18 Jan

7/8/18    1KINGS 21:1-21A   “THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF SIN”

Unfortunately we live in a world today where just about anything goes.  This happens in criminal behavior, sexual behavior, economic behavior and personal behavior just to mention a few.  If you doubt me, just check out your news channel or newspaper.  And hopefully you are still able to recognize good from bad behavior.  If you can’t and think that all the things that happen today are good according to God, then you have another issue that you need to work on.  God has ways of working in all aspects of our lives to make them better and today we are going to look at sin.  Sin is basically willfully going against the word of God.  Society has a way around this.  Just change the word of God to fit society.  I think we all know that isn’t the right way.  Let’s see what God has to say way back in the Old Testament.  Then let’s see if we can apply it to our lives to make them better as we talk of getting off the slippery slope of sin.

What will we do to get ahead?  Wayne Smith tells of a man applying for insurance.  He was asked, “How old is your mother?”  The man replied, “She’s dead.”  “How old was she when she died?” was the next question.  The man replied, “Forty one.”  “What did she die of?” was next.  “Tuberculosis,” came the answer.  “How old is your father?” the insurance man asked.  “He is dead,” the man answered.  “How old was he when he died?” “Forty three,” replied the man.  Then came, “What did he die from?”  “Heart attack.” answered the man.  Finally the insurance man said, “There is no way you can get this special discount.  Your heredity is not good enough.”

So the man went down the street and found another insurance man and asked him for insurance.  This guy asked the same questions, “How old is your father?”  “He’s dead.”  “How old was he when he died?”  “Ninety-four.”  “What did he die of?”  “He fell off a horse when he was playing polo.”  Then the agent asked, “How old is your mother?”  “She’s dead.”  “How old was she when she died?”  “Ninety-one.”  “What did she die of?”  “Childbirth!”  This is a little extreme but I think that it is amazing what some people will do to save a couple of bucks.

It even gets worse as we hear the story from Max Lucado on what people will do for 10 million dollars.  He tells of a hypothetical game show where all the money can be yours if you answer just one simple question, “What is your price?”  The choice is yours.  A person could do a whole lot of good with that kind of money.  All the contestant has to do is choose one option and the 10 million dollars is his.  Here are the choices.  “Put your children up for adoption.”  “Become a drug addict.”  “Give up your American citizenship.”  “Abandon your church.”  “Abandon your family.”  “Kill a stranger.”  “Have a sex change operation.”  “Leave your spouse.”  Or “Change your race.”  “That is the list.  Now make your choice.”

The sad part is that most people would choose something.  They actually did a survey like this and the results were quite astonishing.  I believe that there has even been a movie made about this.  Some of the results are 25% would leave their family and 25% would abandon their church.  Just about everybody chose something on the list.  That is sad.  Personally I feel I’m one of the richest people in the world because of what Jesus has done in my life without choosing anything.

Now this is what Naboth did in this morning’s Scripture.  Naboth refused to sell his vineyard to the king.  He was like someone who would refuse to choose anything on the list I just mentioned.  And the king made a very attractive offer according to the Bible.  The Bible doesn’t come out and tell us explicitly why Naboth wouldn’t sell the land.  But the reason is that this was the land that God had given his ancestors when they were brought into the Promised Land.  According to the law, as long as you or your family lived on this land that God had given you, you would be keeping the covenant and not abandoning the Lord.  So all Naboth was doing was obeying God when he refused this very nice offer.

We have been talking in the last few weeks about how wicked Ahab was as a king.  As a matter of fact he was considered to be one of the wickedest kings of all Israel.  And here is a story that really bears this out.  Please notice how King Ahab starts out down his slippery slope of sin.  As I was looking at this Scripture this week, I thought at first that I would have a hard time to find the Good News in this story that is pretty much a warning.  But I found Good News because there is Good News in everything if we just look hard enough.  We will get to it in a few minutes.  First of all, Ahab sees a nice vineyard by his palace and he wants it.  So he does the proper thing by going out and trying to buy it.  So far there is nothing wrong on the surface.

However, he never thought that Naboth would refuse his king.  He was not, at this time, really understanding that God’s power was more than his.  So the king does what any young child would do.  He goes home and throws a tantrum.  This passage really shows us all of our good attributes in just a few paragraphs.

I think that it is important to see that God is trying to show us just how sinful we are, even today.  We have not really changed our ways that much in 2800 years.  When we look at our world we can see this kind of thing just about everywhere.  We throw tantrums when our political candidate doesn’t win.  We have countries fighting countries because of greed and jealousy.  They tell each other that if you don’t give me this or that, then I will take it.  It may be oil, or land or just about anything of value.  We have lived in a cesspool of sin for so long that it is very hard for us to realize how bad the situation has really become.  This is even in the church as we can see in the United Methodist bishops who tell everyone that the church must change to be more like society and not follow the Bible.  I think these bishops should all be fired.  These people have run the church into the ground and now they want us to follow them in this new cesspool.  Let’s just get rid of the bishops and start over again.  We need to be like Naboth.

Anyway it all starts with one sin.  With Ahab, it started with coveting his neighbor’s vineyard.  Then he escaladed his sins to murder and stealing.  It is a slippery slope that Satan has set us for us.  We can see one of these slopes when we look at the movie or entertainment industry as an example.

It wasn’t too many years ago when movies were decent.  In the early days, people didn’t swear or do anything that might be misconstrued as being bad.  Movies were generally good.  I’m not real sure when the change started but just for the sake of illustration; let’s say it began with ‘Gone with the Wind’.  Do you remember when Rhett Butler tells Scarlet, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a —-.”  Now we have swearing.  We see that the escalation is slow or sinking into the cesspool of sin is slow.

But after 20 years, swearing mildly had become rather common.  So now they are out to press the issue some more and we find ourselves with some nudity in the 60’s.  (Sarcastic) Of course we can do this very casual as it is really art.  Give me a break!  And once again the escalation or sinking is slow.

By the end of the 70’s, we have all kinds of swearing and nudity and lots of sex on the screen.  It has been the same slide for TV.  And there had always been violence in the movies.  But now we have to make sure that the violence is realistic so that our sons and daughters can grow up to have absolutely no moral values if they watch movies without restraint.  It’s no wonder we have so many mass shootings when that is what our movies and TV teach us.  And now we have today where anything and everything goes.  The more swearing, violence and sex there is, then the better it is.  We have started with an industry that was innocent in the beginning as was King Ahab, but has slid down the slippery slope of sin until it is one of the most disgusting industries in the world.

I would like to point out another example of the slippery slope of sin.  As you all know, I feel and I think rightfully so, that this country was founded on the Bible and on the teachings of Jesus Christ.  We did real fine up until about 1950.  Now don’t get me wrong.  We did a lot of things wrong up until 1950, but at least we had a place to go back to so we could try to right ourselves.  We had the Bible.  Most everyone believed it and we raised our children to believe it.

It was at about this time that we started to say that we have to have a separation of our churches and the state.  This is not in the constitution at all but is some evil interpretation of it.  We have always been a country where the state is not welcome in our churches.  But we have not always said, until around 1950, that the church cannot be in the state.  And this should be so obviously wrong.  Our moral institutions, like our churches, belong in the state so that the state will function properly.  Because if we throw out the church, then we will have lawless, mindless, immoral government like we have today.

After we started the separation of church and state, we were soon to the point of banning prayer in school.  We have gone down the road so far now that you do not even dare to bring up the name of Jesus Christ anywhere in public except in our churches and even here I could get into a lot of trouble for preaching against homosexuality.  There are even rumblings in Congress right now that would say that the kind of sermon that I am preaching today would have to be considered hate speech and I could go to jail. What a bunch of baloney!

I hope that you all realize that I don’t hate anyone.  But I will stand here and tell you that according to the Bible, homosexuality is wrong as is alcoholism, as is stealing and as is coveting.  I will tell you that Hinduism and Islam are wrong and are false religions.  These religions are so intolerant that if I said this in one of their countries I would be put to death.  I will also tell you that atheists are wrong.  But I will not hate any of these people.  Because we have to love them to tell them that they are wrong.  We are to tell them the truth and then extend the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  This is not hate. This is love.

And this brings us to the final verses of this story.  King Ahab humbles himself before the Lord when he realizes just how wrong he had been.  He put on a sackcloth which would be quite humbling for a king.  And the Lord sees this as an act of repentance and delays his judgment on the king.  He only delays it because He knows that it will happen again.  God knows everything that has happened and will happen.  But God loves him so much that he will give him a chance to fully repent and come to Him.  We should be shouting out for joy at this.

This is the Good News of this Scripture.  God loves you so much that He will keep on giving you second, third and fourth chances if you try to repent and come to Him.  I praise Him for these chances because I needed many of them before I finally realized that He is King and Jesus is fully my Lord, my Savior and best of all, my friend.  We are not nor will we ever be worthy of this love.  It is the kind of love that once you get it inside of you, it will rattle your very soul in such a tremendously good way that your life will be changed for the better in an instant.  So if you have not asked Jesus Christ into your life, then do so today.  Because the change He makes inside of us is indescribably good.  Please, make the change today.

I think that we can easily see that God loves us.  He loves the Muslims and the Hindus.  He loves the homosexuals and murderers.  He loves the atheists and the non-believers.  He loves us all so much that He tells us the truth and then extends us grace like He did with King Ahab.  And the more I think about it, I should be arrested after preaching this sermon for a love crime and not a hate crime.  This is all about love and not about hate at all.

I think that there are many lessons we can take away with us from this Scripture.  It is obvious that we are not to covet our neighbor’s things as it will lead to more sin.  I always told my children that if you tell one lie, then you will have to cover it up with two more lies.  Then you have to cover them with four more lies, then eight more lies.  Then you are off down another slippery slope of sin, into to the cesspool of sin.  It is better not to start or if you do start down this slope, then confess and start over.  God will give you another chance as you saw with Ahab.

Just about every day you can pick up a newspaper or watch the TV news and see some celebrity who thinks they are much better than they actually are.  They think so highly of themselves that they think they are above the law like Ahab.  This can happen to anyone with power.  When and where did their slippery slope to sin start?  Or maybe a better question is this, “When and where did your slippery slope begin?”

And no matter what your answer, we are to be focused on the most important part of this passage and most other if not all other passages of the Bible.  Jesus is there to help you always.  We talk about this all the time.  Jesus is there to pick you up.  Jesus is there to give you another chance.  He is there to give you many chances.  He is there because of the tremendous love He has for you.  Jesus was the turning point of my life and many of your lives.  And He wants to be the turning point of all lives.  That is the Good News of this story and all Biblical stories.  Praise the Lord for that.  And thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.