Shameless

We are a culture on an increasing downward spiral of abomination. We use profanity as colorful additions to our speech. We have a generation of young women who dress in a way that calls attention to their feminine characteristics that only their husbands should enjoy, and yet these young women are encouraged to by their very own parents and superiors. We have fathers teachings sons to cheat, to get away with the least possible or the most possible (depending on your perspective). And those are just a sampling of surface things. Far deeper we are a generation who thinks first, last, and always, about us. Everything we think, and thus, everything we do, ultimately is the answer to the question, "What will make me feel good?"

We have lost a sense of social consciousness, which is bad. What's worse is that we have lost a sense of spiritual consciousness.

And to top it all off, we lack a prophetic voice in church. The pulpit has gone silent from fear—perhaps the fear of falling attendancee, the fear of falling offerings, the fear of losing speaking opportunities, the fear of a sermon where no one laughs. We knows. We speak for thirty minutes, but then we have not actually said anything.

We have ceased to be voices of warning. The words of Jeremiah speak of a superficial healing crying out, "Peace, peace: Things aren't that bad. The complainers just have a sex problem, or a legalistic problem, or a control problem. They are just old-fashioned, or stuck in the 60s (or 50s)."

In short, we are in the words of Jeremiah 8, people who have no shame, who do not know how to blush, and I am convinced that at the root it's because we have no spiritual discernment.

On this Sunday, I will not be preaching for the second time in two weeks (and what is probably the second time in five years or more) but I pray that God's people will be confronted with sin in a way that will cause us to be be a people of shame who learn to blush at the sins that are an abomination to God.

Men, as you hold forth for your congregation tomorrow, and people, as you listen, remember these words of Jeremiah:

"They heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially,
Saying, 'Peace, peace,' But there is no peace.
"Were they ashamed because of the abomination they had done?
They certainly were not ashamed,
And they did not know how to blush.
(Jeremiah 8:11-12)