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the-record-briefs · 6 years

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May 30, 2018: In other news

Sermon given by David Johnson for ChickenFest

Editor’s note: this is the sermon given Sunday, May 27, at The Record Park by Arbor Grove United Methodist Church’s lay leader David Johnson.

Good morning! Welcome once again to America…my favorite nation…home to my favorite state, North Carolina…which houses my favorite county, Wilkes….which contains my favorite communities…two of which I am living in simultaneously these days due to family illness…Mulberry and Purlear. It’s great to wake up here. I am very glad that there is a "here" to wake up to. But for the grace of God and the sacrifices of many men, women, and families, it might be a very different "here"…a different reality that we would be living in.

But for those who willingly went to fight our enemies on foreign battlefields…our salutes and allegiances might be to a flag containing a swastika, a rising sun, a hammer and sickle, or even an Isis insignia instead of the stars and stripes. I have read about and seen the effects of these regimes in their heyday, and I thank God that they were not successful in raising those flags over American territory. In all of our imperfections as a culture, I still prefer our way of life and our creed to those of our political and military enemies.

Let me share a short scripture about these sacrifices:

John 15:13

…greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends…

It almost seems inevitable that the nation who would have the most personal freedom and become the most desirable goal for those that would leave a land of their birth to relocate in a land of more advantage, would become the nation that would have to fight the hardest for Survival both from outside and also from within. And that has been the case with the United States.

Over two centuries ago we invoked the name and blessings of God in our very creed and national motto when we said that we considered all men to be created by that God as equals…and then we spent the next century combining enslavement and relocation of two different races of people in our quest to occupy and flourish on the continent. But by the grace of the Lord, our national conscience eventually changed and his words uttered first to the Hebrews that he had delivered from their own slavery, then uttered to the gentiles (that included Greeks, Romans, Ethiopians, and of course, our ancestors)…those words kept coming up in our national dialog and in our desire to live up to our creed. Eventually, by God's help, we have progressed closer to that point of true personal freedom for all our citizens than ever before.

Yet all through the years of our efforts to govern ourselves, we still have taken our place on the age old stage of warfare. Sometimes, we were fighting amongst ourselves while we were fighting other nations. Yet to this point of today, God has seen fit to let us exist and given us the strength to persevere over our enemies both outside…and in.

This survival came and still comes with a price…a price in wealth…war is expensive…but more importantly, and sadly, a great price in human lives. No one in their right mind who has ever been in a war wants to see another one. Yet many who have fought one battle and survived, have willingly fought again in order to keep our country, our people, and our way of life secure. And many of these folks paid the price with their own lives. It is them that we wish to honor today. Yet how can we do that?

How do you repay someone that has given their life for you?

In Old Testament times, the Hebrews followed the commands of God through Moses…reluctantly sometimes, because they desired to be free from Egypt's slavery. Yet whether they knew it or not, it wasn't just the Egyptian captivity from which they needed to escape, it was the power of sin and their over and over again rejection of god's plan for them that they needed to be freed from.

Their success against their worldly enemies only seemed to make them more dependent upon earthly answers like a human king with a crown and successors. Earthly idolatry would constantly come between them and God.

Only the hand of God plus the faith of some Israelites would allow them to survive wars with philistines, defeat and captivity by the Babylonians, and occupation by the Romans, plus being exiled and dispensed into the world for centuries.

Yet the faith of some, plus the power of an almighty god brought them back to the land for which they had fought so many times at the cost of countless lives. Their heroes are commemorated in scriptures…Joshua, Gideon, Samson, David, and a man you may have heard of named Jesus, who many of them rejected, plus many others. Their descendants are still there now…not just because of their might, but because god decreed it and allows it.

We are told these histories by songs, by sermons, and by reading the Bible. It is important that we remember them because their story... Is our story.

In our case, as English subjects in the 16 and 1700’s we felt enslaved by oppressive government. Men and women desired to live a life of their own choosing, even if in a harsh environment in order to feel free from the hand of a king. Our first war in America was one of decision…are we willing to risk death to be a free people? Against a superior military force from England, 13 colonies made that choice and fought those battles. As in all wars, not all the troops came home…but there was no controversy as to the results of the war. We wanted to be a free nation…and we had paid the price to be one. And by God's help and only by his help we became one.

Yet less than a century later we would fight the war that not many nations survive… a war amongst ourselves. Five years later at the end of that war, we started patching things up…but at the cost of over a half million troops and citizens, all Americans…all dead.

Only the hand of god had kept us from totally disintegrating. It was actually at the end of this war that our memories of our fallen soldiers began to take on days of commemoration, one state or one town at a time. Decoration days began to form. Yet warfare continued to be a constant part of our culture.

Just after the industrial revolution, the world tried its hand at a global war, and men marched off to trenches in France, Germany, and other parts of Europe. When it seemed that United States allies or interests were threatened, our troops took their place before the cannons, guns, and mustard gas. Some of your kinfolks didn't come back. But they had been willing to go in order to see us survive.

World War Two was just a bigger, wider, more technologically advanced version of world war one…with one striking difference. This time the enemy had hit us at Pearl Harbor…our land…the home front.

The result was an industrial upheaval…many businesses were converted to wartime efforts. Gas, clothing and other goods were rationed willingly. Even housewives gave broken skillets or pots, all scrap metal was collected to be shipped and converted to weaponry.

And almost all families gave up young men and in some instances young women that would not return from the effort. But it was done with the prayer that God would bless that effort and our land would survive and thrive.

As the years progressed to now, we have not escaped our involvement in war. There are those who say that our leaders have gotten us into most of the modern day ones willingly for wealth or world domination etc. I don't know the truth about that. But I do know many of the people who have fought…I know some who have died….and I know some who are fighting now. The ones that I know or knew either went when called, or volunteered.

And they did it because they loved this land. And in most instances they loved the lord who allowed us to be in this land.

We know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we do not live in a perfect world. And as much as I love it, I will be the last to say that America is a perfect nation. But my hopes and prayers for her survival involve her becoming a more faith-filled nation and a more godly nation.

Yes, we are in the middle of the opioid crisis, yes we are ridden with moral problems, with school shootings and corruption in high places, (and in low places for that matter), homelessness plus latter generations some of who don't even recognize that there is God, not to mention the terrible war technology with which many nations hold each other and parts of the world hostage.

But these problems are still symptomatic of the same sins that brought us to war before. The same sin that pits North Korea against the U.S. is from the same source that caused Cain to kill Abel. The genocide that has taken place in Syria and other parts of the world also took place when an early Pharaoh tried to kill all young Hebrew male babies in order to find and eradicate a future Moses…or when Herod tried the same trick to find and kill a baby Jesus. Even in the middle of the slaughter, God's plan prevailed. Satan is Satan, and the wages of sin is death. How miserable would we be if there was not a better way?

There is probably no one sitting here that has not been touched directly or indirectly by a death of a family member or friend on a battlefield somewhere sometime.

What makes men and women risk their lives for a cause?

Not just the status quo…not just a national pride…but the hope and prayer of something better.

Soldiers have died from American forces ever since there was an America not just because they wanted America to survive, but because they wanted a better America to survive!

If we could talk to fallen soldiers what would they tell us their desires for us would be?

How would they want to be honored or remembered?

They would probably tell us they hoped that the battle they fell in would be the last one…or that our nation would turn itself into a more Godly representation of his love.

I wonder if they would tell us to be more about the Golden Rule than the golden bank account?

Would they tell us to pray to the God that helped us found this nation that we can stop being so polarized and deathly opposed to each other before we crank up the next Civil War? With the technology that we possess even locally, who wants to fight that conflict again?

Yet we seem to fight our own personal wars with each other on all the social media sites. How long until this boils over into the streets?

War is a reality…Satan has seen to that.

God's words from Jesus confirm it.

Matthew 24:6

…and ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

But don't we have a responsibility as well to assure each other that our friends and family members didn't die in vain?

They sacrificed themselves so that we can keep the fight on the home front against sin, both in our lives and in our nation. It will not be defeated until Christ returns yet what are we supposed to do until he comes?

We witness...we work…….we feed those who can't feed themselves…we house those who have no roof…we testify as to what God has done for us and what he can do for others.

And we remember those whose lives were given for us to have the opportunity to do these things.

What brought the victory for them? Sacrifice!

What brought the sacrifice? Love! Love of God, love of family and love of this country!

It wasn't mercenary payment that made them fight!

It wasn't prestige, nor fear, nor pride…it was the continued survival, comfort, and freedom of those they loved!

This love motivated them to stand in front of otherwise insurmountable odds and still fight on.

Love reminds us of the presence of God within us…for without God there is no love…only a mockery of love. The gospel of John says that Christ was here from the beginning and went to the battlefield for our own survival. The only mention of motivation in John 3:16 was love.

Our fallen war dead are the David’s and Gideon’s and Joshua’s of our day. We can remember them with flags, flowers and tombstones…but, the only way to honor them is to perpetuate and improve the imperfections of the nation that they left us in a more Godly way. To do this we must love God and because of his love we should love others just like we love ourselves.

In this way we not only honor them and their sacrifice, but we honor the God who made us and Jesus who made the ultimate sacrifice for us in the battle for our souls.

It is only by joining in that struggle that we improve ourselves…improve our nation…and honor our fallen heroes in a way they would approve.

God bless you all. Fall in behind Jesus….and fight on.

Amen

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