with the sharks. But before we do, let's pray. Father, we really want to have soft hearts and open minds to hear your word this morning and to be shaped by it. Lord, where are hearts are corrupt? We want your word to expose it. And where are minds and thinking have been mushy? We want you to make our thinking crisp and firm. Send your spirit. We want to be a people of love and power and grace in our world. We pray this in Christ name. Amen. Read in the paper this week that there was a cruise ship that included folk from Citrus County. And they were making their way up the past Nova Scotia when the captain received word that there had been a horrible plane crash. You're aware of that plane crash with air plane crash. And so the captain diverted the cruise ship from its intended course and engaged in search and rescue. You also know that there was no one to be rescued. And yet the captain was asked to pass his ship through the debris field a number of times to assist in the operation there. Well, that's really what we want to do this morning diverting from our study of the book of Acts, which we intend to engage in throughout the fall. We're going to divert the course of our preaching somewhere else this morning to a presidential debris field, the national derailment that has us looking at sort of a displayed wreckage before us. And we want to carefully navigate through this national situation so that in a sense for biblical wisdom and direction. Here's my concern. My concern is not to give you political direction. My concern is not to tell you about what the future of the president of the United States should be whether it should be impeached and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's not my concern. My concern is neither for the state of our nation and the decay of our nation and the collapsing morality of our nation. That's not my primary concern. My primary concern is for you. My primary concern is for you. The tomorrow at the in the break room during coffee break, at the water cooler during lunch, tomorrow night at your dinner table, tomorrow when you're on the phone with your relatives and friends that in the midst of swirling scandal that you stand out. As somebody who is calm, calm because the last you check God was still on the throne, right. He didn't have any sweat on his upper lip. He didn't seem to be facing anything he couldn't handle. He's not under indictment or impeachment. He'll always be your ruler, guardian, guidance day and because God's people should in a sense never hear any news about anything ever that really shakes their foundations because they're anchored to God. So that God's people would be calm, confident and rivals to the book of Acts. Acts chapter 1, someone asked me this morning, what happened to the last minor prophet Malachi? Then I was glad somebody noticed. The answer is I'm saving that. I want to preach through Malachi verse by verse and that will happen sometime in the next year or two. Should remind you if you are typically a first service Sunday worship attender next weekend, that service will begin at 8.30. 10 minutes earlier than we've been so slight adjustment will be worshiping at 8.30 and 10.30 on Sunday's beginning next week. Acts chapter 1, we'll be studying together the book of Acts and you know the much talk of if Sammy Sosa, Mark Royer, hit these record breaking homeruns if you can catch the ball and that ball be worth just gazillions of dollars. And it's great fear of course that if an object worth gazillions of dollars flies into a crowd of people, how might they behave? And that's been largely unrealized fear until this last week. When playing at Rigley Field in Chicago, Sammy Sosa hit a ball out of the stadium onto Wavelin Avenue and the cameras from the top of the bleachers pictured a an absolute free for all. Hundreds of people piling on the person who got the ball and I'm scratching and clawing and people racing and diving in and burrowing down and now the result is that this homerun ball, the 60 second or whatever homerun, that three people have it. Three people claim that they have the actual ball. Well, when we face this kind of national scandal, are we left just to that? To an absolute information free for all where we've got opinions flying at us from every direction and there really is no possible way to discern in the middle of it what is actually true and actually why. My suggestion is no, we're never left with that. We've got something that tells us, guides us into all truth. We have revelation from God. We have a place we can stand and say, this is true and that is not. And I'm certain of it because God has spoken. Now, you know, the challenge for us then is to have vitically informed thinking, not CNN informed thinking, right? And not partisan Republican or partisan Democrat informed thinking and not to have poll driven public consensus informed thinking or worst of all. Heraldo informed thinking, right? It's that we would have biblically informed thinking what is the Bible say about these affairs that are before us. I see quotes in the paper and on TV and the talking heads just jabbering away and yet I hear very little that seems to be rooted in the ancient paths, the ancient ways, the paths of righteousness. That we've been directed to think according to. So here's our challenge is to understand that all of life comes under the microscope of God's word. That all I thought are to be brought captive to the word of God. I recognize that even adventure into talking about something like this today, there is a recoil reflex in and and poke in this room will instantly say that is not the purview of the church. At the church, I come to hear the Bible and spiritual thing. I want to tell you something. There is no area of culture or society that is not the concern of the word of God and the sovereign Lord of the universe whose word guides us how to think about every area of life. And forget everything else you're about to hear. If you've never heard what I just said, you're not going to hear anything else as life changing as that. That the word of God would direct you in how you conduct yourself as an architect and how you would function as an engineer and how you would raise your children and how you would take care of your lawn. So with the word of God be your only guide to faith and life. So just to give you a few examples, how would we think with vividly informed thinking and some of the kind of issues that are floating before us. Well, one would be, can Christians judge? Is it right for people to judge other people? Pretty common question raised out there, isn't it? And people will quote Matthew 7 verse 1, judge not what? There we have it, the Bible is pretty clear, isn't it? Don't judge. I consider this to be the most misused Bible verse in my personal experience of any verse in the whole Bible. It's as if the Bible has nothing else to say about judging the Matthew chapter 7 verse 1. It's a very dangerous thing to build any sort of life ethic on one line of the Bible without consulting the whole world. Or without consulting the content. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus says that there are people who have a hyper critical judgmental attitude that don't seem to recognize their own failings in false and that that attitude can't be commended and it can't continue. That's condemned in Matthew chapter 7. Let me tell you something. Again and again and again the Bible tells us not only that we can judge but that we must. A people who will not judge are not a godly people. A people who are indifferent to moral turpitude are a desperately sick people. It is not tolerance of evil is not a sign of health. In fact the Bible tells us that we are to be a discerning judging people. God's a judge, right? He'll judge the earth. The Bible tells us that Jesus judged early and often didn't he? He walked into the temple he kicked over tables and he called them thieves. Sounds just a tad judgmental to me, doesn't it? Jesus called people snakes. He said this is a wicked and perverse generation. Those are strong judging words. Jesus told us not to cast our pearls before somebody's got to decide who the swine are, right? He said don't cast that which is sacred before dogs. Jesus said that in the function of the church you are to cast the wicked man out of your midst. Who's to decide that? Somebody's got to make a judgment, don't they? Judging is a part of life. Judging is nothing more than taking truth and applying it to life situations and discerning that which is good and that which is evil. If you have a teenage daughter and some creep who shows up at your door to take her on a date, what's your responsibility as a father to make a judgment? There hasn't been a decent one show up yet, right? Parents have to judge the department of their children, the manners of their children, the teachers have to judge, employees have to judge whether the conduct of their employees is commendable and whether it needs to be corrected. Life is a series of judgments, isn't it? Daily we're having to judge as to whether things are good or whether things are evil. In fact, the Bible commands that very thing. Look at the passage in your sermon outline in the book of Hebrews. It tells us the mature person has a keenly tuned conscience aided by the word of God to discern between good and evil. In fact, we see Christ affirming the Ephesian church in Revelation chapter 2 because they hate that which is evil about the Nicolayatans and their behavior. So where are people judged in the Bible? We see them affirmed by the word of God. I say all this to make it very clear that this notion that Christians aren't a judge is misguided indeed. In fact, what we recognize is that our failure to be wise judges of our culture is a sign of spiritual ill-health and that our culture is increasingly unable to render wise judgment about anything, are they?
70% of people between ages of 18 and 35 went asked to say there is nothing wrong with having children outside of wedlock. You see in our culture, if there are no moral, unchanging moral principles, then there is no basis to ever judge anything, right? I mean, if there is no ruler, then we can never determine what anyone's height is. If there's no standard of measurement, nobody can ever say what's good or what's evil. All we can ever say is, well, that's not the way I would do it. That's not behavior that I condone or that I feel good about or that I would practice. But we have a culture that can no longer stand up and say, that is wrong. Always was, always will be. Second, we're going to thank Biblically in our response. Not only must we be a wise, wise judges, second question is, does a person's private behavior, does the character they display privately really matter, particularly if they can keep it shielded from their public performance? Common question out there, right? What would the Bible say about that? The Bible would say that what you are is what you are. So, what you are privately is what you are publicly. There cannot be any compartmentalization of your life. If you are a private liar, if you are a privately deceitful, then you will be publicly deceitful. Because out of a bitter spring comes bitter water. Out of a salty spring comes salty water. The orange trees always produce oranges. You don't get pairs or apples. And so out of a corrupt art comes corrupt behavior. It just doesn't work any other way. And so, the idea that we could somehow compartmentalize and shield off a private life that will be kept separate from public is just not supportable by scripture at all. In fact, we also know this, that any public leader is responsible for raising, setting a moral example for all those who follow. That's true of dads, right? You might not think of all fathers and leaders, but they are. That's what the Bible says. They are responsible for the example they said for their children. Let's just suppose that a dad spends time with his kids. He reads books with his kids. He enters into their lives. He goes to their events. He provides for the family and they've got adequate food and clothing and health care, and yet he maintains a secret relationship with a woman other than their mother. That's okay, as long as they don't know about it, right? Is that okay? It's not just not okay with God, it's not okay with those kids. Because, if that's true, however he tries to act, he doesn't love their mother. He's not giving her the love he promised to her and to her alone, and therefore the very thing they need the most. Which is a father who loves their mother, they will not have. Whether they're aware of his private behavior or not. Private behavior matters, character matters. Nothing matters more than character. In fact, we're responsible for those who follow us. That's the burden of leadership, isn't it? I don't drink alcohol. I don't think it would be wrong to have a glass of wine. I don't think it's wrong for you to do that. Some people don't handle it very well, though, do they? Some people abuse alcohol. Some come from families that have for a long time. Some could not just drink with extreme moderation and propriety. Some many in our culture are addicted. I don't drink. And even if I like this stuff, I probably wouldn't. Because the person who wears the scarlet L called leader has to face that everyone who follows them will take their behavior as license to do even beyond what they do. That's just what it means to be a leader. Whether you're a coach, whether you're a policeman, whether you're a boss, whether whatever your venue of leadership is. Is it okay if a policeman's a bigot and a drunk? But as long as he doesn't act that way on the job, is that okay? Is it okay if a principal has high SAT scores and competes for state championships and sports and has a bustling fine arts department and a full enrollment? Is it okay if that principal molasses the student teachers that come to teach there? You see, we understand it just done work that way. And when you stop and think about it, great schools and great churches and great teams and great communities and great nations aren't really built on great managerial skills. They're built on great, what character? So here's Biblically, and here's just an example of taking what God's word says and applying it to these questions that are before us. So we need to respond with Biblically informed thinking, secondly, we ought to respond with genuine outrage. Mary McGrawia, a quite liberal columnist said an astounding thing is that this is the first president whose approval ratings have been strengthened by charges of immorality. It's an astounding thing indeed. Now some people act with stained outrage for political purposes. There's an act like there's so in sense, but I think that has more to do with elections coming up than it has to do with the real sense of being grieved. But the people of God ought to be grieved by sin. They ought to be genuinely appalled by sin. God commands those who boldly act to resist evil. Look at what the Bible says. Those who love the Lord hate evil. A righteous man hates falsehood. Righteousness, exalts the nation. Sin is a disgrace to any people. My kids and I were reading in the book of numbers to them and family devotions to them. It seems like we've been in the book of numbers since they were born. And we're reading about Moses preaching, warning the people that they're concerning with Moabite and Midianite woman is destroying them. It's horrendous in God's eyes. It's rebellion. They're taking up the gods of these other nations and it's got to stop right in the middle of the sermon to the picture. And Israelite man takes a Midianite woman and they go in his tent together. I mean it's like in your face, Moses. We are not listening to you. We are doing exactly what we want to do and you can't stop us. Well there's one priest there who says enough. His name is Phineas and in his outrage. He grabs the spear and he runs in the tent and drives it through the both of them. Now what do you think God's reaction was? Phineas, that's not the way we behave. Judge not. Let's you be judged. You know what God says? My blessing of peace will be on the house of Phineas and his descendants as a perpetual priesthood before me because Phineas was jealous with a godly jealousy for my honor.
Let's you be confused. Don't go home and get a spear. You know. As a pastor anymore, you've just got to be careful because some people heard that comment and they said, yeah, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go take down the government. No, I don't think that's really what we want. I think what we really want is for people to have a finely tuned conscience so that when we are exposed to evil, it's things and it's things to us. And we realize it's far more notches in the nostrils of God. You see, the problem is that the standards keep getting dumbed down, don't they? And somebody has to stand up and say, lying is wrong. It's always been wrong. It's from the evil one who's the father of lies and lying is a horrible evil. It's not a victimless crime. And somebody has to stand up and say, committing family treason is a high crime. Being unfaithful to your spouse and your marriage of vows is a horrible thing. It destroys life. And sexual immorality and the abuse of young women who are committed to your care is epidemic in America. It is a horrible evil. The problem is that there's so much of it that we just get desensitized, don't we? I mean, it's like, you know, if you go to too many lethal weapon movies, right? They got 96 people killed in the opening action sequence, right? I mean, after a while, somebody getting, you know, and this car blowing up and that thing, and none of it is really that dramatic anymore because there's just so much of it. And so in our culture, there's just so much of it coming at us all the time and all around us and in our own families. Well, it's just hard not to really be affected by all the, you know, hey, everybody's doing it. And that's just the way it is. One column is set of this scandal. Come on, come on, come on. This is Washington, DC. I mean, this isn't the sound of music. You know, this is the real world. This is just boys being boys and this is just men doing what men do and then lying about it. It's been happening since time immemorial. Do you hear it all just a sort of national acceptance that says, hey, everybody, we're all okay. We're all a bunch of immoral, you know, vagabonds and the standards just get reduced. Makes me think of that old story, the guy standing in, you know, in his city and preaching on the street corner, the old man and the kid who comes up, it says, old man, every day you come down here and you preach your heart out. And you tell us to repent, but nobody's listening. What are you doing? The old man says, when I came to the city as a young man, I stood here and preached so that I might change the heart of the city, but I stand here and preach today. So that the city won't change my heart. You see, friends, that's the real concern is that we need Phineas in our day. Phineas will stand up and say, no, you know, everybody's not doing it. And if there's anything I'd want the third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth and ninth and tenth graders and on up to here, is that everybody's not doing it. President Truman and President Eisenhower and President Reagan and President Carter, they didn't act like this. This is not the way people act. And there are still scores and scores and scores and pens of thousands of families where husbands love their wives. Keep their word, where wives are faithful to their husbands, where they're not filled with lying and cheating and deviousness. In fact, we can prove that statistically. Survey say that it's only 3.6% of men who are unfaithful to their spouses in a given year and 1.3% of women who are unfaithful and a great deal that unfaithfulness is a very limited extent. It's not serial unfaithfulness. Now, that's way too much but it surely falls well short of everybody's doing it. And I don't know what happens in the hallways of your school and I don't know what happens on Friday night and date night and I don't know what happens with everybody at college. But I'll tell you this, if everybody's doing it, don't you do it because you're not everybody. It means something to be a child of God. It's a precious thing to have God for your father. And God's children don't do it. They choose not to.
We need more sentences in our day so that the standards are held up. There has to be in us a righteous indignation towards evil. Third, we need to recapture a biblical definition for repentance. We need to recapture a biblical definition of repentance. Isn't it interesting as this national scene unfolds that we're hearing, a lot of kind of religious words, aren't we? Like sin and forgiveness and even repentance on Friday a week ago, the president of the United States said, I have sin. There's no other word for it. What I've done is sin. And the question is, what does repentance really look like? Good questions. Good question for everyone of us in this room, isn't it? Because we ought to be the chief repenters. We ought to know what it looks like. Pretty important. First of all, repentance involves recognition. It involves a person saying, I did it. I recognize that my heart is corrupt. I recognize that I am a sinner. I recognize that I have sinned and rebelled. It's the prodigal son sitting in a pig pen and the Bible says what? Excuse me. He came to his senses. See, that's recognition. It's me. It's DL Moody picking up that little street archon who kept telling him that his face was in dirty and sticking his face in the mirror. And saying, look, boy, it's God holding us up and causing the walls of our lives to cave in so that we see it. Recognize exactly who we are. Let me tell you something. The recognition of guilt means that there's no defensiveness anymore. Yes, I'm guilty, but you see it's an actual contradiction to say, I am a sinner. It's me. I'm guilty. I've done it, but I am going to mount the most vigorous defense possible. That's an absolute contradiction of terms. The repentant person stops defending themselves. That's what repentance is. Remember what we're saying, just as I am without one, without one why, without one defense, without one argument representing me, without any plea. I have no defense. I stand in the dock before God and I pronounce it guilty. That's repentance. It's recognition. It's the prodigal son going home and saying, Dad, I don't even deserve to be your what. I don't deserve to be your son. I don't even deserve to be your servant. Second, repentance involves contrition. It involves a genuine, sorrowing over sin. It's Psalm 51. It's David against me and the only have I sinned work. It's a recognition that forgiveness is not primarily to be sought from other people. Forgiveness is primarily a matter between us and our maker. And then third aspect of repentance we could say is restitution. That is, I will do everything in my power to make right what I have damaged by my wrongdoing. Your stockbroker calls you up and he's crying. It happens more and more these days. Your stockbroker is crying not because the dials the dip to 400 points that day, but he's crying because he has to admit to you that he stole $50,000 from you. He's weeping. He's saying he's sorry. He's saying he'll never do it again. These are all aspects of repentance, but you're looking to hear something else. What are you keenly interested in hearing? Where's my 50 grand? Right? Are you going to pay me back? One thing to say you're sorry, but are you going to take the very difficult steps to try to make right what you've made wrong? Now let's just suppose he has nothing and that's part of the bitter truth of repentance is very often there's a little we can do to make right what we've done wrong. If you gossip and slander the reputation of someone else, you can't make that right because it'll run all over the place and you'll never catch up to it. If you get drunk and drive your car and kill somebody else and you're later repented of it, pretty limited what you can do to make that right, isn't it? There's a lot of cases where you can't make it right, but it is incumbent on us to do everything in our power to make right what we can think of that little tax collector who Jesus saw in a tree. His name was Zacchaeus. The Bible says salvation came to the Zacchaeus house the day that Jesus passed by and with salvation Zacchaeus did what? He not only paid back the money he embezzled but he was willing to pay it back up to four times what he stole. Here's a very important point. Restitution and repentance don't necessarily mean restoration. If my stocked broker confesses that he stole 50,000 from me, I'm going to be very surprised because I would have had to steal it from someone else to have it, but if they genuinely can try and he does everything he can to make that right, can I not forgive that person, can I withhold forgiveness from them? No, I must forgive them, but I'm not going to invest any more money with them. If my babysitter says that they've molested my children and they go through a treatment program and they're generally repentant, just what? As horrible as that might be, you have sinned worse than the eyes of God and you never have any right to withhold forgiveness but you're not going to call them up on Friday night, are you? And ask them to come watch your kids again. You see there's a big difference between the restoration of repentance and restoring someone to their form of position.
If I have to stand right here someday and confess to you gross sexual immorality and I bear the marks of a repentant man, do you have to forgive me? Absolutely, but you must never restore me for this position. My days as pastor of this church must be over, at least for a number of years before I could restore a good name and a reputation above reproach. Do you understand the difference? Very important. That extending forgiveness to another person does not mean they don't bear the consequences of their actions. Chuck Coulson became a Christian during Watergate. He's gone on to live one of the most fruitful Christian lives as a Christian leader in our nation, but he also went to prison, didn't he? And it was right that he did. In fact his own testimony is that he went to prison for things he didn't even do.
The truth was there were a lot of things he did do that he wasn't even charged with. That's the attitude of a repentant man or woman. Now last of all, and most important of all, we should be reminded to give primary attention to the state of our own hearts.
It's a dangerous thing to have your attention diverted to the sins of another person. The other day I was sitting in my office studying and I smelled. I was on the phone with a friend and smelled this acrid smell. I thought probably the building is on fire. I knew Jim Cole wasn't cooking breakfast, so I didn't think that could be possible. I thought maybe the third floor they're doing some air conditioning work or something welding or some odors are coming through. But I was convinced that this inferno, this acrid smell, the source of it had to be well away from where I was. And then as I continued talking I glanced up and I noticed that on my desk I have a lamp that has two light bulbs and the lampshade had been turned so that the two light bulbs were pressed against the lampshade. And there was a full scale meltdown happening right on my desk. I mean Chernobyl right in my office. Scandal in Washington DC is revealing an awful lot about decay and corruption in our own hearts. And we ought to give attention to it. You ever stop and wonder why the president of the United States given this incredible opportunity to do something that certainly when I was a kid every little boy dreamed of. And today I suppose every little boy and girl dreams of to be president of the United States would throw it all away with such foolish behavior. I would suggest that the answer to that is the same answer that explains why we do that all the time. Why we act so foolishly, regularly. Let's just take a clue. The president of the United States didn't have a wife. He didn't have a father. His mother was married four times. His father was married four times. You don't think that has an effect. He didn't even know his father. His father died before he was even born. His stepfather was an alcoholic who abused his mother. You don't have to be sigmund Freud to figure out that the absence of what would be what we would hope would be a normal God intended stability creates a void in a young man's life. A yearning for a father that some young men respond to by living a life of hyper productivity that leads them to leadership positions in athletics and in the corporate community. In banking and finance and in politics and even to the leadership of nations. I would suggest that many a fatherless child rises to positions of leadership to in a sense satisfy that yearning inside her recognition that I am somebody. Others respond to that kind of environment by a life where they can't retain a job where they are constantly recreation and pleasure seeking. Where they often get in trouble for addictive behaviors very much like the president's brother. Why do I say all that? I say it because it ought to be inside to us. Genesis in the first chapters of the Bible tells us that what's true of us is that we were separated from our father. And so what explains our behavior? What explains our obsession with material things? What need are we trying to satisfy? What explains our recreation oriented culture? What explains the people who care so much about who wins football games? What explains that? What needs are we trying to satisfy in ourselves? What explains the people who are so obsessed with the stock market and the economy and sexual matters in general in our culture? It explains the people who are trying to make it in this world and fill their heart without being restored to their father. It's the one thing we need is to have a father. I just want to issue a warning. If you walk out of this place today feeling better about yourself because Bill Clinton has committed much gross sin, then it's not his repentance I'm concerned about. It's yours. We ought to recognize that we behave in much the same way even if they're a little bit more socially acceptable. Joseph Damian was a missionary in 1800s to the Malachi island, Hawaii, who was a missionary of all people to Leopard. He went to the very least of God's children and they loved him for it. He poured out his life for them. He didn't know what it would cost him. One morning when he was making tea, some of the hot water splashed over onto his barefoot and a spine tingling beer shot up his back. He didn't feel a thing. Slowly and deliberately he took the boiling water and poured it on his foot and confirmed the fact that he didn't feel a thing. It was said that morning that when he went to lead chapel for all the leopards, it was always his practice to stand before them and say, good morning, fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. But that morning it all changed. The day he could stand before them and say as he did, good morning, fellow leopards. You see, we will not respond in a God-pleasing way to the sin of anyone else until we can say, there is no sin that is not true of me in some form or fashion and it is only restrained by the grace of God. Herman Melville said, heaven have mercy on us all, Presbyterian and pagan alike, for we are all dreadfully cracked about the head and desperately in need of mending. The spell ahead, some in our congregation are coming.