Ephraim was exalted in Israel but he failed to finish well.

It’s a question for us as well. Many of us have just made it through mid-life transition by the skin of our teeth and now we face the next challenge. It’s like climbing a mountain and finding out you are on a plateau with even more to climb. We thought we would move easily from mid-life to glory with no more challenges. In some ways, this challenge in our lives is every bit as difficult as any we have faced. How can we not only remain faithful but continue to grow and mature and move forward? For young people we call it “failure to launch” when they do not make it from being a child to becoming an adult. I don’t know the term for what we are talking about this morning but perhaps it is failure to land.

2.  Churches have focused on a variety of things every time there has been a change in demographics or cultural shift. There were no youth ministries until the 1950’s. Until then, youth were seen as taken care of by families and not the church.

We have focused on political influence in the 70’s and 80’s with the Religious Right.

We have focused on social justice in the first decade of this century.

But it is important what happens to aging Boomers and whether or not they can stay the course and be faithful. This is not the same as organizing trips to Branson. The last generation followed the normal course of events and as they aged they became even more active in church. That is the norm. It is a different issue for today. It is not organizing bus trips to Branson. It is helping people stay faithful. ” Religion may play more prominent role in America as baby boomers age”

Based on the premise that people become more religious as they age, Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport predicts that religion will have a more prominent place in American society as a new generation of seniors hits retirement age over the next 20 years. Newport makes the case in his new book, God is Alive and Well: The Future of Religion in America, that the baby boom generation will evolve into an increasingly religious demographic.

“If that’s the case, there are so many baby boomers it will affect the overall religiousness in America just like they are going to affect Social Security,” Newport said.
But exactly how boomers will influence religion in America is anybody’s guess. Will they return to the faith of their upbringing or find something new? Will they affiliate with traditional denominations or create new forms of worship? Will they bring with them a more liberal view on social issues or adopt the views of the conservative Christian right?
“We are going to be more religious in this country, but how that is manifest is the question,” said 64-year-old Newport. “We baby boomers have done some unusual things as we’ve moved on through the age spectrum over the decades.”

The results from the survey of 320,000 interviews conducted between Jan. 2 and Nov. 30 of this year mirror the findings of other polls that have found Americans are largely a religious people.
But Gallup has found changes occurring within that stable demographic of religious Americans since the 1950s, when religious commitment in the United States was at its peak. The number who identify as Protestant has shrunk from more than 70 percent in the 1950s to about 50 percent today, while the percentage of people who do not have a specific religious identity has increased from about 2 percent to 18 percent during that same period.

But Newport contends neither the drop in Protestantism nor the rise in the so-called “nones” necessarily mean the country is becoming more secular, despite a more vocal and organized atheist movement. He points to Gallup data that show 91 percent of Americans believed in God in May 2011, and in 2012, roughly 40 percent attended religious services once a week and 55 percent said religion is very important in their lives. “We are still religious underneath it all, but in different ways,” Newport said.

A recent analysis of those unaffiliated with religion — known as the “nones” — by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found them to be diverse in terms of religious beliefs and practices. While few of them (5 percent) attend church, a majority describe themselves as either a religious person (18 percent) or as spiritual but not religious (37 percent).

Newport writes that Americans are more inclined today to say that they don’t belong to any religion than they were in past decades, which “reinforces a drift away from organized formal religion into more casual, less formal religion.”

Will aging Boomers remain “religious” but leave the church? The worship of Baal is not secularism. Ephraim did not cease to be religious as he grew older. He just moved to another religion – a different way of expressing his spirituality. As Americans, we make assumptions about religion as being innately good – no matter what the religion is. Baal was bad religion. That is what we don’t understand. We don’t believe in bad religion. We may be more “religious” as we age but so were the kings of Israel. They were not any less religious or spiritual. They just moved their allegiance from God to Baal…and that is when they became – like their gods – worthless.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism–the New American Religion

When Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took a close look at the religious beliefs held by American teenagers, they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came down to something the researchers identified as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”

As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these: 1. “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.” 2. “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.” 3. “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.” 4. “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.” 5. “Good people go to heaven when they die.”

That, in sum, is the creed to which much adolescent faith can be reduced. After conducting more than 3,000 interviews with American adolescents, the researchers reported that, when it came to the most crucial questions of faith and beliefs, many adolescents responded with a shrug and “whatever.”

The casual “whatever” that marks so much of the American moral and theological landscapes–adolescent and otherwise–is a substitute for serious and responsible thinking. More importantly, it is a verbal cover for an embrace of relativism. Accordingly, “most religious teenager’s opinions and views–one can hardly call them worldviews–are vague, limited, and often quite at variance with the actual teachings of their own religion.”

The “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” that these researchers identify as the most fundamental faith posture and belief system of American teenagers appears, in a larger sense, to reflect the culture as a whole. Clearly, this generalized conception of a belief system is what appears to characterize the beliefs of vast millions of Americans, both young and old.

This is an important missiological observation–a point of analysis that goes far beyond sociology. As Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton explained, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism “is about inculcating a moralistic approach to life. It teaches that central to living a good and happy life is being a good, moral person. That means being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, responsible, at work on self-improvement, taking care of one’s health, and doing one’s best to be successful.” In a very real sense, that appears to be true of the faith commitment, insofar as this can be described as a faith commitment, held by a large percentage of Americans. These individuals, whatever their age, believe that religion should be centered in being “nice”–a posture that many believe is directly violated by assertions of strong theological conviction.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is also “about providing therapeutic benefits to its adherents.” As the researchers explained, “This is not a religion of repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of sovereign divinity, of steadfastly saying one’s prayers, of faithfully observing high holy days, of building character through suffering, of basking in God’s love and grace, of spending oneself in gratitude and love for the cause of social justice, et cetera. Rather, what appears to be the actual dominant religion among U.S. teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting along amiably with other people.”
In addition, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism presents a unique understanding of God. As Smith explains, this amorphous faith “is about belief in a particular kind of God: one who exists, created the world, and defines our general moral order, but not one who is particularly personally involved in one’s affairs–especially affairs in which one would prefer not to have God involved. Most of the time, the God of this faith keeps a safe distance.”

“In short, God is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist: he is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.”

As sociologists, Smith and his team suggest that this Moralistic Therapeutic Deism may now constitute something like a dominant civil religion that constitutes the belief system for the culture at large. Moving to even deeper issues, these researches claim that Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is “colonizing” Christianity itself, as this new civil religion seduces converts who never have to leave their congregations and Christian identification as they embrace this new faith and all of its undemanding dimensions.

Consider this remarkable assessment: “Other more accomplished scholars in these areas will have to examine and evaluate these possibilities in greater depth. But we can say here that we have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually [only] tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but is rather substantially morphed into Christianity’s misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”
Does this mean that America is becoming more secularized? Not necessarily. These researchers assert that Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith.

All this means is that teenagers have been listening carefully. They have been observing their parents in the larger culture with diligence and insight. They understand just how little their parents really believe and just how much many of their churches and Christian institutions have accommodated themselves to the dominant culture. They sense the degree to which theological conviction has been sacrificed on the altar of individualism and a relativistic understanding of truth. They have learned from their elders that self-improvement is the one great moral imperative to which all are accountable, and they have observed the fact that the highest aspiration of those who shape this culture is to find happiness, security, and meaning in life.

We now face the challenge of evangelizing a nation that largely considers itself Christian, overwhelmingly believes in some deity, considers itself fervently religious, but has virtually no connection to historic Christianity. Christian Smith and his colleagues have performed an enormous service for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in identifying Moralistic Therapeutic Deism as the dominant religion of this American age. Our responsibility is to prepare the church to respond to this new religion, understanding that it represents the greatest competitor to biblical Christianity. More urgently, this study should warn us all that our failure to teach this generation of teenagers the realities and convictions of biblical Christianity will mean that their children will know even less and will be even more readily seduced by this new form of paganism. This study offers irrefutable evidence of the challenge we now face.

That describes well what happened to Israel’s faith, doesn’t it? Like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears, like chaff swirling from a threshing floor, like smoke escaping through a window.

We have “cleverly fashioned images, all of them the work of craftsmen” that is a designer religion based on making us feel good and be happy. Eugene Peterson in The Message paraphrases it this way. “Religion customized to taste. Professionals see to it.” There are no obligations or commitments or even hard work. It’s all packaged to make it easy to access, convenient, quick, and over in forty days. We want what we can make with our own hands to suit our own preferences and busy lives.

Jeremiah 2:5: “They followed worthless gods and became worthless themselves.”
Romans 1:21: “…their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

3.  How do we keep from becoming weightless and worthless? How do we keep from simply drifting and floating? Our danger is not atheism or secularism but false religion. Religion that is made with our own hands to benefit us.

What does James say about “religion that is pure and faultless”? It is this. “To look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” How do we do that? Hebrews 10:24: “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another…”

Staying faithful requires fellowship and encouragement and commitment to a body of fellow believers. Not just Sunday School or exciting worship…but the work of love and good deeds.
Look at 14.

[a]Return,(A) Israel, to the LORD your God.
Your sins(B) have been your downfall!
(C) 2 Take words with you
and return to the LORD.
Say to him:
“Forgive(D) all our sins
and receive us graciously,(E)
that we may offer the fruit of our lips.[b](F)
3 Assyria cannot save us;(G)
we will not mount warhorses.(H)
We will never again say ‘Our gods’(I)
to what our own hands have made,(J)
for in you the fatherless(K) find compassion.”
4 “I will heal(L) their waywardness(M)
and love them freely,(N)
for my anger has turned away(O) from them.
5 I will be like the dew(P) to Israel;
he will blossom like a lily.(Q)
Like a cedar of Lebanon(R)
he will send down his roots;(S) 6
his young shoots will grow.
His splendor will be like an olive tree,(T)
his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.(U)
7 People will dwell again in his shade;(V)
they will flourish like the grain,
they will blossom(W) like the vine—
Israel’s fame will be like the wine(X) of Lebanon.(Y)
8 Ephraim, what more have I[c] to do with idols?(Z)
I will answer him and care for him.
I am like a flourishing juniper;(AA)
your fruitfulness comes from me.”
9 Who is wise?(AB) Let them realize these things.
Who is discerning? Let them understand.(AC)
The ways of the LORD are right;(AD)
the righteous walk(AE) in them,
but the rebellious stumble in them.

4.  What is the image of maturity and faithfulness in these final verses?

Substance, rootedness, connected, useful, protection, blossoming, fragrant, people dwelling and not just passing through, wisdom, a faith that we do not make with our own but one that comes from being connected to a community of others. This is just the opposite of what happened to Ephraim and his children, isn’t it?

In closing, I want us to look at one image – the splendor of the olive tree. It’s a curious and ironic phrase because there is no uglier tree. It is twisted, squat, gnarled, misshapen with thorny branches and nothing like what we would choose as illustrating God’s splendor. Splendor is a word used to describe God’s majesty, beauty and greatness.

Psalm 8:1
LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name(A)
in all the earth!
You have set your glory(B)
in the heavens.(C)

Psalm 96:6
Splendor and majesty(A) are before him;
strength and glory(B) are in his sanctuary.

Psalm 104:1
LORD my God, you are very great;
you are clothed with splendor and majesty.

Psalm 148:13
Let them praise the name of the LORD,(A)
for his name alone is exalted;
his splendor(B) is above the earth and the heavens

We would never pick the olive tree. We would pick redwoods or majestic oaks or something far more impressive, wouldn’t we? Yet, it is in the misshapen, gnarled, twisted and sometimes ugly that God chooses to reveal his splendor and strength. “With a possible lifespan of up to 2,000 years, individual olive trees have seen not only generations, but entire kingdoms, come and go on the earth’s surface.” What better description for the local church? It is our commitment to people that is not always convenient or inspiring. It is not a religion made with our own hands. It is not the pursuit of happiness. It is the way we will avoid the sins of Ephraim and becoming worthless and weightless. It is not pretty or easy or beautiful but it is God’s way to wisdom and righteousness.