Welcome to the Recovery of the
Gospel. I'm Darren Weiss, your co-host, and I'm accompanied
here with Pastor Clark, and we want to thank you for tuning
in to our radio broadcast as we set out to recover the greatest
message ever told, that Christ Jesus came into the world to
save sinners. On our radio broadcast this morning
we want to talk to you about a horrible epidemic that's happening
all throughout our country. It's an epidemic with our children
and how we as ministers of the gospel can minister to the children,
minister in our families to reverse this horrible epidemic. We truly
believe that the gospel is the answer to the epidemic that we're
seeing with kids, with families in America, And until we recover
the gospel message, until the gospel of God's free and sovereign
grace is lived out in the lives of our parents, in our families
in America, this epidemic will not change. So Pastor, why don't
we begin to look at what the problem is. Well, the great relationship
that God has ordained in Scripture is that of family. And when I
talk about family, I'm talking about the biblical family. I'm
talking about a husband and a wife and children. God has ordained
family. And America is experiencing the
curse of the breakup of that ordained relationship. A man
loving a woman, a woman loving a man. And out of that love for
one another, there comes children that have been begotten, and
those children being raised in the second relationship to family,
and that's the local church. The importance of husband, wife,
and children being in God's house, hearing God's gospel concerning
God's Son. When those two relationships
begin to deteriorate, that of family in the house of God and
that of family itself, you'll find society on a downhill pull. And that's where we are in America
today. And the great tragedy that's
taking place here in this country is with our children. We have
an absentee God. God, beyond any shadow of a doubt,
is not speaking to America. This is a land that lies under
the silence. of Almighty God. The greatest
curse that could fall upon any land is for God simply not to
speak and that's taking place in our country and we are seeing
the effects of an absentee God and the breakup of these two
relationships with our children? Well, you know, maybe we can
give our audience a look into this epidemic with kids and with
our families. In Detroit, there's roughly 3,500
homeless children. In the state of Michigan, there's
almost 20,000 foster care kids. In the country, almost 800,000
foster care kids. We are literally warehousing
children at Grace Centers of Hope. We're on the front lines
of dealing with homelessness and addiction here in Oakland
County and in Southeast Michigan. And the average age of a homeless
person is a nine-year-old boy. We have so many kids coming to
Grace Centers of Hope with their moms, with their dads, with their
parents, but are literally tossed to and fro from house to house.
couch jumping. I don't know how many folks in
our audience are listening this morning can begin to fathom what
it would be like growing up in a household where you never knew
when you were going to get picked up and go on somewhere else to
live. You haven't lived in the same place for more than six
months at a time, changed residences two to three times per year,
and to not have any kind of security. Not be able to trust anybody,
because everybody's making promises to you, but it seems like nobody
can fulfill them. And you begin to not trust anybody,
and you're living in fear. Imagine going to school, afraid
to walk to school. They're fearful on their way
to school. They're fearful on their walk home from school.
And the reality is, is that they're fearful at school. They're afraid
of violence, afraid of drugs, afraid of all that this present
evil world is bringing to them as they go to school. Imagine
trying to live a life like that. Imagine trying to study, to apply
yourself to getting an education among those circumstances. And
I think, Pastor, what we want to convey here to our audience,
and I'm sure that there's a lot of people out there who would
just be saying, Amen, because they know what the problem is.
The problem is, is that the gospel has been lost. It's not being
taught to the children. The family isn't rooted and grounded
in the gospel message, in how a man leads out of that gospel
message. And it's just creating a horrible
epidemic. The loss of the gospel is ultimately
what is creating the breakdown in the family. Well, I'll tell
you how important the family is. The Lord said in the book
of James that pure religion and undefiled before God and the
Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their
affliction. What's happening in America is
simply this, that we are warehousing children here in this country.
We have child protective services in this nation, and I want to
state this just flat out and open before you. The state a
good parent does not make, and God never intended the state
to be caring for children in the manner that they are. The
state continues to fail to protect the children in this country.
God has ordained the local church to do that. So there's a breakdown
in the local church, there's a breakdown in the family. I
mean, just think about this. Darren quoted that stat that
the average age of a homeless person in the United States of
America is a nine-year-old boy. That 3,500 children, 19 miles
from Pontiac in the city of Detroit, do not have an address. This
is very difficult for me to talk about, quite frankly, because
I get very emotional about it. The children that are dying in
the streets of this country. We live in a violent nation.
588 abortions among teens, 15 to 19 every day. 4,493 children
are born out of wedlock every day. 7,000 students drop out of high school
in America every day. Darren said there are 800,000
foster care children in America, 20,000 here in the state of Michigan. 1.35 million U.S. children are
homeless on any given night. 13 children die in the streets
of the United States every day. 5,000 children every year are
buried in unmarked graves. Something is bad, wrong. America
leads the industrialized nation in teen suicide, teen violent
crime. There's just something wrong,
and I know what's wrong. The gospel has been lost, the
breakup of the family, and the pitiful, pathetic condition of
the local church because the gospel is not being preached
in the congregation. Let me get a couple things straight
here. The problem isn't just in Detroit
or Pontiac either. The reality is that I quoted
those statistics to a pastor from Traverse City one time I
was at the Tiger game with him and we were talking and I was
telling him about the horrible epidemic with homeless kids and
he looked at me and he said, you know what, in Traverse City
there's over 1,800 homeless kids. And I was amazed when he told
me that. I looked at him and I was taken aback. I thought
I knew all the statistics. And for him to tell me that that
was what was happening in Traverse City, too, all the more just
validated the truth of the horrible epidemic that we're living in.
The next thing that I want to set straight is not only that
it's happening all over in areas that you wouldn't necessarily
think that they're happening, But when we make the statement
about the fact that the state does not make a good parent,
that doesn't mean that we're pointing necessarily to government
and just calling them out. It's actually the very opposite.
The truth is that we are the government. We are the people.
And there's a lot of people working for the state who really have
their heart in the right place and are really trying their best
to help kids. Really, what we're saying is that the gospel needs
to be recovered, not just in our society, but in our churches.
I'm not sure if many people realize this, that the church is the
one who has dished all of these problems off on the state. It's
dished all of this epidemic, all of these issues, all of these
social problems onto a secular society. When God has clearly
ordained the church to be doing these things. Not just telling
everybody where they're wrong, but looking at ourselves and
saying, hey, what are we doing as the church? And what has God
called us to do? We have gotten religious in this
country, and the church is just a place where you go to. It's
four walls where you go to, and maybe give a little money, make
yourself feel a little bit better, maybe learn how to lose weight,
or learn how to deal with your anxiety a little bit, and that's
what it's there. It's there to serve you, rather than you going
to a place to worship God. for who he is, what he's done,
get equipped and serve him in a local body and serve the society
that you're living in to the glory of the Lord. The truth
is that there's over 120 million undiscipled adults right now
in the United States of America who are dying for the gospel.
Eighty percent of our churches right now in the United States
of America are either declining or plateaued in attendance. All
of the churches are going down. Over 3,500 hundred churches close
their doors every year. And the church has gone to sleep
in Delilah's lap. It literally is a place where
we get served rather than where we go to serve. And the children
are the ones that ultimately are going to pay the most because
they're being raised now in not just the society, not just in
a neighborhood, but within the core of families that are not
being taught the gospel message. The truth is, is that the least
likely person for you to see at church this morning is going
to be a male between the ages of 18 and 25 years old, because
that person has not been raised in the gospel at all, if he has
at all, more than likely has been raised in religion and hates
church, can't stand church, thinks it's a hypocrisy and has turned
away from it and needs to be raised in the fear and admonition
of the Lord and be taught the gospel message. And that's when
that male will learn how to live a life before God that is one
of a leader, one of a husband, one of a father, one of a person
who takes on responsibility and accountability for his family
and 10 years, 20 years from now can actually be leading the society
and leading the neighborhood. But as it is right now, until
that gospel is recovered, that person is still going to be living
in mommy and daddy's basement, playing video games, and we're
just creating this cycle of just this horrible epidemic. Well,
you know, I read some time ago that here in Oakland County,
first, second, third wealthiest county in the United States,
we have over 500 street kids. Social ills are never going to
be solved by throwing dollars at them. Social ills will not
be solved by entitlement, welfare programs. Social ills will not
be solved by the state. Social ills are really solved
through the local church proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, people
being born of the Spirit of God. You know, every time a person
is converted, if it's a mother, you've got a better mother. If
it's a father, you've got a better father. You know, we hear a lot
about the Christian right and about Christians being a conservative
group, and many times stones are thrown at the conservatives,
but the truth is we have the answer in God's Word. You know, I was thinking while
you were talking, Jared, that I grew up in a home where I received
I respected my mother and father. I grew up in a home where it
was pretty much expected for me to address my dad as yes sir
or my mother as yes ma'am, to be courteous to adults. What's
happened in this nation is that thousands of children are being
raised by grandmothers. and great-grandmothers, because
mom is a crack addict. Mom has deserted those children. Dad deserted a long time ago,
and mom now has succumbed to drug addiction as well. And there's
a godly grandmother somewhere that goes to her little church,
and she loves the Lord and loves the gospel, but her daughter
somehow or another missed hearing it. We've lost, I believe, two
generations to the pharmaceia, and we are losing this present
generation of children as well, and they're hurting badly. Oh,
there's no doubt about it. Well, Pastor, we've been talking
about this horrible epidemic with our children, and mainly,
really, that epidemic stands from the loss of the Gospel in
the family. And it always comes back to the loss of the Gospel
in the church and whether or not that Gospel is being proclaimed
and being taught to be used as the tool to raise your children
in the fear and admonition of the Lord. We've quoted many statistics,
horrible statistics of what's truly going on in our neighborhoods
and in our society. It's not just something that's
happening 20 miles from your house, but literally within your
neighborhood. As we were talking a little bit, we got into how
male leadership is one of the horrible problems that we're
really seeing. We see it here at Grace Centers of Hope. It's
not just something that's happening to just one individual. It's
happening throughout the entire family. It's a systemic problem.
Everybody is affected. When the father's leadership
is not on point, when he's not following the Lord and responsible
and accountable back to the Lord for how he runs his household,
everybody suffers. We were mentioning the generations
that it actually affects. Here at Grace Centers of Hope,
we've got three generations of people. This isn't just one homeless
person coming in here or there or whatever. We've got generations.
We've got grandma, mom and child all coming here. More times than
not, it's the moms, the mothers are coming with their kids, because
there's no dad, there's no father, there's no leader, there's no
godly leadership. I don't know if our audience
realizes, but roughly 1 out of 100 men in the United States
right now is currently incarcerated. And 68% of those men will be
back in prison once they get out. One of the reasons why I
bring that up is to show how this cycle works. 80% of the
kids who end up in juvie or eventually prison come from a fatherless
home. It's amazing. It's horrible what
happens to the kids that we're seeing when there is no father
in the home. Well, there's absolutely no doubt
about that. God has ordained that man to
be the head of the house and to lead and direct and provide
and protect for that family. And we have lost in this country
generations of men who are not stepping up, standing up and
being the men that they should be. The first, original, and
best Department of Health, Education, and Welfare is the family, and
heroic efforts must be made to preserve and strengthen the family
here in our own country, the United States of America. I weep
for this nation. We have turned socialistic. We
are looking to big government to solve all of our problems.
We have gone the road of entitlement, enablement, and that the government
is to take care of folks. We have traveled down that road
of spread the wealth, share the wealth, that the poor should
not be poor, that those who are wealthy should divide what they
have. I mean, totally unbiblical principles
have taken the place with the social programs that do not work,
and it's destroying this nation. Well, I mentioned, those who
are listening probably have heard me say this before, but I'll
say it again. I was driving to work one day, and I saw on the
bumper sticker in the car in front of me, it had a hand and
a finger pointing to the right, and it said, I did my job. And
I thought to myself, that's the problem right there. That's the
problem, that a person who sees the problem, that person thought
his responsibility was nothing more than voting for somebody
else to do it. that somehow, whether he was
devout conservative, that somehow that was his duty in order to
fix social problems. I mean, what a joke that is.
That if we, as Christians, think that somehow our duty is to elect
another person to make some policy to fix this, that's just more
of the problem. And we're not blaming the government.
We're not blaming the state. What we're proclaiming is that
God is the answer. That government isn't the answer.
And whether you're a Democrat or you're a Republican makes
no difference whether or not you're a Christian and what you
are called to do in your society, in your family, in your church,
in ministry as a born-again believer of a sovereign Lord who has called
us despite what the government might be doing or not doing.
But that just goes back to show where people are at. They think
that somehow we bought into this mentality that I paid my taxes. I paid my taxes, and so they
should fix it. That's not God's way at all.
It isn't. And really, the answer is, let's fix it. Let's make
a difference. And we can make a difference.
I have long since bypassed government. I do not look to government.
I will tell you this, though. I would encourage you to register.
I would encourage you to vote. But then don't sit down. Get
involved. Sign up. Volunteer. Get in your church.
Get outside the walls of your church building and make a difference.
You don't have to go to Brazil, Peru, Africa to be missionary.
Come to downtown Pontiac. We're a bankrupt city. We are
a drug-infested city. We are a gang-infested city.
We have 32 to 35 percent unemployment in this city. I would say to
all of you listening, You want to make a difference? Roll up
your sleeves, spit on your hands, and get in the battle here with
Grace Gospel Fellowship and Grace Centers of Hope. We turned our
city upside down with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We see people
made new creatures in Christ Jesus. What we're seeing here
at Grace Gospel Fellowship is families coming together, children
getting on the honor roll. Eighty-five percent of our children
here are honor roll students. haven't lived in the same place
for over six months, their entire life, before they come to Grace
Centers. I tell you, my friends, the gospel of Jesus Christ works. And the church must become a
militant in its aggressiveness to take back this world and stop
looking to big government to do it. Well, you know, that it's
just not appealing to a religious zealot. It's just not. You know,
we love to quote Spurgeon's quote. I love it. It says, you know,
Charles Spurgeon was known to have said, some men look for
big bells and tall steeples. Give me a rescue mission one
yard from hell. And you know what? That's what
we're doing. We are on the front lines tackling the issue. First and foremost, not just
by throwing money at it, but by giving your life to it. Being
on a mission, I quote it all the time. Jesus said, as the
Father hath sent me into the world, so I send you into the
world. If God has saved you, if God has called you, He's only
done it to send you back out. God doesn't call you to sit,
He calls you to be a soldier. To join in His army and to get
in the game, get in the war. Put your boots on and get where
the fighting is. Get where the ministry is. And
that can be wherever you are. That doesn't mean that if you're
not in Pontiac or you're not in Detroit, you're not dealing
with drug addicts or homeless folks, that you're not doing
ministry. In fact, I think one of the greatest mission fields
in our country is in our churches. We have to get back to understanding
that the church is not four walls. It's not where you go to give
money. It's not the 90% of the congregation giving 10% of the
clergy their money and them doing the work. It's us as a body.
We are the church. We are the body of Christ. And
we are called to go back out into the world with that free
and sovereign grace message that Christ came into the world to
save sinners. And you can start doing it in
your own family. In your own family is where you're
called to first and foremost spread that gospel. You know,
Pastor, we often say here at Grace Gospel Fellowship that
you and I aren't responsible for necessarily the kids of the
church. We really aren't. The scripture doesn't tell us
as pastors that we are responsible for the children. We're responsible
for teaching the parents of those children, but us as parents are
responsible for our children. We are responsible for sharing
that gospel message with our kids and leading them and teaching
them the way of the Lord. When that gospel is recovered
in our family, that's when things are going to begin to turn around
with this epidemic of children. You know, Darren, if there are
800,000 foster care children in the United States, why did
that lady in Tennessee who had to send that child back to Russia,
in the first place, why did she have to go to Russia to adopt
a child? If we have 800,000 children here
in the United States of America without a mother or father, No
American citizen, no young couple ought to have to go to a foreign
country to adopt. There's something wrong in the
law here in this country that forces young couples to go outside
of the United States to adopt. The thing about warehousing children
is we've set up this bureaucracy here with government that oversees
the care of kids and they pay people to take in these foster
care children who really don't love children. We warehouse them.
It's a job. It's a way of making some money.
And that's why we have pedophiles and homosexuals who are foster
care parents. It's a job. It's a money-making
process. And these kids are dropping through
the cracks. And the church has to step up.
You know, we lost back in September one of our women here on staff. She had a massive heart attack.
She had two children. Those children, that young man
that belonged to this mother who had got her life back at
Grace Centers of Hope, he's been in nine foster care homes since
September. That's what's happening in this
country. And it's a sad state of affairs. Every day we pick
up the paper and read about a child that has been murdered in the
United States. by somebody involved in foster
care. That just has to change. The
church has to step up. We've got to do something about
what's happening to children in the United States of America.
And the answer is the gospel. The gospel message is the answer.
And what we're calling you to do is get involved. Get involved
with the kids in your church. If you can't get involved with
the kids at your church, if you don't have any kids, and you
want to, come over here to Grace Gospel Fellowship. You can help
minister to our kids at Grace Centers of Hope, Grace Gospel
Fellowship, help mentor them, teach them the Word of God, and
raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord. And what unbelievable
power of healing is in the Word of God. We want to thank you
for tuning in to the Recovery of the Gospel. We would love
for you to go to recoveryofthegospel.com, leave us your comments, your
feedback. If you would like a copy of any or all of our series here
on Recovery of the Gospel, for a donation of any size, we can
send that to you if you give us your contact information.
If you would like to come worship with us at Grace Gospel Fellowship,
we are a church where everybody is nobody and Christ is all.
We're located at 210 North Perry in Pontiac, Michigan, at the
top of the Woodward Loop, and our services are every Wednesday
night at 7 p.m. and every Sunday morning at 11
a.m. Until then, God bless. You've
been listening to The Recovery of the Gospel with Pastor Kent
Clark.