When Did Holiness Go Out Of Style? Right About the Time Everything Started Being Made in China...

When Did  Holiness Go Out of Style? 

Right about the Time We Started 

Singing Praises To God

Sitting in Chinese Made Chairs, using Chinese made phones and Computers

And Wearing Chinese Factory (slave labor)

Clothes

Isaiah 58 Ministries                             April 5, 2016 

Pastor "Faith"

Did holiness go out of style? Is religion so yesterday? If you ask most modern Christians, yes, ABSOLUTELY.... if you have "religion," you are an old fuddy duddy... they have a "relationship with God..." "Religion," they say "confines, constricts; it keeps people singing the same ol' hymns in a fake wood paneling modular building.  While their "relationship with God" builds giant fancy buildings with large screens, 12 member rock band for a worship team, and smoke and lights...please... "religion" would never allow smoke and mirrors...I mean, lights, lights... this is not a magic show, or is it?

Receive my instruction, and not silver,
And knowledge rather than choice gold;
11 For wisdom is better than rubies,
And all the things one may desire cannot be compared with her.“I, wisdom, dwell with prudence,

And find out knowledge and discretion. Proverbs 8:10-11

My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; and my revenue than choice silver.vs 19

Early Christians were persecuted Christians. They met in secret in one another's homes, they built an elaborate system of underground caves called catacombs, in which to meet and even live in while those on the surface were being rounded up, killed or imprisoned. 

They didn't have time to think about being "cool, " or "being relevant to this generation..." 

No, they were too busy "selling all they had to give to the poor," and finding that Christ meant cutting ones self off from the foolish luxuries that are only derived at the expense of those slaving beneath them, and bringing equality to master and slave. 

   Somewhere along the way, those in power, those in luxury, found that they could use religious ideals to control the masses, and in doing so gave a very bad name to religion, to holiness, for they pretended outward forms while inwardly "they were raving wolves..." 

    Kansas said something yesterday, "did you ever notice that Jesus and Paul spent a lot of time warning people about bad selfish leaders?"

    I was reading in Proverbs today and the verse "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," Proverbs 9:10 

kept coming to my mind... But what does it mean to "fear the Lord?" Well,  

TO FEAR THE LORD:
It's funny, because the answer to this is found in the previous chapter, Proverbs 8. This is one of the most sublime and amazing chapters in the Bible...
13 
“The [reverent], (highly respect, trust, bow down to, admiration) fear and worshipful awe of the Lord includes the hatred of evil;
Pride and arrogance and the evil way,
And the perverted mouth, I hate. Proverbs 8:13
1. hate evil
2.hate pride and arrogance 
3.hate the perverted mouth 

   wow,... that's kind of shocking to our senses, isn't it? But, like a math equation, we can put this all together:
    God wants us to have long life, to be provided for, and be guided by wisdom.... When searching for wisdom, we need to go to the beginning, both King David and his son say that the BEGINNING of wisdom is to fear the Lord... and that fearing the Lord means to shun evil, perverseness, pride, arrogance, and any perverted talk...
   Interesting because no one ever told me that all the wonders of God would be had by hating something... We are taught to love, have mercy, forgive... and yes, those are sides of one coin... but you cannot have one without the other...

William Penn
was one of the first to adopt the Quaker theology. They shunned excess and promoted equality among races, sexes, and age. They encouraged humility and temperance.

   "But the temperance I plead for is not only religiously by politically good: it is in the interest of good government to curb and rebuke excesses; it prevents many mischiefs. Luxury brings effeminacy, (men grown soft and weak, given to pleasure), laziness, poverty and misery. Temperance preserves the land. It keeps out foreign vanities, and improves our own commodities...
Proverbs 10:16 "The labor of the righteous leads to life, the wages of the wicked to sin."

Do We Make Sport of the Poor? 
"When the pale faces are more pitied, when the famished poor, the distressed widow, the helpless orphan, (God's works and your fellow creatures, are provided for); then, I say, if then, it will be time enough for you to plead the indifference of your pleasures. But that the sweat and tedious labor of the husbandman (farmer), early and late, cold and hot, wet and dry, should be converted into pleasure, ease, and pastime of a small number of men; that the care, the plough, the flail, should be in that continual severity laid upon nineteen parts of the land to feed the inordinate lusts and delicious appetites of the twentieth, is so far from the appointment of the great Governor of the world, and the God of the spirits of all flesh; that, to imagine such horrible injustice as the effects of his determinations, and not the intemperance of men, is wretched and blasphemous. As on the other side, it would be to deserve no pity, no help, no relief from God Almighty, for the people to continue that expense in vanity and pleasure, while the great necessities of such objects go unanswered; especially since God has made the sons of men but stewards of each other's urgent needs and relief. Yes, so strict is it commanded, that on the omission of these things, we find this dreadful sentence to be partly valid "Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire" Matt 25
On the contrary, to visit the sick, see the imprisoned, relieve the needy, etc. are such  excellent properties in Christ's account, that upon this He will pronounce such as blessed, saying "Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you, " Matt 25 So that the great are not, with the leviathan in the deep, to prey upon the small, much less to make a sport of the lives and labor of the lesser ones, to gratify their inordinate senses. William Penn

   As Americans, we show up on Sunday to our nice fancy church pew, sing our songs, and go out to lunch.... but we don't see the mobs of people that we have walked upon to enjoy such luxuries. And by luxury, I'm not saying that life in America is great, but think for a minute.
It's hard for me to type on a computer and rally against the Chinese or foreign suffering that allows us to have niceties...

We all know that practically everything we use is made in China...but what we don't want to look at is the average factory worker life:
15 people to one room
50 people to one bathroom
life that lives and breaths by the clock
http://www.npr.org/2013/11/15/243717512/what-are-the-lives-of-chinese-factory-workers-Behind all our material goods, from iPhones to sneakers, is a narrative of exploited Chinese workers with bleak lives. Reporter Leslie T. Chang says that's a disrespectful narrative. She sought out workers in a Chinese megacity and tells their stories.-like

There is a Price

There is a price to this efficiency, though, and it's mostly measured in human terms. The story has been told and re-told: explosions in poorly-ventilated production facilities, depressed employees leaping to their death from dormitory buildings, and inhuman working hours and conditions. Even with the likes of Apple setting up Supplier Responsibility programs -- to the extent of Apple listing down 90% of its worldwide suppliers -- conditions are not likely to change. After all, with their production lines and time-to-market at stake, companies can usually afford to turn a blind eye to supposed shortages in social responsibility and safety standards.http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/why-everything-is-made-in-china-what-it-means-for-us-jobs-014306.php

(speaking of 1600's England): "for no nation I know is so infested with cheating mountebanks (someone who sells medicine in public with pretended cure) savage morrice-dancers (men in kilts dancing wildly), pick pockets, profane players and stagers (actors), to the slight of religion, the shame of the government, and the great idelness, expense, and debauchery of the people; for which the Spirit of the Lord is grieved, and the judgments of the Almighty are at the door, and the sentence ready to be pronounced, "Let him that is unjust be unjust still" (Rev 22:11 Eccl 12:1). Therefore, it is that we cannot but loudly call upon the generality of the times, and testify both by our life and doctrine against the like vanities and abuses, that if possibly any may be weaned from their folly, and choose the good old path of temperance, wisdom, gravity, and holiness, the only way to inherit the blessings of peace and plenty here, and eternal happiness hereafter... William Penn