1980 Perspectives on the 70's

Introduction: The Christian's Awareness of Time and the Call to Reprove Darkness

0:03 Will you turn in your Bibles, please, to Paul's letter to the Ephesian church, the book of Ephesians, chapter 5, Ephesians, chapter 5, and I shall read only verses 11 through 13, words which come in a context in which the Apostle is exhorting the people of God to a life of holiness, holiness understood in its highest sense as the imitation of God, verses 1 and 2, holiness which practically speaking means the avoidance of those sins that are contrary to the character of God as revealed in the law of God, and a holiness made difficult by the fact that we not only have indwelling sin, but we must pursue it in the midst of an unholy society. And in that general train of thought, this word comes to the Ephesian Christians and to us,

1:35 is light.

1:39 All of us sitting in this building this morning, from the youngest to the oldest, are creatures of time. We all have a day which is both designated and celebrated as our birthday. All of us live our lives in those little segments of time that we identify with such words as minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and now the word that is very much upon everyone's lips and in everyone's mind, decades. Now all of those words are a constant reminder to us that we are indeed creatures of time. And though this is true, many times we are not self-consciously aware of that reality. But it's this time. It's this time of the year when everyone is thinking of the closing down of one calendar year and the ushering in of another, that we are made acutely aware of the fact that we are creatures of time.

2:54 And that awareness is even heightened when we not only pass from one calendar year to another, but when we pass from one decade into another. Now as the people of God, we are not in any way, to think of ourselves as detached from this reality of our being creatures of time. Though we have confidence for that which goes beyond time, even the confidence that we shall be forever with the Lord in the timelessness of eternity, nowhere does the word of God call upon us as God's children to be insensitive to this matter. In fact, in this very passage, the apostle goes on to say to Christians buying up the time in which he pictures time as a very vital and expensive commodity, a worthwhile commodity which we are to accumulate, we are to be sensitive of the matter of time and we are to buy up that time in seeking to render acceptable service, to our blessed Lord. Now in the light of these things, it is my concern that on this, the last Lord's day of 1979, the last Lord's day of this decade,

4:23 we should meditate together on matters related to time and seek to glean perspectives that will help us on the one hand, to assess what is gone before and is now being phased out, and to face that which there is not, which lies before and is ushering in upon us with some degree of biblical perspective. And so our meditation today could well be called a perspective on the 70s and a prescription for the 80s. And that's why, as I mentioned earlier, we really have one overall meditation divided into these two segments. This morning, in seeking to gain a perspective on the 70s, I want to direct your attention, first of all, to what I will call the paramount sins of the 70s. And then we shall consider together the primary reason for the sins of the 70s, and then finally the exclusive remedy for the sins of the 70s. First of all, then, the paramount sins. Now, some may ask, why concern ourselves with such a negative matter on the threshold of a new year?

5:45 Why reflect upon the sins of the 70s? Well, the text I read in your hearing, among many others, demands that we engage in such an exercise. Notice the language of Ephesians 5.11.

6:01 Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. But rather, reprove them. There is the negative admonition, we are not to enter into fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. Well, how do we know that we are obeying that injunction unless we can identify that which constitutes the unfruitful works of darkness?

6:29 If we're to obey the injunction to have no fellowship, no delightful sharing, and participation with and in the works of darkness, we must have eyes illuminated by the word and the spirit to be able to identify what are the works of darkness. Then there is the positive injunction, but rather, reprove them. Our biblical duty is not fulfilled by a mere withdrawal from the identifiable works of darkness. But the people's, of God. This is not a word to ministers alone. The people of God are called upon to reprove the works of darkness. Well, they cannot engage in that biblical duty unless they can clearly identify that which is the just and warranted subject of that reproof. And how are we to determine what are the works of darkness? Well, Paul goes on to say, but all things when they are reproved are made manifest by the light, for everything that is made manifest is light.

Defining 'Paramount Sins' and Their Historical Precedent

7:45 It is only as the pure light of the word of God shines upon patterns of human behavior that we can identify them for what they truly are. Well, having demonstrated, I trust, the legitimacy of beginning our meditation with a consideration of the sins of the seventies, let me just give a word of explanation with reference to what I mean when I speak of the paramount sins of the seventies. Since the fall of man, there has existed in the heart of every man both the potential for everything, and the potential for everything. Every single sin imaginable, and a tendency towards that sin. One of the most humbling teachings of the word of God is summarized in such passages as Jeremiah 17 9. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. And without in any way seeking to minimize that

9:00 pervasive teaching of Scripture, that there is... within the heart of every man, woman, boy or girl, both the potential and the tendency, the capability of every form of wickedness, it is also clearly taught in the Word of God that God, by the restraining influence of common grace and the transforming influence of special or saving grace, keeps back much of that potential for evil that is in the human heart.

9:39 But there are times in the history of men and of nations when because of the limited measure of special grace and the withdrawal of common grace, certain sins that are not only latent or may have found an expression here and there in the world of man and woman, in a given society, not only continue to express themselves as a latent possibility and as an occasional outburst, but they become the very sins which characterize that society. And you cannot think of that society without thinking of those sins. This is illustrated in such portions as Genesis 6, where we read, We read in verse 5 that God saw that the imagination of the heart of man was only evil continually, and then that evil found expression in a peculiar sin. We read in verse 9 that violence filled the earth, and it was that sin of unfettered, aggressive violence which finally precipitated the judgment of the flood. We read in verse 9 that God saw that the imagination of the heart of man was only evil continually,

11:03 and it was that sin which characterized the cities of the plains, even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, having in like manner with these given themselves over to fornication and gone after strange flesh. Now that does not mean that you found no murder, no dishonesty, no blasphemy, no gossip or any other form of sin in Sodom and Gomorrah prior to the judgment of God. What it does mean is that sexual impurity and in particular sexual perversion became the dominant or the paramount sins of that society. This was true likewise in New Testament days. The Apostle Paul, writing to Titus, speaks of the Cretans and of what we might call the national sins, the paramount sins of the Cretans. Titus 1 in verse 12.

12:13 One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, idle gluttons. This testimony is true. There were these three sins that predominated in the national life of the people of Israel. All those sins, their Half of that race wereんだ theMbreak of the Cretans. Now that does not mean, again, that other sins were not manifested or that the tendency was not latent. What is press me is that these sins became the paramount expressions of the condition of the human heart. Now it is that within that biblical framework, that I address nonprofit to that memory. And you Jack Heizza in a non-commercial us this morning to that which I am calling the paramount sins of the seventies.

13:00 I am not saying that these sins were never present in our national life until the seventies. They were present in our national life from the moment we had any life. Even in our most blessed periods of national righteousness, every one of these sins that I will mention was present, and the potential for them was latent in every human heart. But they did not become the predominating social climate of our nation until the seventies.

13:33 You see then the precise thing to which we are addressing ourselves this morning. What then are those paramount sins of the seventies that have become as much a part of American national life as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet?

The Paramount Sins of the 1970s: A Moral Inventory

13:56 Well, I confess that it has been no pleasant thing for me to sit hour after hour in past days and to think upon that which constitutes the moral face of my own beloved country, to look at the open sores and the putrefying wounds of the moral state of our nation. And yet as the people of God, we are called upon to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of God, but rather to reprove them, to have this prophetic edge to our life and testimony, a duty which we cannot fulfill unless we have some clear consciousness of what constitutes those paramount sins of the seventies. There is no particular significance in the order in which I mention these things. First of all, this decade of the seventies will go down in any accurate record of its history in American national life as the decade of the tragic reality of abortion on demand.

15:13 One of the most horrendous decisions that was ever made by the highest court of our land was made in 1973,

15:22 a decision which has literally turned those theaters of mercy and compassion and the hospital operating rooms and clinics, has literally turned those theaters of compassion and mercy into mass murder houses. And it has been done with the sanction and the encouragement of the highest court of our land, and it could never have been done at the highest court of the land if it had not been a reflection of the base, the foundation, the foundation, the foundation of our nation. of the base, the foundation, the foundation of our nation. moral fiber of the nation itself. The hands of physicians that have been trained in skill to administer mercy now throw murdered babies into sterile trash bins to be carried off with the other garbage in the hospital. And I say if the blood of one creature made in the image of God so moved God that he came to the perpetrator of that crime and said, Thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the earth, what must the din be in the ears of the Almighty

16:46 from the trash bins of our hospitals and clinics across this land? One of the great sins of the seventies is the sin of abortion on demand. Secondly, the seventies will be recognized by any accurate historian as the decade of pornographic glut. Oh yes, Playboy has been around with some degree of respectability for over twenty years.

17:22 And under the counter for years one has been able to purchase any amount of pornographic filth that his own depraved heart would desire. Mail order houses have existed where the foulest kinds of movies and pictures could be obtained in order to answer to the foul base bestial lusts of men's hearts. But it awaited the seventies to have the glossy covers of Playboy and a dozen other magazines spawned out of the so-called sexual revolution staring at us over the counter-revolutionary, counter-revolutionary, counter-revolutionary world. To compare, the length of this country's history with the world's Parceannes was not only to sample material, but also to prove that all the characters were of the same origin. The world was marked by a great confidence that the works of the world's most respected and exhaustive directors of the universe were the true stories of our own. It was one thing

18:36 A respectable, middle-class businessman to turn aside in his lunch hour to plunk down his few dollars in a respectable place like Willowbrook and there feed his mind upon the very thing that just a few years ago had to be sought out but is now open and blatant. A running sore in our society that not only is it confined to the magazines and to the movies but the TV, t-shirts, bumper stickers. We have nothing less than a pornographic grunt as the mark of the sins of the seventies. Thirdly, it will be known as the decade of total sexual abandonment. Oh yes, there has always been premarital sex. There has always been extramarital sex and affairs, but it awaited the seventies to bring it out to the level of respectability so that premarital sex is a way of life among our own present generation. And the college student who even regards virginity as a virtue, let alone who seeks to maintain it, is looked upon as some kind of a hysterical.

20:02 A historical anachronism sort of looked upon like something out of the ice age. Yes, there have always been extramarital affairs. The Bible records them and the tragic fruits of them. But it awaited the seventies to have sociologists and the Doctor brothers and the Ann Landers and their ilk to tell us that extramarital affairs are not only tolerable but often provides spice and new life to the marriage relationship.

20:28 Extramarital affairs often provide spice and new life to the marriage relationship. Extramarital affairs often provide spice and new life to the marriage relationship. I'm a woman. I'm a man.

20:33 I'm a man. I'm a woman. I'm a woman. I'm a woman.

20:34 unashamed flaunting of the sanctity of that inner sanctuary of marriage and saying that the violation of that sanctuary can actually aid and advance the cause of a good marriage.

20:52 This will be known as the decade of total sexual abandonment. Fourthly, the seventies must be understood as the decade of homosexual militants. There have always been homosexuals in our national life,

21:13 but it awaited the seventies for the homosexual to be so blatant and bold as to march shoulder to shoulder with his fellow pervert and demand not only that the laws punishing this vicious wickedness be rescinded, but that laws be enacted to give him full status. In the society, it awaited the seventies for homosexuals to appear unashamedly on talk shows, television and radio, to appear in popular magazines and openly acknowledge with joy and with a measure of pride that they are perverts. And don't you ever use the word gay.

22:11 That's their term. Don't you use it. Don't you use it. Don't you use it.

22:14 Don't you use it. Don't you use it. And to the tragic, tragic erosion of our society, this will be known as the decade of homosexual militants. Furthermore, the sins of the seventies are to be found in the fact that this will be known as the decade of drug and alcohol obsession.

22:40 Oh yes, drugs have always been with us. Alcohol has always been with us. But this has been the decade in which drugs and alcohol have become an obsession and a way of life right across the board in our nation. Both legal and illegal drugs.

23:02 So that you have the housewife who getting her prescriptions from her own doctor can only function as she's driven to her tasks as she pops her uppers in the morning and can only get off to sleep as she swallows down her candy. Drugs and alcohol have become an obsession and a way of life right across the board in our nation. downers at night. And you have the wino who staggers on the skid rows of our cities. And you have the respectable Scotch and water businessman who sits next to me on the airplanes and belts down three or four before he takes his lunch, belts down another three or four before he gets off the plane, and belts down a few more before he eats his meal at night. He's utterly addicted to his alcohol. Oh, yes. He's not on skid row. He has his three-piece

23:52 business suit. He makes his $40,000 a year and has a fancy title and a lovely home. But he is obsessed and cannot function without his alcohol. And there is the downright pothead who lives for nothing more than his next buzz or his next high with his joint. And it's a way of life to him all the way to the respectable weak. A weekend user who only gets his five or six on a weekend and considers himself a vital part of society and making a vital contribution, but utterly obsessed. And you have the entire rock culture with its music that is spun out of minds that are disjointed through drugs that is then paraded by means of an obsession with a whole mental

24:52 mentality that is saturated in chemicals. And it's significant, isn't it, that the 70s close with a bitter memory of that rock group that is the symbol of everything that rock epitomizes. Read the article in Time magazine about who? The rock group who? Not written by Christians and saying that they are the symbol of the inherent self-destructiveness of the rock music and the rock culture. And they have been actively a part of it. Just over thought, this special album Well, we're going to Ultra rumored—we don't find them out at all because era over era has confirmed the image of those. History Outlaw The what Rock Band They're, um, the wild west of west and 22 days ahead, and they've been there for a long time to get involved inION technology.

25:48 But they had the unearned love for this music, and in all this that happened from age to age, the meaning for another era is something perhaps even committees—the original Roberts era. So, the spirits of the rock band, those who play the%, This is what we unquote recognition of as I went on a comedy tour because to me, it was very rare. Subjection As I spent the most time while writing The 70s will be known as the decade of dishonesty and double talk. There was a time in our national life when a man's word was his bond.

26:14 Christian or non-Christian. Whether it was the man down at the corner store and you happened to have no money with you and you took home your groceries and said you'd be by the next day to pay it. I've lived long enough to remember when there was such a day. And your word was your bond.

26:29 But no longer.

26:33 The double talk and the dishonesty perhaps was most clearly epitomized in that whole tragic affair that goes under the title of Watergate. When the highest elected official would look straight into the eyes of millions of his American, fellow Americans and say I'm telling you all I know when he was spinning out a web of lies. And the double talk and the dishonesty is only exemplified by the fact that the very ones who are most blatant in condemning him are guilty of the same double talk and the same lies in their political and personal dealings.

27:14 The 70s are marked as that decade when dishonesty and double talk at every level of national life has become a way of life. It will be known as the decade of militant feminism. Oh yes, the so-called feminist movement had its roots back earlier than that, I'm very much aware of it. But it has been in the 70s that there has been this obsession to pass the Equal Rights Amendment even to the twisting of our Constitution to get an extension of time.

27:49 What is Constitutional Law? We're determined! What? That women should receive equal pay for a job that they do in equality with men?

27:58 If that's all it were, I would stand behind it. There's injustice if a woman does not receive the same pay for a job that a man does if the job is worth a certain amount of money. But that's not the issue. The issue is much deeper.

28:14 Militant feminism asserts that there is no fundamental difference between men and women except a few biological matters. There is no fixed role assigned to the woman by God. There is no fixed structure of authority in male-female relationships. There is no such thing as feminism.

28:36 There is masculinity and masculinity. All of these distinctions are man-made and imposed from without and we are determined utterly to obliterate them. That's the platform of feminism. And the 70s will be marked as the decade of militant feminism.

28:53 Further, the 70s will be marked as the decade of divorce as a way of life in America. Divorce has always been with us. Even the Scripture allows divorce. Divorce for two reasons.

29:09 It does not encourage or smile, but recognizes that sin being what it is, there will be circumstances where divorce is the only honorable and righteous course to take in a given set of circumstances. But it never envisions it as a way of life. One just picks up an ordinary newspaper now and there are the ads of the attorneys who, for $200, will help you to dissolve your marriage. Just that simple.

29:36 One cannot stop at a popular bookstore that carries good literature. I'm not talking about a cheap paperback shelf. And there will be books how to get your own divorce at a minimum expense to yourself. The absolute dissolving of the sense of the marriage bond and its sacredness.

30:03 And then this will be known as the decade of the rejection of the so-called nuclear family. The whole idea that you have a family in which there is a figurehead called the father who exerts a gracious and righteous and authoritative loving rule in that home. And a mother who is the epitomizing of all of those virtues spoken of in the word of God that are attached to motherhood. And children who look to that mother and father for direction and guidance.

30:35 This will be recognized as the decade that perhaps utterly destroyed the concept of the nuclear family in our national life. Daycare centers are far more confident to rear children because they've got the experts whose only job is to manipulate three to five year olds or seven to nine year olds. And so the terrible, terrible propaganda goes on. And this will be known as the decade finally of decadent religious obsession.

31:13 And here I wish I could pause to speak longer but time will not permit it. But we must face the fact that the 70s were marked by a tremendous mushrooming of the cults. Whoever heard of the Moonies before the 70s? They were around but we didn't hear of them.

31:29 They weren't accosting us every time we stopped at a red light, walked through an airport. But in the 70s there was this tremendous advance of the Moonies. And again the 70s are the decade of Jim Jones and the Guyanese tragedy. 900 people so fanatically obsessed with a human leader that they will send themselves to hell at his command.

31:56 The decade of yoga. The decade of TM. The decade in which there has been that mushrooming of the mind cults and the oriental religions. The decade of pop religion with no doctrinal substance or moral fiber.

32:13 Country singers drunk on Friday nights singing Amazing Grace on Saturday night while 6,000 people stomp their feet and clap their hands and have no sense of shame. Pop religion with no doctrinal substance or moral fiber. We now have locker room chaplains who go in and read a few verses to 35 men on a Sunday and pray with them to salve their conscience while they go out and for three hours profane the Sabbath before 60 or 70,000 and who knows how many million on the TV. Pop religion with no moral fiber, no doctrinal substance.

32:52 Bumper sticker Christianity. Smile. God loves you. Honk if you love Jesus.

32:58 What is all of this? It is nothing more or less. than the terrible blight, the terrible sin of this that I have called decadent religious obsession. Born-againism where everybody and his uncle who's had any kind of a twitch anywhere in his inner being that has made him feel good in some way related in some form or other to something that has to do with the Bible, he's born again.

33:34 Mystical experience. This is the decade of the 700 Club and the PTL movement. Oh, dear people, it is no pleasant thing for me to speak of these things, but these, I suggest, are the paramount sins of the 70s. Some of you perhaps feel other things should be added.

33:54 Some of you perhaps feel some should be subtracted. But no one can deny that the things I have articulated are no longer done. These things are no longer done in a corner. These things have always been present in our national life.

34:12 But it has been in the 70s that they have risen to the prominent features and the very characteristics of our life so that when a fanatical Muslim by the name of Ayatollah Khomeini says that we Muslims must rise up and put down your morally decadent Western Christianity, we have no answer. Now, he's wrong in identifying American culture with Christianity. In his Muslim mind, he cannot separate religion from total national life. And we understand that.

34:52 But no one can say, you've misread our national life. What moral decadence are you speaking about? We must hold our hands over our mouths and blush and weep.

The Primary Reason for the Sins of the 1970s: God's Revealed Wrath

35:09 These are the paramount sins of the 70s. Now, I must hurry to touch on this second area of our concern. What is the primary reason for these sins of the 70s? You're aware, I'm sure, that there are some who would say that these things are not sins.

35:31 They fit the description of Isaiah 5. Woe be unto those who call light darkness and darkness light and evil good and good evil. And there are people who would take these ten things I've mentioned and would say they're an evidence of advance and development. We're throwing off the shackles of the old Puritanic mentality that so long bound us in our national life.

35:59 They would call all of this evil good. Well, God has spoken to such people and says woe be unto them. But now I'm concerned from the Scriptures. To ask and answer the question, what is the primary reason for these sins of the 70s?

36:18 And here's where the Romans 1 passage enters. I am not saying this is the exclusive reason. Nor am I saying that this is the only means that has been operative. But I am asserting that this passage contains an answer to the question, what is the primary reason for the sins of the 70s in our national life in America?

36:51 Romans 1 and verse 18. In this passage, I'll give you a summary statement and we'll break it down briefly and demonstrate that that summary statement is warranted. What Paul says in Romans 1, 18 through 32 is that God's wrath is revealed in giving men over to sin when they willfully reject the knowledge of God given in His revelation to them. Paul is saying that God's wrath is revealed right now in giving men over to sin when they willfully reject the knowledge of God given in His revelation to them. Notice the main assertion, verse 18. The wrath of God and there's a present tense verb. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven.

37:50 And all that follows is a commentary upon that fact. What is the wrath of God? How is it revealed? What are the manifestations?

38:02 What are the causes which provoke it? Those are questions to which the apostle will address himself. But now the main thesis is the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Now what's the main cause for that wrath being revealed?

38:23 And the answer is the rejection of the knowledge of God. Verse 21. Because that knowing God they glorified Him not as God neither gave thanks but became vain in their reasonings and their senseless heart was darkened. Because that knowing God they did not glorify Him as God.

38:47 Verse 25. Look at the language. For that they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator. Verse 28.

39:01 And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge. You see the main cause for that wrath being revealed? It is rejection of the knowledge of God given in His self-revelation. In this context it was the revelation of Himself in creation nothing more but it was that.

39:23 And rejection of that knowledge is the cause of His wrath. Now then what is the manifestation of that wrath? Abandonment to the vilest of sins. Verse 24.

39:38 Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts. Notice the lusts were already there but there was a measure of common grace restraining the lusts from finding expression in total abandonment. And now as a judgment of God God removes the barrier He gives them up to the lusts of their hearts. Verse 26.

40:06 For this cause God gave them up unto vile passions. And then the sin of homosexuality is described. And then verse 28. And here the language is frightening.

40:21 God gave them up unto a reprobate mind to do those things which are not fitting. And then this tragic list of social sins. Wickedness, covetousness, envy, murder covenant breaking. All of this as the fruit of what?

40:41 Being given up by God to a reprobate mind. Do you see then the primary reason for the sins of the seventies? The primary reason is the wrath of God revealed on our nation for its rejection of the knowledge of God. There is no explanation for this pattern of abounding aggressive dominance of wickedness.

41:10 But that Almighty God is right now in this last Lord's day of 1970 revealing His wrath from heaven by doing what? In the language of the text. Giving up those in our nation to the lusts of their hearts. Giving them up to vile passions.

41:31 Giving them up to a reprobate mind. Now follow. If God did this when man rejected the mere glimmering light of creation. Glimmering compared with the full blazing light of the gospel.

41:56 If man with just the light of common or general revelation put down that knowledge refused to act commensurate with it and God is angry and gives them up to these vile sins. What of the nation that was born under the blazing light of the gospel and visited with mighty outpourings of the Holy Ghost so that woven into the very fabric of our national life for the first couple hundred years of its existence was the overall moral consciousness of the Word of God governing social life, family life, governing our views of sex and of marriage, of education, of the home. Governing the dictums of our courts. What must God's anger be upon a nation that takes that light and says we no longer want it and turns to the darkness of humanism, pagan education, subjectivism and the deification of man's so-called intellect? My friend, there is no explanation for the seventies

43:24 but that Romans 1 is being reenacted before our eyes. And if we are called upon as the people of God to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather to reprove them, we've got to understand what has produced these characteristics of the seventies. God has been thrown out of any true consideration in the whole realm of education in place of an educational framework that operates in the orbit of creation, fall and redemption. We have for over a hundred years had an educational framework soaked in pure humanism. An educational framework which puts evolution in place of the God of creation, which puts humanistic optimism in place of the biblical doctrine of the fall and which puts self-help based on self-wisdom in place of redemptive power and light and grace. And God has said, alright, you're so smart, you can get on educationally without me, go ahead. It's no surprise then when young people act as though they were animals.

44:52 They've been told they were animals. They're just being consistent. When God says, you want to believe you're an animal, then I'll give you up to your animal passion. In terms of our courts, the word of God and the great principles of justice, the sanctity of human life, the overall moral implications of the unchanging moral law of God expressed in the Ten Commandments no longer a consideration of our nation.

45:26 That's why our highest court can justify abortion on demand. It has no longer felt the pressure of the Sixth Commandment. Thou shalt do no murder. That's why divorce is so cheap and easy, premarital and extramarital sex.

45:46 No one is upset. Why? We no longer have the Seventh Commandment exerting its pressure upon our national life and thinking. The tragedy is that within the very church of Christ voices are raised up saying the Ten Commandments have nothing to say to us.

46:05 It's bad enough when the world doesn't. But when the church begins to parrot what the world is saying, it's a double tragedy. Well, this has been very oppressive, hasn't it? It's been oppressive to me.

The Exclusive Remedy: The Power of the Gospel

46:20 I've lived with these thoughts for the last couple of days, and my spirit is very oppressed. But I'm going to close by briefly addressing myself to something that I hope will be a glimmer of light. What is the exclusive remedy for the sins of the Seventies? Having contemplated the paramount sins of the Seventies, the primary reason for the sins of the Seventies, now very briefly and in closing, what is the exclusive remedy for the sins of the Seventies?

46:52 Oh, stay right there in Romans 1. You see, the apostle did not introduce the thoughts of verses 18 to 32 in a vacuum. He had just stated his own sense of indebtedness to preach the gospel. Verse 14.

47:14 Then he has given this wonderful statement of the power of the gospel. He says, I have no cause to be ashamed of this gospel of the grace of God. It is this very gospel which is the power of God to bring salvation to Jew first and also to the Greek. And then he launches into this statement, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.

47:39 You see the connection? What he is saying in essence is this. Against the realistic backdrop of the condition of the pagan, Gentile, Roman world, a world that is obviously under the wrath of God, having been given up by God to its lusts and passions because of its rejection of the knowledge of God in creation, to such a world, I go with a gospel that is the power of God unto salvation. And though I have gone into situations where I have seen men ensnared in the very sins described in this passage, I have seen this gospel break their chains, set them loose, make them Christ-free men. He said, I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God. And oh, my friend, this is the exclusive remedy for the sins of the seventies. And there are all kinds of quack doctors who may to one degree or another admit the malady, but oh, they come with false remedies.

48:52 My friend, there is but one remedy. It is the gospel preached in this book of Romans, coming to the consciences of men in the power of the Holy Ghost. A gospel that announces God's rights as Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge. And that is exactly what Paul does in the first three and a half chapters of Romans, right through chapter 1, 2, 3, to verse 20.

49:19 And he says, Whatsoever things the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, Jew and Gentile, that all the world may become guilty before God. That's the gospel that is the hope of this generation. A gospel that announces God is Creator, God is Lawgiver, God is Judge. But then a gospel that goes on to announce that this same God has sent His only begotten Son to die for sinners.

49:52 And in the perfection of the obedience of Christ, obedient even unto death, there is a righteousness adequate for all the filth and unrighteousness of these things that are categorized in Romans 1. You mean there is a righteousness that can cover all of these sins? Homosexuality? Bestiality?

50:16 Open idolatry? Backbiting? Insolent? Disobedient to parents?

50:21 Covenant breakers? Yes, my friends, that's the gospel. That in the Lord Jesus Christ, God has provided a righteousness that is adequate to all the demands of His holy law. And that righteousness is to be found only in Jesus Christ.

50:40 And it is only ours when we come into Christ by faith. So he says, it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Nothing here about to everyone that joins himself to the true church and partakes of the seven sacraments. There is no Romish hocus-pocus in this.

51:04 No, no. It is the gospel to everyone that believeth. Not to everyone who gets a wonderful feeling about Christ. He doesn't know where it comes from, what it's based upon.

51:14 No, no. It is faith in this objective truth, the announcement. God our maker is our lawgiver and our judge. We've sinned against Him.

51:24 We stand under His wrath. But that God, wonder of wonders, has sent His Son. And in His Son has perfected a righteousness that is available to everyone who believes. Believes what?

51:38 All that's revealed about God as your creator, your lawgiver, and your judge. All that's announced about God as the redeemer of sinners in the Lord Jesus Christ. You're to believe that. You're to embrace Him who is held forth in the gospel.

51:57 My friends, that's the exclusive remedy for the sins of the seventies. The remedy is not found in Christians going to Washington and lobbying. The answer is not found in Christian action groups. The answer is found in the mighty power of God the Holy Ghost attending the proclamation of the gospel and transforming men and women at the citadel of their being.

52:28 That gospel proclaimed over the back fence to your neighbors. Proclaimed to your loved ones when you enclose a good solid gospel tractor booklet. That gospel proclaimed when you pass on a tape to a friend or associate at work. That gospel proclaimed formally in pulpits across our land.

52:51 And oh, as we gather tonight, this will be one of the areas of exhortation and entreaty. That we have a renewed confidence in the power of this gospel. You would think after Paul wrote what he wrote in that first chapter of Romans, he'd have put his pen down, put his tail between his legs and say, what's the use? If God's wrath is being revealed on the Gentile world, why burn myself out?

53:16 Why risk shipwreck and death and imprisonment and beatings and stonings? If men are so given over and given up and besotten in their sins, my friend, that's the very glory of the gospel. And that's what got hold of Paul. He saw that gospel come as divine power and liberate sinners.

Call to Hope, Gratitude, and Evangelism

53:39 Oh, may something of the thrill and the glory of it grip our hearts. That as we feel the pain of looking at the seventies and seeing the tragic moral and spiritual declension, those sins that characterize that decade and recognize the cause and the anger of God, the wrath of God, giving up a nation that no longer wants God in its knowledge. How thankful to God we can be if we've been rescued from that. All the potential for every sin in Romans 1, 18 to 32 is in your heart.

54:21 And oh, how grateful we should be if God has laid hold of us in grace. And how filled with hope and earnest desire to see that gospel come to others should we be. And oh, my friend, sitting here this morning, some of you whose very lives fit the description at one point or another of the sins of the seventies, you wouldn't know how to get through one week without your booze. You wouldn't know how to get through one week without your drugs of one kind or another.

54:57 Your life would be utterly shattered. You wouldn't know how to get through one month without some kind of illicit sex, some kind of a high from pornography or infidelity. Your life is a living monument that these are the sins of the seventies. My friend, there's hope for you.

55:17 But there's hope in only one place. And that's in Jesus Christ as He is offered in the gospel. That's all. Now, that's not flattering.

55:27 That doesn't make you rise up and say, oh, boy, there's something. No. It strips you. It humbles you.

Closing Prayer and Benediction

55:32 But, oh, if you will but come in the humility of faith, you will find the blessedness that we read about in our opening song. Blessed is that people whose God is the Lord, even Jehovah Jesus. Let us pray. Our Father, again we confess our sense of shame and grief as we look at our own national life, the moral consciousness and conduct of our nation.

56:14 If we who are sinners feel a sense of inward shame and blush, and at times a sense of anger, what must Your holy heart feel? We know we come to one who though He is above us and beyond us, yet, oh God, You have revealed Yourself as the God who feels. We pray that in wrath, that very wrath which is causing You at this very moment to give men over to their lusts, to give them over to a reprobate mind, that in the midst of that wrath You would remember mercy. Seal Your word to our hearts. Give us as Your people, as we are privileged to gather together tonight, a clear word of direction for the days that lie before us, that we may not walk uncertainly, for Your word says that we are not to be unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Give us understanding in Your will that we may, no matter what happens around us, be those who walk surely, because we walk in the light of Your holy word. Be pleased now to seal that word to our blessing and to Your praise.

57:38 And may the benediction of Your own felt presence and all the promises that are yea and amen in Christ be our portion as we leave this place through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.