S.O.S. Save Our Sons

S.O.S. Save Our Sons Inspired By Events From Trayvon Martin Shooting/Murder Exodus 1:15-21 15 And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah: 16 And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. 17 But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. 18 And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive? 19 And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. 20 Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty. 21 And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses. [1] In popular usage to this day, the letters SOS (no periods) are commonly believed to be an acronym for: Save Our Ship Save Our Souls Sink Or Swim. In the simplest terms, SOS is a ‘SIGNAL’ indicating distress and the need for help, and not an acronym or abbreviation. I want to use it as an acronym today as I preach one of the most difficult sermons I have ever preached “save our sons”, but I also want to use it as a distress signal saying we need help, someone needs to come to the aid of our sons, for if we don’t we will lose them. I am sick to my stomach and grieved when I think about what transpired last month in Sanford, Fla., a 17-year-old African-American named Trayvon Martin took a walk to the corner 7-Eleven for a bag of Skittles and some iced tea. On his return walk home, a neighbor, George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old white man of Latino descent, apparently decided a young black man walking alone at night wearing a grey hoodie, jeans, and white tennis shoes must equal trouble, so he made a call to the police. Somehow, not long afterward, Martin lay dead on the grass of a gunshot wound to the chest. Some say it was racially motivated because of the attire Trayvon was wearing. Some say the laws need to be revisited and guns are a problem. However I want to focus our attention on the real issue. No matter what your position is on [race or guns], nobody believes your rights extend to the right to kill innocent and unarmed children on public property! That’s the real issue! Mr. Zimmerman should have been arrested and charged with something and processed to follow a meandering path through the judicial system to determine his innocence or guilt. Why didn’t this happen is the real issue? This unfortunate incident furthermore highlights a deeper problem in America. I believe it reveals when African American won their civil rights only the branches and leaves of hatred, bigotry, and racism we trimmed, pruned, and cut back, however the trees are full and robust are in full bloom now, and the roots of racism are firmly planted and singing the song, “I shall not be moved…like a tree planted by the water…I shall not be moved!” Racism has been here for as long as black people have been in America. Racism remains the greatest cancer of American society, and has been since the founding of this nation – by men who owned slaves. Slavery was racism at its practical best. Now that slavery is 'outlawed', racism has a covert new face. Sometimes racism hides behind police badge who profile black drivers and passengers. Sometimes racism takes on the form of business owners who make you very uncomfortable when you shop in their stores, managers or bosses who single out black employees and treat them differently because they don't like how we speak, wear our hair, walk or dress, members of communities who don't want blacks anywhere near their homes. These are the NEW racists, which are offspring from the good ole boy system! The justice system is NOT in our favor, especially black men, and is really the new legal slavery in America. This country's laws were not set in place with black people in mind because, you have to remember, we were never meant to be free Americans in the first place. We the people meant some other people, if it didn’t 17-year-old Trayvon Martins wouldn't have to be harassed when they go through communities that have different skin color. Trayvon didn't die because of what he was wearing. And even if he did, that's not his fault, anymore than a rape victim could be blamed for a short skirt. I think a lot of people agree minority children are being unfairly stereotyped by their clothes, but the appropriate response is not to tell children to change their clothing - the appropriate response is to flip it and tell our culture, hey, pull your head out, stop making deadly assumptions about people based on what they wear and what they look like! American racism is not merely a distortion of human psychology teaching the George Zimmermans of our nation to see Trayvon Martin as nothing more than a criminal; it is also the debilitating disease allowing us, on the one hand, to denounce the alleged atrocities of in faraway Africa we've seen in that viral video, and on the other, to overlook the Trayvon Martins, just as we ignore the routine stop-and-frisk harassment of legions of black and Latino young males. It is American racism that constrains our leaders, like President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, and pastors and religious leaders from speaking forcibly and publicly about this destructive cancer for fear of alienating "regular" folks. We need to send a strong message to statehouses all over the country we will not tolerate our sons being taken from us anymore. We are sick of the killing, we are sick of racial prejudices, racial profiling, and symbols of hatred and monuments erected to demoralize our sons. You know what I am sending a message to our governor, Niki Hailey thank you for finally signing the bill for South Carolina to officially observe Black History Month…36 years after President Gerald Ford signed it into Federal law, now if you really want to do something to make me feel better…while you are at it get that confederate flag from in front of our statehouse! I send a stronger message to our own people right here in Columbia, SC to come together. Pastors should be more outspoken black and white, churches should stand with their pastor’s, we should insist on church not being the most racist time in America. We should be united in our efforts to save our sons! We can no longer overlook, what I deem in my humble opinion as being set up for failure. I believe the pattern is by design. I truly believe there are some sick folks who plan the failure of our young sons. Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group children of the group to another group." I believe there are some who have through their actions have set the destruction of our sons as their agenda and have pegged them dangerous and enemies the state. It would not be the first time either. I shouldn’t seem far-fetched. In our text we find ourselves enthralled in the middle of an insidious plot of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. His first plan of annihilation of Hebrew male children having failed, found it necessary for him either to give up his purpose, or to devise something else. Can I tell you a secret? Satan never gives up. He is a roaming around out of control as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He only comes to steal, kill, and destroy. He is a lonely soul and always wants company! He is always recruiting and always enlisting others to become team players in evil. Persevering and tenacious, Satan has a hold of Pharaoh and he prefers to find a way to continue his evil treachery. He hatches a wicked plot of murder and deceit. When devilish minds get to cooking in hell’s kitchen they will stoop to any means to accomplish fickle deeds. He thought himself a stop might be put to the multiplication of the Israelites by means of infanticide on a large scale. Infanticide was no doubt a crime in Egypt, as in most countries except Rome; but the royal command would legitimate almost any action, since the king was recognized as a god. It was strange he did not rather pick a fight with the grown men, against whom they might perhaps find some occasion: but directs his bloody aims towards innocent infants. There is more cruelty in the corrupt heart of man than one would imagine[2] Evil people don’t care who they hurt, who they kill, who they character assassinate, to accomplish their insidious acts. It does not matter if you are a president, a governor, a mayor, a city councilman, a police chief, a judge, a preacher, pastor, deacon, trustee, mother, father, sister, brother, family relation, trusted friend, babe, bae, boo or sweetheart. When folks decide they are going to hurt someone by any means necessary it doesn’t matter who they hurt and how they do it. The steps by which men go down the road to hell are easy; each is in advance of the other, a little further on in guilt; there is no startling transition; and so, by little and little, advance is made, and the neophyte becomes a graduate in the school of crime. Grown and shameless, Pharaoh openly avows himself, a murderer, takes these two midwives, who attend to the Hebrew women in between the labor and birth of their sons, compels them, so far as he can, to be a accomplice murderers, and extends his genocidal and homicidal project to all the sons of Israel. Pharaoh approaches the two midwives in our text Shiphrah (shif’-rah) = He garnished; fairness. Beauty; (roots = [1] beauty; brightness; [2] to be bright). Prolific; to procreate.[3] Puah #2 (pu’-ah) = Exodus 1:15; Splendor; splendid; light; child bearing; i.e., joy of the parents.[4] They are “superintendents,” head nurses, who were expected to give their orders to the rest of the midwives because certainly they could not be at every birth for they numbered in the millions. “Choke the life out of all of the boys and let the girls live”, was the death warrant and edict issued by Pharaoh. It was no doubt well known midwives were not always called in; but the king supposed they were employed sufficiently often for the execution of his orders to produce an important result. Simply kill the seed and allow the incubators to survive to carry whatever they are given to produce whatever comes to them after their seed is gone. Modern Day Pharoah That’s what modern day Pharaoh has done. Modern day Pharaoh is alive and well. He has since been long dead, but there is always another Pharaoh in succession to the throne. There are powers that be working against our males right now in this society. The 4.5 million African American men ages 15 to 29 represent 14% of the U.S. male population of that age and 12% of all African Americans in the U.S. Fewer than 8% of young African American men have graduated from college compared to 17% of whites and 35% of Asians. The unemployment rate for young African American men is over twice the rate for young white, Hispanic and Asian men. In addition, fewer African American men between the ages of 16 and 29 are in the labor force compared to white, Hispanic and Asian men in the same age group. Over 20% of young African American men live in poverty compared to 18% of Hispanic, 12% of Asian and 10% of white men. African American men are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. The percentage of young African American men in prison is nearly three times that of Hispanic men and nearly seven times that of white men. While African American men represent 14% of the population of young men in the U.S., they represent over 40% of the prison population. This figure does not include the number of young men on parole. Young African American men die at a rate that is at least 1.5 times the rate of young white and Hispanic men, and almost three times the rate of young Asian men. While the death rate drops for men ages 25 to 29 for most groups, it continues to rise among African Americans. For young African American men, more deaths are caused by homicide than any other cause. Additionally, HIV is the sixth leading cause of death for young African American and Hispanic men, yet for other racial groups, HIV is not among the top 10 causes of death. Nearly 4 out of 10 young African American men lack health insurance. High rates of death, incarceration, and unemployment, and relatively low levels of college graduation rates raise concerns in my humble opinion Pharaoh is still alive and has said don’t let the males survive! Killem all! And Pharaoh has issuing the nurses to do it! Oh I hear women saying I can’t find a good black man. They all thugs. They all in jail. They ain’t worth anything! Negro please! And here you go strutting around with Pharaoh and his kind on your arm while your seed is dying! Wake up!!! Pharaoh doesn’t want your seed to live, and he is using you to belittle, to discourage, to bash, to label, to tear down, to choke the life out of the male seed! Notice these were Hebrew midwives enlisted to snuff the life out of their own people! Yet they stood up and defied the law, broke the status quo and said we will civilly disobey the unjust killing of these sons! They stood up and said for God I will live and for God I will die. They were as determined as Joshua when he said as for me and my house we will serve the Lord! We have got to stand up and save our sons. All of us…I am sending out my distress signal…save our sons! For the sake of Trayvon Martin, and the Trayvon Martins who never had this sort of mass outcry, something must be done. We must send an S.O.S. out…save our sons. This is a call to action! Someone must do something and we are the somebody. But if we choose to turn our ears and hearts away from his parents and his community, then Trayvon Martin's blood will be on the hands of this entire nation. Will we ignore that call for help, as Trayvon's went unheeded? The Bible says, but the midwives feared God! And the narrative implies he had not miscalculated. It was the disobedience of the midwives (ver. 17) that frustrated the king’s intention, not any inherent weakness in his plan. The midwives, while professing the intention of carrying out the orders given them, in reality killed none of the infants; and when asked by the Pharaoh with disobedience, made an untrue excuse (ver. 19). Thus the king’s second plan failed as completely as his first—“the people” still “multiplied and waxed very mighty” (ver. 20).[5] Thank God these midwives decided to save our sons. They had a duty of opposing authority when its commands are against God’s Law. Wrongful commands of legitimate authority are to be disobeyed. Vers. 20, 21.—Therefore God did well to the midwives. Literally, “And God did well,” etc. (vs. 21). Because they feared him sufficiently to disobey the king, and take their chance of a punishment, which might have been very severe—even perhaps death—God gave them a reward He made them houses. He blessed them by giving them children of their own, who grew up, and gave them the comfort, support, and happiness which children were intended to give. There was a manifest fitness in rewarding those who had refused to bring misery and desolation into families by granting them domestic happiness themselves.[6] In other words when we do what God commands us to do, the very thing we fear we will lose is the very thing God blesses us with and no one can take away. There is a blessing when we save our young sons. Everytime infants and children trapped in the well of hunger and poverty simply because they were born in black America…we are saving our sons. Everytime we rescue youth trapped in the grip of poor education and mis-education because they were born black in America…we are saving our sons! Everytime we come to the aid of a young man trapped in the well of unemployment and lack of opportunity simply because they were born black in America, and we are saving our sons. Everytime we tell our sons folks will not like you for who you are. Everytime we tell them to run away from trouble… Everytime we tell them you will have to make allowances for other people’s racism. That’s part of the burden of being black. We can be defiant and dead or smart and alive. Everytime we tell them to be aware of their surroundings we are saving our sons! Is there anybody here that everytime opportunity you get you will think S.O.S.! Save our sons! That’s just what Jesus did! Everytime we share the gospel message we are saving our sons! God sent his son, Jesus to answer the distress signal…S.O.S. Jesus came to save our sons! Jesus died for our sons and the whole wide world! I am so glad Jesus got up with all power in His hands! I hear God saying if we want to save our sons, if you are willing I am able. I will save your sons! I will save your sons: I am able to make obstacles disappear. I will save your sons: I am able to rebuild broken-down bridges. I will save your sons: I am able to restore the washed out roads. I will save your sons: I am able to open locked doors. I will save your sons: I am able to neutralize hidden dangers. I will save your sons: I am able to stem the floods which threaten to take them out I will save your sons: I am able to calm the storms in their lives I will save your sons: I am able to rescue them Is there anyone that knows He can…knows He will…. say yes! The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2009 (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version.) (Ex 1:15–22). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc. Henry, M. (1996). Matthew Henry's commentary on the whole Bible : Complete and unabridged in one volume (Ex 1:15–22). Peabody: Hendrickson. Smith, S., & Cornwall, J. (1998). The exhaustive dictionary of Bible names (223–224). North Brunswick, NJ: Bridge-Logos. Smith, S., & Cornwall, J. (1998). The exhaustive dictionary of Bible names (198). North Brunswick, NJ: Bridge-Logos. The Pulpit Commentary: Exodus Vol. I. 2004 (H. D. M. Spence-Jones, Ed.) (16). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc. The Pulpit Commentary: Exodus Vol. I. 2004 (H. D. M. Spence-Jones, Ed.) (17). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.