Sermon1

In 1954, after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, the reference to God was added. It was added because the Country was terrified of communism, and they wanted to differentiate the United States from nations under communists rule.
Let me tell you something folks, I'm not terrified of communism, I’m terrified of a church that has grown luke warm, that tries to straddle the middle of the road, so it doesn’t offend anybody. A church that is moving away from the truth of God’s Word.
Rev. 3:14-22
And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.
As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
The book of Haggai is talking about the temple, the house of the Lord, the Bible tells us in 1Cor. 3:16 that we are the temple of the Lord. In Romans and Corinthians, it says we are the Body of Christ. Haggai is writing to a people that must reorder its priorities and complete the temple before it can expect the blessing of God upon its efforts. Because of spiritual indifference the people fail to respond to God's attempt to get their attention. They didn't feel any sense of urgency to rebuild the temple. Listen to what Haggai says verses 1-7
In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet unto Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, saying,
Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD'S house should be built.
Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying,
Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste?
Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways.
Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.
Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways.

I believe that God is telling us to "consider our ways", to reorder our priorities."
There was an interesting quote by John Ashcroft, the Attorney General concerning the Pledge of Allegiance, "the Justice Department will defend the ability of our nations children to pledge allegiance to the American Flag" that's great, he wants to fight for their right to say the Pledge of Allegiance, "one nation under god" but they aren't even allowed to pray to their God in school or at school functions. The first thing we should be able to do is Pledge our Allegiance to our God. My allegiance is not to my flag, I will fight for it and defend it, I will respect it, but my allegiance is to my God. The word allegiance means loyalty, or an obligation of loyalty. I have an obligation to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ because he died for me. The church has a loyalty, an allegiance to Jesus Christ, we must defend him and his Word. Where was the disgust the outrage, the flurry of denunciations when prayer was taken out of school, when abortion was legalized?
Lets take a look at this one nation under God, at one point in time we were one nation under God but are we still? I was searching the internet and one site listed 165 different christian denominations.
The encyclopedia of American religions lists 1,584 religious organizations in the U.S. and Canada. Do we know how these religious organizations came about? Someone got their feelings hurt, got offended so they took some of the people that agreed with them went down the road and started their own church. "one nation under God?" Should it not be under gods?
Someone has said that the church hour on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week. The Blacks worship with the Blacks, the Whites with the Whites, the Hispanic with the Hispanic, the people in the suburbs don't want to come into the inner city and vice versa. "one nation under God?"
My friends the church in America has become so diluted that it's hard to tell the christian from the non-christian. We have become so busy and pre occupied that church is no longer of importance, a relationship with God is no longer of importance. Every thing else comes before church and God, even the Pledge of Allegiance. We make our schedules and we try and fit God into it. Is it really any surprise that this has happened with the Pledge of Allegiance? We are moving so far away for the principles of the Bible from the truth of God's Word that it is ridiculous.
This is what the church has become, Timothy talks about the coming apostasy 2 Tim.3, listen to what he says,
2Timothy 3:1-5
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away
he continues in 4:3-4 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
My friends we are worried about not being able to say "under god" in the Pledge of Allegiance, when God's Temple, his house, is in ruins. That would be like putting a fresh coat of varnish on the window frames upstairs while the windows are falling out. Listen if we are going to get up in arms, if we are going to get angry, lets get angry about all the people that the devil is blinding their eyes to the truth. In the song I sang this morning, it said, we live in a world where wrong seems right.
Rosie O'Donnell leading the fight for people of same sex relationships to adopt children. We slap the hands of Priests who molests children, we ordain homosexuals as ministers, we perform marriages of same sex couples in our churches; we perform hundreds, maybe thousands of abortions everyday. We say the truth of Gods Word is not relevant for today's society. We see people everyday who are troubled, who are on their way to hell, we don't get angry about that. We need to, "consider our ways, reorder our priorities."
Friends there are a myriad of people within the reaches of this church who need the Lord, who need the truth of Gods Word. Haggi is saying to us that we work and work in our own effort, in our own strength and it's useless, listen to Haggai 1:6
Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.
Its time that we began to trust in God, its time that we began to take a stand for God and his Word and call right right and wrong wrong. It's time that we stopped being spiritually indifferent. It's time that we began to rebuild this spiritual house of God. Its time that we began to "consider our ways and reorder our priorities" let me tell you something, when the children of Israel were truly a "nation under god" after God brought them out of bondage, the other nations feared them, listen to Joshua 2:10-11.
For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt; and what ye did unto the two kings of the Amorites, that were on the other side Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom ye utterly destroyed.
And as soon as we had heard these things, our hearts did melt, neither did there remain any more courage in any man, because of you: for the LORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath..
Do we understand that if we truly were to become a nation under god we wouldn't have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to try and separate ourselves from other nations, our very lives would separate us.
Folks it's time, way past time for the church, this church, to "consider our ways and reorder our priorities."
Reading the closing remarks of Haggai, 2:15-19
And now, I pray you, consider from this day and upward, from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the LORD:
Since those days were, when one came to an heap of twenty measures, there were but ten: when one came to the pressfat for to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty.
I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands; yet ye turned not to me, saith the LORD.
Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the LORD'S temple was laid, consider it.
Is the seed yet in the barn? yea, as yet the vine, and the fig tree, and the pomegranate, and the olive tree, hath not brought forth: from this day will I bless you.
It was because they reordered their priorities. Lets reorder our priorities.
Let me close with some remarks by Chuck Swindoll from his book, "Strengthening Your Grip"
"Gods people are not museum pieces, placed and anchored on a shelf to collect dust. We are alive, moving, and active people called by him to make an impact on a world that isn't quite sure which end is up. But to do that, we need to determine our priorities." He further stated, "it is we who have hauled his cross out of sight. It is we who have left the impression that it belongs only in the sophisticated, cloistered halls of a seminary or beautified beneath the soft shadows of stained glass and cold marble statues. I applaud the one who put it this way:" I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the center of the market place as well as on the steeple of the church, I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles: but on a cross between two thieves; on a town garbage heap; at a crossroads of politics so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in the Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek and at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse and soldiers gamble.
Because this is where he died, and that is what he died about. And that is where christ's men ought to be, and what church people ought to be about.
George Macleod

Lets consider our ways and reorder our priorities!

Home