Skip Steward

“God is a righteous judge, and a God who has indignation every day. If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword; He has bent His bow and made it ready.” — Psalms 7:11-12

“I despise the picture that’s painted in our culture of the sissified, needy Jesus, amen? Newsflash: by definition, God is self-sustaining, self-existent, and self-sufficient; therefore, by definition, He needs nothing. God does not need you, and He’s going to prove it.” — Voddie Baucham

A corrupt generation gets so embedded that it takes generations, if ever, to root it out. That’s where we are: lust for pleasure, selfishness, materialism, sexual perversion, anger, hate, vengeance, unforgiveness, prejudice, lack of submission to authority, civil rebellion, corrupt leadership. Hope for a Doomed Nation — John MacArthur // May 24, 2015 Listen: any other god but the God of Scripture, any god that anybody devises, the god of Islam, the god of Mormonism, the god of Judaism—any other god but the God who is the Trinity; the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; the God of Scripture, Old Testament and New; the God of the gospel. Any other god is an idol. Any other god is an idol, whether you’re an atheist or you worship a false god, that’s idolatry. If you’re an atheist, you worship yourself. But any other god means you hate the true God, that’s what it says. “Those are those who hate Me,” and that’s what we’re seeing in this country, folks. You have to see, they hate God. They hate the true God. And Jesus said in John 15, “They hate My Father and they hate Me, and they will hate you.”We just have to set the record straight, this is how it is, okay. This society is not your friend. They hate God; they hate Christ; they hate you. This is going to create generational impact to the third and fourth generation. What does that mean?  Please, it doesn’t mean when a father sins, his kids pay. No, it’s not a father, it’s fathers. It’s not a child, it’s children. It’s not a generation, it’s generations. What this says is when you have a corrupt generation, it will take three or four generations with the best conditions to change that. So here it is: you’re not going to fix it; don’t try. Neither will your children, neither will your grandchildren, and probably neither will your great-grandchildren. This is your world, and their world, and the next world, and the next world. And it may be the last one; Jesus may come. But you’re not going to change it, so stop trying. You can’t change it politically, can’t change it financially, it’s how it is. Ezekiel 18:20 says the sins of an individual are never punished in his children. You only are punished for your own sins; that’s a different issue. This is generational impact. A corrupt generation gets so embedded that it takes generations, if ever, to root it out. That’s where we are: lust for pleasure, selfishness, materialism, sexual perversion, anger, hate, vengeance, unforgiveness, prejudice, lack of submission to authority, civil rebellion, corrupt leadership. That’s going to be around for your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren. It’s not going to change. So what do we do? Well, first of all, remember this: this culture is not going to help you in anything that is God-honoring. Don’t look to the culture for any help in your personal holiness. In order for you to be personally holy, you need to separate. This culture offers you nothing. The less exposure, the better.There was a time when I was a boy growing up that it was cultural morality, cultural dignity, cultural honor, cultural honesty. There was a kind of Christian mentality. No more; they’re your enemy. They hate everything that you love. They’re you’re enemy. They’re God’s enemy, Christ’s enemy, your enemy. They’re not going to help you in your personal life: separate. Parents, they’re not going to help you in your parenting. They’re not going to help you; you’ve got to know that. They’re not going to help you. They’re not going to help you in any way. They’re not going to help you through the toys they make for your kids. They’re not going to help you through the entertainment they provide for your kids. They’re not going to help you through the schools. They’re not going to help you. They’re against you.This raises the stakes in personal holiness and raises the stakes in parenting. And they’re not going to help the church, they’re going to come against us really strong.

In Proverbs 16:4, “The Lord has made all things for Himself, yes, even the wicked for the day of evil.” God created everything that He created of His own free choice, and He designed them the way He designed them, because that’s the way He wanted them, knowing full well that angels would rebel, and so would men. God created angels and people, and planets and stars, the sky and earth, and mountains and seas, and deserts and plains, and lakes and streams, and sun – and you go on, and on, and on, and on, in every kind of form and fashion, because that’s exactly the way He wanted it done. Second Samuel 10:12 says, “The Lord does what seems to Him or what is known to Him to be good, to be good.”In Job 23:13 says, “But He is in one mind, and who can turn Him? And what His soul desires, even that He does.” God is not conflicted. God is not duplicitous. God is not wringing His hands trying to figure out whether He should go this way or that way. Psalm 33:9-11, “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. The Lord brings the counsel of the heathen to nothing; makes the devices of the people of no effect. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations.” He is equivocating, He is fixed and unchanging. “The Lord” – says Psalm 103:19 – “has prepared His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all.” — John MacArthur

When they throw the truth away and trample it with unrighteousness, when they overrun all those boundaries and all those restraints, then Romans 1 says, “God gave them up.  God gave them over.”   Hope for a Doomed Nation — John MacArthur // May 24, 2015 Romans 1 comes into play: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”  When they throw the truth away and trample it with unrighteousness, when they overrun all those boundaries and all those restraints, then Romans 1 says, “God gave them up.  God gave them over.” So now you have a form of divine judgement kicking in.  So you watch a society like ours and you see the fight against the law of God written in the heart: what is normal, what is natural, what is sensible, what is common knowledge about what is right and what is wrong; the fight against overthrowing that; the fight against the conscience, to silence the conscience.  You watch them fight to destroy the family every possible way it could.  You watch them rebel against all the social order and social discipline and fight against biblical truth, biblical Christianity, the gospel, the true church.  And when they succeed in overrunning all those restraints, then Romans 1 begins to take place, and God gives them up. And how do you know that?  Because it says, “God gave them up to sexual immorality.”  And then it says, “And, secondly, he gave them up to homosexuality, and then he gave them up to a reprobate mind.” All you have to do is look at a culture and ask: “Have we had a sexual revolution?  Have we had a homosexual revolution?  Do we have a reprobate mind?”  Answer: of course we do.  This is indicating we have not only kicked over all the restraints and we are loose in the field of God, if you will, and He has pulled back and said, “You’re turned over to the consequences of your own sin.”  That is a form of divine judgement.  It’s not that God will judge this nation; we’re in it. Oh, there’s an eschatological judgement, yes, coming.  There’s an end-time judgement and an eternal judgement.  But already we’re experiencing judgement.  And where there are – and there certainly are – advocates for righteousness, and advocates for morality, and advocates for goodness and kindness, there are some people who are still clinging to the things that are noble and good because they followed the law – and I’m not talking about Christians, but people who followed the law in their hearts and grew up in good, sound, healthy, sensible, reasonable families, and who have learned respect because they’d been taught to respect, and they have that respect to society.  There are those people. But advocates for righteous and beneficial morality, and advocates for righteous and beneficial family, and advocates for righteous and biblical societal government, and advocates for the true church and the gospel of Jesus Christ, are like little Hans Brinkers with their fingers in a dike that’s going to overwhelm everybody.  So it’s a losing effort in the end because God has allowed all the nations to go their own way; this is the pattern. So as we look at our nation – and I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few weeks when I’m not here.  I’m just kind of preempting that a little bit by helping you to be able to think through whatever happens.  I have to say at this point that there are many churches who aren’t helping.

“We are the salt and light of the world, and the weapon that we have is the gospel” Hope For a Doomed Nation — John MacArthur // May 24, 2015 We are the salt and light of the world, and the weapon that we have is the gospel, and it’s the most powerful weapon because it is the only weapon that totally transforms the whole person, totally transforms the whole person. The church wields that weapon. Now let me tell you something about man. God has placed the law in the heart, the family, government, and the people of God, the church, in the world. God has given the weapon of conscience, the rod of discipline, the sword of civil law, and the gospel of Jesus Christ, and sinners fight against all those restraints as hard as they possibly can. They fight all those restraints. Sinners fight those restraints relentlessly, aggressively, and they are aided by Satan and demons. They are aided by every aspect of human life. They are aided by philosophers. And educators, and politicians, and teachers. They are aided by false religious teachers. And they are aided by just the collective life of sinners. That is an ongoing war. If they can, they will fight against the divine law of God in the heart. They will do everything they can to rewrite the law that should govern men’s lives. They will throw away the law that they know in their own heart. Romans 1:32 says they know they’re doing wrong, and they know there are consequences; and they not only do it, they applaud those who do it. They will fight against the law of God in the heart, and they’ll do everything they can to silence the conscience. They will do everything they can to destroy the family. They will take every angle, every possible approach to destroy the family, to destroy parental authority, to destroy the union between a man and a woman, to destroy the relationship between parents and children, to make children as rebellious as possible. They will do everything to destroy the family. They fight against that restraint. And they will fight against the divine institution of societal authority as well. They’ll fight against every law. They will violate every law they can possibly violate. That is why we have to have police everywhere, and they can’t keep up with the violators, they can’t keep up with the violations because sinners collectively, relentlessly fight against these restraints. It is their nature to do so. And they will fight against biblical Christianity. They will fight against the truth. They will fight against the gospel, the only truth that can transform them. Now, listen: this fight goes on all the time. Man would go to destruction without the restraint. God puts the restraint there, and what they do is fight against the restraint, to overthrow this restraint, to rebel against it. And it is true that in a democracy like ours, in a republic that essentially is a democracy where the people have the ultimate power, they will eventually destroy all those restraints, they will. That wouldn’t happen necessarily in a dictatorship. It might not happen in a dictatorship where you get your hands chopped off if you steal, and you are executed if you commit adultery. If somebody rules that way, those things might not change. That is not that I’m advocating that; I’m simply saying in a democracy with sinners fighting against everything and all the power in the hands of sinners, they will eventually overthrow all the restraint. It’s the nature of it. And when they do that, and when they do that, Romans 1 comes into play: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”  When they throw the truth away and trample it with unrighteousness, when they overrun all those boundaries and all those restraints, then Romans 1 says, “God gave them up. God gave them over.”

“If there is one maverick molecule in the universe running loose outside the scope of God's sovereign ordination, then there isn't the slightest confidence you can have that any promise God has ever made about the future will come to pass." — R.C. Sproul

“This culture has turned on God, eliminated His Word. The Bible and the gospel are an enemy. The leaders of this nation have no interest in God or in His Word, and they are basically running this country right into hell as fast as they can. The only thing that’s going to stop this is not a group of feminized men who think God just wants to give them what they want so they can be happy. What this world needs is not sensitive men; it needs strong men. We live in a world of compromise, more than compromise. You could barely call it compromise because there’s nothing left of that which is good. So what are they compromising with?” — John MacArthur