Chapter 44. I remember listening to my girls, and they would put together a medley and stuff, and they would sing it, and it was so beautiful, harmony and all that, but there nothing beats the voice of males singing, amen? Something about men singing like that, it's just a powerful, powerful thing. Jeremiah chapter 44. Excellent, beautiful. Jeremiah chapter 44. Are we all there? It's in the Old Testament. All right, Jeremiah 44. Let's pray. Father, we come to you this morning, Lord. We thank you for what we've heard. Beautiful singing. Thank you for the privilege of being able to sing praises unto thee. Fellowshiping and being with one another. But now, Father, we're praying that you would take this time and speak to our hearts. We are your children, you're our Father. We sit at your feet and we wait to hear. Because, Lord, we know that you are our bread, you are our meat, you are our honey, you are our water, you're everything we need to spiritually sustain us. And we desire to hear from heaven. And I know all you've got to work with up here is this piece of dirt. Pray that you'd take this piece of dirt, fill it with your spirit. We want to hear from your spirit, not the dirt. Your power, your passion, your words, your wisdom. Put a watch by its mouth and a guard by its lips. Give it grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Holy Spirit of God, please stand up here at this pulpit. Please sit next to us in our seats. we're trusting this morning that you'll minister to us praying you'll give us something that'll make us a little better a little stronger a little more edified when we leave than when we came in well thank you for it in Christ's name Jeremiah 44 we're gonna start reading at verse 15 It says, Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt and Pathras, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word which thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the Queen of Heaven, to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done we and our fathers and our kings, our princes in the cities of Judah, in the streets of Jerusalem. For then had we plenty of vittles, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine. When we burned incense to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her and pour out drink offerings unto her without our men? Then Jeremiah said unto all the people, unto the men and to the women, to all the people which had given him that answer, saying, the incense that you burned in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, ye and your fathers, your kings, your princes, the people of the land, did not the Lord remember them and came it not unto his mind, so that the Lord could no longer bear? because of the evil of your doings and because of the abominations which you have committed, therefore is your land a desolation and an astonishment and a curse without an inhabitant as at this day. Because ye have burned incense and because ye have sinned against the Lord and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord nor walked in his law nor in his statutes nor in his testimonies, therefore this evil has happened unto you as at this day. January 28th, 1986. Long time ago. On the pad, launch pad at Cape Canaveral, I believe it was called Cape Kennedy at that time, sat the Challenger spacecraft ready to enter into orbit, ready to take off. Very cold night that night. It was in the teens in Florida. You say, Preacher doesn't get cold in Florida. Oh yeah, it gets cold in Florida. They've got a city called Frost Proof. I said, have you ever had frost here? Oh yeah, we've had frost. Yeah, down in the teens in that area of Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, Cape Canaveral. And caused a concern, caused a concern with the engineers from Thiokol and NASA engineers. They actually had a midnight meeting, midnight conference, teleconference, and said, the Thiokol engineers said, we have a bad feeling about this. And I said, what's the issues? I think the cold weather's gonna affect the O-rings. And NASA said, do you have any evidence? Do you have any data? Do you have any hard data you can show me? And I said, no, we just have a feeling, have an instinct. And he said, well, we can't cancel the flight based on your feeling. And by the time morning came, and they waited till almost noon, the temperature had gone up to 36 degrees, the ice was melting, everything looked good. 73 seconds into the flight, and you know the story, there was an explosion. And I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but the Challenger didn't blow up. The rocket boosters and that's the stuff that exploded. The Challenger, going beyond the speed of sound, when it got unstable at that speed, it just disintegrated. That's how the Challenger ended and the people in it died. It just disintegrated. The source of the explosion was the right-hand solid rocket booster. And from the flight data of the previous launches, 24 in all, there were file cabinets filled with warnings about a potential catastrophe. 14 of the 24 flights, when inspected, showed fire damage and other signs of failure in the O-rings. Two years before the Challenger disaster, a memo from Morton Thiokol had been sent to NASA with an urgent warning. Six months before Challenger, another memo was sent from Morton Thiokol by Mr. Roger Biosgeli, a Thiokol rocket engineer. He said, quote, it's my honest and very real fear that if we do not take immediate action to team up to solve the problem with the field joint, that's the O-ring joint, Having a number one priority or we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight crew and all the launch pad facilities. He thought it would blow up on the launch pad. He was 73 seconds off. It blew up when it got up there. And the reason for not fixing the problem was a deviance from the standard of performance established 10 years before. They had tested this, obviously you're not going to use something you don't test, but it was tested under a no pressure situation ten years before. And when the space shuttle flights began it was a pressure situation. So what do you mean? The goal was to eventually launch 26 flights a year. That's one every two weeks. And economically, that's the only thing that made sense. The only reason to go up there, and an economic reason that would make good sense, was to go every two weeks. And what they're doing is they're launching satellites and stuff from there, and doing repairs on the space station. So there was a push, every two weeks we need to get this out here. Don't tell us anything about grounding the flight. Don't tell us we have a problem. Let's just get these things up in the air. The standard was that the O-ring should never see any damage. That was the standard. Not what it could and could not do when damaged. And that's what NASA had done. The first sign of damage was from the second launch. The first launch, and understand how this works, they would shoot them up, and then the rocket boosters would end up falling back to the ocean, the parachutes would come out, it would float back to the ocean, they had put air inside of these things so when it hit the ocean it would float, and the Coast Guard would come out, hook it up, drag it back to Cape Kennedy, and there they would pick it up, take it apart, take it back into the hangar, take it apart, check the O-rings, check things, put it back together, refuel it. You could do that in a couple days. The second one they got in there and they took it apart. And they looked at the O-rings and they were shocked. They were seeing fire damage in these O-rings and there should be zero damage to those. What are you gonna do? They voiced their opinion. But more tests were made and different things were looked at and they came to the conclusion that we can get away with this. This was called a criticality one deviance. There could be no damage to the O-ring. They tested it and tested it. They put it three times the PSI that it's supposed to be able to hold NASA, so no reason to ground the fleet. The third and the fourth fifth showed no damage. The sixth one had damage. The next 18 flights, 24 in total, showed little to no damage. It's less than they saw with number two. So four years and 24 missions normalized the deviation of the damaged O-ring. Meaning it came to be expected and was not a concern. Even though it was still considered a criticality one defect. Challenger was number 25. And seven astronauts lost their lives. When it could have been stopped. And you think, well, NASA must have learned their lesson. Well, 17 years later, they repeated it with the Columbia incident. I remember where we were. We were in Nokomis, Florida, when I heard on the news of this Columbia disintegrating over Texas. And the issue was, There was foam that was protecting the fuel tanks and a piece of foam would fly off and it damaged a spot on the wing and upon re-entry that damaged spot was allowed to get too hot and that wing defected and crashed. The damage allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate the heat shield, destroy the internal wing structure which caused the orbiter to become unstable and break apart. This had happened on previous flights with minor to near catastrophic disaster. And a comment made by one of the Columbia board members, quote, NASA had lived for 20 years with the idea that foam, the foam on the gas tank, could cause a catastrophe. Foam appeared on the list of a critical safety risk for every flight, but its defects were given a standing waiver. So on Saturday, February 1st, 2003, seven more astronauts would die. Now, I told you those stories because here's what I want you to understand. Diane Vaughn, who was a sociologist, not my favorite kind of people, but she was a sociologist, researched both of these incidents. And she wrote a book called The Challenger Launch Decision, Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. And there she introduces a concept that has become very popular in some fields today. It's called normalization of deviance. And how many have heard of that term? Normalization of deviance. And you know I preach a lot about deviance. You've heard me use that word before and not realizing that somebody actually done a study on it and has come up with the concept of normalization of deviance. Vaughn defines normalization of deviance where a clearly unsafe practice becomes considered normal if it does not immediately cause a catastrophe. She said, quote, a long incubation period before a final disaster with early warning signs that were either misinterpreted, ignored, or missed completely. And signs of normalization of deviance are such things as statements like this. We've always done it that way and nothing happened. Or we may have cut some corners but the job got done and the customer and the client is happy, everybody's happy. And so there's the process. You've got the standard. You've got the temptation to go substandard because of outside pressure, we've gotta get this done, job's gotta be done, et cetera, et cetera. We can't ground these flights. Temptation to go substandard because of outside pressure leads to deviation from the standard And when there's a deviation from the standard, nothing bad happens. So you repeat the same with the same results. Deviation now becomes the standard. And then there's the disaster. So here we have the standard. No damage at all to the O-ring. That's the standard. Well, we had damage here and nothing happened. And these were damaged a little bit and nothing happened. And we tested this and tested that and nothing's happened and so we're doing this. And so notice in the back of the mind of the NASA engineers, this became normal. And so they continued to work that way. And this period here is called the incubation period where you fall away from the standard and you begin to adopt a substandard and disaster after that. Now, I said that and I had you read the text. If you're in Jeremiah 44, stay there. If not, go back to Jeremiah 44. I wanna show you something. There's a spiritual aspect to this. When I first heard about normalization and deviation, this is the text that came to my mind because they did the same thing. They thought the same way. Jeremiah chapter 44, look at verse 16. They said to Jeremiah, the preacher, the prophet, as for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee. You know what Jeremiah's preaching? The standard. You know what they're saying? We can go substandard. We're not gonna meet this standard here. We don't care about that. We wanna go here. We'll do what we wanna do right here. Verse 17, but we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense at the Queen of Heaven, to pour drink offerings unto her. So there's the deviation from the standard to whatever they think the standard should be. Verse 17, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. By the time they were participating in it, there was a normalization of deviance. Notice he said our fathers, that's two generations. The last good king, Josiah, would have been around 30, 35 years prior, where he got rid of the idols. Their problem is idolatry. He got rid of the idols, but in 30 to 35 years, they set them up again, they began doing the same thing again. Verse 17, and look at the statement. And were well and saw no evil. Well, we're doing it this way, but nothing happened. There was no disaster, there was no catastrophe. Nothing happened. So in the back of the mind, it must be okay, nothing happened. Again, that's the incubation period. Verse 18. Jeremiah says to them, you've been consumed by the sword and by the famine. Verse 22, says the Lord could no longer bear because of the evil of your doings, because of the abominations which you've committed, therefore is your land a desolation, a stonemason, a curse, without an inhabitant at this day. Disaster, what was the disaster? Babylonian army coming in under Nebuchadnezzar, and destroying the city of Jerusalem, and destroying the temple, and making the land a barren wasteland, to which these people fled to Egypt. And Jeremiah says the reason why the problem exists is because of your idolatry. But for years, for two generations, they were in the incubation period. We're doing this and nothing's happening. We're offering sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and nothing has happened. We're making cakes to the Queen of Heaven and God hasn't done anything yet. And then it hits, just like that. Normalization of deviance. So today I'd like to make a little application to that because it is just as true spiritually as it is in the technology world and the other applications it's made. We have a standard. Very familiar text, go to 2 Timothy chapter three, let's just look at it again, 2 Timothy chapter three. Very familiar text, but this is our standard. In fact, it's 2 Timothy three in one hand and Isaiah chapter eight in the other. 2 Timothy chapter 3. We have a standard. 2 Timothy chapter 3, look at verse 16. And you could probably quote it by memory. All scripture is given by inspiration of God. And we talked about what inspiration means. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. What's the first thing? Doctrine. Doctrine. your church is all about doctrine yeah all scriptures give my inspiration of God knows proper doctrine for reproof for instruct for correct as a correction or instruction correction correction and instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect truly furnished unto all good works we have a standard He's all about preacher. Paul was talking to Timothy, Timothy was a young preacher, and he's saying that to another preacher. And what do you think Timothy's gonna preach to his congregation? That's the message Timothy will be preaching to his congregation. He will be teaching them doctrine, he will be reproving them, he will be correcting them, he will be giving them instruction on how to live a righteous life. Because he said that's the standard. Now go to Isaiah chapter eight. Isaiah chapter 8, look at verse 20. And Isaiah is having a problem at that particular time. There are people that are going to wizards and other kind of witchcrafty people. And these people say they're talking to, you know, the dead and all that. And the other people are saying, how do we know? And Isaiah says this, and remember when Isaiah said this, they didn't have much of a Bible at the time, but they had some Bible. And he said, to the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it's because there is no light in them. You see what Isaiah said? Isaiah said we have a standard. And if somebody starts talking about substandard stuff, there's no light in them. Ignore that. We have a standard. Now, if you are sitting there thinking, oh, but it's so high. The standard of God is so hard. If you're thinking that, go to 1 John. 1 John chapter five. because I know I know the thought of a yeah I want to live by the Bible preacher but it's just hard it's there's I gotta do this gotta do that first John chapter 5 look at verse 3 1st John chapter 5 verse 3 for this is the love of God that we keep his commandments his commandments what are the next three words are not grievous preachers too hard no that's not it says right there his commandments are not grievous it's not hard to walk for the Lord thou shalt not kill well I struggled with that one today I was down I want to go out today and kill when's the last time you felt like that now should I doesn't bother me a bit I don't plan on killing anybody now should not bear false witness I don't plan on lying to anybody Are they hard? Love thy neighbor as thyself, is that hard? You know how to love yourself. Not hard to love your neighbor as yourself. It's not grievous. We have a standard here which for us is pretty easy to obtain along with the fact that we have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in us. We've got a new nature inside, we talked about that last week. We've got a preserved book. It's not hard to maintain the standard. But our society sure had a hard time with it. John Adams said this one time, talking about the founding fathers not being Christian and all that stuff. Okay, here's what John Adams said. Quote, suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. What a utopia. That was his opinion. People on a desert island, the only thing they have is a Bible, and they live by that Bible, they're gonna have a wonderful life. From our founding through a civil war and two great wars after that, Americans toted their Bibles and guns into the bloodiest of battles to defend liberty, freedom, democracy around the world. In fact, after World War II, it was Dwight D. Eisenhower that added One Nation Under God to the Pledge of Allegiance. So we're doing pretty good at that point. Understand this I've never said I never will say America's perfect, but we sure have been better than we are 1943 The Supreme Court ruled in West Virginia Board of Education versus Barnett That making students recite the Pledge of Allegiance violated the First Amendment That's where this stuff begins I mean you had the option to say it or you didn't have to say it. I remember going to school, I went to school in the 60s and we started every day, pledge allegiance to the flag, blah, blah, blah. But that ruling ended a 165 year tradition where every student before that would stand up and pledge allegiance to the flag. 1962, the wonderful state of New York, which are two horrible states in this country. New York is one and California is the other. Politically speaking, beautiful states. California's beautiful. New York is okay. In 1962, the New York board approved optional prayer. Pray or not pray. Which led to the Engel versus Vitale, June 25th, 1962 Supreme Court decision which declared that school prayer is unconstitutional. so here we go and the result of that quote since the Supreme Court banned organized public school prayer and again it's God God is looking at what people are deciding somebody said one time as long as there's tests there will be prayer in school okay individual one but this is talk about organized let's talk about what they're gonna The Supreme Court banned organized public school prayer. Since then, over the years, this has been linked to numerous social ills and an increased decline in respect for authority in the classrooms. Eliminating school prayer put America on the road to moral and spiritual ruin. You say, well, that's what some preacher said. No, that's what sociologists have said. And it isn't hard to figure out, David Bartlett had published books years ago with the graphs showing how much crime went up, and single parent birthing, and divorce, and he wrote before LGBTQWD40NCAA. I'm not thinking it got any better. So the deviation has become the norm. When I went to school, and I had to avoid the dinosaurs stepping on me, I understand that, but I went to school in the 60s, I knew of one kid, one kid whose parents had gotten divorced. It was a friend of mine. His dad met her in World War II, married a Japanese woman, Mitsu. She was absolutely insane. I never met her, but I heard her. She's always yelling at somebody, screaming at somebody. She would take an egg, chop the end off, suck it down, raw egg. Okay, if that's your thing. They ended up getting divorced. That's the only one I know. Only one I know. Let me ask you a question. How many young people really know, now let me rephrase this. Young people know of a lot of people that are divorced in this day and age, right? I used to hate it getting on my bus route where one week I had to pick a kid up here because that's where dad was dropping off because he had custody that weekend and next week I pick him up here because mom has custody this weekend and how many kids go through that and it seems to me that divorce has become the norm from this standard right here where I said what God had joined together that no man put asunder right down here we've got a normalization of divorce And if it's not divorce, it's people living together. And the children are the one that are having to deal with this stuff. I usually say children in this society are the collateral damage of two stupid adults. But what's gonna happen to them when they grow up? You know, when these kids grow up, you know what their standard will be? The deviation. Unless somehow they come to Christ and somehow they are able to be brought into church or Sunday school where they're taught this is the standard right up here. And that's what we try to teach in our Sunday schools. That's what we try to preach in our junior church. Here's the norm up here. But we've always done it this way. And don't care about how you always done it this way. This is the norm. This is what you need to strive for. Pregnancy's out of wedlock. LGBTQ trans males and female sports etc all that stuff Injustice oh yeah preacher there's injustice when I say injustice what I'm talking about is this people that are Praying in front of an abortion clinic that are arrest and put in jail for two year two years sentence That's what that's what my talking about injustice and talk about the stuff in Springfield, Ohio one of these Haitians And they're not all bad people some of these Haitians that came over to Springfield, Ohio were very successful They had business they bought houses. They've started business there some of them haven't and and they don't understand the traffic laws and one of them got in a car and drove down the road and killed a 71-year-old woman and was not charged. I think that's called injustice. Ralph Waldo Emerson, some of you may know the name. Poet, writer, not a Christian. He was raised in the home of a Unitarian pastor and the Unitarians are nuts. mean I just this is you just must be honest about it they're nuts and he got into this transcendentalist movement and all that and he he was kind of a kook himself but even somebody like that had enough sense to know this he wrote this about morality he said there can be no high civility without a deep morality Even he had enough sense to know when a nation loses its morality, when the normalization becomes the deviation, and you step away from the standard and live substandard, he knew that's gonna cause a problem. And I think it was Adams, I don't have the quote right off hand, but I think it was Adams that said, our Constitution, the laws that we have made, are only gonna work for people that are subservient to the God of heaven. But you take God out of this thing and you take his reason for morality out of the thing. These laws don't make any sense. People aren't gonna follow them. So that's where our society is. Our society is now living in the normalization of deviation for the most part, morally speaking. But I'm done talking about them, I wanna talk about you. Is there normalization of deviation in your personal life? Because we're human beings too, aren't we? And you know, a lot of times normalization of deviation is the result that, you know, I can cut some corners here and I can avoid this and stop doing this, what have you. I can live here. And then you know what you'll say? And God didn't strike me dead. That's what you'll say. And when you say something like that, count on it, you're in the incubator. You're in the incubator. We talked I think last week or a week before, 1 Corinthians 11, 28, don't turn there. But God said let a man examine himself. And he's talking about the Lord's Supper here. But the idea is very simple, let a man examine himself. You've got the opportunity as a Christian to examine yourself. And if we judge ourselves, remember that verse? If we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged. God gives us the opportunity to judge ourselves. again we're not talking about your motives we talked about that before you can't judge your motives you don't know really know your motives but you can judge your actions and your behavior you may know me you may not know why you're doing something but you sure do know what you're doing and let me ask you this are you doing things and saying well that's the way we've always done it that's the way we've always done it know I've told parents and I continue to tell parents don't just tell your children what to do tell them why you do it okay and give them the biblical basis for why you do what you do because every biblical tradition and I'm using tradition in the sense that Paul used it every biblical tradition has a biblical basis all right When we were on the road, my girls always dressed like good Christian girls. And I never said, when they said, why do we dress like this? I never said, well, that's the way you're supposed to. I never said that. I said, because the Bible says women are to adorn themselves in modest apparel. And you figure out what modest is. Modest apparel. I think wearing a pair of jeans is modest. Ask the construction workers, they'll tell you. if it's modest or not. Why do men have short hair? The Bible says it's a shame for a man to have long hair. Daddy, why do I got to get my hair cut? Shame for a man to have long hair. And you do that and you're teaching them the biblical principles. But why do we have to go to church? Why do we have to go to church all the time? Because the Bible says not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is. Well, Bobby's parents don't go to church all the time as the manner of some is. We not forsaking assembling ourselves together. And I taught you the teaching of the concept of being in the local church. What a joy it is to be in the local church. I think the greatest asset, and I've said it time and time again, I'll continue to say it, the greatest asset you have in this life is your local church. And the friends that'll be the closest to you are in this local church. And the people that'll help you are in this local church. The people that'll encourage you are in this local church. The people that'll tell you the truth about yourself are in this local church. Greatest asset you have as a believer. And what a wonderful time we have. We get together and we sing. We sang beautiful hymns this morning. Beautiful, special. But why don't we sing? Why do we sing? Why do we sing in church? Anybody know why we sing in church? Well, that's just what you do. No, no, no, no. Well, you have to fill up a certain amount of time because the preacher doesn't get paid until 20 after. No, no, it's not that. Colossians 3 verse 16 says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in sounds and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord. That's why we sing. And I know when I came here, you had a certain list of what, 20 songs you were to sing and you only sing three verses or whatever of these songs. That's nonsense. Because singing is such an important part of ministry. Preaching is number one, and the singing in congregation is number two. I mean, even in the Old Testament, David had sent men up to be over the service of the house of the Lord and singing. And some of you here, I know the mentality. Well, I'm gonna be late, but as long as I get there for the preaching. And I appreciate the fact you respect the preaching. but you miss something when you're not in with the singing. I don't like to sing. Then listen to it. Just sit there and listen to it. And listen to the voices of God's children singing, which is not a problem unless the guy behind you can't carry a tune in a bucket. Then you might have to move. But if you don't want to sing, just listen to it and enjoy it. And if you like to sing, sing it out. Some of you think church is in the shower, it's the only place you sing. And let me say this, special music, very good, very good, I enjoy the special music we have. I'm gonna tell you something, that offering has taken that special music right there. And you think, well, pianos, they just go up there to fill up the time so these guys can get the offering taken, get them to come sit back down. No, no, it's something for you to hear while the offering is being taken. The offering's a very spiritual thing. I know it isn't treated that way. But the offering is a very spiritual thing. And let me say this. While somebody's playing a beautiful hymn up there, I look out, most of you are listening to it. Some of you are running your mouth. You know what you should do while the pianist is playing? Keep your mouth shut. This is something they're doing for you. This is an admonition for you. And you miss it. And it's rude to talk while somebody's playing up here, okay? But that seems to be a Baptist thing. I remember the lady that taught our girls how to play piano, Joy Hardin, one of the ladies, was the pianist for the Detroit Baptist Temple, where Beach and Bick was up there years ago. And she played the offertory. And they'd say, you know, during the offertory, everybody's talking, everybody's yakking. I don't know if they're setting up business deals or, you know, lunch, dinner, lunch appointments, whatever, everybody's yakking. Nothing spiritual about it, not just everybody yacking. So she said, you know what I'm gonna do one Sunday morning, and she did it. She played the theme to the Mickey Mouse Club for the offertory. And nobody came up to her and said, what was that all about? Nobody. So when we are singing, playing music, it's for you. In Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord was what Paul said. That's the basis, the biblical basis. So you need to ask yourself in your personal life, are you in an incubation period? How's your prayer life going? We'll have prayer meeting Friday night for the ladies, Saturday morning for the men. We won't have a crowd like this there. and understand some people can and some people can't, but how's your personal prayer life doing? Oh, you know, I'm supposed to pray every day and all that, but you know, I can skip it today. And well, I can do this much. And I'll pray when things are really important. You see how that works? How's your Bible reading and study? well I go to church preacher preaches we got the best preacher in the whole whole city he teaches us so good I don't need to study the Bible during the week boy you nuts how's your witnessing coming how's your passing out tracks going you know there was a time in your life you felt guilty of somebody you were talking to walked away and you didn't talk to him about Jesus Christ or at least invite him to church there was a time when you felt guilty because I could have had a chance to pass a track out and I didn't do that and you feel kind of bad about that you had a standard but now well if I remember well one of these times I'm going to witness that guy you see how it goes how you doing following the standard are you in the incubation period I read Gaye's text, I think it was Thursday night, that her uncle had just died, her sister was walking through a parking lot, somebody gave her a gospel tract at the exact right time because their mind was on death. And she took a picture of it and showed it to Gaye, and Gaye said, well, if it talks about trusting Jesus Christ your Savior, it's a good thing. And then she was gonna give it to her brother. Isn't it interesting that some guy in a parking lot that had a gospel track, listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit, walked over and said, I need to give you this. And when's the last time that's happened to you? Holy Spirit tapping on your heart, well, you know, I can't do it this time, maybe next summer. Pretty soon the Holy Spirit just stops tapping on your shoulder. You're in the incubation period. How about sin? Since we're covering all this other stuff, how about sin? You got some sin going on in your life? The standard, my little children, I would that you sin not, 1 John 2 and verse 1. If we sin, we have an advocate of the Father Jesus Christ the righteous to get us back to here. But nobody knows. It's just between me and this other person. Nothing bad has happened yet. It may be something as simple, as stupid as taking shortcuts in your Christian walk. What shortcuts are you taking that you shouldn't? How about your family life? Is there normalization, deviation in your family life? You know, today's public school students are taught marriage is marriage and gender has nothing to do with it. Children can be raised by two mothers, two fathers, single parent. A mother nor a father has any unique thing to offer to a child. Single parent households can live off government handouts, et cetera, et cetera. That's what they're being taught. That's not the standard. He that made them an beginning made them male and female. What God had joined together that no man put asunder. There's your standard. But we are not part of the world. Hopefully. But how's your family life? Have a standard for raising your children? You have devotions with your kids? When our kids were little, we were traveling on the bus and we would get our own Bible reading done and what have you done and eat breakfast or what have you. And then we sat around the bus, had the couch here and had a couch over here, my chair, a couple chairs over here. We'd sit around and have our devotions, read the psalm of the day, spend time in prayer. I said, why'd you do that? I'm trying to raise my children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. If you've got kids, are you doing that? Are you having devotions with your children? I never thought of that never heard of that. That's a sad thing isn't once when you haven't even heard of that stuff You know what has become in America is there was a time when mom and dad and the kids went to church Then mom and dad said we're staying home. We'll send they can make sure the kids get to church Let's make sure the kids get to church and Sunday school make sure they get on the bus and in the following generation nobody goes and You know what we need to see? We need to see families sitting in church. I appreciate every parent that allows their child to come to our Sunday school, I appreciate that. But I'm thinking, why don't you bring them? What's keeping you from bringing your children to church? Don't you realize you have a responsibility? And you bring them to church, you make them pay attention? well you know the little kids you can give them something to color and what have you well when they're 16 they need to be paying attention bringing them to special meetings when we have brother Rogers in or we have missions conference or what have you bringing them to that brother Spurgeon shows up you're gonna bring them to that Well, you know, a meeting's three days long. We're gonna come one day. We'll come Wednesday, we can't make it Monday. So you're teaching your kid, you know what? Special meetings aren't important. That's what you're teaching them. Well done. How about normalization of deviation in ministry? Ecclesiastes says whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest. Colossians 3.23, whatsoever you do, do it heartily as unto the Lord, not unto men. So you're prepping well for your Sunday school, Sunday school teacher? I hope you're not studying your lesson on the way here. I mean, that becomes very dangerous if you're the one driving, but I hope that's not one of, I hope you spent some time before that. you doing the additional things the crafts and the show-and-tell and stuff like that are you doing stuff like that I mean that's the standard we want to do the best we could do my wife always shows me this little crafts you know the go along with a lesson of those cool little stuff for little kids cool stuff they enjoy that junior church we had a meeting in junior church last week, and we've got a great curriculum to use for junior church. I really like it, and there's extra stuff that needs to be done. Boy, I sure hope everybody does what they're supposed to do. Well, we were gonna do that, but I thought, nah, I'm not gonna do that, and I don't have time to prepare for that, and I'll just go in and I'll preach. There you are. Special music, our guys got up and sang wonderfully this morning. You know what they did? They practiced Thursday night. And we don't want people up here that didn't practice on Thursday night to suddenly come up and say, I wanna sing. Sorry, you need to practice. You're supposed to be doing your best for the Lord. Well, I can get by. Yeah, yeah, you're getting by. Now, the most important part that definition that miss Vaughn gave was the statement where she said a long incubation period that's what happens before the final disaster challenger at 23 flight incubation periods I said 23 instead of 24 because the first one was okay Columbia had 20-year history of warning them about foam coming off the gas tanks and hitting something and causing a problem Judah had two generations of the preaching of Jeremiah to warn them and miss Vaughn went on to say that with early warning signs that were either misinterpreted ignored or missed completely so he had the memos from Wharton thank all the warnings from the engineers the board members of Columbia all saying something's gonna go wrong here and Judah had the preaching of Jeremiah warning them about all idolatry warning about all the wickedness and the sin that went with that and And by the way, Jeremiah preached all over. He preached at the gates of the temple. He preached in the court of the temple. He preached at the house of the king. He preached in the valley of Hinnom by the east gate. He preached in Tophet. You know what was going on in Tophet? That's where they had the idol, the brazen idol set up, where they would sacrifice their children to this burning idol. And he was there preaching to these people, saying this is wrong and you've gotta stop. there are preachers all over this country that have been preaching hopefully the truth from the Word of God and I don't think they're misinterpreted if they're good preachers I don't think you're gonna think well I think he was saying this you know what I'm saying the only thing is you're either ignoring it or you're missing it completely and then there's the disaster Then there's the phone call in the middle of the night. There's the knock on the office door. There's the text. Preacher, this just happened. Why don't you just write what you should write? Disaster. Everything in my life just blew up. My life has disintegrated. I've destroyed my family. Things have come out about me and what I've been doing and disaster. And I understand we're all human beings. We all at times will succumb to that outside pressure. I've got to get the job done I I got to please my family I got to meet my family responsibilities my business needs to make a profit therefore I can cut corners here and I can cut corners there and I can kind of skip church here and I can skip church there and you're heading for disaster that's the incubation period leads to the disaster so Didn't mean to preach to you this morning, but the two terrible disasters in NASA's history happened because of normalization of deviation. And as Christians, we need to be careful about normalization of deviation in our lives, in our families, in our ministry, and to heed the warnings. You know what's a wonderful thing about being a Christian? We have the ability to nullify the incubation period. So what do you mean? We examine our lives and say, you know what? Preacher's right, I've been cutting corners here, I've been cutting corners here, I've been allowing this, I've been allowing that, but I know if I confess my sin, he's faithful and just to forgive me and to cleanse me from all righteousness and I can start over right now. And every time we do this, we can do this. And the idea is to do this before the disaster. What a wonderful option as a Christian. If we judge ourselves, we should not be judged. What a wonderful thing it is to have a Savior that's so merciful and so gracious and so loving. He gives us that open door if we confess our sins. He's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What a wonderful God. So it's up to you to figure out if you're in the incubation period, what's going on, judge yourselves, examine yourselves, and get it right. And if you get it right, you avoid the disaster. If NASA would have listened to Morton Thiokol engineers and stopped at number two and said, let's figure this thing out so we don't have another problem, seven astronauts would have been alive. If they would have listened to the board members of Columbia who are seeing this thing and say, you know, we need to fix this foam problem, it comes off every time and it's gonna hit something and cause a problem one of these times, if they would have stopped right there and said, we need to fix this, seven more astronauts would have been alive. And if Christians would decide to judge themselves, examine themselves, Less Christians would be out there and don't want to come to church, don't want anything to do with God, who have a miserable life. It can be avoided. So, in fact, if Judah would have listened to Jeremiah's preaching, 70 years of captivity in Babylon, the destruction of their city, the destruction of their temple would have all been avoided. Now, if you're a Christian, you have the option, I just explained it, the option of self-judgment, the confession of sins, to get it right. If you're not a Christian, here's the standard. You must be born again. Well, I'll go to church, I'll try to live a good life, and you find yourself one second after you die in a lake of fire. What went wrong? You didn't go here. you must be born again. Say, preacher, how do you get born again? We understand that we're all sinners. God cannot allow sin into heaven. And so he made a way for sinners to be able to be forgiven and allowed to go to heaven. And 2,000 years ago, God, manifest in human flesh, named Jesus Christ, died on the cross for our sins, shed his blood as the payment for sin. He was the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world, hanging on the cross, paying for your sin, past, present, and future. And he made the way. And it's up to you to decide if you wanna trust him and what he did or not. It's that simple. Talked about that in Sunday school this morning. If you're trusting in the wrong thing, you cannot make it to heaven. Repentance toward God, faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Trusting Him. Yes, preacher, I know I'm a sinner. I know I can't save myself. I know my only hope is Jesus Christ. Now what do I do? Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. With a heart, man believeth unto righteousness. With a mouth, confession is made unto salvation. Simply receive Christ as your Savior. Ask Christ to come into your heart and save you. Not a complicated thing. But that's how you are born again. That's how you become a Christian. So that choice is up to you. We're gonna give an invitation here in just a minute like we do every week. And Walter will be up here leading the singing. Everybody will be standing. And if you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, we ask you simply to come forward. Somebody will meet you up here, a man with a man, a woman with a woman, and take a Bible and show you how to trust Jesus Christ to be your Savior. What a wonderful thought. You could walk out of here this morning knowing for sure that you're on your way to heaven and nothing can change that. Christian, God spoke to your heart this morning. Are you in the incubation period? Are there areas in your life that you need to straighten out, fix up, get confessed to get back up to the standard? Are you satisfied with the normalization of deviation? It's your choice. Father, we thank you this morning for your word. We thank you, Lord, for being such a wonderful God and Savior, a merciful God and Savior that is very patient. Thank you for your patience with us. Lord, I pray this morning that we will avail ourselves to the ability to self-judge. that you'll help us to avail ourselves to the ability to confess our sin, to be forgiven, to be renewed, to get back up to the standard where we should be. I also pray this morning, if anybody in here doesn't know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, that maybe this morning they'll come forward and receive Christ. Spirit of God, we're trusting you to lead this invitation, we're trusting you to speak to hearts, Thank you again for being our God. Walter, come ahead. Let's go ahead and stand. Turn your hymnals to 163. 163. Come every soul by sin oppressed, There's mercy with the Lord, And He will surely give you rest.