Faith, Fear, and Y2K

We've got an awesome special song coming, but we're going to do it at the very end of the message today. So I want you to get your notes out, and we're going to look together at what God has to say about Y2K. That would have been a great title. I never even thought of that until right now. What God has to say about Y2K. Well, 313 days, 14 hours, 21 minutes, 29, 28. This is my millennium clock. Counting down, counting down, counting down. No, Ussers, wait. Wait, yeah, wait, Ussers. I misled you, I'm sorry. It's not time yet. If you didn't get an outline, hang on. Ussers, you can just sit down, in fact. You're wonderful, I appreciate you so much. I said that because I say that at the beginning of every message, and it's not exactly right. But, lots of interest in today's message. Lots of you said, you know what, I've got to hear what you have to say about this. As a result of the brief survey that we took last week, if you weren't here and you missed out on the survey, you're going to probably have an opportunity in the future. We've concluded that most of us can be roughly divided into one of three camps regarding our attitudes concerning the severity of the Y2K millennium bug and its effect on our culture. I want you to look up here now. Which of these three images come closest to describing kind of your attitude about what's going to happen? Let's put the house lights down and we'll take a look at these three images. Some of you are, well, if you're really honest, when it comes to Y2K, this is you. Some of you, you have a much, much more concerned viewpoint. This is yours. That's Wexford right there. That's the church. That's Pittsburgh. This is what happened in our backyard here recently. And then there's a fair number of you who are somewhat in between those two. This is kind of more accurately what you see happening. Kind of a windswept, sort of rather significant storm. This was a clip of Hurricane Andrew just before it came ashore five or so years ago. There goes the old playhouse. There's Paul Gregg's boat, I think that was. All right? How many number ones do we have here? Thank you for your honesty. How many number twos? Thank you for your honesty. How many number threes? And how many of you say, hey, you haven't put mine up there yet. I'm more sane and rational than any of those. I'm going to talk to you some this morning as well. Now, there's lots of scriptures that I could reference to begin today. And the one that I just want to point you to as a sort of a home base in this whole thing is what happened in 2 Corinthians when there was a huge famine that was just permeating the Middle Eastern countries. And the people of God responded to the famine. And they did some things, very practical things, to mitigate against what was happening in the natural realm. And God used the churches in Macedonia to be a blessing to the churches in Jerusalem and so on. Friends, throughout Scripture there are plenty of precedents for how God's people respond in times of distress. I'm not going to go through them all. That would be the whole morning. Because I want to talk specifically about this particular potential distress. The Y2K bug. I'm not going to go into the details of any of the technology of this. We're having a meeting Wednesday night, which you're welcome to come to an open forum. So you'll hear me say that several times. But Y2K, let's put that up. What does Y2K stand for? I know that some of you don't even know. I mean, this is so new to you. But it stands for the Year 2000. The Year 2000 bug is this little computer program glitch that occurred nearly 40 years ago when programmers were making the first computers. The first computer I saw was in this huge garage-sized building on my college campus. And they were trying to save memory space. So when they made dates, like 1975, instead of saying 1975, they just said 75. And they figured somebody would be bright enough by 1980 or 90 to figure out a way to fix that. But unfortunately, we're not quite that bright. And we didn't fix it. And so things are happening at an accelerated pace because there's billions of lines of code that have just two digits in them. And when the computer reads a double zero, it thinks, well, it must be 1900. And things will shut down. And most of you have heard about the embedded chips that are in a lot of different pieces of machinery and equipment that are going to read those digits and may not work. There's a limited amount of time. There's just a little under 313 days and so on. There's too few programmers to fix all the lines of code in the embedded chips. And there's also this whole thing of, well, how's the public going to respond? Now, 90% of you said on your survey, one reason I feel comfortable bringing this up, 90% of you said this is one of the most important issues facing our country right now. I felt pretty good about that. And a lot of you thought this was going to cause either major problems or widespread brief problems that would affect a lot of people. I love how some of you fill out surveys. Do we have one of the overhead? Here's one of the surveys. This is exactly what it looks like. They strongly agreed that there was going to be this important issue. Major problems, number two, they said. Then they said, how about you personally? Well, I don't know what it's going to really do. And number four, they said, what's your source of information? They said nothing. I don't get that. But then I was okay up to that point. Then I flipped it over and they said, well, does the Bible guide you? Yeah. Ten, do you care about others? No, not at all. I think they were visiting from another church. I pray. If this is someone from this church, I'm a failure as a pastor. How well informed are you? I don't know. But this is it. I didn't make this up. It's right here. This is what happens. But there's lots of confusion about this. And a lot of people are, you know, what's the big deal? And, you know, it's starting to create more and more humor. I mean, because it is like a... Well, here's one. I think this is kind of how some people feel about it. A letter from a blonde Y2K engineer. Well, I hope I haven't misunderstood your instructions because, to be honest, none of this Y2K problem makes any sense to me. At any rate, I've finished converting the company calendar so that the year 2000 is now ready to go with the following new months. Jerk. Fredward. Mark. Anzal. I don't want any letters about the blonde thing either. I have a blonde wife. She said I could do this. I have a blonde secretary. But, you know... But as you begin to read and listen more and more, it's evident that the Y2K computer bug is a real problem, friends. This isn't a millennial scare tactic. And the only proof that you need for that is the knowledge that companies that most of you work for that exist to make money, serious money, are spending incredible amounts of money to fix it. Nobody is going to spend a million, 5 million, 10 million, 50 million, 100 million dollars to fix a problem if it's just sort of someone's game. It's estimated that we'll spend 1.3 trillion dollars to fix this problem in America. Our entire budget for next year is 1.68 something trillion dollars. So we're going to spend the equivalent of the entire national budget in one year. Tell the chairman of AT&T it's an overstated problem. He spent 800 million dollars to fix it. Our own Duquesne Light is spending 45 million dollars to fix it. It's not a game. It's a real problem. Why am I spending Sunday morning time someone's thinking of this? I've got so many more important things in my life. And I know that for some of you, you certainly do. More urgent problems anyhow. But what I've begun to discover over time is that the information that's flowing right now is very spotty. On this same survey, most of you say you get your information from radio and TV, and there's not a whole lot of accurate information out there. Only 20% of you get it on the internet, and there's the extremes of information on the internet. One of you said you got it from your wife, and one from me. I pity both of you, but that's all I'm getting just from the two of us. But you see, what can and probably will begin to happen as information starts leaking out in different forms, it could lead to a sense of fear. And most everyone believes that the greatest inherent problem of the Y2K bug isn't the bug itself, but the fear of what it could do. And so I felt this is an opportunity for us to take our faith, that we say we believe, and put it into practice in everyday life to kind of be salt and light in the community in which we live. Did you know that Allegheny County just started to study the problem this quarter? No, I mean, I just read that. So we need to be salt and light in our community. We need to be people who are alert to what the potential issues might be. And here's one last thing. I believe some of the principles I'll share with you this morning, you can apply no matter what particular situation you could be facing in your personal life. Most of all, if you're informed and educated and prepared physically and spiritually over the next nine months, I can all but guarantee that you're going to have opportunities galore to talk to people about God. I mean, I just, I know if you have some of the right tools in your kit. When people come up to say to you, hey Joe, you know, you're one of those crazy Christians, aren't you? I've seen all those silly guys selling survival food and saying it's the end of the world. You don't believe that, do you? It's crazy. And you say, no, I don't believe that. And walk away, you're missing an opportunity. You can say, well, that's not my view, but let me tell you what I do believe about some things. And I mean, what a great opportunity. People will be thinking, even just the coming of the new millennium, they're going to be thinking about the long range look of things, folks. Now there's just a few key concepts and these are underlying words that I think we all need to be aware of in this discussion. One of them is uncertainty. Just four words, I think. Uncertainty. Every single authority on this subject qualifies their current assessment with this word. Uncertainty. We just don't know yet how serious this is going to be. Now, I want to say something very clearly and I want to make sure that some of you who are concerned about this listen to me. Most people in responsible positions, people who would be equipped to really know what's going on, programmers, project coordinators, specialists and so on, really don't believe that we're going to have much of a problem. Did you hear me say that? Most of the experts are assuring us, I mean the ones that I'm, and I want to go on record and tell you that we have a group of about ten very sharp, involved, engaged people in these fields that are helping us to formulate our plans. Some of them are very, very secure in their confidence that things are going to be okay. They cite statistics of compliance that's already in place, the progress of certain industries to meet their own checklists, the amount of money being spent, the fact that in our culture we just tend to put things off and then throw the best that we have at it and get things done, and we do. I mean, historically you can say that about us. They have all these different statistics and tell me about the systems that have checked out and most of it, I will tell you, is very encouraging stuff. But then, I have to say in the same breath that a lot of this stuff has that little word uncertainty and I think we have an overhead. This is right out of the report of a company, it's kind of a little longer quote, but this is a local power company. I'm not going to name just because I don't want people to say I'm picking on somebody, but this is one of your power companies, I promise you. Here's what they say at the last paragraph of their summary, most recently. The foregoing paragraphs contain forward-looking statements regarding the timetable, effectiveness and ultimate cost of the company X, I'm calling it, year 2000 strategy. Actual results could materially differ from those implied by such statements. In other words, they were saying things are going to be fine. Due to known and unknown risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the possibility that changes and upgrades are not timely completed, that corrections to the systems of other companies on which company X's systems rely, in other words, the connectedness thing, they may not be done in a timely way, and that such changes and upgrades may be incompatible with company X's systems, the availability and cost of trained personnel, and the ability to locate and correct all relevant computer code and microprocessor. What did they just say? That is a word for word out of their statement. Now, if you're an attorney, you're saying, hey, well, that's good stuff. I mean, right there, right? It's good stuff. We're not liable. But, again, hear me say well, I'm impressed with the number of companies and people that are pouring first rate energy into this, and most of what I'm hearing is reassuring. Most of it. The second word that kind of covers all this is the word projections. Right now, we're still, what, 313, 410, and 50 seconds away. I mean, technically speaking. And so, there's a lot of projecting going on, and a lot of people are not sure what's going to happen. This week, I've admitted to you before that I'm a weather channel guy. It's just sort of something I do when I'm kind of anticipating. And I watch the weather channel on Tuesday. Anyone watch the weather channel on Tuesday, and could you tell me what the five-day forecast was for this weekend? What did it say? Snow. Say it again. Snow. Mmm. Shhh. Okay? Five days out, weather channel, this storm could come tracking right up the old east, and we could get hammered, and I was, of course, I stood and prayed against it as I always do for weekends. But nonetheless, in five days, look what happened. So, I mean, projections really, we're a long way out yet in terms of really projecting accurately where things are. But that's the kind of world we're in. So people have to project, but things will change. Third word is perceptions. This is an important word because it's the most slippery of all the things I'm going to say to you today. If we've learned anything, listen, would you agree with this? If we've learned anything in the self-made presidential mess of 1998, it's the principle that public perception guides policy and decision-making. And in many cases, this perception becomes reality. The biggest concern and greatest uncertainty, really, is just how the public will perceive this problem. That's the biggest concern. The problem will get fixed. I'm assured of that by every scientist and technician that I know. But it may not be totally fixed in time to assure the public that everything's going to be okay. And a lot of folks that I'm reading are saying that usually some of the forecasting four, five months out will be accurate enough that people will start to make their assumptions in August, September, October about the impact. And that's when we may feel the greatest impact, actually. So the biggest thing we want to avoid is fear. We want to be informed as we go along. And that, again, is the primary reason why I want to prompt this entire body of believers to think rationally as people of faith about this situation, even though the outcomes are still unpredictable. How many of the things are just unpredictable? Who would have guessed, I mean, 15 months ago, who would have guessed we would have had a presidential impeachment trial that lasted a year and two speakers of the House would have resigned? You couldn't have predicted it. Or who would have predicted a year ago that gas would be 83 cents a gallon? Hmm? Or three years ago, who would have predicted that we would have had a budget surplus in 1998? I mean, nobody would have predicted that. So things are, you know, they're changing. And it's important that we don't just sit back and kind of say, well, you know, it's sunny today and it looks like it's going to be nice for the rest of the year. I'm not going to worry about this until October or November. That would be a mistake. It's called procrastination. Anyone want to give a testimony about how procrastination has kind of stung you now and then? Now, here's a little poem that I found. This kind of describes how I feel about procrastination. Look at what it says. Procrastination is my sin. It only brings me sorrow. I know I ought to change my ways. In fact, I will. Little things become bigger things if we procrastinate. And so what we're recommending, and I say we, I'm representing this council of ten, this new millennium team. I have run this material by them. By and large, I had their approval. We're not predicting a meltdown. We're not anticipating, you know, the end of the world as we know it or whatever that phrase is. But neither are we sticking our heads in the sand like that ostrich in the first shot. We think that some things could happen that will affect us. And so I want the ushers now please to come and hand you the outline. The outline that really describes what our simple seven-step preparation plan is. And I'm going to go through these very quickly for you, but I wanted you to have something to take with you. The fourth key word is the word prepare. Uncertainty, projections, perceptions, and preparations. And as you get this outline, I think it will help you to see what the key issues are and how you can begin today, February 21st, to prepare for the coming of the new millennium. Let's go through these together and I have a number of scriptures I want to refer to. The message on the top of the outline is this, this scripture. For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Let's read that together again. For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow. The word consecrate means to set yourself apart. Get ready and prepare for tomorrow. That was what Joshua told the people when they were about to go into the promised land. Let me quickly touch on these. This is not going to take as long as it looks. Number one, the first thing God's calling us to do is to pray. If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, two reasons why the first thing we need to do, spiritually speaking, is to pray are these. In every story that I could come across in scripture, every time I did a little check, 2 Chronicles chapter 20, when the people were about to be invaded by the Moabites and the Ammonites and so on, in story after story of the Old Testament, the book of Joshua, the book of Judges, in the New Testament, the book of Acts, when the people were being persecuted, the church would gather and they would pray because what people need in times of distress is they need the wisdom of God. And it was Jesus who said this, look in your outline, no one knows the day or the hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself, only the Father knows. And since you don't know when they will happen, look at that last part of the sentence, stay alert and keep watch. Friends, even in times when things are going smoothly, Jesus says, stay alert. Now how many of you know the time you're most likely to have a car accident is when you're just sort of checked out and not thinking? Do you know, I think the statistic is 80% of car accidents happen within five miles of your home? And the reason is we just check out, we don't stay alert. Stay alert. Pray. And we're going to mobilize a prayer effort around here and by the way, there's a national ministry called the Y2K Prayer Shield. All this information will be available Wednesday night in printed form, how you can get in touch with these different people on how to pray for yourself, your family, your church, your neighborhoods, your city, and your nation. Number two, rational preparedness. Now there are two extremes we want to avoid in this and I've already said them but I want to state them again. One is panic. It's not going to, panic helps nothing. Panic just creates its own problems. And the other is indifference. And I'll tell you, if you watch some of the messages that are out there, it would be easy to believe the worst. I just a few weeks ago got home a little bit early from my quiet time and sat down to watch, I was watching the Inspiration Network on our cable and there was a guy on there selling survival stuff for the Y2K thing. And he had, most of his clips were like the atomic bomb thing. And he was going down the long list of things and then they'd break in with the commercial about all the survival food you could get from them at a bargain price if you moved now and so on. Well, you know, that kind of thinking just creates this sense of panic. Well, now someone's saying, well you know, to be honest, Pastor Jay, what if Y2K does hit hard? I mean, what if it creates more problems than the experts are telling us? Well, I'll tell you one thing we're not going to do. We're not going to move to Idaho. We're not going to go and out-survive the rest of the world. That's not what the church is called to do. We're called to be here to minister, salt and light. And can I tell you, regardless of Y2K or whatever other associated problems, it's still not going to be as bad here as the Christians have had it throughout history. We're just so used to living on the fat of the land, that, I mean, just the fact that we might have to, hmm, you know, be a little tight for a couple of days or weeks even, like, well, gee, that's not Christian, is it? Well, it's in the Bible. We may be afflicted, and we need to be prepared. We want to offer hope. We want to be a ministry to other people. But let's not worry about it. Look at your outline. Who of you, by worrying, can add a single hour to his life? I love that. And yet, anyone here worry a little bit this week? I worried if I was going to be ready for this message. Doesn't help. Worrying is the most unproductive thing anybody can do. Don't be anxious about tomorrow. Jesus said, God will take care of your tomorrows. Well, then I ought to just forget about it then, Pastor Jay. No, look at the next outline. A prudent, the next scripture, a prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them. You might want to circle that. He prepares for them. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers a consequence. Turn your neighbor and say, are you prudent or a simpleton? That's right out of the Bible. You don't want to be indifferent about this, friends. You don't want to just stick your head in the ground and pretend it's not going to happen. Why? Well, because you need to examine the risk. Now, this is going to be helpful for some of you and maybe confusing for a few, but I want to go ahead and risk it anyhow. What I discovered when I started reading in earnest about this issue is that it is a very complex one. In fact, one expert I heard said this. He said, it is the most complicated technical problem in the history of civilization. That caught my attention. And the biggest factor in it being a technical problem is the uncertainty of what the implications will be. And when you go to make decisions under uncertainty, it creates dynamics in your decision-making process that are very difficult. In other words, there are some things that are problems. You say, if I had enough money, I could just walk out and get that fixed. Well, this isn't like that. You could throw all kinds of money at this and maybe not get it fixed. There might not be enough time, enough people. You might be too interconnected to get it fixed. I want to share with you a simple analogy that helped me to understand the rationality of doing something in preparation for this. And this will help you, by the way, in your witnessing to people about Christ. It's borrowed from the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal, who had this little explanation of the wisdom of trusting God. He called it the wager. And I tried to reduce it down to an overhead, and you won't be able to write it, but maybe just look up here. Here's what he said. He said, either you believe in God or you don't, and either God exists or He doesn't. Those are kind of the two options. Either you believe in God or you don't, and either He exists or He doesn't. Now, there are four possible outcomes of those beliefs and those factors. Number one, if you do believe in God and He exists, you go to Heaven. I'm going to tell you, speaking generally here, if you believe in God through Christ and He exists, you spend eternity in Heaven. I mean, that's a good thing. Second possibility is you do believe in God and He doesn't exist. What have you done? Well, you've spent some time in church here. You've met some pretty nice people. You maybe didn't do some of the stuff that you good stuff anyhow when you play it all out. So what harm have you really done? Third option, you don't believe in God and He does exist. Uh-oh. Bad bet. And this one, you don't believe in God and He doesn't exist. Well, you're smart, but who's going to be there to celebrate? Because when it's over, it's over, right? I like that one, but I always thought that was the best one. Now, take that same logic, if you will, and apply it to the Y2K issue very quickly. Either you believe in a serious problem or you don't, and either you prepare or you don't. And here's the four outcomes. You prepare, and Y2K hits hard, you're ready. I mean, as much as you can be, depending, I mean, if it's like incredible, if it's in the atomic bomb scenario, who's going to be ready? But if it's a mild interruption of services, you'll be ready. Second, you prepare, and Y2K's a dud. Well, you've made some unnecessary investments of some different things, which we'll talk about on Wednesday night, but no real harm done. Eat your food. Whatever you're going to do. Drink your water. You don't prepare, and Y2K's a dud, you can say to me, I told you so. Or whoever else has told you so. I mean, that is a possible scenario. And I have to say, as we get closer to this, we may know more clearly. And here's the last one. You don't prepare, and Y2K hits hard, you're in deep stuff. And you'll likely be scrambling around trying to figure out what to do. And so, I don't know if that helps you, but it's a very rational, logical, citizen preparation. Again, I want to underscore, Wednesday night. Wednesday night. We're going to give you some details about that. Number four, plan. By the way, that's called the theory of least regrets. I mean, that's in essence, that's if you're a blank filler, and you're going to be really mad at me. It's an illustration of the theory of least regrets. Next, plan as a family for various scenarios. Very quickly, I just want to say, sit down and talk about, well, what should we do here? What are a few things we could do? And anything! How many of you were here when the storm hit last June 15th, or wherever it was? All right, let me take you back. Four hands went up. I think most of you were here. We had that very difficult storm. Remember that? And how many of you lost your power for a couple of days? Oh, that storm, yeah. Well, the reason why it was no big deal, because we knew that people were fixing it, and everything would get back to normal, but there was some inconvenience and so on. Well, wouldn't it be great to have some things in place if that happened again? So, plan a few scenarios in your mind. What might that look like? Wednesday night, I trust you'll make time to come. We'll have about an hour, hour and a half. You can ask any question that you want of this group of highly qualified folks who will tell you what they're doing and how to prepare and what their own personal viewpoints are, which do differ, I might add. Then, as this information is updated, you can modify your plans. I tell you, North Way is going to have a plan. We're going to have several scenarios planned out. I want you to do the same thing for yourself. Number five is awareness. Ironically, we live in the information age, but there's so few reliable sources of unbiased information. It's amazing to me. It's not as easy to get reliable information. Yeah, folks, listen, not every Christian that's selling a book is going to give you reliable information. I've got to tell you that. There's some books out there that have the bomb on the front, and that guy just wants to sell a lot of books. But there are some Christian authors out there with very good information, and you would do well to read it and understand it. Check your books out. Please. And a few people are thinking, you know what? I trust capitalism. We'll get the problem fixed. Some people are going to make a lot of money on this. Time heals about everything. Time doesn't heal everything. How many know that's true? Have you ever sat in a doctor's office for a while? I sat there for a long time waiting to get healed. It didn't happen until I came out of the office. Just for a moment, I want to turn letter R to the minds of many people on our team. The most important part of this is what does this mean in terms of our ministry to others? How do we reach out to others in the midst of this situation? I believe we're going to have incredible opportunities to open conversations with people about eternal things. Just be prepared mentally to go where people need to go. If you're prepared, you're going to have great opportunities to talk to people about God, about eternal matters. Just the fact that have the privilege that most of us are going to have to see a new millennium come to pass, what a great opportunity to talk. But, there's also the reality that when you're preparing and making your plans, you need to take care of yourself. You need to have enough resources to share with others. There are going to be people who don't prepare. Maybe it will be some neighbors of yours. Maybe it will be a relative. I just hope it is. I just hope it is. I'm going to tell them, go find your own stuff. Seriously, it may well be a person who can't afford to make preparations. We need to be prepared to help them. Our new millennium team is very committed to having preparations made for people who are in need outside of our immediate body and those who can take care of themselves within our church family. Consider developing neighborhood networks. A lot of you need to think in terms of your neighbors. I'm going to tell you what a great opportunity is. What do you think about what's going to happen? You might want to develop a neighborhood network in the coming months if we get further confirmation that this could be more than just a little hiccup. Letter E, expect God to do great things. In the end of whatever circumstance, in the end of whatever we face in life, it may be a national or global issue, but friends, some of you today are facing one of the worst personal problems of your life. No matter what the circumstance, our God reigns. Our government doesn't reign, computers don't reign, money doesn't reign, power doesn't reign. Our God reigns. Prosperity comes and goes. Depressions come and go. Peace and wars have come and gone. But in the midst of it all, our God reigns. And he is in control. And if you stay tuned in to his heart, you will grow through this situation, whatever it might be. Peace will grow in your life because you know that God is in control of the things that concern you. Whatever happens, our world won't fall apart. Listen, because the kingdom that we serve is not of this world. Some of you are going to say, well, Jay, I was expecting you to talk about Y2K as a tool of judgment in God's hand. I was expecting you to say that God's had it with America and this is the tower of Babel and he's going to use Y2K to bring down the tower. Well, I don't know. Maybe he is. But I know this much. If I invest in the kingdom of God, if I give my resources and my energies and my affections to God's kingdom and his righteousness, he promises to take care of me no matter what happens all around me. And if I just may say in closing, there's a lot of us who would do well to rethink everything I put in this page regardless. If someone woke up tomorrow with a Y2K pill and popped it into every computer and the whole