Pastor Hurst

Uprooting Crabgrass

It’s that time of year again--the time when invasive crabgrass exponentially grows and splotches lawns like stains of past spills on a nice carpet. It lies low growing mostly horizontally radiating lengthening tendrils that bend desirable grass over and smother it like a flat octopus with a hundred tentacles. Crabgrass drives me mad. I find myself seeing it when I close my eyes at night. I arm myself with my weed deracinating tool and spend hours on my lawn trying to free it of this blight. Yesterday, I was doing just that. I straightened up to rest my back and to wipe sweat from my forehead. Portions of the lawn caught my eye. They were parts of the lawn where I would NOT have to uproot any crabgrass. Thankfully! But, why? Why is there no crabgrass on those parts of the lawn? It is this simple. The sections of the lawn without crabgrass are those where the good grass is most healthy. The grass is healthier there because it receives more runoff from the rain, is shaded parts of the day from the brutal August sun, grows in more fertile soil, and has received the best care. I concluded what lawn specialists try to preach: The best deterrent of crabgrass or any weed is healthy grass. Healthy grass comes from good lawn care. I realize as my pile of pulled crabgrass clumps grew, that I really wasn’t helping those parts of the lawn infested with it. One good clump can produce multiple thousands of seeds that can lie dormant in the soil months before sprouting. In fact, I was probably hurting those sections of turf. However careful I tried to be, I uprooted good grass along with the crabgrass. All of the above flashed through my mind in a second’s time followed by the thought, “This is instructive of both one’s individual life and one’s ministry to others.” Foibles, faults, failures, and sins can sprout and create ugly splotches on a Christian’s soul, cancers on his heart, unhealthy toxins in his relationship with Christ. He can worry, jerk on, seek to exterminate these. But, the best prevention of blights in one’s relationship with Christ comes from keeping one’s heart spiritually healthy. If my lawn is not healthy, I cannot keep crabgrass from growing nor successfully purge my lawn of it. If my relationship with Christ is not healthy, I will be unable to keep sin, unhealthy desires, bitterness, jealousy, covetousness, discouragement, doubt, fear, and a host of other weeds from growing. I will fight a failing battle trying to get rid of those weeds once they manifest and mature in my heart. Myself being one, I know that out of concern for folks’ souls, a preacher can become as alarmed by the evident sins, failures, and faults in the lives of people whom he loves and ministers to as I am of the crabgrass on the lawn. He wants them, for their own sake, eternal souls’ sake, to be rid of those things. So, he attacks those “weeds” verbally in a campaign much like I wage against crabgrass. He zeroes in on a thing, grabs hold, jerks, pulls. Yet, he soon realizes, he cannot tell his efforts have yielded any difference at all. It is a liberating revelation for the minister to realize the best way to handle the weeds is to provide from the Word the sunshine, rain, nutrients, that will make the heart healthy, inspire good desires, and enable fruit to grow. This is all true in society too. The reason the splotches of ugly leftism have grown in our society and of destructive socialism in our universities is that our culture is not healthy, the home is not healthy, marriage is not healthy, and education dispensers are not healthy. We can rail against the crabgrass of our culture, yell and scream, and jerk at it. But, only a healthy heart, home, church, and society will be free of such crabgrass. Of course, any who take care of their lawn know there is still a time a weed must be pulled, weed killer must be sprayed, and the lawn treated for invaders. Yet, that does not change the fact that focusing on making the good grass grow is the single most important requirement to a weed-free lawn. Endeavoring to have a healthy lawn results in far fewer weeds than resorting to the singular campaign of pulling weeds. I have rid areas of my lawn of crabgrass by jerking it out with my deracinater. But, those areas have brown divots where the weed has been removed, and there are, despite trying to clean up, strands of shriveled weed lying about. Those areas are ugly. A person’s best efforts to rid himself of weeds of sin and lust, leave his soul and life ugly. God can make his soul a healthy, beautiful lawn; one that both is rid of weed and prevents them from growing to begin with.

A Tribute To Sunday School Teachers: Sis. Ervie Lee Hooten

Recently, when in my hometown for my father’s funeral, my wife and I walked the few blocks from the house where I was raised to the church of my childhood. As I stood on the front steps of the church, tidal waves of memory inundated me. Those waves rose and came from fifty-plus years ago, from my childhood experiences in and around that stone church. Among them were many reminiscences of Sunday School. I thought of my childhood Sunday School classes and teachers. One teacher dominated those thoughts—Sis. Evie Lee Hooten. She’s the one who stood me in a corner for tying some girl’s dress’s bow to the back of her chair. She’s the one who got on to me for talking in class. And, she’s the one who impacted my life in a most powerful way. I cannot remember anything in particular she taught. I do remember the passion for Christ in her voice. I do remember her weeping while giving a testimony. I do remember the fervency with which she prayed and worshiped. And, I remember her interest in me. After a pause, we walked on past the church. It took only a few steps to be again reminded of Ervie Lee Hooten. She had lived next door to the church. I halted again as another spate of memories about her washed over me. Ervie Lee Hooten had not only been my childhood Sunday School teacher; she had been my father’s too. He too had memories of her getting on to him when he did not behave in Sunday School. Having taught both me and my father means she taught for a long number of years. She was 96 when she died. I never knew until I read her obituary online that she had attended two state universities and a Bible college. The obit also reminded me that she had devoted several years of her life to working in an orphanage. All I knew as a child was that she was a tremendously spiritual woman who always made me sense the presence of God. Above, I said I could not remember anything specifically she taught. I do remember two things she told me. When I was a young adult, she shared with me about a revival she had recently visited in another part of the state. The way she told it created a deep hunger in my heart to see God move and awaken churches. Another thing I remember was a story she told in Sunday School when I was quite young: As a teenage girl, having recently gotten saved, she went to a “picture show,” a movie. She told how, as the movie began rolling in the darkened theater that she started to feel uncomfortable about being there. Suddenly, she felt a tap on her shoulder. She twisted around in her seat, but no one was seated behind her. Facing the screen again, she soon felt another tap; again, whirling around, she saw no one. The third time she felt the tap, she jumped up and ran out of the theater vowing to God that she would never go to “that worldly place” again. Now, this had to have taken place sometime around early 1930s. Just how bad could the movie have been? Yet, that was her heart—serve God all out. As her obituary put it, “She lived a life devoted to God.” Such devotion had its impact—to which I testify by finding myself writing of her. After I had gone into full-time ministry, each time I returned home and visited the church, she was one of the first to bee-line to me. She had dibs on me. She was my Sunday School teacher. One of the first things out of her mouth was, “Are you preaching tonight?” Her face would brighten if I was. After all, I was one of her Sunday School kids. Not long before she died, during a visit to my hometown, I stopped by her house just to thank her for the impact she’d had on my life as my Sunday School teacher. I never knew that would be the last time I would see her this side of heaven. For over forty-one years I have preached the Gospel. If my ministry has been beneficial in any way to anyone, I must allocate a huge portion of the credit to the impact of a Sunday School teacher, Sis. Ervie Lee Hooten. Just thinking of her makes me long for another move of the Spirit and to live more devotedly to God. Sunday School teachers make a difference!

THE UNCLOUDED DAY COMES AFTER THIS ONE

The sun was shining. Yet, in a solar eclipse, the moon dimmed the sun’s light. I remembered how eerie it was that while the sky was clear, and it was near noon, the sunlight seemed darkish, diminished. What should have been a perfect day bringing joy became shadowed with solemnity and melancholy. COVID and the subsequent nation-wide protesting and rioting have eclipsed the bright summer sun. It has eclipsed the light in our lives, our holidays, our church services, our family gatherings. This present reality that has overcast our lives with a dark shadow has brought from the dusty archives of memory a song we used to frequently sing when I was a child, “The Unclouded Day”: O the land of cloudless day, O the land of an unclouded day, O they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise, O they tell me of an unclouded day. But, notice, the unclouded day is not one in the run of human events as we know it. It is not a day of the here. It’s not now. It’s at the end of things. Our hope is not ultimately that this day will get better, but that a new day is coming. A day that can and will never know the dark shadow from a cloud or eclipse. My attempts at encouragement during COVID are so laced with realities as to be discouraging. Why? Because, although God does shine light into this darkness of the now, though there are bright days here and there, though there are blessings and victories in the present, we have failed in recent Christianity to pinpoint when where our hope is realized. We have put much emphasis on a hope in this life. Things are really bad, but our hope is that something wonderful is going to come from this trial—something soon. Something in life. Ultimately, our hope is not in something now, or something before the end. It is not a hope that things won’t end. Our hope is a hope after the end. Jesus died. That was the end. Then, He resurrected. The hope comes after the end. This world will melt with fervent heat. The end. Then, there comes a new heaven and a new earth. Nature is analogous to this fact that hope comes at the end: The tree browns. There’s no hope of new growth. There’s no hope things will be reversed. There’s no hope of new buds for the year. The leaves fall off. The limbs are bare. The end of growth. The end of that season. The hope comes after the end. It looks like it’s over for the tree in December. But, come April, or May, the tree is bursting with brilliant colors of its blooms. The hope was for after the end. People put too much hope in the here and now. They can’t ignore the shadow but they think, “Things in America are getting really bad. But, there is going to be a reversal. Reason and righteousness will rule again. Leftism will be defeated. Marriage will make a comeback. Families will be nuclear again.” “Folks are jettisoning their faith in unprecedented numbers. Our youth are becoming atheistic at unbelievable speed. But, there will be a great revival and their hearts will turn back to God.” Maybe. I pray so. Thank God, there is the pendulum swing principle in politics, economy, fads, and fashions—and faith. Thank God there are revivals that reverse, recalibrate, return. Yet, we must not forget. Our hope is really about after the end not before it. I am not preaching the end of hope. Never. I’m not preaching give up hope; I am preaching we can hope to the end because our hope is after the end. Praying for brighter days ahead? Yes!!! Me too. But, ultimately, we are looking for the Brightest Day ever. The New Day. The unending Day. A day uneclipsed by death, disease, debt, debauchery, duplicity. Oh, they tell me of an unclouded day. The uneclipsed day. God is light and in Him, there is no darkness at all. With Him, there is no variableness nor shadow of turning. “In the City where the Lamb is the Light” was another oft sung song. Jesus is the uneclipsed light reflecting off the Crystal Sea, streets of gold, walls of gems, and gates of pearl. There are no shadows in that land. There are no eclipses of that day. That’s our hope. That’s the Unclouded Day--a day that come after this shadowed one.

You Don’t Have To Quit—The Challenge

Life can become unbearably hard in its struggles, temptations, and trials. Being a believer does not exempt one from these. Often holding to faith intensifies them. I never minimize one’s personal difficulties. They are too real. Just because I don’t feel what another feels doesn’t mean that one isn’t hurting. Just because I don’t struggle with what another struggles doesn’t mean his battle is not fierce. Yet, through the years of pastoring, I have put forth this challenge: “If you are weary walking this way, wrung out running this race, fatigued fighting this fight, don’t quit. Consider this: If you could go to heaven for a visit right now, right in the middle of your present crisis, if you would chat and interview those believers who have already made it, you would discover that they, while on earth, had faced the same battles, struggles, and storms that Christians quit over every day.” They faced them. Yet they didn’t quit. Some even faced coliseums, burning at the stake, the rape of their female family members, the theft of all their property, the tearing down of their homes, long incarcerations, and horrible beatings. But, they did not quit. Things, for many, may be rough right now in so many ways exacerbated and inflamed by COVID, economic conundrums, and unrest and uproar in our streets. But, we do not have to quit. It is not a cheap shot. It is the same challenge the writer of Hebrews gave to those who were facing persecution for their faith. “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” (Heb 12:4). In modern speak, “You may be having it rough for your faith, but you have not been martyred for it.” We have to understand the context. The writer had just mentioned those who were mocked, beaten, incarcerated, stoned, sawn in two, tempted to give up their faith, pierced with a sword, made homeless and country-less, and brought to abject poverty (Heb. 11:37-38). But, they made it! In fact, the writer says, they fill the seats above the race we run in testimony, witness, and encouragement, that if they made it, so can we. Then, the writer calls our attention to Jesus. Though He faced the worse of all deaths—the Cross, He was not only victorious over its awfulness and the death it brought, He not only endure it, He did so to blaze and mark the trail for us. He has already walked the way we walk, run the race we run, and fought the battles we fight. So, during your hypothetical visit to heaven, talk to Jesus, talk to those of Hebrews 11. They faced even worse than we face. Again, I minimize no one’s conflict, consternation, crisis, or conundrum. I’m just saying “You and I don’t have to quit.” As Pastor Weirsbe said, “It is always too soon to quit.” As Churchill said during the Nazi Luftwaffe’s blitz and bombardment of England, “Never give up!” As the Native American believer said, “Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on!” As Paul said, “Press towards the mark.” As Jesus said, “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.” Take my challenge. Ask. There’s a multitude that’s made it that say so can you. You don’t have to quit.

WHEN TRUTH IS USED TO TELL A LIE

Undeniably, the COVID-19 virus is real. Understandably, those who love their families are fearful of it. Rightfully, at every level, folks are inquiring what leaders are going to do about it. However, I believe a more urgent question should be what the opportunists are going to do with it. I am speaking of opportunists more dangerous and threatening than scam artists who take advantage of calamities to con the vulnerable of their money. I am speaking of how the COVID virus is being used by those in the political and spiritual realms for their own nefarious destructive designs. When political leftists openly taunt that they never let “a crisis go to waste” for political ends, do we think that the master strategist of evil machinations, Satan, is going to let a crisis go to waste for his spiritual ends? Think of this: While Wal-Mart, Kroger, and Lowes were full, churches were empty. Blatant inconsistencies, contradictory directives, disingenuous inflated reporting, and every-changing reasons for alarm, must leave one suspicious that things are not as they are being portrayed. Again, I believe COVID is real. We have had three immediate family members contract it. That COVID is real is not a reason to dismiss that something conspiratorially is going on, it is more of a reason to suspect it. I have never been attracted to or espoused conspiracy theories. But, with COVID, the biggest conspiracy is the insistence that no conspiracy is happening. That COVID is real is even more of a reason to believe a conspiracy is afoot. You will be disappointed if you read on with the expectation that I will unveil the exact earthly conspirators. You may expect me to finger China or the Leftists. I won’t. My point is whoever is involved and however they are involved, and even if there are multiple uncoordinated conspirators involved, there is a master conspiracy and conspirator behind it all. Satan. Back to COVID being real. The realness of COVID lends legitimacy to the conspiracy. Perhaps, you’ve heard the aphorism, “an excuse is the skin of a reason stuffed with a lie.” True. If I could tweak that saying a bit: When you listen to folks mandate, demand, and make all these changes based on the COVID virus, the reason for it all is “the skin of a truth stuffed with a lie.” The Corona is microbially small, but some many lies have many stuffed into it. Satan has always worked this way. I was told as a child that Satan never came to us with bald-faced lies. He comes with a partial truth. We recognize the partial truth and accept the whole package. In accepting the partial truth, we accept the whole lie. I’ve noted this in theology as well. I’ve never encountered a false doctrine that infiltrated true Christianity that did not have some amount of Truth in it. If it were blatantly false, few would fall for its error. Apostle Paul notes “We are not to be ignorant of Satan’s devices.” We shouldn’t be. But often are. We should understand that however much truth he uses on the bait trigger, the trap is still there. However real the virus is, it is being calculatingly used to promote lies that are destroying both nation, economy, and visible church, all targets of politicians and Satan. Do not doubt for one moment that there are devious, designing minds orchestrating the responses to the virus. Believing in absolute truth, I do not think we should doubt the findings and conclusions of verifiable, observable, and repetitive scientific method. If results are truly a product of such methodology, adequately controlled, then they are true and real. Yet, math yields true and real results as well. From the first announcement of governmental directives, I immediately got out my calculator and did the math. I still read a newspaper. Almost every morning I have done the math with the reported numbers of cases and deaths in state and county. During this time, I have heard almost no one talking about doing the math on the percentages. I’m not talking about reporting the numbers of cases and death. I’m talking about doing the math. Let’s do the math for today, 07/15/2020. Before we do, let me make clear that every death is a tragedy and unimaginably painful for the family of the victim. People really are dying because of COVID. I do not minimize that loss in the least. Horrible. Anecdotally, that any die is reason for alarm and concern. But, let’s do the math. Today, the number of cases in our state was .57% of our state’s population. Rounded up, that’s all little more than ½ of 1 percent of residents who have contracted COVID. Now, deaths, each one tragic: Deaths in our state from COVID have been .026% of the populace. That 26/1000’s of a percent. Here’s what it is for our county: Contracted cases, ½ of 1 percent. Deaths, 6/1000’s of 1 percent. To give perception, these percentages on their face are minuscule. Now consider something else. This is not the percentage of cases and deaths for that day. These are the percentages of cases since tallies began! The totals have never been reset. Thus, the percentage of those per capita who currently have COVID is incredibly small. Yet, draconian measures (some necessarily) have been taken based on percentages that are minuscule in light of other dangers we routinely live with daily. But things are actually worse than just utilizing truth to tell a lie. We have reached that stage of idiocy and debauchery where, as the prophet said, they will call evil good and good evil. It is evil to go to church. It praiseworthy to in protest burn one down. It is wrong to have our college-age children in school but noble that they riot in the streets. It is wrong to sing unmasked in church but wonderful to shout slurs in the streets. No, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I am not even a prophet. I am just pointing out the worse danger of all--when truth is used to tell a lie.

WHERE IS AMERICA IN PROPHECY?

There are those who, however peripheral they were to an event, however minor a role they played, make themselves the hero of the story—even if they have to embellish or stretch things to fit themselves in. I am a lover of our U.S.A. and would like to make our nation the hero of every story. She has been the hero of many stories. WWI and WWII are examples. However, as much as I would like to make America the hero, the central actor, the focus of cosmic attention of end-time events, I’m not sure that is possible, however much we embellish or stretch things. During this constant barrage of bizarre crises roiling across our land, I have folks constantly asking me how this and that happening in America fits into Bible prophecy of end-time events. I am slightly flattered to be asked but overwhelmed by my inadequacy and inability to tell them how America or what is happening with and in her fits into prophecy. Others apparently easily find Bible prophecy everywhere happening in America; yet, I cannot find America happening anywhere in Bible prophecy. I do see Bible prophecy in America; for example, “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.”(2Ti 3:13). Yet, I still don’t see America happening in prophecy. There is a difference. I try to answer folks when asked how America fits in but must admit I’m flummoxed. If I look honesty at Scripture, I really do not see the U.S.A. as a government and world power in Biblical eschatological prophecy at all. There are a few Scriptures that one could pretzel twist to foist America into the end time fray, but those are very limited and require some finagling divergence from good exegesis to read America into the text. Another complicating difficulty is that the U.S.A. is increasingly not looking like The U.S.A. at all. Perhaps, she appears in Bible prophecy in a new transmogrified form. The U.S.A. is used to playing a major, really, THE major, role in world events. I would be quick to remind her many internal haters that the role America has played in the world has largely been a benevolent one, rescuing and building nations, promoting freedom, and responding overly-generously to world calamities, etc. But her past, powerful and prominent role in world events is no promise of her playing a future one. As I prepared this morning’s message, a sermon involving the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a statue representing the successive rise and fall of world empires, I came to the reference of the final Kingdom--the Kingdom of God; it then occurred to me: “I don’t see America anywhere in that train of empires.” History has borne out Daniel’s interpretation. As I went through the procession of nations, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Revived Rome—great empires all, I noted that however mighty each became, they each in succession declined from being a world power. Each empire gave way to the next. Indubitably the USA is The World Power of today. Although I didn’t expect to see America in the Biblical parade of the sequence of empires, I couldn’t keep from asking, “What nation, what kingdom, what world power, will follow America? See, no kingdom has ever lasted. Not one. I think there will be at least two after America: First, there will be the New World Order, the One World Government of the Antichrist. Following that will be Christ’s Millennial Kingdom. Sad as it is, the U.S.A. will not fail to follow the meteoritic trajectory of every other world power. She will decline and be replaced. Without exception, every other empire in turn has been supplanted and replace. Except the last. The last world power will have no successor. No ending. And the last is not the global government of the Antichrist. The last is the Kingdom of God ruled by Christ Himself. I am grateful to be a citizen of the U.S.A. But I am also a citizen of the Kingdom of God—the Kingdom that has no end. That Kingdom I do see in Bible Prophecy. All through it. I may not be able to know where America is in Bible Prophecy. But I can know where I am. I am in the Kingdom that lasts. What a role that Kingdom is going to have. There’s no need to exaggerate or embellish that.