Ensign: Sometimes The Best Words

 

All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. Isaiah 18:3

AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS 22 November 2013

WORD COUNT: 31,037

Sometimes the best words, the ones we need to hear the most, are the ones that never get said. “I love you” on the tip of someone's tongue. Specific words of praise to your kids for their achievements. The message I had for today is still going to get out (provided we aren't raptured before next Friday; it could happen) but this morning as I was coming in for my workday I felt the need to change my emphasis. Not to turn away from God and His Word, please understand, but the need for something else.

[This and every other underlined paragraph come from the address President Kennedy was scheduled to deliver at the Dallas Trade Mart on this day, fifty years ago. See below for why you have probably never heard it.] This link between leadership and learning is not only essential at the community level. It is even more indispensable in world affairs. Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country's security.

This past Tuesday in American history was the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address. That's the one beginning, “Four score and seven years ago,” and at least when my dad went to grade school in the mid-1930s it was something you had to know, a basic building block of being a citizen. And the Declaration of Independence, or at least part of it, was too I believe … the fact it, it was a time we identified with, even after the original speakers were long dead.

In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America's leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason -- or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.

Flash forward from when Lincoln gave the Address one hundred years. Today, fifty years ago in Dallas, John F. Kennedy was shot and died. Both men Presidents of the United States, both memorable and often memorized – right now the JFK statement coming to my mind is “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” – but we can, even with the best material we have, which for all who have accepted Jesus Christ the Son of God as their Savior and Lord is the Bible …

I realize that this Nation often tends to identify turning-points in world affairs with the major addresses which preceded them. But it was not the Monroe Doctrine that kept all Europe away from this hemisphere -- it was the strength of the British fleet and the width of the Atlantic Ocean. It was not General Marshall's speech at Harvard which kept communism out of Western Europe -- it was the strength and stability made possible by our military and economic assistance.

… become only hearers of the word, and not doers. Which is exactly what Jesus elaborates on (I was surprised that the verse I was thinking of, “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves,” is actually James 1:22) toward the end of what we call the Sermon on the Mount. The three chapters we have in our Bibles dealing with all Jesus deals with in one hundred nine verses (I may take two years to break down each verse some time) ends with that warning in two examples.

We, in this country, in this generation, are -- by destiny rather than by choice -- the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of "peace on earth, good will toward men." That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: "except the Lord keep the city, the watchmen waketh but in vain."

On the day we are at the gates of the kingdom of heaven – and that's going to be EVERYBODY – not everybody will get in. In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus tells us it isn't enough “Lord, Lord” to Him, we have to do what God's will is for us – and that can be nothing outside of what Jesus is doing. Then there's those who build their houses on rock and sand, appropriately enough, according to whether they're a hearer and doer of what Jesus says (that is, what's God's will) or just a hearer.

See Matthew 7:24-27 for the result of it,

David

P.S. I write this weekly devotional to keep in touch with all of you in my address book, and I hope to be an encourager to action too! If you find that I'm not or you want me to get lost, just let me know -- thank you!

Thank You, Lord, that we can come to you in prayer and that You provide for all our needs, even when we don't know what they are. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem on both sides of the fence there and around the world.

Thank You, Lord, for everyone in leadership and service, both here and abroad. Thank You for the opportunities we have and the promise of new life through You. I pray that we all seek and have a blessed week! Amen.