Feast: Handwriting on the Wall: Without Natural Affection
#FT23-00
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 29-Sep-23; 52 minutes
description: (hide)
transcript:
As a society, we have gone from murders making national headlines to the point where so many murders occur that only the most brazen and hideous ones make the local news. One of these caught Beth's eye earlier this year and she passed it on to me.
It occurred in Milwaukee, Wisconsin last November the 21st, sometime around 7 a.m. At first, it was reported that a 10 year old boy had been playing with a gun which accidentally went off. His mother, Quiana Mann, 44, suffered a fatal gunshot wound to her head. The boy then woke his older sister, who found the mother's body and called 911. After a short investigation, the shooting was ruled as accidental. However, as of last July, that now-11 year old boy will be tried as an adult for first degree intentional homicide. It was not too long after November 21st that the real story began to trickle out.
The mother was doing laundry. She was very busy, she did her laundry early in the day. She had put a load in before 7 a.m. And while she was doing that job, her son confronted her with a gun taken from the lockbox in the residence that he had accessed with a key taken the night before. He originally told the police he just meant to scare his mom by shooting at the wall, but she walked in front of the gun and took the shot in her face. In a second interview, held because extended family members informed the police that the boy had rage issues for which he had been undergoing therapy, the boy admitted the killing was no accident. He said he shot her because she woke him up early that morning.
But that was not the truth either, at least not fully. It soon came out that he killed his mother because she refused to buy him a very expensive virtual reality headset. After he shot her—here his mother is in the laundry room dead—he logged into her Amazon account and ordered the headset. The next day he told his grandmother, "I'm sorry for killing my mom." And in that next breath, he asked if his package had arrived yet. An aunt told investigators that he never cried, never showed any signs of remorse for what he did to his mother.
Now since then, the aunt has shared few more details. She spoke to the boy in custody and he said he did not remember shooting his mother and quickly changed the subject to talk about his gaming devices. She said her nephew in times past had reported hearing multiple, perhaps five imaginary voices. He had a history of cruelty toward animals, like swinging the family puppy by the tail until it whined and howled in pain. And just six months before the shooting, he had filled a balloon with some sort of flammable liquid and ignited it, triggering an explosion inside the house that burned furniture and carpet.
So, concerned about his psychological diagnosis, his mother had installed cameras around the house to watch him while she was gone, and she was gone quite a bit at work and she was also trying to get a degree. But two weeks before she died, someone unplugged them. In addition, the therapist recommended that she limit his time on electronic devices and violent video games, and apparently her restrictions, which were not unreasonable because of his psychology, the way he was acting, well, they were too much for him and led him to take her life in cold blood.
It is not my intention tonight to blame computers, gaming, or even violent video games. Instead, I want to focus more on this boy's callous attitude toward his mother. The normal mind just reels at the thought of harming a parent, much less killing one. Yet this boy coldly planned and executed his mother for the price of an Oculus headset.
Have we reached the point where a growing segment of people have no natural affection for even their blood relatives? Family members coldly killing one another, however, seems to be happening more often. And along the same line, there was an incident, I believe it was in Arizona just in the past couple weeks, where two boys stole a car and were joy riding and saw a retired sheriff on the road and just ran him over and gleefully laughed once it was done. They are both being charged with murder.
Now, we have a tradition here at Church of the Great God to begin each Feast of Tabernacles with a sermon titled, "The Handwriting Is On The Wall." My dad began this practice in 1994, highlighting a trend that illustrates that Jesus Christ's return is just around the corner. It is right on schedule. My offering this year will highlight a sign of the times and that is a growing lack of natural family affection.
Let us go to Daniel 5 and just read the verses that the title of this sermon series comes from.
Daniel 5:1-6 Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, and drank wine in the presence of the thousand. While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple of the house of God which had been in Jerusalem; and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone. In the same hour the fingers of a man's hand appeared and wrote opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king's countenance changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his hips were loosened and his knees knocked against each other.
Daniel 5:22-28 [this is Daniel's interpretation] "But you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, although you knew all this. And you have lifted yourself up against the Lord of heaven. They have brought the vessels of His house before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone, which do not see or hear or know; and the God who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways, you have not glorified. Then the fingers of the hand were sent from Him, and this writing was written. And this is the inscription that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIIN. This is the interpretation of each word. MENE: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it; TEKEL: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting; PERES: Your kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians."
A literal hand wrote on the wall in Daniel's day in that palace. But in our day, the phrase suggests reaching a point at which the outcome, usually negative, is patently obvious. When that point comes, we say the handwriting is on the wall, it is going to fail, or what have you.
I have a couple of examples here. The handwriting was on the wall when most of a generation participated in the so-called Summer of Love. The sexual revolution would not be stopped. Or here is another one for those of you who are sports fans. Once the Pittsburgh Pirates fell 10 games under 500, the handwriting was on the wall. They would not make the playoffs—again.
So in Daniel 5, the handwriting on the wall was a sure sign of Babylon's defeat.
This is not the only place where a similar thing is mentioned in Scripture. Let us go to Luke 12. We will start in verse 54 and just read through 56. Just three simple verses here.
Luke 12:54-56 Then He also [that is, Jesus] said to the multitudes, "When you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, 'A shower is coming'; and so it is. And when you see the south wind blow, you say, 'There will be hot weather'; and there is. Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time."
So this is the New Testament equivalent of the handwriting on the wall, discerning the signs of the times. Here, He castigates the crowds that followed Him (those crowds represent mankind), for being so self-absorbed and blind that they had missed the whole point of His ministry and His message. They did not know why He was there. They were the only there, for some, it was to hear a nice message, for others it was, "Oh, maybe He'll feed me this time," or, "I have palsy. If I can get to Him, maybe He'll heal me." They were not seeing the greater picture of what the coming of the Son of David meant in the grand scheme of things. And He had done these things right before their eyes. They had heard His voice in their ears and still did not get what was actually going on.
In Matthew 16:1-3 He directs His ire in a similar way toward the Pharisees. They were blind too. He called them blind guides in Matthew 23, and everybody falls into the ditch when they follow them. They could not see anything, nothing, in front of their noses. So whether it was laymen or whether it was leaders without the right perspective and ability to judge righteously, we are as good as blind like they were.
But hopefully, we have been given the right perspective and we have been able to learn God's way and understand it enough that we can judge righteously. And we can discern the times that we are living in and how close we are. Like Martin said in the prayer, it is pretty disgusting what is going on out there, yet so many are just accepting it. This is the way it is. They are free to do this. And so no one stands up to stop it.
So we should be very eager to avoid the examples of these people, the multitudes, or avoid the example of the Pharisees. God wants us to be aware of the world's zeitgeist, the spirit of the times. And He wants us to be thinking about the direction and ramifications of events and trends and philosophies that are swirling about in our world. We should be like a guard, a soldier on guard duty, head always on a swivel, making sure we see everything that is going on so we do not miss something and give up the fort, or whatever, to the attack that they do not see because they were not really looking. We need to be able to react to whatever dangers may come and fit them in to what we understand of the timeline of prophecy and take appropriate actions.
Now, let us go to II Timothy 3. This is Paul's prophecy of the times of the end, what it will be like. Not the Millennium, but before the Millennium when things are getting so bad. Let us read the first five verses. He tells Timothy this so he can be aware, so he will be the soldier who is on guard duty looking every way to see the enemy as he approaches. He writes,
II Timothy 3:1-5 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!
This is a list of attitudes, primarily, and character descriptions, and it parallels the crimes and trends that we see in the news feeds every day. I am sure that you could go to whatever source you get your news from and with a little bit of digging, you could probably come up with examples of these things occurring and being reported in the news, but they do not always manifest themselves just in major crimes. They also show up in the way people set their priorities. We see that most clearly, I think, in the first one that is listed here, "lovers of themselves." That is the priority for most people. What is in it for me? How can I get ahead? Or me, me, me, me, me, I want it. It is for me, me first.
Selfishness, even its worst form of narcissism, undergirds all of these other attitudes and descriptions. We could call this list an expression of the observation in Judges 21:25, "Everyone did what was right in his own eyes," and they did that because they saw some advantage to themselves. That is their priority. That is why they do everything—because they are putting themselves first.
Our focus tonight centers on the word here translated in the New King James "unloving." That is in verse 3, the first one in verse 3. And that unloving is a very mediocre translation. It is trying to simplify something, and generalize it, and it just does not work. The King James version renders it "without natural affection." And that is the translation I like. It is very, very close to the actual meaning in the Greek.
The Amplified Bible reads, "without human affection, callous, inhuman." That is pretty good in its narrowest sense. The word, which is astorgos in Greek, is Strong's #794. Astorgos means "without family love." It can also be translated as heartless, merciless, and implacable. William Barclay, in his commentary, "The Letter to the Romans," writes an insightful commentary on this word, astorgos.
Without natural affection, astorgos. Storge, the root, was the special Greek word for family love. It was quite true that this was an age in which family love was dying. Never was the life of the child so precarious at this time. Children were considered a misfortune. When a child was born, it was taken and laid at the father's feet. If the father lifted it up, that meant that he acknowledged it. If he turned away and left it, the child was literally thrown out. There was never a night when there were not 30 or 40 abandoned children left in the Roman Forum. Even Seneca, great man that he was, could write, "We kill a mad dog. We slaughter a fierce ox. We plunge the knife into sickly cattle lest they taint the herd. Children who are born weakly and deformed, we drown." The natural bonds of human affection had been destroyed.
Theologian and pastor James Montgomery Boyce, gives a mother's intentional abortion of her child and a father who abandons his family as examples of astorgos. We could also consider selling one's child into some form of slavery, killing or abandoning of a physically or mentally handicapped child, or any kind of abuse of a child, spouse, or parent as astorgos. By definition, astorgos occurs any time self-service overrides the natural bonds of affection between relatives. It could be expanded out to include other supposedly close relationships where, let us say, you have a friend who you consider a brother or a sister, it would come under astorgos.
Let us go back to Matthew the 24th chapter, verse 12. Let us put this into a kind of an end time setting. And I conjecture that this may be the scripture that Paul based his list in II Timothy 3 on.
Matthew 24:12 "And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold."
Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. This verse becomes more fascinating when we look under the hood of the words "grow cold." It pictures a person sitting at a table, let us say, before a hot bowl of soup. It is very hot. Guys, your wife has cooked it to death and it was, you know, 211 degrees. To cool it off so that he can eat it, what is the normal thing to do? You blow on it. You might take a spoonful and blow on it, right? When my kids were little Beth and I would tell them to "foof" it. That is just a nice onomatopoeia of that act of blowing on a hot soup, any kind of hot food. (You can use it, we have not copyrighted it or anything.)
But it illustrates blowing on a hot spoon of soup or a hot bowl of soup. It illustrates a gradual but constant process, something we continually work to produce an aim. So in this case, we continually blow on the soup in a process that our aim being to bring the temperature down so that we can drink the soup.
This is the idea of love growing cold. It is a constant process to reach a certain end, a goal, or a destination. So what Jesus is saying here is that love, whether agape, as it is here in Matthew 24, or storge, family affection, grows cold in the same way as that spoonful of soup or the bowl of soup, however you want it; one small, one big. It does not matter. They both grow cold over a certain amount of time. So the idea of growing cold here in Matthew 24:12 is that it is a slow-cooling process. It does not happen, you know, just in 10 minutes. It is something that happens over a course of months or years because of the things that are happening to cause the love to diminish.
This unloving, hostile, without natural affection attitude has been building in our society for years. If you want to put it this way, our love has been "foofed" for a long time. The effect of so much that has been introduced into our culture over the last several decades has been to break the bonds of love and affection between family members, especially parents and children. It has actually been quite organized in our society, from, I do not know, maybe as much as since the World War Two, maybe from before that.
A few centuries ago, it was not rare at all, in this country at least, for children to be with their parents for almost all the day, all night. They hardly ever left their parents. Many of them worked at home, they were schooled at home. They did everything at home and there was a very tight bond of affection between parents and children. They saw each other all the time. Their parents were able to give their children whatever they needed in terms of wisdom, knowledge, help, and schooling, as I mentioned. But now it is turned almost entirely over.
In Charlotte, I do not know when the school buses start. It must be pretty early, 6:30, 7:00 a.m. I do not know if it is even earlier than that. So, kids get out to the bus stop at about that time and they go to school and they stay with the teachers and their peers, and then they do not get home till 2:30, 3:00, 3:30, 4:00. Some kids were getting home after 5:00, I think. And of course, a lot of times they have after school stuff with sports and whatnot, and they are gone maybe into the hours of the evening. There may be half a day when they do not see their parents and they come home, they are tired, they go in their room, they turn on their television or they fire up their computer and play games with their friends. And where is the relationship?
It is not just the educational system. It is cellphones and, as I mentioned, computer games that has everybody, even the kids, looking down [at their phones] like this all the time and reading and texting and whatnot. And even when parents and children are together, they are apart because they are not engaging in the same activities. They are not talking, they might as well be 1,000 miles apart. I probably am exaggerating. I hope I am exaggerating. But I see this; it just happens. Going to a restaurant, a family is there and nobody is talking to one another. They are all on their cell phones, maybe just looking at Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever, and they are not talking to one another. Maybe they are talking to somebody who is halfway around the world. But there is no communication going on, nothing loving certainly, going on, happening between parents and children.
And we cannot forget the intentional adversarial relationship between youths and adults that media exploits everywhere. You do not want to be like your dad, you do not want to be like your mom. Be something different. I mean, go look at any sitcom. I would not recommend you watch too much of it. But in most cases you see a lot of strife between parents and children in those things, and that has been going on for years. I mean, where is the idea of Father Knows Best? That is laughed right out of every television boardroom that ever was after Robert Young died. People do not think that way anymore.
As a matter of fact, nowadays, and has been for 30, 40 years, the father is the laughing stock. He is the one that gets poked at. And it is not just the sitcoms but commercials. I saw one the other day where they could not all live in the house anymore and who had to leave? It was dad because he was worthless to the rest of the family. Mom made the big bucks and there were various other things. So he was the one that had to leave. I think it was it was one of the phone coverage companies, like T-Mobile or one of those, and they could not use all their devices. So somebody had to get kicked out and it was the dad.
But that is the way it is. Dad, mom, they are dispensable. That is the idea that is coming through a lot of media. And it becomes easier, once you start thinking about these things, to understand why our society is having such a hard time dealing with astorgos, without natural affection. That is what a astorgos means.
Now, Jesus gives us the very simple answer about why this is happening. He gives it in the first part of this sentence, "And because lawlessness will abound." That is why astorgos grows. That is why love grows cold. It is the fact that people are becoming more lawless. Abound means multiply, it means increase, as in a population or like the fruitfulness of a crop. Actually, the idea behind this word in Greek or this phrase in Greek is what we call, "it reproduces like rabbits." It is actually not literally that, but the idea behind it is that. That lawlessness is increasing like rabbits. It is just growing and growing and growing exponentially.
It is highlighting, here, that sin begets more sin. It does not beget good things like agape or storge, it begets what it is. Kind begets kind. In an atmosphere of corruption, which we certainly have in this country, where sin and guilt are downplayed, which we have in this country, and even outrightly denied because they do not believe in absolute truth and morality, people think nothing of committing more sin. Remember their priority is to please themselves. And if sin pleases them, if something they do which is a little bit wicked, as they might think of it, gets them going, gives them those happy feelings in their brain, they will keep doing it.
And it is like a drug; sin is addictive. Each time we sin, if we are caught in its grip, we like it. We want more of it. It takes a little more perversion the next time to satisfy us and it just grows and grows and reproduces like rabbits. Sin just ends up being our whole lives because that is what we want to do. We are not fighting against it because we want that rush that the sin begets, and since sin and love are opposites, they are antithetical to each other, the natural result of iniquity abounding is love growing cold. You do more sin. You are not showing very much love. As a matter of fact, you are not showing any love.
How does this affect us? We are in Matthew 24 here. Let us go up a few verses to verse 9. We will read down through 14 to get the whole context here. And if we consider verse 12 in context, it appears that we are living in the time it describes. So let us start here.
Matthew 24:9-14 "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."
Now, what is interesting here, remember we are talking about us now, the interesting part about what we have just read, which I have mentioned before here, is that the love that cools is agape love. It is the agape love in Christ's disciples. People without the Spirit of God cannot really do agape love because this is the love that comes from God. It is poured out from Him and He does not give His Spirit to just anyone. And so Jesus here is saying, "Look, this is the world you live in and it's going to affect you. It's going to influence you. I'm sorry, but you can't get away from it because it's inundating the whole world."
And so we need to consider this very seriously because Jesus is saying that the love of God, the love that He pours out by the Holy Spirit, is what grows cold in us. R. T. France, who was a commentator, a theologian, in his commentary on Matthew says, "Jesus paints a somber picture of a church in decline." And may I add to that, "a somber picture of a church in decline at the wrong time." When it actually needs to be growing strong in the love of God.
So it is our responsibility not to be part of the many whose love grows cold. The many being the majority. That is sad that the majority of the people of God will have their love grow cold within the church.
Let us go back to II Timothy 3 and we are going to read a little further down in the chapter. I know this may be a little depressing. I do not want you to be depressed. I want you to be actually convicted and energized to go counter to all of this. So Paul here, in this section, starting in verse 12, advises us how we can avoid being caught without natural affection.
II Timothy 3:12-17 [he says] Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you [take note, "as for you," let us get personal] continue in the things that you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you learned them, and that from childhood [or let us just make it more general for all of us because I think in most cases of the people in this room, it has been a long time, so we will say, "and for many years"] you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man [or woman] of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
What does Paul say here about how we can avoid being caught without natural affection?
1) continue to practice what you have learned. And 2) to study and believe God's revelation to increase knowledge, understanding, and wisdom.
Unlike the world, we cannot get away from this Book and the authority of the divine mind that is behind it. Now is the worst time to abandon the authority of the Bible and the effective character building teachings that we find within it. In times of turmoil, the times that we are approaching, the truth will be a comforting refuge. We can say, "I know that's true" and grip it with all that we are worth so that we continue to practice it.
And that is my next point here. What we have been taught is not just doctrine. Doctrine is just teaching, doctrine is instruction. We have been taught as well to do. To do good, to serve. The gospel given and exemplified by Jesus Christ is not just believing, it is also doing—believing the truth and doing good. Let us just quickly go to Acts 10 and see his example as Peter explained it to Cornelius and his family here.
Acts 10:36-38 The word [or the Logos] which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ—He is Lord of all—that word you know, which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.
So He preached and He did good. That is the example of Jesus Christ. We may not have a whole lot of times where we can preach, but we have lots of occasions to do good. So we must know both how we can be saved, that is the doctrine, that is the teaching, and how to give a cup of cold water as needed. That is from Matthew 10:42. It is not just head knowledge, it is not just understanding, it is not just giving a pearl of wisdom at the right time to someone who may need it. It is actually doing good, physically doing good or spiritually doing good. That is even better.
I have been going around to the various church groups here in the United States and the present Bible study I have been giving is about how to be a good leader, how to be a servant-leader. And several people have come up to me and been slightly astounded because I have told them that because we have the Holy Spirit, we can give spiritual things to others. Can we not give love? Can we not give joy? Can we not give peace? Can we not give patience? Those are the fruits of the Spirit. We can give those to others. That is doing loads of good! All that does not have to come from high above in heaven, as I am going to preach on the Eighth Day. Jesus says that, "Come to Me to have the Holy Spirit and rivers of living water will flow from you."
We need to start being (I hate this word) more proactive in the way that we serve one another. It does not have to be serving, like calling somebody up and saying, "Hey, come over for dinner this weekend," or some physical thing, "I'll paint your house, I'll do this." But we can, in simple conversation, in simple fellowship with one another, we can bring joy, we can be patient, we can be forbearing, we can do all kinds of spiritual good just in the way we interact with one another, and let that Holy Spirit flow through us and from us to do some of the work of God in making other people's lives better. We have been given the power. Why do not we use it?
Now, at this Feast we have the opportunity to learn a great deal. This is the most highly concentrated period of learning that we have every year. It is very intense. It used to be a whole lot more intense. Back in the tents and the field houses and such, they would have two services every day. You have got it easy. We have not only all of these services to gain knowledge and understanding and some wisdom, but we also have eight days or more, depending how long you are staying, to practice serving one another. We must be countercultural. We are not the world. This is not God's world. We have been called out of it. We have been told to leave Babylon and intrinsic in that command is do not be like them. We cannot be like them. If we are like them, we are of the world.
And so God gives us—every year in this fall period—a time when we can learn a lot and practice a lot because we are all together in one place. Among ourselves here, however many we are, among ourselves we must push back against society's retreat from natural affection and loving service and practice the servant-leadership God wants to see among His people. If we do these things out in the world, nobody cares. We are too small. They may say thank you, but it does not affect them.
But here, among ourselves, we can not only appreciate it but learn a great deal from it. Learn from the examples of people who are doing it right. Then if we do these things, if we learn a lot and we practice a lot to be servants of God as it says in Matthew 25, verses 34 and 40.
Matthew 25:34 "Then the King will say to those on His right hand, 'Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."
Matthew 25:40 "Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me."
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