I live just south of Jackson TN, which you have probably never heard of, if you don’t live in West TN. Jackson is about 70 miles East of Memphis TN, which I’m sure you have heard of. Memphis is famous for many things, Elvis, barbecue, and lately, murder. Last week, in Memphis, a 34 year old woman, Liza Fletcher, was kidnapped, while she went for her morning run, and was later found murdered. Just a few days later, a young man went on a shooting spree, which left four people dead and three others injured. All of this happened within the last week and this has prompted many people in West TN to begin asking what is wrong and, I think, caused some to begin to lose hope. We see similar events playing out all across our nation on a more and more regular basis, prompting the same questions and sense of hopelessness on a national scale.
I recently read a social media post, written by a woman who basically said that she has always believed that humanity is inherently good but, given recent events, she is beginning to loose hope. Anyone who places their hope in humanity will ultimately be disappointed and many people do place their hope there, either believing in the inherent goodness of human kind or believing that the right human religious or political leaders can fix our problems. When we place our hope in humanity, we are destined to lose it, because that is not where true hope can be found.
Jeremiah 17:9 says that the heart of mankind is “desperately wicked”. Today’s popular culture tells us that we are all basically good by nature but that is not so. Our heart is sinful.
Look at what Jesus said here.
Mark 7
20 And He said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man.
21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
22 thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.
23 All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”
Jesus said that these things come from within us. Many temptations are external. However, any sinful thought we have or sinful action we take because of that temptation comes from within us and our own sinful nature. It comes from within our own heart. Too often, we do what we do because we look to our own heart, rather than to God, for wisdom. It has almost always been so and so we must look back to the dawn of human history to understand why.
Genesis 3
1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden;
3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”
4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.
The serpent, the Devil, was trying to talk Eve into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eve told him that God had said that the day they did that they would surely die. The devil told her that they would not die, that God had just said that because eating of that fruit would allow Adam and Eve to discern good and evil, like God. Verse 6 says “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.”
Eve saw that the tree was desirable to make one wise. What wisdom was she thinking of? She and Adam talked to God every day. They could ask Him anything they wanted. This tree offered a different kind of wisdom. The Devil told her that, if she ate from the tree, she would be like God, knowing good from evil. He was telling her that she could set her own standard for right and wrong. Eating the fruit made Eve wise in her own eyes. Then she gave to Adam and he ate and, through that single act of disobedience, sin entered the world. Ultimately, that’s what all sin really comes down to, thinking we know better than God.
We tend to blame our sin on the bad influences in the world but when the first murder happened, when Cain killed his brother Abel in Genesis 4:8, it was before any of the bad influences that we talk about so much now had entered the world. As soon as the human race turned from relying on God as the only source of wisdom and began to rely on itself for wisdom, just one chapter and one generation after Adam and Eve ate of that fruit, the first murder was perpetrated. We cannot rely on ourselves for wisdom. We cannot look to ourselves for hope. We must turn back to God for that.
2 Chronicles 7
14 if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
I have previously written and preached extensively concerning this verse of Scripture and how it does and does not apply to our nation today and so I will not expound on this here. The bottom line is that we, as a nation, must turn back to God, if there is to be any true hope of things getting better. Turning back to Him as a nation begins with us turning back to Him as individuals, and then winning others to Him. I am talking about truly turning back to Him, not just invoking His name while continuing to look to ourselves, which is exactly what many of us do. He is our hope, our only hope. We must fully and whole heartedly grasp that truth and diligently act upon it, if anything is to ever change for the better.
As I said, turning back to Him as a nation begins with us turning back to Him as individuals. In order to turn back to Him, one must have turned to Him in the first place. That does not simply mean believing that He exists and trying to be a good person. It means establishing a personal relationship with Him. If you have never done that and would like to, you can start here:
