A DESENSITIZED PEOPLE
December 17, 2000 AM
Sermon Outline
Jer 8:9-12
INTRO: My father and mother, reared with the big band sounds and velvet voice of Rudy Valle, no doubt thought I had lost my moorings when I listened to Fats Domino and Bill Halley and the Comets. Mine was a different generation. Times had changed. But the moral values of my parents generation was pretty much intact in my generation. Today, however, the world of entertainment assails eyes, ears and minds with morals and values of dysfunction, sin. Little by little we have become desensitized.
I. WHAT THE ENTERTAINMENT WORLD TEACHES?
A. Personal purity, chastity are out dated
1. sex without, outside marriage, nudity, homosexual relationships can be normal, acceptable alternate
2. television/ motion pictures rarely produce programming without inferred or explicit representations of such things in settings of normalcy
3. 1 Cor 7:2 - Titus 2:5 - Rom 1:26,27,32
4. these things which so many consider normal, acceptable are sinful ... no matter the generation
B. Use of profanity, Gods name in vain, typical
1. profanity, vulgarity, Gods name used in vain flow in a torrent from the screens, the music, the printed page
2. I am told by teachers that four letter words are increasingly used by children in early elementary school
3. Ex 20:7 - Eph 5:4 - Lk 6:45
4. the speech of the world is not the speech of disciples of Christ - it cannot be
C. Use of alcohol is socially acceptable, solves problems
1. interesting: smoking - drugs unlawful or heavily discouraged by government ... not alcohol
2. Ive just got to have a drink - answer to problems
3. Prov 23:31-35 fact: alcoholic beverages are one of the great contributors to social, economic, health and family problems
4. but its use among the very young grows - why? its the social thing to do ... or so the entertainment world says
D. Problems can be solved in thirty minutes
1. over and again, we see it happen!
2. most complicated problems solved in the brief period of a television program, motion picture
3. so, we have the now generation which is antsy, stressed, angrily impatient ... unwilling to work through a hurting relationship, to understand success is a process taking time, etc.
4. Jas 5:7-11 we are being conditioned to impatience!
E. The end justifies the means
1. get what you want ... no matter how!
2. lie, cheat, steal, murder ... just get what you want
3. so, to satisfy wants and desires moderns are willing to compromise values, integrity, morals, etc.
4. Eph 5:8-11 for Christians there can be no compromise of goodness, truth in order to satisfy desires, lusts!
F. Fathers are just joke objects
1. husband, fathers are not the heads of families
2. they are portrayed as silly, comedic, weak, clueless men who are under the thumb of wife, children
3. not men to honor ... but to scorn ... and the tragedy is that this portrayal has become reality in too many homes
4. Eph 5:22,23 and 6:1,4 to manipulate this pattern to selfish ends is both sin and disaster
CLOSE: The Jeremiah text says of apostate Judah, Neither could they blush. They had become so desensitized to truth and right by their years of abomination that abomination had become the norm. How is our culture better than that? Has this sad state of affairs settled into the thinking of the children of God?
Cecil A. Hutson
17 December 2000