Would you support the death penalty?
You remember during the elections they asked California
to vote on the death penalty and I
think at a ratio of 2 to 1
they demanded the death penalty.
You remember that the nation really is split
on the whole deal because I think there
are 35 states who are required to rule
on the Supreme Court's decision about the death
penalty and perhaps 17 of them have agreed
with the Supreme Court that the death penalty
is unconstitutional.
But there are still about 18 of them
that have not made any decision and some
of them, like California, seem to be going
in the other direction.
You know probably if we were to ask
each of us here in the theatre we'd
differ very much because Christians have finite minds
and some of them will interpret God's way
one way and some of them another.
Some of us will say, well punishment should
be remedial and therefore the death penalty is
not right or some of us will say
but punishment needs to be retributive and therefore
the death penalty is right.
I think whether we differ on the death
penalty or not we'd all agree on this
that it is a shame to inflict uncertainty
like that on about 607 men in death
row.
We would agree upon that that it's terrible,
you know, to keep men hanging not knowing
whether they're going to be executed or not
month after month after month.
And yet do you see that it's that
position that most of the world lives in
itself.
Most of the world and most of the
people in it have a sense that something
terrible is going to happen to them and
they're very unsure about whether they'll escape it
or not.
Most of the world really feels that it
is condemned.
People will try to laugh it off and
first sort of pretend it isn't true but
most people live under this terrible threat of
condemnation or final execution.
And this, dear ones, is the source of
all our ills.
Really it is.
It's the source of all the neurotic behavior
in the world.
It's the source of all our lack of
full complete joy.
This terrible uncertainty we have that something is
wrong in the world and something bad is
going to happen to it and to us
too.
You can see it right throughout the world
of nature.
You know that.
Lake Superior looks beautiful from the scenic drive
but the mud and the dirt and the
destruction that came with those floods this year
and all the heartache that was caused by
it reminded us that water can look very
beautiful but just as often as not in
our world it has not been tamed and
it can destroy.
And we see beauty in one part of
nature but we see something wrong in the
other part and we see a terrible trauma
in nature that suggests that something is wrong
in the world and that in some way
it must be a world condemned.
Probably here in the States we have more
control of nature than any other nation and
yet you know there's no forecast goes by
but we hear reports of flooding or of
hurricanes or tornadoes.
We've done our very best to tame nature
and to bring it into order and to
make it a world that is good and
happy and yet there seems to be something
in nature that brings about this trauma and
this strain that suggests to us that all
is not as right as we think it
is.
There are beautiful parts in the world but
there are these parts that are ugly and
make us feel that somehow the world is
out of control and that's in the States
here but if you go to the rest
of the world they're in no doubt.
The rest of the world is in no
doubt that we live in a sick world.
If you go to India, Africa they've never
had a season, a rainy season that hasn't
flooded thousands out of their homes and destroyed
thousands of their cattle.
They've never had a dry season when the
drought has not dried up the lives of
many of their babies.
If you go anywhere in the world you'll
find that people in the world generally say
yeah, yeah, there's something wrong with our world
that's obvious.
Bombay and Calcutta has streets filled with people
who live and sleep in the streets because
the natural resources have never been sufficient to
provide enough life for every man and woman
in those countries.
And people there will have no doubt about
it.
They'll say yeah, yeah there are beautiful things
in our world but there's something wrong with
it.
And of course many of them will say
there's no doubt in our minds that the
displeasure of the gods is upon this world
otherwise why this?
And of course brothers and sisters we live
in the midst of it.
The San Andreas Fault is just an outstanding
example of the Dulce Vita being lived in
the midst of what geologists say is just
going to be a tremendous disaster that's going
to come upon us.
And it seems you have that combination, you
know.
Many of us will say oh no brother,
the world is a beautiful place.
Yes, but brothers and sisters all around the
world you can see that it is a
world that is not at home with itself.
That a strain inside it that is filled
with trauma that seems to have the gods
displeasure upon it in many ways.
Now that's really what Paul says in Romans
8 and 22 if you look at it
there.
Because it might help you to see the
thinking that God has presented in the Bible
as a whole if you do look up
verses like that and see where they fit
in.
Romans 8 and 22.
We know that the whole creation has been
groaning and travail together until now.
And that's what God means there you see
when he says that through Paul.
We know that the whole creation has been
groaning and travel together until now.
And there are actually parts of the world
where you can almost hear the groaning and
the crunching of the rocks and the falling
apart of the tremendous pressures that are in
it.
Now here's the strange thing.
There isn't one primitive people in the whole
world who do not tie this trauma that
the world experiences to man's behavior.
There isn't.
There isn't a primitive people however uneducated they
are however unsophisticated they are that doesn't say
this is coming upon the world because of
us men and us women and the way
we have acted.
Whether you say they are right or wrong
they do make sacrifices of all kinds to
try to appease the gods that are obviously
so angry with them and that try to
destroy their crops with storms and with earthquakes.
All primitive peoples believe that the groaning of
the natural creation is in some way tied
to the way we men and women have
behaved towards the creator.
We may say that's ridiculous but even in
our sophisticated western civilization we believe the same
thing.
We ourselves are at the moment involved in
trying to do something about the way we're
polluting our world.
We tie much of the lung disease and
much of the ill health and much of
the problems we have with our food now
to the way we men and women have
polluted our natural world.
There's never a forecast that we don't come
out now with a pollution index.
Well obviously because we believe in some way
our behavior is almost about to destroy our
world.
We too, even though we're not primitive tribes
and don't try to appease the gods we
do see that our behavior reacts upon our
natural world.
That's why we have all the argument over
supersonic airliners.
We're now concerned about is it worth getting
a person across the Atlantic in three and
a half hours if it's going to cause
all the trauma and all the pain here
to the people on the surface of the
earth.
You know the Rand Corporation has come out
with a report in California and they've said
that if they don't cut their electricity consumption
by 60% over the next 25 years
there'll be tremendous electrical shortages in California.
And we're beginning to see that the way
we men and women behave reacts upon the
world itself in some way brothers and sisters
we're bound up with the world.
And that's what I mean by many of
us feeling we're condemned with the world.
There are many men and women today who
say yeah you're right that's the way the
world's going the world is condemned and we're
condemned with it.
And loved ones there are many of us
that live under that kind of just pain
and hopelessness as the years pass.
Now it runs through you know it just
runs through all our literature.
You know that.
We no longer have that sort of bright
eyed, open eyed optimism.
We no longer have that kind of naivety
that this is going to be a wonderful
world sir.
We had it, we gave that up maybe
30 years ago.
No longer you know do we say with
Swinburne glory to man in the highest for
man is the master of things.
No longer do we feel man is the
master of things.
You know our particular generation looks just a
little wanly even on the idea of the
American dream.
We no longer have that kind of happy
-go-lucky, naive optimism that it's all going
to be wonderful.
Through our life and through our literature there
runs this same kind of consciousness that we're
a world condemned.
You know there's the loneliness of the condemned
man isn't there in death row.
There's that about our lives today.
Old Tennessee Williams you remember said in the
preface to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
and I've quoted it before.
We all have been condemned to solitary confinement
within our own skins.
You know that what he has said in
writing you and I have often felt.
I mean it is true isn't it that
as we've squeezed together in cities to be
closer to each other we've locked more and
more doors against each other.
It's strange that we're a people that acts
like condemned people.
We have the loneliness of condemned people.
We part from each other like condemned people.
We are alienated from one another like condemned
people.
And it runs through even people like H
.G. Wells.
He was really the prophet of that optimism
at the beginning of the century.
And even he wrote in a book called
The Fate of Homo Sapiens.
This is how he stated it if you
just listen.
But quite apart from any bodily depression.
And Wells was a man who believed the
world was going to be perfect someday.
Until near the end of his life in
The Fate of Homo Sapiens he wrote this.
But quite apart from any bodily depression.
The spectacle of evil in the world.
The wanton destruction of homes.
The ruthless hounding of decent folk into exile.
The bombings of open cities.
The cold blooded massacres and mutilations of children
and defenseless gentle folk.
The rapes and filthy humiliations.
And above all the return of deliberate and
organized torture.
Mental torment and fear to a world from
which such things had seemed well now banished.
Has come near to breaking my spirit altogether.
And that's the kind of atmosphere the ones
whether you're a Christian or not that runs
through our literature today.
Our philosophers you know share that same terrible
hopelessness.
Every psychologist knows that if he writes a
book about psychology he has to deal with
the one great mark of a condemned world.
Guilt.
Because that's what fills our psych wards today.
People who have tremendous guilt that they can't
get rid of.
Guilt is so persistent that after the electric
shocks have worn off the guilt still comes
back.
When the division between the memory and the
conscience has been at last restored after the
shock has worn off the guilt is so
persistent it comes back.
And so whether you go to philosophers you
know or psychologists they all will agree on
that same thing.
Churchill you remember talked to Graham near the
end of Churchill's life and he said well
do you see any hope?
And Graham of course talked about Jesus and
Churchill said well if that's the hope that's
the only hope.
Because I only see no hope.
I see nothing but hopelessness and despair and
international politics for the rest of our century.
And old Monod did the same thing you
know.
Monod in France today.
I heard him on a TV program I
think I referred to it in London in
the summertime saying well if there is no
hope there is no hope.
And that is the decision of even the
foremost of our scientists.
You get the same thing running through you
know.
An old Bertrand Russell.
All we can do is take up a
position of unyielding despair.
Now that really is the situation if you
live in this world without any other message.
Now why I share it all with you
today is that it seems to me there's
a reason for all that.
And you see it Romans 8 and 20
there where that's indicated.
Romans 8 and 20.
For the creation was subjected to futility not
of its own will but by the will
of him who subjected it in hope.
You see what God tries to tell us.
I've subjected the creation to this kind of
futility.
As a result of your actions and your
independence of me I've subjected it in hope.
Now what's the hope?
Well brothers and sisters the hope is that
we would see where Adam led us in
rejecting the Holy Spirit of God's uncreated life.
That's it.
God is hoping that you and I will
look around this creation and see there's something
rotten in this whole setup.
We've missed something.
And God wants us to see that this
is what happens when you live independent of
his uncreated life.
When you reject the Holy Spirit that was
available in the tree of life this is
where it takes us.
It takes us east of Eden.
It takes us into all the marks of
condemnation.
But brothers and sisters do you see what
God is saying to us this morning?
The world itself cannot turn back.
It's going on down that route.
Even the second law of thermodynamics says that.
That every process has a tendency to run
down.
The world is going that way and you
can't turn it back.
But God has said you each one individually
I do not condemn.
Because my son has been condemned in your
place.
And you each one individually I am ready
to deal with apart from this world.
The world yes I have condemned but I
condemned it so that you would see your
own perilous state.
But you each one individually I don't condemn
you this morning.
My son was condemned in your place.
For all your independence and your rebellion against
me I condemn my son.
You I am willing to receive as if
you had never sinned if you will come
and trust me.
And loved ones do you see each of
us here this morning will not experience eternal
death because we have been condemned with the
rest of the world.
We won't.
You and I are not condemned with the
rest of the world.
If we experience eternal death it will be
because you individually have refused to receive God's
Holy Spirit.
That's it.
You'll die because the lack because of the
lack of eternal Holy Spirit.
You won't die because God is out to
condemn you this morning.
You won't die because He is condemning you
at this moment.
In other words, you won't die because you're
condemned.
You'll die because you haven't taken this opportunity
to receive His Holy Spirit into you.
So brothers and sisters, really that's what it
means if you look at Romans 5 and
16.
It's really what that verse means.
Romans 5 and 16.
It's page 981.
And the free gift is not like the
effect of that one man's sin.
For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.
And that's what the world experiences at this
moment.
But the free gift following many trespasses brings
justification.
But the free gift to bring justification in
your own life has to be received.
And that's the heart of it.
You can agree with all that I said
this morning because it is pretty logical.
You couldn't go much any other way than
interpreting reality as we see it in the
world today.
But you could listen to it all and
agree to it.
But do you see that you are not
justified until you actually take the step and
receive this free gift of the Holy Spirit
for yourself.
In other words, you're back in Adam's position.
You're in the position that Adam was in.
With the Father saying to you, look, I
can give you my uncreated life of the
Holy Spirit that will enable you to be
like me.
It's your choice.
Will you take it or will you not?
And really, that's the only thing that will
bring you into eternal death and alienation from
God.
Your refusal of that gift.
And do you see how important it is,
loved ones, to be able to look at
the miserable world and see that you are
not condemned along with it.
But that the real reason God has allowed
this to take place in our world is
to show you what happens if you continue
to go with it.
You'll die in the midst of its pollution
and its alienation and its loneliness.
You will.
I mean, you'll just go down like that.
What you see around you is a picture
of your own future.
I just refer again, you know, to that
play by Sartre.
You remember Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the play
No Exit?
You see the homosexual and the lesbian, isn't
it?
Now, forget what the third person is, but
somebody in the same kind of psychotic situation.
And there's one electric light bulb burning in
the room.
And gradually it dawns on them as they
burn against each other and wear each other
down and tear each other apart by their
criticism and their hatred.
Gradually it dawns on them that the light
never goes out.
The light is on all the time.
And gradually they begin to realize this is
hell.
Being together like this forever with no possibility
even of escape into darkness.
The loved ones, that's why God has allowed
these things to come.
To show you what it's like if we
don't receive the life of his Holy Spirit.
And that's presumably something of what hell will
be like.
It'll be a place more polluted than our
world.
In greater trauma than our world.
In greater alienation and loneliness than ours.
But you still have a free will.
That's why you can't say God's forcing me
into it.
No, you can still choose.
You can still choose to your own disadvantage.
Really that's what I'm urging you to think
about.
Are you really moving in the direction of
life in your own life?
Or are you moving in the direction of
death?
Are you really beginning to receive this Holy
Spirit that Jesus sent?
Is he beginning to influence your life?
Is he beginning to make it like Jesus'
life?
Or are you in fact becoming more like
the world of which you're a part?
That's part of what God said, you know,
and meant when he said save yourself from
this untoward generation.
Really, brothers and sisters, you have to step
out of it in order to live.
So will you think about it dear ones
and pray about it and see, you know,
which way are you moving in your own
life?
Are you moving towards the death that the
world is going to experience?
Are you moving towards the life that is
possible in the midst of death?
Father, we know these are important things and
vital things.
Father, as we think over them and as
we pray about them, will you show us
individually how we are responding to your gift
of the Holy Spirit?
And whether we are moving towards it ourselves
or making the same choice as our forefather
Adam did, whether we're moving into the same
kind of savage microcosm inside ourselves or whether
we are in fact moving into the great
macrocosm of love that exists in your Son
Jesus.
Father, we would trust you to give us
revelation about this so that we may take
the action that is necessary and the action
that you want us to take, that of
receiving your Holy Spirit and allowing him to
rule our lives and change them.
We ask you to do this, Lord, whatever
it costs us and whatever it costs you
to bring us to that place.
We ask this in your Son's name.
Amen.