Adrian Rogers - The Generation to Come
Would you take God's Word and turn to Psalm 78. And I want to say, that the great American dream was placed in the heart of our founding fathers, I believe, by Almighty God. No nation, no nation ever had such a Christian beginning as America. I say that is the American dream, but it is becoming not a dream but a nightmare. And the nation that we once knew is receding over the horizon. And we have those who purport to lead us now who are such poor examples. Someone has wisely said, "When little men cast long shadows the sun is about to set". I'm afraid that we're there and the nation that was born in Philadelphia in 1776 needs to be born again.
Well, you say, "Pastor, America is still number one". You're right. We're number one in homosexuality, number one in militant feminism, number one in divorce, number one in the destruction of family values, number one in abortion, number one in political correctness, number one in the occult and the New Age religion. And I wonder, if Jesus tarries, if some historian will not write the Rise and Fall of the American Empire. Now let me tell you what really concerns me more than anything else, and it is our children and our grandchildren, our children and our grandchildren. I want to talk to you today on this subject, "The Generation to Come".
And there're three words that I want written upon your heart and I hope that God will cause these to be written upon your consciousness today. One is the word history; the other is the word memory; and the third is the word legacy. Now I hope you'll remember those three words as we go along. Let's look here in Psalm 78 verses 1 through 6, "Give ear, oh my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old..."
That is mysterious things that can only be understood by the revelation of Almighty God, "which we have heard and known and our Fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and His strength and His wonderful works that He hath done. For He hath established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children".
Some time ago in a political campaign the slogan was this, "It is the economy, stupid". That is, if you want to get a vote from Americans, don't worry about morality, don't worry about righteousness, don't worry about homes, don't think about God, or churches, think about one thing, the economy. It is the economy, stupid. Well, very frankly, friend, that whole line of thought is stupid. It is not the economy. I don't know what you want for your children, but I do not want for my children and grandchildren a nation that is wealthy and morally bankrupt. I do not want for my children a nation of children, grandchildren to have wealth, if they do have it, to squander in perversion and filth and immorality.
I want a nation that we can thank God for, one nation under God. I want to talk to you, therefore, about the generation to come. I want to tell you how to keep the great American dream alive, and those three words, I want you to write them down again on your heart or in your notes. That word history, that word memory, and that word legacy, or if you want a better word or a different word, destiny, because those are the words I want you to write on your heart, as well as in your notes. How are we going to keep the American dream alive? Number one, we must preserve our history.
Now notice what he said here in this verse. The Bible says concerning our history, Psalm 78 verses 4 through 6, "We will not hide them from our children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and His strength," now watch this, "and the wonderful works which He hath done. For He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who arise, who should arise and declare them to their generation". Do you know what one of the major responsibilities of fathers and grandfathers is? It is to teach history.
Now very little of that is done, but you see, there is to be, according to the Word of God, a spiritual chain between the past and the future and the fathers and the grandfathers are to be links in that chain. Because if we do not know our roots, if we do not remember what God made us to be, if we don't understand what God has done for us, if we don't teach this to our children, the generation to come, we as Americans are just one generation away from paganism, that's all there is.
Now sometimes a man will say, "Well, I don't want to force my views upon my children. I just want them to be free to choose their own standard, to choose their own morality, to choose their own philosophy, and I want to give them that freedom of choice". Well while you're giving them that freedom of choice, I want to tell you there are plenty of forces out there who are working on their plastic mentality to mold your children into their image. There are humanists. Now we don't hear a lot about secular humanism anymore today, but secular humanism is alive and well in America, and these have an insidious plan to take your children, to remake them and remold them and to cut them off from American history as we knew it.
The humanists have a magazine, that magazine is called The Humanist, and about some years ago there was an article called "A religion for a New Age", and I remind you that secular humanism is a religion, only they disguise it and therefore they make the secular classrooms the Sunday School for their new religion, only it doesn't meet on Sunday, it meets Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And here's what this leading humanist said, and I quote, "The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in a public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new; the rotting corpse of Christianity and the faith of humanism".
Now that's a frightening thought. But these are saying, "We are not going to allow Christian values in the schools today if we can help it, but we are going to bury the rotting corpse of Christianity and there will be a new faith, that is secular humanism". The Bible teaches that Almighty God holds parents responsible to teach their heritage and their history and it is to go from father to son to grandson and great-grandson. There is to be a spiritual chain reaction. And what is the history that we can teach as Americans. Now here the Psalmist is talking about the history of Israel, but what history do we have in the United States of America?
Now the revisionists are trying to change our history, but what is our history? I said in the introduction to this message that the American dream was placed in the hearts of our founding fathers by Almighty God. And the original colonies, listen to me, the original colonies were founded, and I say this without stutter, stammer, or equivocation or fear of contradiction, the original colonies were founded because of the Christian faith. And those who came over here on the Mayflower, the Pilgrims, they huddled beneath the decks of that little Mayflower ship and they wrote a statement called the Mayflower Compact. And do you know how it began?
And by the way, if you can go to the Capitol in the rotunda there, you'll see a picture of this, a huge painting there in the rotunda of the Capitol. This Mayflower Compact began with these words, "In the name of God, Amen". That's the way they began. And they stated why they were coming to these shores. And I'm going to give you an exact quote. Quote: "For the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith". "For the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith". On July the fourth, 1776, in the city of Philadelphia, our forefathers drafted a statement, a document called the Declaration of Independence.
Now, that Declaration of Independence, and listen to me very carefully, was a declaration of independence from earthly tyranny, from those despots who would rule over those colonies. But in the same document, listen carefully, it was not only a declaration of independence from despots, but it was so clearly a declaration of dependence upon Almighty God. Now I want to show you that, I want you to listen. They said in the opening statement, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their," what's the next word, "Creator with certain unalienable rights".
Now they believed in the Creator. They didn't say that government is going to give these rights, they didn't say that these rights are self-generated, that we are given, we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. And then in the closing words of that Declaration of Independence and dependence upon Almighty God, here's what they said, now listen to it carefully. They said, "We do this with a firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence". We say, "Almighty God, we are looking upon You and Your goodness". And then it says, "We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor".
You see, folks, they said that they believe that the sovereign God is the Creator of mankind, that the rights that we enjoy as Americans have been given to us by Almighty God: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our government cannot give them, our government is here only to protect them. And then they said we're going to sign away our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor. Many of our children do not know the price that has been paid that we might be here this morning. Of the 56 men who signed that Declaration of Independence, few were long to survive. 5 were captured by the British and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes sacked and looted, occupied by the enemy or burned, two lost their sons in the Army. Two had sons that were captured. Nine of the 56 died in the war from its hardships or from its more merciful bullets.
These were not poor men, these were not wild-eyed fanatics, these were men who had ensconced themselves, most of them, in comfort but were willing to forgo that comfort, forgo their reputation, that you and I, as free-born Americans, might be here today. They did pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Now, we have to remember our history, folks. The word we're talking about now is history. We must proclaim our history. Let's just think of a little bit about America's history, lest we forget.
In 1778 James Madison, who was the architect of the federal Constitution and the fourth president of the United States, said this, "We stake the whole future of American civilization, not on the power of government. Far from it. We have staked the future upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves and to sustain ourselves," are you ready for this, "according to the Ten Commandments of God". That's what the architect of the Constitution said. He said, "We placed everything on the ability and the responsibility of Americans to govern themselves according to the Ten Commandments of God" and now, boy, we cannot even post those Ten Commandments in our public school classrooms.
On April the 30th, 1789, George Washington said at his first inaugural address, listen, "My fervent supplications to that Almighty being who rules over the universe," he's talking about God, "that Almighty being who rules over the universe, who presides in the council of nations and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States. A government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes". That's the father of our country, George Washington. And then he went on to say, "We are to be no less persuaded that the smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained".
In 1820 another of our forefathers, Daniel Webster, said this, this is back in 1820, "Let us not forget the religious character of our origin". Now, there're some who will say, "Rogers doesn't know what he's talking about". And perhaps some school teacher will key in on this and get some of your students and say, "You know, these folks are trying to rewrite American history," talking about people like us. No, folks, they're the ones trying to rewrite American history.
Listen to me, 1820, Daniel Webster said, "Let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers brought hither their high veneration for the Christian religion, they journeyed in its light, labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate," listen, "and to infuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, and literary". That is, they wanted our Judeo Christian ethic to go through all of life. So therefore on July the fourth, 1821, John Quincy Adams said, "The highest glory of the American Revolution was this, it connected into one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity".
Now Americans believe in the separation of church and state if you mean that there should be no church, a state church. But Americans never have believed for one scintilla of a moment the separation of God and government. One indissoluble bond, he went on to say, "In the day of the Declaration, they, the American people, were bound by the laws of God which they all and by the laws of the Gospel which they nearly all acknowledged as the rules of their conduct".
And on June the eighth, 1845, Andrew Jackson said, "The Bible is the rock upon which our Republic rests". That's in 1845. And Americans didn't quibble about this. Therefore, in 1931, in March, the United States Congress adopted the Star Spangled Banner as our National Anthem. Think about the fourth stanza of the Star Spangled Banner. It says this, "Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation, then conquer we must when our cause it is just, and this be our motto, in God is our trust". Congress said as far back as 1931 that is to be our National Anthem. And then in June 1954, Congress adopted the phrase "Under God" to be added to The Pledge of the Allegiance, and so we stand and pledge to our flag, "One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all".
I wonder what the ACLU would have done, had they been active back in that time. And in 1956, by joint resolution, Congress adopted a bill providing that the National Motto of the United States is "In God We Trust". Now you see that, I say in the Star Spangled Banner, our National Anthem. Listen to it, "Blessed with victory and peace, may the Heaven rescued land praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation". And then our National Hymn. What is our National Hymn? America. "Our fathers God, to Thee, Author of liberty, to Thee we sing. Long may our land be bright with freedom's holy light, great God our King".
Now our kids are not hearing this. Are you going to wait for the school teachers to teach them this? According to this verse here, in Psalm 78, God depended upon the fathers and the grandfathers to teach the spiritual history of Israel to their children. Should we not teach to our children, therefore, the spiritual history of America? Now fathers, how are you going to do this? You say, "Pastor, really, I know very little of the spiritual history of America".
Well, we have a bookstore over here. I suggest that you pay a visit to Bellevue's bookstore and get some materials that will help you to teach this spiritual history. And by the way, not only should you teach to your children the history of America, but you need to teach to them the history of your church. How many of your children know the history of your church? How many know the price that was paid that we might be here today? Things that have happened since 1903 and the blood, the sweat, the tears, the sacrifice, the crises, the things that we have enjoyed as a church. Many of us come, plop ourselves down, open a hymnal and sing and give no thought whatsoever to the history of this church.
Not only do we need to know the history of our nation and the history of our church, did you know every family ought to have a history written down? Why don't you teach the spiritual heritage of your family? It would be a great exercise for you to get all of your children and sit them down and say, "Children, here's what God has done for our family. Here is from whence we have come," and get each child to write down his or her testimony, mothers and fathers and dads, as to when they received Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. What a book of remembrance that would be for children to have. What the devil wants to do is to disconnect this generation and set them awash in the sea without any spiritual heritage, and God says we need to remember the generation to come. We need to proclaim our history. Satan wants you to have spiritual amnesia.
Now here's the second thing. Not only do we need to proclaim our history, we need to retain our memory. Look if you will now in Psalm 78 beginning in verse 7 through verse 11. He says you do this, "That they might set their hope in God and not forget the works of God". Now, you've got to give the history so they can have it but then they're not to forget it. "And not to forget the works of God and keep His commandments and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that set not their heart aright in whose spirit was not steadfast with God. The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of God and refused to walk in His law and forgat His works and His wonders that He had showed them".
So not only do we need to proclaim our history, we need to retain our memory and God is saying, "Don't forget the blessings of God". How easy it is for us to forget the blessings of God. God warned Israel in Deuteronomy chapter 6 and verse 12, "Then beware, lest thou forget the Lord which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage". And He uses an illustration here about Ephraim. Ephraim was the dominant tribe, Ephraim was a strong tribe and yet, according to this passage of Scripture, Ephraim was defeated in the day of battle because of a poor memory. Not because they did not have numbers, not because they did not have armaments, but because they forgot God. They had excellent military equipment. America, strong as she is, like Ephraim, can be destroyed if we forget Almighty God.
You know, there are those who want us to forget. There are those who are rewriting American history and when we get cut off from our roots, then the fruit that we have been enjoying will wither and rot. Now according to this Scripture there are three memory killers that Satan uses and I want you to see what those three memory killers are and it's a long Psalm, so fast forward to verse 17 if you will, and here is what they did that destroyed their memory.
We're going to read Psalm 78 verses 17 through 21, "And they sinned yet more and more against Him by provoking the most High in the wilderness and they tempted God in their heart by asking meat," or food, "for their lust. Yea, they spake against God and they said, 'Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Behold, He smote the rock that the waters gushed out and the streams overflowed. Can He give bread also? Can He provide flesh for His people?' Therefore the Lord heard this and was wroth".
What are the three memory killers? Well let's just stop with this first one and it is the lust of the flesh. Americans are suffering from an erosion of moral values. My heart is sick as I see sexual perversion being paraded. Homosexuality and heterosexual immorality being paraded. My heart is sick as I see the casual disposal of unwanted, unborn children. They, call something a partial birth abortion. That's not a partial birth abortion, that is murder during delivery, that's what that is. But we as a nation, we as a nation sit here on Sunday morning, benign and hardly can think about it. The breakup of the family, the consuming obsession of self and material acquisitions, where a person would say, "It is the economy, stupid".
The craving of pleasure, drugs, and sex. One thing that causes us to forget is the lust of the flesh. The other is the lure of the world. Look, beginning now in verses 40 through 42 of Psalm 78, if you will, "How oft did they provoke Him in the wilderness and grieve Him in the desert"? That is, the children of Israel provoked God. "Yea, they turned back and tempted God," now watch verse 41, "and limited the Holy One of Israel. They remembered not His hand nor the day when He delivered them from the enemy".
Now, notice it says here they "limited the Holy One of Israel". Do you know what the word limited literally means? It means they proscribed or they put a circle, a horizon around God, they limited God. They said, "Now God, You stay in that circle, don't get out of that circle. There are certain areas, God, where You are off limits, You are out of bounds". They made no room for God in every area of their life. Does that remind you of anything about America today?
Friend, there's no room for prayer, there's no room for the Bible, there's no room for the Ten Commandments in our classrooms, and yet our law says every child shall attend unless you pay for your own private education, that big brother still wants to watch over. Every child shall attend, by law. And then they say, "Well we're going to be neutral about it. We're not going to be for God, and we're not going to be against God. We're going to be neutral". That gives me a pain I can't locate. Do you know what that's like? It is like saying, "We're going to be neutral about food, so since we're neutral about food, nobody will eat. That's the same thing, we're just neutral about food. We're not for food, we're not against food, so therefore nobody will eat food".
You see, they just simply drew a circle around God. Not only was there the lust of the flesh, but there was the lure of the world. What do we have in America's schools today; well, prayer is out, policemen are in. Bibles are out, values clarification is in. The Ten Commandments are out, but rape and armed robbery, gang warfare, murder and cheating are in. Creation instruction is out, evolution is in. Corporal punishment is out, disrespect and rebellion are in. Traditional values are out, unwed motherhood is in. Abstinence is out, condoms are in. Learning is out, social engineering is in. History is out, revisionism is in.
There is the lust of the flesh that causes us to forget. There is the lure of the world. And then there are the lies of the devil. Look if you will down in Psalm 78 verse 58. Here's the third memory breaker. "They provoked Him to anger with their high places and moved Him to jealousy with their graven images". Not only did they shut God in, but they turned to pagan gods. The lies of the devil. Peter Jones has written a book called The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back. In that book he asked a pertinent question and I want to ask you the question as he asked it in the book.
Have you ever asked yourself any of the following questions: Why is homosexuality on the rise? Why is it endorsed by Time Magazine, promoted on public-funded radio and featured in children's comic strips with great moral fervor and in the name of democracy? Why is feminism such a powerful force today? Why is this movement developing its own goddess spirituality? Why is witchcraft taught in certain California school districts? Why is feminist spirituality making enormous inroads into Christianity? Why is abortion a virtually important part of the feminist manifesto? Is ecology just a neutral concern about the survival of the planet or does it too have a religious agenda?
Why is America's Indian nature religion being actively promoted? Why is the work ethic no longer working? Why is multi-culturalism and political correctness so important on many college campuses? Are these seemingly disconnected issues, related any way to the so-called New Age movement? Why are there numerous New Age spiritual techniques for healing, peace of mind and self-knowledge being publicized so vigorously in the media and more and more utilized in the business world and the armed forces? The real question is this. Are these apparently disconnected issues really a part of a coherent, pagan ideology, poised to impose its religious belief system on the new world order of the twenty-first century?
Think about it. Friend, something is moving in America today. And these three things have caused us to forget as they caused Israel to forget. The lust of the flesh, the lure of the world, and the lies of the devil. Now there's a generation to come and according to this passage of Scripture, it is the father's responsibility to teach his children and his grandchildren spiritual history. Now, here's the third thing, the final thing. The first word I wanted you to think about was the word history. The second word is the word memory; lest we forget. The third word is the word legacy or destiny.
Look if you will now in Psalm 78 verses 59 and following in this same chapter. He says, "When God heard this, He was wroth and greatly abhorred Israel". You know, folks, Israel was His chosen nation and yet God was angry with them and God abhorred them. I'm not afraid of what the Red Chinese will do to us. I'm not afraid of what India, Pakistan may do with the bomb. I'm afraid of what Almighty God is going to do. And God is our only hope and God is our biggest threat. Look at this in verses 59 through 61, "When God heard this, He was wroth and greatly abhorred Israel, so that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which He placed among men. And delivered His strength into captivity and the glory into the enemy's hand".
What does that mean? It means that the great nation of Israel was taken into captivity. What does that mean for America? We sing, and I love to hear you sing it, "God Bless America", but are we asking God to bless sin? Are we asking God to bless indolence? Are we asking God to bless greed? Are we asking God to bless perversion? Are we asking God to bless blasphemy? America, this nation may become a moldy crust in history's garbage can unless we have a moral and a spiritual awakening. I ask you again, the question, the generation to come, what kind of a nation are we going to leave? I look at my grandchildren, "what kind of a land will our children know"?
I want them to have the blessings that we've had, don't you? The generation to come and, folks, it's time we got serious. There was a woman who was traveling in Europe, and she saw a piece of jewelry that was very expensive but she really wanted it. Her husband was at home. She wired him back and described the jewelry and she said to her husband, "Do you think I ought to buy it"? She was hoping that he would say, "Yes". But he wrote back and said, "No, price too high". She read that and here's the way she read it. "No price too high, no price too high", and she bought it. Now folks I want to tell you something. There is no price too high for us to pay for this nation. No price too high for us to say it, sing it, and mean it, "God bless America".
Now what do we need to do? Well, we need to look up. God's the only one big enough and strong enough to save us, but He is big enough and strong enough. I want to tell you this, listen, God had rather forgive than judge. God wants to forgive us. We need to look up and we need to confess up. God will not bless sin. And we can't use our prayers as a smokescreen to hide sin; we need to get right with God. And then we need to stand up. Do you know what the world is trying to do? They're trying to get us in our little stained-glass prisons and they say, "Now, don't you go out of doors, it's all right for you to huddle together and to have your holy huddles, but don't get into the public life, don't get into the public arena, don't get a candidate, don't speak up, don't call sin sin. Go back under the rock".
Well, we need to come from out under the rock and stand on the rock and say some things today. We need to stand up and we need to speak up. We need to understand what the issues are and we need to speak up while we still have time. You say, "Well, we're not as many as we used to be". Well I want to remind you that Lenin began the Communist revolution with a few hundred. I want to remind you that Castro took Cuba with a band of eighty cutthroats. I want to remind you that Jesus, in the positive side, started with twelve disciples.
The Bible says that two of us can chase a hundred, "If God be for us, who can be against us"? But I want to say one other thing, and listen to me carefully. I really don't know what God is going to do with America. I really don't know whether the republic that was born in 1776 will survive. I really don't know, because I cannot control the hearts and minds of other people. But one thing I know that I know, that Jesus is King of the universes and He's King of the ages and one thing I know that I know, I'm going to give my heart to Jesus Christ and I'm going to teach my children and my grandchildren, the generation to come, that no matter what happens, if they will know and love Jesus ultimately, it will be all right.
Let's bow our heads in prayer. Heads are bowed and eyes are closed. Would you begin to pray for those round about you who may not know the Lord Jesus Christ? Know if there's a precious friend here today and you do not have that absolute assurance that if you died right now you'd go to Heaven, let's get it settled. Would you like to be saved, would you? Your sin has already been paid for. Your salvation has already been purchased, but now you must receive Jesus Christ personally as your Lord and Savior. The Bible says it simply and sweetly, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved".
What Jesus is that you believe on? The Son of God, the sinless, virgin-born Son of God who paid for your sin with His blood and walked out of that grave. Believe on Him, trust Him, and you'll be saved. What does it mean to be saved? Every sin is forgiven. Jesus Christ will live in your heart, Heaven will be your home. "Pastor Rogers, will Jesus save me today"? I promise you on the authority of the Word of God, if you will come to Him in repentance and faith, He will save you. If you will pray a prayer like this:
Lord Jesus, come into my heart, forgive my sin, save me, Jesus. Lord, like a child, I just trust You to save me, right now, with all of my heart. Thank You for doing it, Amen.