Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-18-16

Our recent essay “Welcome To the Revolution” has excited a bit of discussion, some readers claiming I am an alarmist, and others granting that I might be predicting the future instead of, as I believe, reporting on the present. To the charge that I am an alarmist, I would reply that doctors operate when there is disease; firemen rush to houses on fire; when I see alarming things, I sound the alarm.

There are many subjects that American schools do not teach any more, and we generally are an anti-intellectual society. In that vein – specifically, the danger of even right-thinking Americans being ignorant of the Current Crisis – I recall what Alexander Boot wrote about Hellenistic Man, that “he was not ignorant of history; he simply did not see how it affected his life.”

For the immediate future, I believe we are headed for the Summer of Our Discontent. Where once a polite diving-line was drawn between Democrats and Republicans, even liberals and conservatives, now there are bottomless chasms between family members. Ugly schisms divide former friends. “Occupy” and “Black Lives Matter” partisans ascribe blood libels to Tea Partiers, and vice-versa.

Those who think murdered soldiers and policemen are victims of random gunfire, and those who think we are seeing war in the streets. Now, Baton Rouge. Next?

The conventions and campaigns will be ugly – and the Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas parties of many families likely will be bloodier. These rifts will slowly – if ever – heal: people must first desire healing; and for all the empty clichés about Getting Along, the contemporary American is quite happy to excoriate his opponent. Hate Thy Neighbor.

So this is a classic case of “inability to see the forest for the trees,” America’s fatal state of decline. We have gone from decadence to destruction, and when we catch a glimpse of the “forest” – an active society where things continue to happen, where we still wake up, go to sleep, and scurry about our affairs – it is rather a case of inertia that masks the crisis.

Our fall has not been the result of a sudden explosion, but gradual poisons in our cultural water supplies.

One of the favorite Bible verses of Christians in recent years has been II Chronicles 7:14: “If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

How many of us are guilty of quoting that verse, even applying it, superficially? For one thing, it seems, in a forest-for-the-trees manner, like a fortune-cookie aphorism. “Straighten up your act, people,” to be followed by spontaneous revival and Heaven on earth.

But the verse needs to be parsed – examined phrase by phrase. In the first place, linguistically, it strictly is not a promise of God. It is a conditional statement: “If… then.” The Bible is filled with many such conditions, warnings, threats, and yes, promises. But God requires things of His people. Humility. Prayer. Seeking Him. Repentance. All of them “big time.”

THEN He will forgive transgressions and heal the land.

“If.” That is the condition – a big “if.”

“My people.” Not necessarily the entire population, but the Children of God. The saved; today, Christ-followers.

“Who are called.” All of us must be open to the specific call of God on our lives: His will for us.

“Humble themselves.” This does not mean to stop being haughty in church, but to adopt true servants’ hearts.

“Pray.” Jesus Himself prayed fervently before every important act. How less should we?

“Seek My face.” Request guidance and acknowledge God as the source of all good things.

“Turn from their wicked ways.” Here God means true repentance… transformative changes in our personal lives.

Then you “will hear from heaven.” Prayers will be answered.

Then He will “Forgive your sins.”

Then He will “heal your land.”

That makes this verse more than “words to live by.” Or something for Christians to claim in agreement or to memorize for a Bible study or Sunday School class. Not those things alone – good start – but incomplete. Even the famous verse is incomplete! It is the second half of a sentence, not a new sentence in Two Chronicles, as Donald Trump would call it.

Can we, o average American and Christian Patriot, read the context, and learn what the Lord was really saying? Starting with Chapter 7, verse 11:

Thus Solomon finished the house of the Lord, and the king’s house: and all that came into Solomon’s heart to make in the house of the Lord, and in his own house, He prosperously effected.
12 And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place to Myself for an house of sacrifice.
13 If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people;
14 If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
15 Now Mine eyes shall be open, and Mine ears attent unto the prayer that is made in this place.

First, that is a lot of IFs. Second, there are severe warnings. A third point might be that these are specific instructions to David’s son Solomon and the people of ancient Israel. However, it is valid for us to draw lessons.

The most sobering of lessons, chastisements, and warnings of punishment (indeed, God’s promise) is a few verses later:

19 …If ye turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them;
20 Then will I pluck them up by the roots out of My land which I have given them; and this house, which I have sanctified for my name, will I cast out of My sight, and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations.
21 And this house, which is high, shall be an astonishment to everyone that passeth by it; so that he shall say, Why hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and unto this house?
22 And it shall be answered, Because they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath He brought all this evil upon them.

In effect: We bring this evil upon ourselves.

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Click: Leaning On the Everlasting Arms

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1-9-12

It’s all over the news now, the disparity between the “99 per cent” and the “One per cent” – or, rather, the resentment and envy that the majority is supposed to harbor against the more wealthy. It is at the core of the “Occupy” crowds’ chants and signs.

Theodore Roosevelt correctly observed that the sin of envy is no less a sin than that of greed. And years ago, a friend from France once gave me the best definition of Socialism (therefore, its most potent pushback). Francois Mitterand had been elected president in his country; the Socialists were coming to power; and among their proposals, in the name of equality, was the abolition of First-Class seats on public transportation.

“Why is it that the Socialists never want to abolish anything that is second-class?” my friend asked.

That riposte has come to mind when hearing so often lately of the Ninety-Nine versus the One per cents. “Versus” is the operative word; a campaign to raise the civic temperature. But something else has come to mind – that Jesus had a different take on the numbers of 99 and one. Nothing to do with current politics… except as those numbers provide a shout-out to our souls.

Let us remember Christ’s parable of the Lost Sheep. It is found in Luke 15:4-7. The gentle shepherd had a flock of 100, but one had gone astray. And he set out to search, high and low, far and wide, for that wayward sheep. The sheep was found, rescued, and restored to the shepherd’s flock.

Many of us have the natural reaction to think that the sensible thing would have been to play safe with the ninety-nine. A similar impulse, in the other parable of the Prodigal Son, is to observe that the other son was slighted after all of his work and obedience, while his errant brother was feted by the father upon his return.

Our problem as humans is that we tend to see ourselves as members of the flock of ninety-nine. “What is one sheep against so many?” We get proud of our accomplishments, jealous of others receiving favor. Our bigger problem is that God sees us as that Lost Sheep, and the son who departed and sinned – not as we see ourselves.

Heaven rejoices when one sinner is saved, when the Good Shepherd has restored the wayward. Our Heavenly Father arranges a lavish feast when we return. In each case we are not rewarded for straying: we are forgiven when we return.

“Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety and nine–
Are they not enough for Thee?”
But the Shepherd made answer, “This of Mine
Has wandered away from Me;
And although the road be rough and steep
I go to the desert to find My sheep.”

Jesus not only seeks us out; He persists. For us to be as THAT “one percenter” we should be grateful… and can take assurance. Occupy God’s flock.

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“The Ninety and Nine” was written as a children’s poem by Elizabeth Clephane in 1868. The great hymn-writer Ira D Sankey read it when on a Dwight L Moody crusade in Scotland years later; he tucked it into his vest pocket. That evening Moody preached on “The Good Shepherd,” and asked Sankey, his worship leader, to sing a hymn. Sankey remembered that poem in his pocket, took it out, and sang this song impromptu, forming the music as he went. It is now a standard of the church.

Click: The Ninety and Nine