Nothing new under the sun

I love quotes from what the world would call famous people, I think most people do. It gives us an insight into how a person thought or felt and drives us to think about the things we might not normally ponder. Take the following quote:

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our own hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

As I think about the statements made above I cannot help but see their bold and correct stance on the state of the world today. I not only see the world but also the state of the church of Jesus Christ as well.

We have built churches all around the country; I don’t think we can travel the space of a few miles in any populated area without seeing at least 2 or 3 on every corner. We have been preserved in peace in a country where religious expression is not only allowed but encouraged. We have been multiplied and enriched with churches that would rival many rich people’s houses nowadays. We look at how far the “church” has come and we vainly imagine in our own deceitfulness of heart that we somehow did it, while giving passing glory to the Lord of how He has blessed it.

We look to men that might not even have the power of the Holy Spirit working in their lives to guide us because they appear successful. We gobble up their teachings while the Word lays dusty and untouched. We give glory to the Lord but ignore the commands He has given us to lead holy lives and instead flock to the same men that “tickle our ears” as it says in Timothy.

It’s time church to wake up! It’s time saints to grab the Word and sharpen the Sword that the Lord has given us. It is time as a nation we put aside the deeds of darkness and pray for forgiveness and start walking in the Light. It is time that as “Soldiers of Jesus Christ” as it tells us in 2 Corinthians that we rush into the battle.

But we are you say. We are signing petitions, we are demonstrating, and we are trying to show the world the morality that it is missing. WE, WE, WE but are WE turning to God or walking in our own wisdom? It is time we get back to the Word and see who it is who changes hearts and minds and it is only the Lord alone. Signing petitions and things of that nature are fine, but we first and foremost need to do what the bible tells us to do which is to go out and seek the lost. We need to get out there and tell them the Good News of Jesus Christ. We need to pray that the Lord would awaken the souls of people and bring the convicting knowledge of sin and judgment to come.

We do that you say. We make church inviting and pleasant so that people will be pulled in and join. Does that what the Word says? The Word says that the church is where the saints, the saved, meet for instruction in the Word, not where to bring lost people! We need to go out into the world where they are and speak to them there. That doesn’t seem quite logical you say. It doesn’t have to! The Lord has given us the blueprint in the bible of what we must do; our simple task is to obey it.

Well that was in different days you say. Dear church, sin has not changed. The nature of sin has not changed it has been exactly the same since the garden. There is nothing new under the sun, human nature is exactly the same as it always has been. To quote Leonard Ravenhill “Human Nature is still a sinful nature”. It is only by the blood of Jesus Christ that we can escape that nature, and that will never change. Nothing has changed, we need to reach this world with the message of Jesus Christ.

There is nothing new under the sun as Solomon said in Ecclesiastes. That quote from above that seems like it came from a man of God in the pulpit today was actually spoken by Abraham Lincoln in 1863 declaring a national day of prayer, fasting, and humiliation. Let us humble ourselves saints and realize we must be about the Work the Lord of the Harvest has given us.