Why We Can't All Just Get Along
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Good morning.
Good morning.
Hey, I love you guys.
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I wanted to say that to you all week. You know, driving in this morning, there were the clouds, as you have seen the last several days. But just-- there were a few balloons in the air, and the weather was just perfect and the clouds and the way the sun was striking the landscape. And it reminds you we live in one of the prettiest spots in the world, don't we?
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Would you turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 24? Let's pause for a word of prayer.
Lord, we have set aside this time, this next hour or so, on this, the first day of the week, to make a declaration that You own all of our time. You have marked it out for us in advance. And we now bring our hearts, our minds clearly before You to hear what Your spirit would say to us today. And in these last days, give us strength, courage, and comfort. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Well, we had a little traffic accident on Monday. Yeah, we were up on Academy, and Lenny was driving. That has no reason why we got into the traffic accident, by the way. We were driving, and we were following a truck, and he slowed down, and we slowed down. And this dear woman behind us didn't slow down in time, and it was an accident.
She rear-ended us and pushed our car into the truck in front of us. So we got out, and we were talking about this accident. And the guy that was in the very front in the truck said, "You know, there's a traffic accident right up on Wyoming Boulevard, and it looks like all the traffic's been diverted here on Academy, so there's more cars, hence the accident."
Well, as we're discussing these two accidents, one of which we're a part of, right next to us, in the lane next to us, bam we heard. A car plowed into another car-- separate incident. And then another bam, and then another bam-- a four-car pile-up next to our three car accident, seven cars.
But that's why they call them accidents. They weren't meant to happen. Nobody intentionally set out to hurt the person in the car next to them or in front of them. But on the other side of the world, during this last couple of weeks, you know there have been car bombings, not accidents. Missiles fired. Bullets fired. All of them intentional incidents, not involuntary accidents.
I heard about a cowboy who wanted to get insurance. And he went to the insurance agent, and the insurance agent said, "Have you ever been in any accidents or had an accident happen?" The cowboy thought about it, and he said, "No. A horse did kick me in the ribs two years ago and broke two of them. A rattlesnake bit me about last year this time." And the insurance agent said, "Well, wouldn't you call those accidents?" The cowboy said, "No. They did it on purpose."
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And unfortunately, seriously, on the other side of the world, there's a lot of things being done on purpose that are very disturbing, so disturbing that because we don't know what's going to happen in the future, it causes psychological fallout. All the experts will say that when there's times like this of uncertainty, it sets up in our minds a despairing for a lot of people.
UCLA Emmanuel Maidenberger, a doctor on staff, said, "Unpredictability scares us. So does feeling that we have no control over the events that affect our lives." Well, no wonder these disciples were becoming unnerved when Jesus said the temple that we just walked out of is going to come crashing down and not one stone will be left.
Suddenly, they have a flurry of questions. When will these things be? What will the sign of your coming be and of the end of the age? So Matthew chapter 24 is one of the clearest messages in all of the Scripture from the lips of Jesus as to what's going to happen in the future, and here's the overarching truth that lets us go, ah, OK, God's in control. There is an out-of-control history. As a child of God, you know that by divine decree, these things are going to happen. But God's in control.
Well, today, we want to look at verse 6, 7, and 8 where we read, as Jesus continues answering his disciples, "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows."
Jesus predicts the coming of wars. Wars will come. Now, you know the Bible does speak of a time in the future when all warfare will ultimately cease and all implements of war will be converted into tools for peace.
Over the United Nations' entrance still to this day is the Scripture out of Isaiah chapter 2. It's written right above the lentils. "And they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation. Neither will they train for war anymore."
But it doesn't look like that time is coming anytime soon. After all, look at verse 6. Jesus said, "These things must come to pass, but the end is not yet." Well, we've always known war, haven't we, as people on this earth? Whether it was fighting with fists or stones or sticks or swords or bullets or bombs, mankind has never been able to get along. And you saw some of the statistics.
Since 3,600 BC, 14,500 battles, large and small, have been fought that have taken the lives of 3.64 billion human beings. And if that's not bad enough, the total destruction to property would be the equivalent of a solid gold belt that stretched around the entire planet Earth 97.2 miles wide, 33 feet thick. Destructive-- it's been our nature. It's been the character of man. Jesus predicts war is coming.
But from 2,000 years ago when he said that until now, wars have increased. It's not astonishing. Wars have increased because population has increased. Think about it. When Jesus gave these words, there were only 250 million people on Earth. The birth rate yearly in our world is 125 million per year. So in two years in modern history, we can produce the entire world population at the time of Christ.
We are exponentially growing in population. And the more people, the more problems, the more warfare. Think about it this way. It took from the beginning of history to the year 1860 to produce 1 billion people on planet Earth. But by 1930, we had 2 billion. And then a shorter period of time, 1960, we had 3 billion. 1975, we had 4 billion; 1987, 5 billion; 1999, 6 billion people.
And I checked the meter yesterday. Yes, there is online a meter that tells you the current world population. And we're at 6.5, almost 6.6 billion people. Some think that by the end of the year, we'll reach 7 billion people. More people, more problems. More population, the more likelihood of battles to occur.
But Jesus says these things must happen. He predicts war. What is he predicting? Well, as we've already said, principally, he is telescoping forward into the future, into that tribulation period when peace will be taken from the earth just prior to the second coming of Christ.
The prophet Daniel-- and we'll get to it in the next few weeks-- predicts that Israel as a nation and the coming world ruler we call the Antichrist will make a peace treaty, and that in the middle of that covenant, it will be broken. Jesus mentions it in verse 15 of this chapter. When you see the abomination of desolation, as spoken by Daniel the prophet, that peace treaty will be broken.
And when that happens, war will be such on the increase in the tribulation it will reach fever pitch. And it will culminate in the mother of all battles called the Battle of Armageddon. Revelation 16 describes that in brief. The kings of the earth and the whole world gather together for battle.
But that battle will make every other battle in the past pale in comparison because it will not just be nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom and people fighting each other. They will actually form an international coalition to fight God. Doesn't that sound bizarre? It sounds insane, doesn't it?
The people are going to get together. We're going to fight God. But listen to this, Revelation 19. "The kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against Him who sat on the horse"-- that's Christ at His second coming-- "and against His army."
Just in case you're wondering what God thinks about this, if he's worried in any capacity that the whole world might form a international military coalition to stop the second coming, all you got to do on your own is read Psalm 2 where it says, "Why do the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth gather themselves together against the Lord and against His Christ. And He who sits in the heavens shall laugh." So here's the world gathering together. Their best armaments come out. And God goes, ha, ha, ha, like it's going to work. He's not worried.
What makes this prediction and these verses this morning so riveting to us is we now today have the capacity to destroy the entire Earth in a single hour. With all of our nuclear armaments by all of the nations, in a single hour, Earth could be totally destroyed of its population. And that makes it interesting because there is a prediction in Revelation 18 where that final world power, known as Babylon, will be destroyed, the Bible says, in a single hour.
July 16, 1945, 50 miles outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first atomic blast was detonated. Three weeks later-- today is the anniversary-- Hiroshima was bombed at the order of the President of the United States. The entire world changed from that moment onward. We live in the nuclear age, the atomic age. And since that very day, people have wondered, will we blow ourselves up?
Well, according to the Center for Defense Information, the estimates are that the United States alone has an arsenal of 35,000 nuclear weapons. And we have the capability of producing those nuclear weapons at a rate of three per day, three per day. A single nuclear warhead in our arsenal is equivalent in its destructive power to 460 million tons of TNT or 35,000 times more the destruction than that one bomb that was dropped in Hiroshima.
Well, we have 35,000 England has a nuclear arsenal. France, Russia, China, India, Korea wants one. Iran is trying really hard to get one. Israel probably already has them. And you know why I say probably, and they've probably had nuclear weapons for about 25 years? Israel has never formally admitted that they have them, for obvious reasons. They want the bargaining power and the stability in that region. So everybody thinks they have them, but they have not formally admitted to it.
But think. All of these nations, including our own, that's enormous capability to utterly destroy all of life. Well, no wonder. Jesus looked forward to that time on the earth and said in Luke 21, "There will be distress of nations with perplexity. Men's hearts will be failing them from fear and the expectation of those things that are coming on the earth." Unpredictability-- it will seem like the world is out of control. So Jesus predicts the coming of war.
Go back to verse 7 in Matthew 24. Not only is the coming of war predicted, but there are consequences of war. And notice what they are. "And there will be famines and pestilence and earthquakes in various places." Now, it could be that these are just other signs that fall into place with the sign of warfare. It could be that these are completely unrelated things that are just bad things that Jesus predicts.
But I believe that these three are the results of war. First of all, famine, we know that famine is always the result of war when you blow up population centers, you blow up food supplies, you hinder transportation of food going to the market.
And if it is a nuclear war, think of the worldwide contamination. Do you remember Chernobyl when that thing exploded over in the Ukraine? Milk cows as far away as Western Europe were contaminated. Food gets quickly contaminated by that.
And during the tribulation period, things will become so bad, inflation rates will get so bad, food will become so scarce that, the Bible says, a quart of wheat will sell for a denarius. A denarius is a day's wage. A quart of wheat is the minimum amount to survive. In other words, a working man will work all day long and won't be able to provide for his own family. There will be a 1,200% inflation rate from first century norms when that prediction was made till now.
Now, if you were to add to that the fact that the rapture of the church will have already taken place, Christians will be off the Earth during that terrible time of judgment, that means there'll be no Samaritan's Purse handing out food for people who need it. There'll be no world vision given by Christians who want to help other people. There'll be no more Feed the Children. These organizations filled with Christians will be gone. Famine is a consequence of the war.
Second, Jesus speaks about pestilence or disease. And we know that disease always, unfortunately, accompanies both war and famine. With malnutrition comes the breakdown of the immune system. Typical antibiotics no longer work. And that means people die.
In Revelation chapter 6-- and you've heard me refer to that chapter in conjunction with Matthew 24-- there are two riders that come forth on the scene. Their names are Death and Hades. And listen to this. "They are given authority over one-fourth of the earth to kill with"-- listen-- "the sword and famine and disease."
Do you hear those three? The sword-- that's war-- famine, and disease, pestilence, same thing here. War followed by famine followed by disease. And did you get the number? We read it so quickly. "One-fourth of the earth killed," wiped out. By today's standards, that's 1.75 billion people lost.
There's a third. He predicts famine, pestilences, and earthquakes. You say, now wait a minute. How could earthquakes ever be a consequence of war? That's an independent seismic activity. Not necessarily. I've done a little bit of research on this. It's been going on, by the way, for a number of years.
Scientists talk about embedding nuclear implements in the earth, blowing them up to adjust tectonic plates to-- in other words, a controlled earthquake. They could move the plates, move the earth in order to avoid the earth shifting tectonically on its own, i.e. the big one. Let's prevent that from happening.
And scientists-- some of them will tell us you get a big enough blast and you could create a chain of earthquakes like you've never seen before. The Book of Revelation predicts three. Earthquakes are mentioned seven times in that book. There are three major earthquakes that will occur during that time, and one I would call the big one. It's called the severe earthquake.
Revelation 16 says, "No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on the earth. So tremendous was the quake." OK, push the pause button for a moment. Think of all we just talked about-- worldwide war, nuclear proliferation, blowing people up. It's the most horrible, unimaginable, unpalatable, followed by famine, pestilence, earthquakes.
But all of these things were unthinkable 100 years ago, unthinkable. Couldn't happen. Now we're seeing this as a present reality. Listen to the words of a scientist over 100 years ago. Back in 1860, a French scientist wrote these words-- interesting prediction.
"Within 100 years of physical and chemical science, man will know what the atom is. It is my belief that when science reaches that stage, God will come down to earth and will say to humanity, 'Gentlemen, it's closing time.'" Can you imagine making that prediction in 1860? We'll discover one day the power of the atom. When we do, it will be over.
Well, enough of the coming of the war and the consequences of the war. Where do they come from? What's the cause of war? And this is where I'd like you to put a marker in Matthew 24 and turn to James chapter 4, the little epistle of James, the fourth chapter. James will tell us why they exist.
Now what if we were to take a poll today and ask people, why are there wars? Here's a few possible answers. Some would point to the leaders in the Middle East and say it's their fault. Those guys have never been able to get along. They're so stubborn. They ought to give up a little more land or come to terms.
Others would point to the leaders in Washington, DC, and say, well, they've been warmongers a long time. They're just looking for a fight. Or we might point back to Adam and Eve and say it's their fault. They started it all. Of course, they would point to Satan and say it's his fault. By the way, that's been done. When God said, Adam, what have you done? He said, it's the woman who gave me. Women, that hasn't stopped, has it?
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Those same kind of excuses are still being made today. It's her fault, Lord. And God said to the woman, what about it? She said, it's the serpent who beguiled me. But here's the truth. If you want to look for the cause of war, you and I have to look no further than us.
Within every human heart are the building blocks, the very seeds for war. James tells us in James 4, "Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet you cannot obtain. You fight and war. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive because you ask amiss that you might spend it on your own pleasures."
Here's what's interesting. You know who James' audience is, who he's writing to? A group of believers. He's writing to a group, probably, of young churches filled with conflict, filled with fighting, filled with interpersonal warfare. And he tells them the reason for wars. And there's three reasons. Number one, selfishness.
Look back at verse 1. "Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your"-- you see the word "desires"? Hedone is the Greek word. We get the term hedonism from it. Hedonism is the worship of pleasure or seeing pleasure as the highest goal in life. In other words, war is simply an extension of people not getting what they want.
Now you think back to the last time you as a married couple had a fight. It could be 20 years ago. It could have been 20 minutes ago. But you'll probably discover that one of the great reasons for that conflict is somebody felt they weren't getting their way, and they weren't willing to budge and perhaps at the very root with selfishness.
There's the second reason-- pride. It says in these verses, "you" and "your" quite a bit. If you notice all the personal pronouns, it gives us a little bit of the background. "Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?
You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your own pleasures." You, you, you, your, your, your.
Pride is one of the great reasons people just can't get along, whether it's at home, at church, or at the negotiating table overseas or in Washington, DC. Selfishness and pride are reasons international war start. There was a guy years ago named Alexander, and he thought he was great.
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And by worldly standards, Alexander was great. He conquered the entire world. And at age 31, I believe, almost 32, he collapsed like a baby in Babylon, and he wept because there's nothing left to conquer. He wanted it all. Adolf Hitler was not content with being the chancellor of Germany. He wanted Russia. He wanted all of Europe. That's selfishness. That's pride. It's where wars start-- selfishness, pride.
There's a third reason, and it's tucked here in these verses. And when I tell you, you'll get it, but you'll be shocked-- religion. Religion is one of the great causes of war. Look at what it says. You murder. You cover. You war. But then he says, "You ask and you do not receive."
Hmm. Who's doing the asking, and what is the asking? You, being a group of young believers, and asking is they're praying to God. They're making this their prayer. In other words, James is writing to a group of pleasure-seeking believers who express their own selfish desires in prayer.
Now think of all of the wars throughout history that have been fought in the name of religion. Go all the way back to Babylon. And they would march to battle in the name of Bel or in the name of Marduk, their chief gods, or the Ammonites or the Philistines who would go in the name of Dagon, their god. And when the battle was won, they would attribute the victory to their religion.
And as we go back in history, we blush. We're a bit ashamed because we have on our record in Christendom the Crusades, where we sent people or the Europeans sent people to the Middle East to kill people under Pope Leo IV and John VIII. They both said that killing unbelievers will be beneficial for Christian soldiers. And some of those leaders stated that their sins could be erased if they killed in the defensive the church. That's Christian history. It's shameful.
But it helps us understand the current situation. Because you see, over in the Middle East, there is this concept of the jihad, the holy struggle, the killing by some radical, fundamentalist Muslims who will kill in the name of Allah. You say, I don't get that. Well, as they read their holy book, the Quran, they discover there's 109 war verses in the Quran. One out of every 55 versus is considered a war verse.
And both in the Quran and in the hadiths, that is, the sayings of Muhammad, their prophet, all of humanity is divided into one of two groups-- the house of Islam or the house of war, period. You're in one of two camps-- the house of Islam or the house of war. Translation, according to Don Richardson, who did a lot of research, spoke here, lived in that area for a number of years-- says, anyone who is not a Muslim is assumed to be rejecting Islam.
Rejecting Islam equates to attacking Islam, attacking Muhammad, and even attacking God. So jihad is now, in their minds, self-defense. Helps you understand the minds of suicide bombers. We're defending ourselves because they're attacking us. The name of religion.
So we have discovered war is coming. War has consequences. War has causes. But now go back to Matthew 24, where we're going to end. Because so far, we haven't had very much good news in this message, have we? Wars, rumors of wars, destruction, it's not like a happy message yet.
Now I'd like to give you the calm in the war. Notice what Jesus Christ tells his disciples in verse 6. "See that you are not troubled." You could translate that, don't panic. OK, now wait a minute, Jesus.
You just predicted the most terrible time of human history where wars, rumors of wars, nation fighting nation, kingdom fighting kingdom, and you say, don't panic. How is that possible? And moreover, you're telling believers who will read this and go through the tribulation, don't be troubled. Why?
Well, move ahead in our text. Go down to verse 25. You may have skipped over this verse. Our Lord says, "See, I have told you beforehand." It is comforting just knowing that He knows. He's not surprised, that He in advance, by divine decree, has foretold it, that He knows all of these things, and He tells them beforehand.
Because you know what that means? If He knows, He's in control. If He knows that kind of detail of the future and gives it by divine decree, then God is in control. How much is knowing that God knows your future-- how much is that worth to you? It's priceless. It's priceless.
I'll be honest with you. The omniscience of God, the fact that God knows everything, is one of the hardest doctrines theologically for me to get. But it's one of the most comforting things on a personal level for me to enjoy.
Listen to what David said, Psalm 139. "Oh, Lord, You've examined my heart, and You know everything about me. You know when I sit down and stand up. You know my every thought when far away. You chart my path ahead of me, and You tell me where to stop and where to rest. Every moment, You know where I am. You know what I'm doing. And You know what I'm going to say even before I say it, Lord."
Ladies and gentlemen, that is true of every hard time you ever face in life. War-weary child of God, discouraged child of God, despondent child of God, God knows. And more than that, God cares. And the Bible tells, you cast all of your cares upon Him. Because what does He do? He cares for us.
Have you ever had somebody come up to you and say, I've been thinking about you lately. You've been on my heart. In fact, I've been praying for you a lot lately. What does that make you feel like? A million bucks. That's so encouraging. Thank you. You know what God would say to you today?
I've been thinking a lot about you lately. You've been on my heart. You know how much God has been thinking about you lately? The Bible says His thoughts are more in number than the sand of the earth. God constantly has you on His mind. God knows, and He's in control. And so He says, see that you are not troubled.
I read about a little bird called a guillemot who lives way, way up in the Pacific Northwest, way up toward the Alaskan peninsula. And they congregate on the craggy rocks near the coast. When it's time for the mother guillemot to lay their eggs, they'll all get together in a crowded place. They'll come in a very tight spot. And the mother guillemots will all lay their eggs in a long, long row side by side because of the crowded conditions.
Well, all those eggs look identical, but they're by different moms. Research has shown that if a single egg gets moved and taken somewhere else, that mother guillemot who laid it can find the egg and replace it back in the very spot where she laid it. Now, they all look alike, those eggs. But she can find the egg and put it right back where it belongs. You say, Skip, what's your point? Simply this. If a bird brain--
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--can do that and have that kind of control and care put in and programmed by the creator, then the God of all history, who makes these divine decrees and knows everything that's going to happen to your life, can put everything in order and bring you calm, no matter who you know overseas fighting that battle or these battles or whatever is going on in your world. I agree with one of the presidents of the United States who said, "Peace will never come at a negotiating table. It has to first come into the human heart."
Let's pause for need prayer today. Heavenly Father, You're the God of all peace, though You decree here that war is inevitable. It's going to come. We look around. It has come. It shakes us up, but we're not surprised because here, You told us we're not to be troubled. All these things were spoken of in advance.
And You know these wars in advance. You know our own turmoils in advance. And You're in control. And that's why we have confidence and peace and rest. And I'd pray for anyone here today who doesn't have a relationship with the prince of peace, the God of peace that their lives would be turn it over to You, Lord. In Jesus' name. Amen.