In this thought-provoking episode, Ron Dart delves into the complexities of past and present leadership failures, drawing parallels between the times of Isaiah and our current political climate. He reflects on the moral and societal decline that seems to perpetuate a cycle of weak leaders and societal decay. Dart emphasizes the idea that both God’s nature and human nature remain constant, posing a challenge for us to reflect and take responsibility for the leaders we choose and the society we shape.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 03 :
In my time, I have followed a lot of election campaigns. I remember, for example, sitting in a car in the rain in 1964. in England, listening to the Democratic National Convention of America on the BBC. Believe it or not, it was that important that the BBC was carrying it. Lyndon Johnson was nominated as president that year. But in all my years of following elections, I have never seen anything quite like this 2008 election season. The political process has always been a little crazy, but this one is really strange. And I find myself wondering every time this cycle rolls around, is this the best that we can do? As a nation, we probably expect too much of our leaders and too little of ourselves. Like everyone else, I marvel at the weakness of people running for office, and I sometimes forget that they are merely a reflection of ourselves. I recall those famous lines from Abraham Lincoln about government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And I don’t see how we can escape responsibility for what our leaders do and don’t do, for the quality or lack thereof, for their experience or lack thereof. I don’t see how we can sidestep that issue. If there are no strong leaders before us, it’s our fault. We have been willing to elect idiots, and idiots is what we will continue to get. There are a couple of things. that I think are badly understood about history and about God. One, God does not change. The consequences of that are far-reaching. Two, human nature doesn’t change either. Oh, sure, we invent new kinds of gee-gaws and gadgets and our technology advances, our ability to communicate advances, and all we accomplish with all this is make it possible for us to do more damage than we could have done in years gone by. But the nature of man doesn’t change. Therefore, we keep making the same mistakes and reaping the same rewards over and over again. I’d like to take you back today to another time and place, to a nation surprisingly like us. They were like us in spite of all the changes in technology. They were like us in the place of the explosion of knowledge and information that we’re going through today. They still were like us. The place is Jerusalem. The time is the days of Isaiah the prophet. Isaiah was really quite a young man when he had his first vision and volunteered to be a prophet. He had no idea what he was letting himself in for. For reasons of his own, Isaiah does not begin his prophecy with a story of his calling. He postpones that all the way down to chapter 6. And in the earlier chapters, he touches on what bothers me most about the political landscape around us right now. It’s in Isaiah 3, verse 1. See now, the Lord, the Lord God Almighty, is about to take from Jerusalem and Judah the supply and the support. All supplies of food, all supplies of water. But that’s not where he stops taking stuff away. He goes on to say he will take from Jerusalem and Judah the hero… the warrior, the judge, the prophet, the soothsayer, the elder, the captain of fifty, and man of rank, the counselor, skilled craftsman, and the clever enchanters. I will make boys their officials. Mere children will govern them. Historically, we know what was happening at the time. The Assyrians had invaded the north, taken Samaria and all the ten northern tribes. They would besiege Jerusalem and destroy a lot of Judah. But here’s the puzzle. Why would God take away the leadership of the country when they needed them most? A small clue lies in that first verse. What would be the instrument, the proximate cause of the absence of food and water? Well, it was the Assyrians, of course. They were the ones that came in. They besieged the country. They took down cities all over the place. They destroyed crops. I mean, Jerusalem was sealed up. The only thing there was to eat or drink was inside the walls of that city. So, if that’s the case, if it was the Assyrians that did it, it really took no miracle at all. It was more the absence of something that led to it. The absence of wisdom, the absence of godly men, the absence of godly intervention, of God saying he’s going to save them from it. Now, the rest of what happened here may not be due to divine intervention, but to the absence of divine intervention. God did not have to lift a finger. to say that he had done it. Now here’s something we need to think about. When sin is committed, whether it be by a man or a people, there are three things that can follow it. One, consequences. When you tell a lie, something happens to you and to your reputation. This is inevitable. It cannot be done away with. The consequences may be small, they may be great, but they are there without question. Automatic. Two, The second thing that can happen is chastisement. God can actually take a hand and use the consequences to bring us to our senses. The third is banishment. If things get bad enough, God can just remove us out of his sight. Punishment, destruction. Now, in a very real way, Judah’s loss of leadership was the very real consequences of what they had been doing for a long time. Now, having said that, there may be something to learn then from the events that led up to this prophecy. For reasons known only to Isaiah, it seems though he feels driven to start with what God had told him to say or sing because Isaiah’s language is very poetic and prophecy was always sung. These prophecies were in a way the protest songs of that era. Well, after a short header in the beginning of the book of Isaiah, he begins to sing and Hear, O heavens, give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. Now he begins to speak for God. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knows his owner. The ass knows his master’s crib. But Israel? They don’t know. My people do not consider. Even a dumb ass knows who the boss is and knows where home is. Not Israel. They don’t know. Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors. They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger. They have gone away backward. And no longer are they going to find God on their side in anything. Now, you don’t have to be a news junkie to recognize our people in this description. God gave us this land as much as he gave Canaan to Israel. He turned blessings on us that we can’t even begin to account for, just as he did with Israel. And just like Israel, we’ve turned our back on God. Oh, I know we have a Thanksgiving Day once a year so far. And I know there are a lot of good people in this country. In fact, I think the presence of all these good people in this country is the reason why we are all still here. But we should know that something has gone terribly wrong when we see, as I saw on television, a high school class where the kids were being shown how to put a condom on a banana. Now, understand something, though, at this point. The sex education going on in schools nowadays is not the cause of the corruption of our children. It is a symptom, not the cause of a moral disease. It’s a sign of moral rot having set in among our people. The thing that I finally came to realize about all this is the schools are trying to hold back the tide with a broom. And I’m finding it hard to blame them for at least trying, but we should know this. We have allowed the hands of the teachers to be tied. We have denied them a real basis for teaching morals in school. We have denied them the implements of discipline in any educational circumstance, and they’ve been reduced to trying, with whatever they’ve got to work with, to limit the damage being done. So while I have many things I can criticize the schools about, they need to do a better job of teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. The fact that they’re teaching sex education is not the cause of the problem. It’s a sign of it. The obsession with sex in our society is a sure sign of a people who have lost the power to love. In the words of the song, the feeling’s gone and we just can’t get it back. And it’s what lies at the root of the explosion of pornography on the Internet and people chasing around trying to feel something. when they have lost the power to love and can’t find it. There’s one major difference between our day and that of Isaiah at the time he wrote his prophecies. He was writing and speaking much later in the day, so to speak. His nation was even further down the grease slide than we are. That’s not to say that we are better than they, only that it is earlier in the day, for we are marching steadily down the same road. We need to give that some very serious thought.
SPEAKER 02 :
Stay with me through this short break, and I’ll be right back. Isaiah is the most loved and admired of all the Old Testament prophets. If you would like to receive a free introductory CD from the album Isaiah the Messiah’s Prophet, write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560 White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. That’s 1-888-242-5344. and tell us the call letters of this radio station.
SPEAKER 03 :
These were hard and dangerous times. The nations were like wild animals attacking and devouring one another, and that’s the choice of the imagery God often uses. Things haven’t changed very much, I guess you’ve noticed. The Assyrians had invaded Samaria and taken the northern tribes away. They’d come into Judah with fire and destruction, and only the city of Jerusalem had managed to hold against them. The countryside was devastated. The only food left was inside the city. And that sets the stage for Isaiah, a great communicator, to stand in the gate of the city and preach, or sing, as the case may be. Isaiah 1, verse 5. Why should you be stricken anymore? you will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick. The whole heart is faint. From the sole of the foot, even to the head, there’s no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They haven’t been closed. They haven’t been bound up. Nobody’s put any ointment on them. You know, it’s with the greatest dismay that I can see this description play out day by day in the leadership of our nation, just as you see it in theirs. For Israel, the situation had become dire. Your country, he said, is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Your land, strangers devour it in your presence. It’s desolate, overthrown by strangers. And the daughter of Zion is left like a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. We’re just one wall city standing out here in the middle of nothing. And he goes on in verse 9 to say this, Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we would have been like Sodom, and we had been like Gomorrah. What Isaiah says about the remnant reminds me of something that happened long before this with another prophet. His name was Elijah. It is worth knowing that long before the house of Israel at Samaria fell, they had been getting the same warnings that Isaiah would give to Judah much later. But even then, there was a remnant of faithful people among them just as there is today. Elijah, in a fit of self-pity, concluded he was the only servant of God left in the land. They were after him to kill him. He said, they’re going to just wipe us all out, Lord. Back up, said God. I have reserved to me 7,000 men in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal nor kissed him. They were the remnant in Elijah’s day. Someone said they thought the population of the northern tribes of Israel, about 1 million at that time, which this 7,000 would amount to 0.7% of the population. That would amount to a city of about 100,000 people. You’d find 700 somewhere who were faithful. They were the remnant. But the remnant didn’t save the nation. The nation had just gone too far. Now Judah was a long way down the same road, and Isaiah had the grim duty to go out there and tell them. I’ve said it before. Let me say it again. When you see a prophet of God walking down the road, it’s bad news. God does not send a prophet to tell you how well you are doing. Now, it was a very small remnant that Isaiah found that were still there. I said, we have a lot of good people in this country, and it is so. Will that hold? Are we going to systematically rid ourselves of good leaders as every civilization before us has done? What are we doing wrong? Well, Isaiah said, except the Lord of hosts had left us this very small remnant, we would have been like Sodom and like Gomorrah. Now God begins to address the people of Jerusalem as if they were Sodom. He says, chapter 1, verse 10, Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the law of God, you people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? I am fed up with the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fetid beasts. I don’t delight in the blood of bullocks or lambs or he goats. What this is telling me is that religious observance was continuing apace, but it says even more. It says going through the motions of religion won’t help. God is saying, I am fed up with your worship by the numbers that you just keep on, keep on, keep on going through. When you come to appear before me, who has required this at your hand to tread my courts? In our vernacular, he would be saying, who asked you here? Bring no more vain oblations. Incense is an abomination to me. The new moons, the Sabbath, the calling of assemblies, I can’t stand them. It’s iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons, your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They are a trouble to me. I am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. When you make many prayers, I will not hear you. Your hands are full of blood. So now we start getting the picture. Going to church is not good enough. God created the Sabbath. God gave them instructions for feasts and solemn assemblies and for times to fast or whatever they’re going to do, but they were no longer his. They had become theirs. He said, when you spread forth your hands, I will not look at them. Your hands are full of blood. What an image. I don’t know what terrible social scourge in that time led to hands full of blood. Isaiah doesn’t say right here. I’ll bet the people who heard him say this knew well enough. And when you consider our society, how could you overlook 40 million abortions? 40 million Americans that might have been who are not. How can you do that? You know, there is just no point in raising bloody hands to God in song or in prayer. You only make things worse. What is Isaiah trying to tell us that we need to know? One, religion comes in two aspects, form and substance. You can have all the form you want, but if the substance isn’t there, you are dead meat. All of our theological arguments, all our worship services with pageantry and orchestras and choirs and sacred dance, powerful preachers who tell us what we want to hear, all the great song services with dancing in the aisles, all the great prayers with hands held on high can be for nothing. When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. When you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. You see, the whole thing about lifting up holy hands to God, which the Bible does mention, is not about some kind of spiritual antenna that you put up there to feel God or what have you. It is a statement made to God, my hands are clean. How do you expect God to respond to your prayer when the hands you raise to him are not clean? You can’t sleep with your neighbor’s wife on Saturday night and lift up holy hands to God on Sunday morning, my brother. You just got to get used to that idea. Somehow, the form of your religion has got to shape the life you live. But in Isaiah’s day, there was still hope for the nation, even at that late date. He goes on in verse 16 to say this. Wash yourself. Make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil. Learn to do well. Seek judgment. Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless. Plead for the widow. You know, this is the kind of thing that we’re supposed to be doing. It has to do with the way we live in society, that we as Christian people should be having an influence on society. It would be like leavening or like the salt of the earth, that wherever we go, we have an effect on the things around us because we live the life and we stand for what is right. And even if you yourself have never killed anybody, If you don’t stand behind a government that leads us to do what’s right, you are guilty as those who actually get around to doing it. So what are we supposed to do now, Isaiah? What do we do next?
SPEAKER 02 :
Listen through this short break, and when I come back, I’ll give you the answer. For a free CD of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only. And request the program titled Leadership Lost. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44. That’s 1-888-242-5344.
SPEAKER 03 :
So, where do we go from here? Come now, said God, let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. What is it that makes the difference? Well, he’s just said, wash yourself, make yourself clean, put away your evil, learn to do well. Seek judgment. You’re on a jury duty. Be fair with people. Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless. Plead for the widow. Intercede for these people. Come, let us reason. Though your sins be as scarlet, they’ll be white as snow. Now, understand something. This doesn’t mean that the works you do will wash away your sins. Only the blood of Christ can do that. But that blood won’t apply unless or until you repent. And what God is telling us is, look, you’ve got to change the way you live. We’re not talking about the way you worship. We’re talking about how you treat your neighbor. In verse 19, he said, If you be willing and obedient, you will eat the good of the land. If you refuse and you rebel, you will be devoured with the sword. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. I love this country. My heart swells with pride when I think of the men and women who have sacrificed so much for the freedom we take for granted. The love of country impels me to call on my country to repent and turn to God because we are systematically destroying this land, not just the dirt, the society that God established and planted here and blessed. To call on people not to come to this or that church but to come to God as the source of morality and truth. And I want to make this call while I can. I make the call not because I’m any better than anybody else. I’ve got as many problems as the next man has. But all of us, all of us need to turn to God sincerely and begin to turn our lives around. Only then can we begin to make a difference. Having made his call for repentance, Isaiah returns to his lament. How has the faithful city become a harlot? It was full of judgment. Righteousness lodged in it. But now, murderers. Your silver has become dross. Your wine is mixed with water. Your princes are rebellious and companions of thieves. Everyone loves bribes and follows reward. They don’t judge the fatherless. They don’t take the cause of the widows. One of the things that galls me most about politics nowadays is the politician who promises things to the poor to get elected and then lines his own pockets with bribes and special deals for himself and his friends. These are our princes in biblical terms, the congressmen and the senators, and guess who’s responsible for them? We are. And now we come to the reason why we end up in time of war with less leadership than we need. We are so stupid, in Elijah’s words, we will elect a child to office if he will just tell us what we want to hear. Has anyone figured out that we cannot depend on Congress to police itself? It’s absurd to even think they would. I mean, if you make your own self as the law, if what you feel like, what you want, is going to be determined by what’s right, guess where you’re going to go? Who expected us to police Congress? The framers of our Constitution expected you and me to do that. And isn’t it astonishing? I want you to think about this. that the approval rating of Congress can drop into the teens, and yet we the people have elected the scoundrels. And we say, oh, this is terrible. This is bad. I hate this. Look at all these bad people in Congress who make jokes about Congress. If we the people won’t punish congressmen who take bribes and line their pockets with unethical gain, who will? Now, maybe your congressman hasn’t done that, and that’s a good thing. Here’s the next question, though. What’s he doing about those who are doing it? Does he have the nerve? Does he have the gall? Does he have what it takes to stand up in Congress and demand changes be made in the ethics of that body? These men become so powerful that they can perpetuate themselves in office. But it wouldn’t work if we were paying attention. It wouldn’t work if we cared. God says, I’m going to deal with this. I’m going to turn my hand upon you. I’m going to purely purge away all the impurities in you. And I will restore your judges at the first and your counselors as at the beginning. And afterward, you’ll be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city. Are you familiar with his analogy? It’s the refining of silver. To do that, you put the silver in a pot and you heat it until it melts. The impurities rise to the top, the surface, the dross, and are skimmed off. What God is saying is that we are heading into the chastisement phase. He is turning up the heat. His goal, to turn us around. You know, it worked for a little while after 9-11, but it didn’t hold. I guess we’ll have to go through something else, a little more heat, a little hotter. Zion, he said, will be redeemed with judgments and converts with righteousness, and the destruction of the transgressors and the sinners shall be together. There’s something you need to know about this. In summary, God is about to take things away from Judah in Isaiah’s day. In point of fact, though, it’s their own doings that have taken these things away from them. Did God do it? He said he did. How did he do it? He let them do it to themselves. They were the instruments of their own destruction. Just as I said in the beginning, our leaders are just a reflection of all of us.
SPEAKER 02 :
Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart. In the U.S. and Canada, call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44 and visit our website at borntowin.net.
SPEAKER 01 :
Stay in touch with the new Born to Win with Ronald L. Dart app. This app has all of your favorite Ronald L. Dart radio messages, sermons, articles, and it even has a digital Bible. Simply search on the iOS or Android App Store to download it for free today.
