Job 8

The speaker refers to a sermon by Brother Adrian Rogers titled "The Ghost That Caught Us". They discuss the current state of the world and the influence of false teachers who distort God's Word. They emphasize the importance of basing our lives on the truth of God's Word and the need for genuine, timeless truth in a changing world. They mention the attack on God's Word and the decline of churches preaching the truth. They highlight the significance of teaching our children to walk in truth and the brevity of life. They criticize secular education for lacking truth and suggest that we should seek truth in God's Word. They mention a prayer from 1996 that criticized the moral decline in society and reflect on how things have changed since then. They question how society reached this point and mention the removal of prayer from schools in 1962 as a starting point. We're going to be in Job just for a little bit here, and I want to talk about a sermon I heard Brother Adrian Rogers preach, and he entitled it, The Ghost That Caught Us. You'll understand that a little bit better as we get further into the lesson tonight, but one of the things he talked about there is the fact that, you know, as Christians today, we see what's going on in the world today. You know, things are not looking really good, and there's a lot of things going on. I know if you look on Facebook, I don't know if y'all have seen this guy on there, but he is exactly a false teacher. I mean, he's taking God's Word and making it fit his lifestyle and lifestyles of others that God certainly condemns. And, you know, I think a lot of times we have to be careful because we can fall in that trap, too, of having worldly knowledge influence our thinking and our thought process. But we need to have a – as God's people, we need to be – our view needs to be on the truth, the truth of God's Word. And, of course, everybody knows that God's Word is under attack today. I mean, you know, I don't think I have to explain or convince anybody here tonight that this is the truth, this is God's Word. But I want to say this, you're in the minority. And, you know, I think about that in the sense that you see what's going on in the world today. And one thing he mentioned is that knowledge expands, but genuine, wined truth does not. And if you think about that, you know, knowledge changed. And he kind of relayed that to cooking. He said, you know, facts are like recipe, but truth is like the meal. And, you know, we digest the truth. When you digest God's Word, it's going to change your life. And, you know, of course, John chapter 17 – let's look over there right quick before we get to Job. But in John chapter 17, he says there in verse 17, that sanctify them through thy truth, thy Word is truth. So God's Word we know is genuine truth. And, you know, we know after salvation we receive the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is to guide us into all truth. So, you know, when we digest that truth and we're led by the Spirit, it's going to change our lives. And, you know, God's Word is truth, and the Holy Spirit is truth. And, you know, Jesus said, I am the truth, the way and the life, and no man cometh unto the Father except by me. And, you know, all those things that I'm talking about and saying right here that we hold dear and believe is being pretty much hammered in the world today. And, you know, we talk about our churches. You know, the Bible says that our churches are the pillar and ground of the truth. And so, you know, God's churches is where we come to hear the truth. But sadly to say, a lot of churches today are not preaching the truth. And I think that's kind of the way that we see our world heading. And he also brought out, and John stated this in John 1.4, he said, I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in truth. And that's the desire of every parent, you know, a Christian parent, is that our kids grow up and walk in the truth. And, you know, the truth is something that God says truth will set you free. The truth of God's word is what we have to base our life on. And, you know, James in chapter 1 verse 4 says that, you know, our life is what? It's like a vapor. It appears for a little while, and it vanishes away. So we don't have very long here on this earth. And, you know, I'm 65 years old, and it, you know, those 65 years went by just like that. And I tell Jesse and them, you know, it's amazing. Once you get out of high school, I tell everybody, well, you know, age was a big thing when you was in high school, but you learn very quickly when you get out of school, everybody's the same age. I mean, you know, the age gap closes. And so, you know, time moves on very quickly. And, you know, education is not enough. And, you know, we, our young people today need the facts. They need the truth. And you're not going to get it in our schools today. Okay? And one of the things that's happened, and it just happened in our lifetime, my lifetime, is, you know, I'm wondering why in the world, and how this came about so fast? How did we get to where we're at today? And, you know, it's like, well, you know, everything that we used to say, well, that happens in California. But now, what's happening in California has happened right here in Slim County. You know, it is, the gap has been bridged of the things that's going on in the world. So we need practical truth, we need truth, you know, to feed our hearts, we need truth to feed our minds, we need truth to build our churches, we need truth to go out to the mission fields, we need truth in our Christian homes and families. And, you know, that's one thing that we'll see later on in this is the fact is that we've got to do it at home. We've got to do it at home with our kids. We're not going to get it in education, secular education. And so the thing about it is, is where are we going to go for that truth? And today, and I'm thinking about this in the sense, you know, today, where do we go for truth? Where do we go to solve our problems? Where do we go when something's not going right? And I learned through all this, that this has been going on for a long time. And to me, it just seems like it just passed on us right here, since COVID and all that, that things have just been, you know, spun out of control. But the fact of the matter is, it happened to Job. If you look at Job chapter 8, in verse 8, and we all know the story about Job and what happened to Job. And, you know, he is a man that has done nothing. But he had so many things happen to him so quickly in his life, that he was at a point where his friends were supposed to be comforters, but they actually were tormentors. And one of them was Bill Ben. And look in verse 8, chapter 8, and it says, For inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to search of their fathers. For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon this earth are a shadow. Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter the word out of their hearts? And think about that, and you kind of look at those scriptures, and basically what Bill Ben is telling Job is this. He says, you need to go to the library, you need to dust those books off, and you need to read what these philosophers have to say. And if you think about that in a sense, you know, he did not give him what he needed. He needed what? He needed the truth of God's word. So, he was basically telling him that, basically appealing to humanism. And that's exactly what Bill Ben was doing. And so, basically Bill Ben was saying, Job, you need some answers, and you need them right now. If you think about it in situations that you may be, or have been in your life, if you're like me, I'm a very impatient person. I want answers right now. But sometimes those answers don't come right now. Those answers come later on. And so, you know, this lesson was actually, I think this sermon was preached in 1996. OK? I don't know if y'all remember the prayer that this man, Pastor Joe Wright, made to the Kansas Assembly. You know, they always have preachers that will come and pray before the assembly, before they start to assemble together there. They've got their senators and congressmen and representatives there that's going to represent the state of Kansas. And I want you, I'm going to read this prayer. And remember, this was in 1996. So, he says, Heavenly Father, we come before you today and ask forgiveness and seek your directions and guidance. We know, your word says, woe those that call evil good, but that's exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values. We confess that. We ridicule the absolute truth of the word of God and call it pluralism. We have worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism. We have endorsed perversion and called it alternative lifestyle. We have exploited the poor and called it philately. We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed the unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and calling it building self-esteem. We have abused power and called it politically savvy. We have coveted our Navy's possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity, pornography, and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, O God, and know our hearts today. Cleanse us from every sin and set us free. God, our God, and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas and have been ordained by you to govern this great state. Grant them the wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us in the center of your will. I ask you in the name of your Son and living Savior, Jesus Christ, amen. That was read before the Kansas assembly and they said it was almost like people were just devastated. They said that was the most divisive prayer that was ever made publicly before this assembly. People even got up and left. And I'm thinking, well, it's 1996. What if they read that today? What if that prayer was prayed today? What if it was prayed in Congress? What would happen? I think we all know what would happen. That person would be ridiculed. He would have been wrote out of there and probably never seen again. But how did we get to this? That's the thing that we have to look at. Where did all this start happening? You know, for years and years and years and centuries, right was right and wrong was wrong. Murder was wrong universally all over the whole world. But what happened? What happened? Let me tell you what happened in the United States. It started in 1962 when they took prayer, voluntary prayer out of schools. Many of you know that. You remember that. And, you know, it wasn't long after that, I believe it was 1963, they quit allowing prayer but also reading the Bible. How many of you in elementary school, when you went to school in the morning, the first bell rang, the teacher got up and read the scripture? I remember it very well. They took it out. They took it out. And then come along about 1980, the courts ruled that the Ten Commandments was unconstitutional. So we had to take it out of our schools. We had to take it out of our branches of government. We couldn't post this anymore. And in 1982, I believe, I believe it was 1980 when they, the Ten Commandments, I believe it was in 1982, they took teaching creation, creation out of the school. How many of you remember being taught creation in school? They took it out. In 20 years, this country took away what this country was founded on and our Christian values have been under attack ever since. And, you know, the thing about it is, today, students need permission from their parents to take medication, even an aspirin. But they may have an abortion and do not have to contact their parents. This is where we're at today in our world. Textbooks are being written to destroy heritage, history, belief, values, the foundation of this nation. They're taking it out. They took it out. This has happened in my lifetime. This has happened to our schools. And y'all know what's going on with the, you know, the library down here, all the stuff that's happening there. Why? Why is all that? We have set asleep. We're asleep at the wheel. Because we say, that only happens in California. But we can't say that no more. It's happening right here in our great state. So, we're going to look at five men. And all five of these men were philosophers. And all five of these men started this way back in the 1800s. And I thought about this in the sense that when these philosophers, and they're all German philosophers, and when that began, I thought about our 200th year. This started about the same time that this church was founded in 1922. So, we're looking back about 200 years or a little bit more. The first one is a man named George Frederick Hegel. H-E-G-E-L. He was a philosopher. And what he did, he rejected absolutes. He said there is no absolutes in this world. He stated there's no standard for right and wrong. He believed the strongest idea wins. This is just the ghost of an idea of rejecting morals as absolutes. Then you have another guy who comes along. He's a philosopher. And he built upon Hegel. His name is Ludwig Furebach. I hope I'm pronouncing these names right, but that's the best I can come up with that name. But he built upon Hegel of no moral absolutes. He believed there can be no God because that would be an absolute, that there was a God. He stated that man is not made in the image of God, but God is in the imagination of man. This is the ghost of humanism. The third man we talked about is Karl Marx. He asked, what is the future and the purpose of mankind? He believed that capitalism, the right to own property and the right to be productive for yourself, was wrong. He said that he desired equity and fairness in the hearts and the minds of working people. What does this sound like? What does this sound like? This sounds exactly like what's going on today. He said that he did not recognize the worth or dignity of the individual. He advocated violence to change no matter how many lives it cost. Where do you think this is the ghost of? Communism. Socialism. Where's our country headed today? We're headed down that road. The fourth man he talks about here is Charles Darwin. Now, we're probably getting into some names now we know a little bit about. Charles Darwin said he built upon all these others. No absolutes. No moral absolutes. Communism. Socialism. He built all upon this. He concluded that since there's no God, how do we explain our existence? Well, you know how he explained it. He concluded that man is a product of evolution. It's called evolution. It's not a science. It is a philosophy. This is the ghost of evolutionism. Then we look at another man. His name is Sigmund Freud. The father of, I think, psychoanalysis. And he asked, where do we get the idea of God? He stated that to form the image of God was based upon a childhood father. He taught that mankind is motivated chiefly by pleasure, specifically by sexual pleasure. And this is the ghost of extreme permissiveness. Then we wonder where we're at today. And when we look at it, this has been going on for a long, long time. And we are seeing the results of it. One of the results of this and the consequences of these five men was a man named Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler studied all five of these philosophers. And he proclaimed that the survival of the strongest is killing of the weak. He paved the way for abortion. Original racism. That's what you can say about Adolf Hitler. Nature desires a mating of the weaker with the stronger individual. Nature does not desire the blending of higher and lower race. And what did he do? He reclassified Jews as non-persons. And we know what Adolf Hitler did to the Jews if you go back and look at history. He worked systematically in the public system to seduce our children. The enemy does not have the answer, does not have the truth. One last man we look at is Dr. Kovlorkian. Remember him? What was he famous for? Assisted suicide. If you want to leave here, if you want someone to kill you, if you're in pain or suffering and want to die, he'd do it for you. It's just almost scary when you look at this in the sense that what has happened to our world and to our country. And I think without a shadow of a doubt we can look at these five men and we can look at what they believed and what they taught and how that they have pushed this into our school system and they're teaching our kids these things. There's no absolutes, there's no God, there's no high being. Only the strongest and fittest survive. They take God out of the schools, they take God out of the family, they take God out of the country. And what do you have left? The Bible says we have weapons and our warfare is not carnal but mighty. 2 Corinthians 10 verse 4. Through God, through the pulling down of strongholds. There's one thing that the enemy does not have and that is the truth. We have the truth. We have the Holy Spirit. And, you know, if God's people today said, you know, we need to know the truth. Now, I said in the beginning here that what did, and John said that, you know, the truth will what? It will set us free. And we have to have biblical truth. As Christians, you must be prepared to give an answer for the hole that is within you. 1 Peter 3 verse 15. Can we tell people what we believe and why we believe it? Can we take them to the Scriptures and show them that God's Word is truth? And that His Word is incontestable, it's incorruptible, it's indestructible, it's indispensable, Word of God. Is there any hope for America? Can we say there's any hope for America? There's always hope. But what's going to have to happen? What's going to have to happen is there's going to have to be a whole generation. There's going to have to be preachers that will stand up across this land and preach and teach, thus saith the Lord. Now, just ask Brother Keith what you see on preachers at 4.30 in the morning. Are they preaching the truth, Brother Keith? Not too many of them, are they? They're teaching and preaching the things that we just talked about, that these philosophers have put in the minds of men. And this keeps snowballing to the finish. But, you know, it's got to start somewhere. There's going to be a healing in America. And, you know, I'm probably the one that probably has said it. You know, I'll probably say we've gone too far to ever come back. But I don't think we've ever gone too far that you can't come back to God. Where does it start? Well, it starts in my heart and it starts in your heart. There has to be a change. You know, you say, well, I can't do much. You got kids, you got grandkids. You know, the parents ain't doing it. Somebody's going to have to do it. It may be the grandparents. We've lost a whole generation to this worldview of thinking. And it's sad. Let's give our young people a Christian worldview. You know, a lot of times our young people all they hear is what's brought them to complain about what's going on in the world today. There's a lot of bad things going on in the world today, but there's a lot of good things going on too. But we tend to dwell on the things that are bad. And they are. We can't deny that. Let's stand up and speak while God gives us a voice. I want you to look over in Ecclesiastes. If I can find Ecclesiastes. Who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes? Solomon. Who was Solomon? He was one of the wisest men there was, probably, wasn't he? What did he ask God for? He asked God for wisdom? God gave him wisdom? The whole book of Ecclesiastes is about trying to find out what the purpose of life is. What did Solomon come up and say? Dainty things and dainty things. What did he say? He said in verse 13, he said, let's hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God, keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. Fear God, keep his commandments. Go back to the first part of this chapter. Verse 1. This is very important. He says, Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil of the days come not. When the years draw nigh, then thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. Why is it so important that we teach our children, our grandchildren, if they're not called to God's Word, if they're not brought to God's house, if they're not witnessed to, if they're not encouraged in God's Word. The Bible says when they get old, they're not going to come to it. How many people have you heard say this? Well, when my kid gets a little bit older, we're going to start coming to church. What happens? They don't come. They won't come. You know, this kind of brings home to me. I mean, I've got some grandkids and I love them to death. But there's a lot of things in this world that's taking them away from God's house, from God's Word. Not bad. It's good. But if they do not understand the most important thing in their life will be this. This what? What did the father say? He said that here's the conclusion of the whole matter. It's fear God and keep His commandments. For this is the whole duty of man. Life is confusing and meaningless without God's intervention. You know, several of us have been here. We kind of say we've been down the road a little bit. We've seen a lot of things. Can you imagine going down the road that's in our life, down your road, without God's intervention? We go back and we look and we see how God has intervened in our lives. Even when we wasn't faithful, we wasn't serving Him. We wasn't doing always what God wanted us to do. God was always there leading and guiding us. And you know, that Word is not going to depart from us. That Word is always there. But there can come a point in time, the Bible says, that it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of Almighty God. If you're a child of God and you're not living for Him and you're not doing what God has called you to do, God could say, come on home. You're better off here than you are down there. There is a sin under death. The Bible says you don't pray for it, but there is a sin under death. There is a time and place in a person's life that gets so far from God that they're nowhere to be good. And we don't want to see our children and our grandchildren end up with only thing to do is go to the library and dust off them old books and hear the philosophy of this world. That's all we need. That's all we need. Any comments or anything, any questions on this?