Rev. David Holwick T
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
June 6, 2010
Ezekiel 18:1-13
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I. Which way is the crime rate going?
A. Our impressions may be wrong.
Most people expected the economic meltdown to get a big boost
to the crime rate.
For a long time, liberalism has held that crime is a natural
response to poverty.
Poor people are desperate, so they steal.
By eliminating poverty, we will also eliminate crime.
The funny thing is, it doesn't work like that.
We are in the midst of the worst recession since the Great
Depression.
Yet the crime rate is falling.
Even in places like Detroit, crime is falling dramatically.
It is not a fluke, either.
During the Great Depression itself, the crime rate fell.
In the past week I have read two commentaries on this
phenomenon.
One was by Charles Colson, a Christian conservative.
The other was by Richard Cohen, a liberal Jewish commentator
for the Washington Post.
Both agreed that crime is not primarily caused by poverty or
a bad childhood, but the bad moral choices people make.
Psychiatrist Stanton Samenow studied prisoners for 17 years.
He discovered that what habitual criminals have in common is
not their economic background or history of abuse.
It is that they choose to break the law.
Richard Cohen summarized it this way:
Bad times do not necessarily make bad people.
Bad character does. #36221
B. We like to pass the buck.
1) Criminals blame their poverty.
2) Ex-Princess Fergie (or whatever she is) - said her attempt
to sell access to ex-husband Andrew was caused by booze.
C. Everybody blames somebody - but we don't have to.
1) We can take responsibility for our life.
II. Your family doesn't determine your life.
A. This is not to say that our family doesn't have an impact.
1) Even in the Ten Commandments it says the actions of our
ancestors can cause damage that trickles down to us.
2) All of us have been shaped, positively and negatively, by
those around us, past and present.
3) They have an influence on us, but they are not our destiny.
B. Every proverb has a limit. 18:2
1) Jews in Ezekiel's day quoted one that said, "The fathers eat
sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge."
a) In other words, my life is rotten because of something
my parents did, not me.
b) It was a popular saying - Jeremiah quotes it too.
2) Probably it was popular because it fit their times.
a) Many Jews, including Ezekiel himself, were now in exile
in a distant country and suffering a lot.
b) It didn't seem fair to them to suffer for what past
generations of Jews had done.
3) But Ezekiel corrects them.
a) Their exile was just as much their own fault as their
parents' and grandparents.
b) They needed to own up to their own responsibility.
C. Individuals matter. 18:4
1) "Soul" here really means a person, and death could be
physical as well as spiritual.
2) God cares for each person - verse 4.
a) You may belong to a group (Israel, Baptists, etc.) but
God focuses on individuals.
b) But each person is responsible for their actions.
D. An example of three generations.
1) A righteous father, a rotten son, and a righteous grandson.
2) This probably reminded them of three recent kings:
a) The good Hezekiah.
b) His evil son, Manasseh.
c) Manasseh's good grandson, Josiah.
3) Principles within the passage.
a) Each generation can start fresh.
1> A rotten father can have a good son or grandson.
b) You answer for your own moral choices.
c) God wants you to choose well. 18:32
1> He doesn't like to condemn people but wants us
to live.
2> Our most important choice is to repent.
A> The soul that sins will die, but the one that
turns to God will live.
B> God challenges them to get a new heart and
a new spirit - we call this conversion. 18:31
III. Lousy circumstances don't have to determine your life either.
A. It is tempting to use hardship to justify sin or despair.
1) If your marriage is not what you expected, you may use
the lack of attention to justify an affair.
2) If you are unemployed or in deep debt, you may spend money
wildly anyway, thinking it doesn't matter anymore.
B. A Christian can rise above any bad situation.
1) Even if the whole world seems to turn against us, we can
still decide to act decently and righteously.
2) Bad situations will eventually change - we should never
give up on God or his values.
IV. You may criticize others for shirking responsibility, but do you?
A. The ideals of youth can slip away.
1) Earlier we sang "Jesus Love Me" - the first Christian song
I ever learned.
a) It is a reminder of values we were taught as children,
values such as don't steal, tell the truth, don't hit.
b) As we grow up, we tend to "fine-tune" those innocent
morals until they are gone altogether.
2) Our youth group is on a retreat right now.
a) We try to instill good moral and spiritual values in
them.
b) But it is not just for them - it is for you too!
B. You can rise above where you are now, or where you have been.
1) Don't crawl into a hole and expect things to change.
In 2001 Wanda Hudson of Mobile, Alabama, lost her home and
moved all her stuff into a self-storage unit.
Some believe she moved herself in as well.
A month later she was in her unit at night when the manager
came around and noticed the door was unlocked and
slightly open.
He shut it, locked it, and moved on.
Hudson was still inside.
Most people would yell and scream, pound on the door, and
demand to be let out.
But Wanda didn't do that.
Incredibly, she made virtually no attempt to let anyone
know she was trapped.
She subsisted on juice and canned foods that she had stored
in the unit.
Another person whose unit was two spaces away went almost
every single day to her unit, yet never heard a thing.
"There was no yelling, no screaming, no beating on the
doors, no nothing," he said.
"No one knew she was in there."
And she was there for a long, long time.
It wasn't until January 2002, 63 days after she was locked
inside, when someone heard noises -- not yelling or
banging, just "noises" -- inside the locked unit.
They notified the storage company and the door was opened.
Amanda, who is normally a "plump" 150 pounds, was in
horrific condition: she weighed only 85 pounds and her
doctor says she was in "advanced starvation."
Her fingernails, normally several inches long, were said
to be a foot in length.
The smell inside was so bad that fire department rescue
personnel donned gas masks before going in.
Hudson was so disoriented she hadn't realized she had
missed Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Sad indeed, but someone must be held responsible, right?
Well, someone else, anyway: Amanda and her lawyer said the
storage company was solely responsible for her plight
and sued the company for $10 million.
The jury, however, was clearly bothered by Hudson not doing
more to free herself.
They awarded her "only" one percent of the suit's begged-for
amount, or $100,000.
They also asked the judge questions about a person's "own
responsibility for his or her predicament" before they
made their decision.
#25749
2) What can you do about your predicament?
a) Get help from others - let people know your needs.
1> Too many Christians are like Wanda and suffer in
secret, when believers who surround them are
more than willing to help them.
b) Do what you can to set things right.
Recent case of "robbed" perfect game by Aramando
Galarraga.
Umpire Jim Joyce publicly apologized to him.
Some fans have given the ump death threats, but
Armando gave him a hug.
A class act by both of them.
Aramando probably won't get credit for a perfect game,
but life will not always be fair to us, either.
Take what you get, hold your head high, and move on.
c) Ground yourself in God.
1> Is your situation due to bad choices you have made?
A> Acknowledge it to the Lord.
2> Get back into God's Word to get his wisdom.
V. Your environment has power, but Christ has more power.
A. You can choose to repent.
1) You MUST choose to repent.
2) Remember that your hand is on the hammer.
One of the most visceral religious movies has been
Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."
No one wanted to distribute it and it almost didn't get
made.
But once it got into theaters, millions flocked to it.
According to Gibson, this movie wasn't about making money,
but about personal faith.
He was portraying what he described as "Christ's wounds
that healed my wounds."
The personalness of Jesus' death to him surfaced vividly
on the day that they were filming the driving of the
nails into Christ's hands.
In a not-to-be forgotten moment, Gibson himself grabbed
the mallet and spikes from that actor who was supposed
to be nailing Jesus to the cross.
The cameras kept rolling, and in the movie it is Mel
Gibson's hands we see, wielding the hammer and driving
the nails into Jesus' hands.
And it is not just Mel's hands. It was your hands, too.
#26664
B. You can also choose to do good.
1) Personal responsibility has two aspects.
a) Choose to avoid evil.
b) But you must also seek the positive good.
2) Choosing good requires God's help.
C. God can help us, and only God can save us.
1) Some get the impression from Ezekiel that a believer is
saved by living a righteous life.
a) The New Testament says otherwise - we can never be
righteous enough.
2) In both Testaments, salvation can only come by grace.
a) It is a gift from God to us which we can never earn.
b) But truly saved people show gratitude to God by the
fruit of their good deeds. Eph 2:10
3) What are your deeds saying about your relationship to Him?
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
#25749 "Trapped Within Her Will," by Randy Cassingham, adapted by
Rev. David Holwick, True Stella Awards #41, www.stellaawards.com,
October 8, 2003. Original source was "Woman Sues DIP Storage
Facility over Bizarre Ordeal", Mobile Register, 26 September 2003.
<http://StellaAwards.com/cgi-bin/redirect3.pl?41a>
#26664 "The Hand On the Hammer," by Ron Hutchcraft, A Word With You by
Ron Hutchcraft #4530, May 21, 2004.
#36221 "Crime And Recession: It's Not What They Think," by Charles Colson,
BreakPoint Commentary, April 27, 2010. Richard Cohen's article
is "Did Liberals Get It Wrong On Crime?", June 1, 2010;
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/31/~
AR2010053101640.html>
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
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