When We Miss God We Come Up Empty

In Jeremiah 8.22 we read, Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then, is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? I believe, friends, a nation can provoke a holy God by sin. I believe a state can offend a holy God by legalizing sin. I believe a city can offend a holy God by backing away from God in sin.

And I believe a church can miss God through all of this and come up empty. All these things transpired in the city of Memphis, Tennessee in 2003 while I was living there, where God's just displeasure was manifested through a remedial judgment on a section of Bible Belt that was gradually moving further and further away from God. And slowly but surely, through compromise in the churches and godless government legislation, the churches were loosening their grip on the Bible by conformity with the wicked society in which they existed.

I saw a section of the country that once stood strong for God loosen their grip on God. I was there, friends, in that section of the country known as the Bible Belt. And I lived there for over 40 years.

And I saw the spiritual deterioration with my own eyes, as a pot of water on a stove will soon reach a boiling point. I believe God reaches a boiling point over sin. And things boiled over in Memphis in 2003 through an act of God, which was later referred to as a land hurricane, or better known as Hurricane Elvis.

I saw the ruin and wreckage that was laid on this section of the South by the hand of a providential God, whose righteousness boiled over in the summer of 2003. When straight-line winds in excess of 108 miles an hour came through Memphis early in the morning like a devastating freight train plowing down one neighborhood after another, my wife and I thought we were going to die as that storm came barreling down our street, destroying our neighborhood. The whole city was alarmed, and no one was left unscathed.

It left seven people dead, and 70 percent of Memphis was damaged and without power for two weeks in 90-degree heat. I recall my neighborhood looked like it had been bombed. At the time, I was a member of the Mighty Bellevue Baptist Church, which claimed a membership of 30,000, but in reality was more like 10,000 if they were honest.

Anyhow, there were two occasions at Bellevue that I recall where I saw the church packed to the rafters. Once was the Sunday after 9-11 in 2001, and the other was the Sunday after Hurricane Elvis in 2003. My family came to church that day like everyone else, hungry, searching for spiritual food in a desperate time, where to many of us it looked like the hand of God had just dropped in judgment over our city.

I'll never forget the crowd that day in church, and I'll never forget what Adrian Rogers preached that Sunday as we all sat there with our hearts aching and our mouths agape as he dragged out a well-worn sermon he had preached 100 times before on evolution. As a member of that congregation, I can assure you, friends, there were very few sitting there that Sunday who wanted to suffer through a message on evolution after we had suffered over 110-degree heat for two weeks. We'd already heard him preach that to us on numerous occasions before, and this calamity should have addressed a different message.

Our homes had been damaged and destroyed. Our city laid waste. Businesses had lost business by damaged buildings in the wake of that storm, and our spiritual leader dusted off a sermon that did not fit the occasion.

I believe Adrian realized it while he was preaching it, for the best of men are only men at best. Now, I'm not saying this to criticize a man who I wasn't worthy to carry his shoes. He was a friend of mine, but I say all this, friends, and I say this to pastors in particular of the danger here, and I'm going to finish this message with the following statement because it mirrors the times we are living in when the wheels have come off a nation and society spins out of control and the church is silent about it and drags out the same well-worn sermons that don't fit the hour in which we live, and we miss God because we are out of touch with God.

Now, here is my statement. When the man of God misses God, the people of God go away empty. That's what happened that Sunday in Memphis in 2003.

I've watched that city go downhill since then. I don't know if it ever will recover.