The Lamb Is Still Worthy
"And they sang a new song: You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals; because You were slaughtered, and You redeemed people for God by Your blood from every tribe and language and people and nation. You made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign on the earth. Then I looked, and heard the voice of many angels around the throne, and also of the living creatures, and of the elders. Their number was countless thousands, plus thousands of thousands. They said with a loud voice:
"The Lamb who was slaughtered is worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing! I heard every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, on the sea, and everything in them say: Blessing and honor and glory and dominion to the One seated on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever!
"The four living creatures said, " Amen," and the elders fell down and worshiped" (Rev 5:9-14, HCSB).
INTRODUCTION
I have made no secret of it. In this series from the Revelation I will not answer all your questions. I will not answer all my questions. Furthermore, I will make no effort to do so.
This is not an exhaustive study of Revelation, and even though most sermons are definitely expository, some are textual or even topical. This message swings somewhere in between textual and topical. I will come back and deal with the entire fifth chapter of Revelation later, but my purpose today is to simply focus our attention on the Lamb of God, Who is proclaimed in chapter 4 to be worthy of praise and glory and power because He is the One who created all things. The hosts of heaven praise Him: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing." Why does Jesus receive such praise here? Because He is worthy to open the scroll that is revealed in Heaven and break the seven seals (5:2).
Please remember that we are only skimming the surface in our series from Revelation, not explaining every symbol or identifying everything revealed (even though we will identify many of the symbols). Today, I want to see if I can make one point that I consider especially important. Just as Jesus was worthy of the praise of the inhabitants of Heaven in the Revelation, He is worthy of praise and glory today. It really concerns me when I consider the difference in the attitude of America today and the America of the Founders toward the Lamb of God. While America was never a theocracy, it was a nation founded on principles set forth in the New Testament and for the first one hundred-fifty years Americans recognized the fact that the Lamb of God is worthy of praise, worship, obedience, and service. However, something began to change in America and that which changed parallels the attitude of America toward the Lamb of God. Can you imagine what George Washington, James Madison, John Witherspoon, or Abraham Lincoln would have thought if they had stood before the so-called art exhibit and observed an image of Jesus Christ submerged in a vial of urine? And there is no way I would tell you what the caption under the work said. It is simply too vile. When did the change take place, and who was responsible for it? There may be some clues. One of those clues may be found in what has been called THE GREATEST GENERATION.
I believe it was Tom Brokaw who popularized the term and during the coverage of the visitation and funeral services for President Ronald Reagan we heard the term over and over. Just what did the media moguls have in mind when they kept referring to "The Greatest Generation?" Some would say the World War II generation, and I can appreciate that. However, World War II did not last a whole generation. Some would say that a generation covers forty years, and if that is the case we might think of the generation that gave us the fighting men of World War II and their families. A young man born in 1920 would have been twenty years old at the beginning of the Second World War. Just think of some of the things Americans witnessed from 1920 until the end of the Second World War and the recovery - say until 1960.
I. SOME THINGS CONSIDER THE GREATEST GENERATION WITNESSED.
1. The recover from World War I, "the war to end all wars."
2, The Roaring Twenties.
3. End of the horse and buggy era.
4. The age of the automobile.
5. The establishment of a great highway system.
6. The age of the airplane.
7. The age of communication, complete with the radio and television.
8. The stock market crash of 1929.
9. The Great Depression.
10. The Scopes Trial and the spread of evolution.
11. The spread of Communism, Humanism, a host of other -isms.
12. America entering the post-Christian era in 1935 (Shaeffer).
12. The rise of the Third Reich.
12. Pearl Harbor.
13. World War II.
14. The Jet Age.
15. Rise and fall of Christian denominations.
16. Spread of cults.
17. Spread of the occult.
18. Supreme Court redefines separation of church and state.
19. Civil Rights cases.
20. Genesis of the Space Age.
II. NOW THINK OF SOME THINGS THE GREATEST GENERATION BELIEVED.
1. They believed in God.
2. They believed Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
3. They believed the Bible is the Word of God.
4. They believed certain things are holy.
5. They believed the church is special.
6. They believed in the Ten Commandments.
7. They believed in helping one another.
8. They believed a man’s word was his bond.
9. They respected their neighbor’s property.
11. They believed in the sanctity of human life.
12. They believed in marriage.
13. They believed in discipline in the home.
14. They believed in discipline in school.
15. They believed in law and order.
16. They believed modesty in dress.
17. They believed in an honest days work for an honest day’s pay.
18. They believed in America.
19. They believed in supporting our troops.
20. They believed in personal responsibility.
21. They believed in a republican form of government.
22. They believed in clean speech in public places.
23. They believed in setting an example for children.
24. They believed in clean entertainment.
25. They believed in prayer and Bible reading in school (church, and home, too).
III. THERE WERE THINGS THE GREATEST GENERATION DID NOT BELIEVE.
1. They did not believe in public profanity.
2. They did not believe in vulgarity.
3. They did not believe in pornography.
4. They did not believe in filthy entertainment.
5. They did not believe in homosexuality.
6. They did not believe in abortion.
7. They did not believe in a welfare state.
8. They did not believe in feeding those who would not work.
9. They did not believe in restricting Christianity to church and home.
10. They did not believe separation of church and state should be used against the church.
11. They did not believe the Ten Commandments were ten suggestions.
12. They did not believe there are many ways to God.
13. They did not believe in rewarding evil.
14. They did not believe we should vote for immoral candidates for high offices.
15. They did not believe policemen are our enemies.
16. They did not believe the Gospel needed to be amended.
17. They did not believe in Nazism, Fascism, or Communism.
18. They did not believe in aiding and abetting the enemy.
19. They did not believe in Islam.
20. They did not believe the Bible and prayer damaged our children.
Let me tell you about a two members of the so-called Greatest Generation. We began a new school year with a new face on the campus at our Sledge, Mississippi High School. His name was L. C. Caffey. I didn’t have him his first year, as I recall. I was in the sixth grade and he taught Junior High Civics and High School history. He would teach me history for several years. He also coached me in baseball and football. On what must have been his first day of classes, overcrowding at the end of the Second World War forced his Civics class to meet in one of the dressing rooms in one of the finest gyms in the state. This dressing room was directly under the stage, which was on the opposite side of the floor from the bleachers.
L. C. Caffey called the roll and prepared to begin his first lesson. He asked the class to get quiet, but this was the first day of classes, and for several years there had been a shortage of men in the classroom and some of the boys were a year or two behind and they were not intimidated by this new teacher. After all, the older boys were almost as big as he was. When he called the class down one of the older boys popped off to the new teacher. Mr. Caffey reached past those on the front row and caught the student by the arm, dragged him from his desk, between the desks ahead of him, and stood him up in front of the class. Before anyone knew what was happening, Mr. Caffey was using his belt on the student. That day, discipline was reestablished at Sledge High School.
L. C. Caffey was a slender, quiet man with black wavy hair, except for some white hair along each temple. One day, he told us he got all his white hair in three days and nights at Iwo Jima. A sailor who had fought off Kamikaze fighters was not about to be intimidated by teenagers. Mr Caffey was not only a strict disciplinarian, he was by far the best history I ever sat under, high school, college, or seminary.
The second member of the Greatest Generation was a lady. Miss Boots Hicks (later, Mrs. Bob Dean) was a godly lady and an outstanding teacher, even if she was a little intimidating. One year she assigned additional sonnets and poems to the ones already assigned in out English class. The new ones were disciplinary. I will never forget when I thought I was ready to quote my poems. I went to her at lunch and asked her if I might quote mine at that time. She permitted it and I was relieved to get that behind me.
The first day of English my Junior year in high school, Miss Hicks stood before the class and announced that she had attended Youth Week at Ridgecrest Baptist Conference Center at Ridgecrest, North Carolina that summer. She went on to tell us that the theme for the week was "God has a plan, a place, and a purpose for every life." She then related that theme to her students in what was one of the most moving and life-changing experiences I had ever known. The next summer Miss Hicks took three of her students to Youth Week at Ridgecrest, and I was one of those fortunate students. Little did I realize that she had paid for my week at Ridgecrest until I returned later with my family.
I thank God for the contribution members of the Greatest Generation made to my life. I could add pastors, teachers, neighbors, and my on parents to the list. The Greatest Generation did not spend their time trying to protect us from God. They did not lie to us about the faith of the Founders. They did not try to convince us that George Washington was a deist and not a Christian. There was one thing you always expected to see in a classroom, and that was a portrait of George Washington. We were taught that a factor in the greatness of George Washington was his honest and integrity. That he was man of courage no one would have doubted. Let me share with you a prayer of our first president:
"Almighty God; We make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy holy protection; that Thou wilt incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government; and entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another and for their fellow citizens of the United states at large." "And finally that Thou wilt most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation. Grant our supplication, we beseech Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
We all know about the Washington Monument, but you may not be aware of the testimony at the top of that great monument. I found this information in a file and I assume it was a part of a newsletter but I do not know to whom I should give credit.
"On the aluminum cap atop the Washington Monument in Washington DC are two words: Laus Deo. No one can see these words. In fact, most visitors to the monument have no idea they are even there, and for that matter, probably couldn't care less. But there they are, 555 feet, 5.125 inches high, perched atop the monument to the father of our nation, overlooking the 69 square miles which comprise the District of Columbia, capital of the United States of America.
"Laus Deo! Two seemingly insignificant, unnoticed words...out of sight and, one might think, out of mind ... but very meaningfully placed at the highest point over what is the most powerful city in the world.
"And what might those two words ... composed of just four syllables and only seven letters ... mean? Very simply ... "Praise be to God!"
The Greatest Generation had been taught the Word of God as children, but somewhere along the way it got hijacked by the prince of this world, who used a new gospel to convert many of those who grew up between WW I and WW II to Humanism, Secularism, and New Age religious beliefs.
IV. SADLY, THE GREATEST GENERATION DID NOT PASS IT ALL ON TO US.
Francis Shaeffer made the point that we entered the post-Christian period of our history in 1935 - which not coincidentally, was ten years after the famous Monkey Trial (or Scopes Trial) in 1925. After ten years of media propaganda, even professors in Christian colleges were ashamed to admit that they believed in special creation. Many of the moral and social problems we are wrestling with today can be traced back to the shift from a Biblical (Christian) world view to a non-biblical (humanistic) world view. While the statement may need clarification, I am convinced that if you want to sell people on abortion, homosexuality, pre-marital sex, genetic engineering, euthanasia, and all sorts of immoral activities, sell them on evolution first. While all evolutionists do not condone immorality or the murder of the unborn, acceptance of this demonic lie may for many evolutionists remove some of the barriers and allow them to the acceptance of some of these of many of these things. After all, if you do not have God at the beginning you do not worry about standing before God at the end.
The Greatest Generation did not begin with a humanistic world view: I guess you might say they evolved into it! They did not begin with a socialistic attitude toward government and society. At the beginning, the Greatest Generation did not endorse pornography, profanity, obscenity, immodesty, vile and filthy entertainment, Communism, paganism, Islam, and left-wing social and political activism, but by the time they were off the scene, their children were being entertained by MTV, taught evolution in school, and entertained from pulpits by preachers across America. Somewhere along the way, possibly near the end of the period, The Greatest Generation produced a new generation that changed America.
1. The Bible was removed from public schools.
2. Prayer was removed from public schools.
3. We moved more and more into the post-Christian era.
4. Crime soared, beginning around 1962.
4. The moral decline kept pace with the crime rate.
5. People were entertained by what used to be called filth.
6. Children from Christian families began using language once called obscene.
7. The divorce rate has soared along with other social problems.
8. There is a loss of decency.
9. There was a loss of patriotism (regained to a measure in recent years).
10. Many professing Christians openly support homosexuality.
11. Many professing Christians swallow every biased report the networks serve up every night.
12. Many professing Christians will not sit still for sound doctrine.
13. Many professing Christians are addicted to pornography.
14. Many professing Christians go to "R" rated movies.
15. Many professing Christians are addicted to vile music.
16. Many professing Christians use language that would have shocked their grandparents.
17. Many professing Christians are oppressing the spread of the Gospel.
18. Many professing Christians are at war against the church.
19. Many professing Christians voted for Bill Clinton - twice.
20. Many professing Christians are not Christians at all.
CONCLUSION
Do you remember the cigarette ad which proclaimed, "You’ve come a long way, Baby"? Well, dear friend, we have come a long way from our roots. We deny the established fact that America was founded on the solid foundation of the Word of God. The founders were determined to protect the church from the state, now we are far more determined to protect the state from the church. America is filled with people, many of whom profess to be Christians, who are at war against God and His church. They defend Islam and restrict the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The results are seen in the moral and spiritual decline we are seeing today.
American Christians today are fighting for what the Greatest Generation fought against and they are fighting against those things their grandparents fought for, especially in the spiritual arena. America is in trouble - nothing affirms this more clearly than the breakdown in the family, the acceptance of moral degeneration, and the murder of almost forty-five million unborn babies.
What has happened? For one thing "the Greatest Generation" began in the Christian era in our history (the Lamb was worthy to receive praise, glory, and honor), but the "Greatest Generation" closed in the post-Christian era - the Lamb was not longer receiving praise, glory, and honor.
What must we do? When Peter preached the first sermon in the power of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost that is the exact question his listeners asked him. You know what his answer was? REPENT! John the Baptist preached, "Repent ye, for the Kingdom of God is at hand." He urged the people to "Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance" (Matt. 3:8). What do we need to do? Well, the Lord does not make us guess! He has an answer:
"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14).
Let me see if I can make a distinction between one who honors the Lamb of God and one who simply pays lip-service to Him. At the burial service for President Ronald Reagan we heart his two sons and his daughter. Ron Reagan took the opportunity to blast President George W. bush for "wearing his religion on his sleeve." Michael Reagan shared how his father had led him to a personal faith in Jesus Christ and he told us how important it was for him to introduce his own children to the Savior.
Someone who had recently written a book about President and Mrs. Reagan was asked, "Did Nancy share Ronald Reagan’s faith?" The author paused and then offered the observation that Nancy admired his faith but she didn’t share it. That probably explains the difference between his two sons. Ron, like the disciples at the arrest of Jesus, followed from afar. Michael Reagan proclaimed Jesus worthy of his love, worthy of his devotion. I am praying that America will once again bow before Jesus Christ and proclaim Him worth of our worship, worthy of our praise, worthy of our witness, worthy of our service, worthy of our commitment. Can you really join the hosts of Heaven in proclaiming Jesus worthy? Listen to the words again:
...They said with a loud voice: The Lamb who was slaughtered is worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing! I heard every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, on the sea, and everything in them say: Blessing and honor and glory and dominion to the One seated on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever! The four living creatures said, "Amen," and the elders fell down and worshiped" (Rev 5:11-14, HCSB, emphasis added).
Christian friend, will you join those elders and trust Him, proclaim Him, and worship Him? If you have never confessed you sins, repented and trusted Jesus Christ to save you, let me urge you to that right now. "Today is the day of salvation, this is the accepted time."