Walk Through Esther Part 5 | The Prophet Jeremiah Part 8

Now, real quick, we're going to pray, and we might have a couple of closing thoughts as it relates to Esther, and if you have any burning questions that we did not get to last week as it related to our walk through the book of Esther, you are welcome to ask those questions.

In fact, if you have a question that's off -topic, and you just want to know the answer to it, from time to time here we play this game called

Stump the Pastor, and we'll see if we can do that. You know, I pretend to be the Bible Answer Man, but I'm not,

I'm just a normal pastor guy. But let's pray, and then we will get started. Lord Jesus, again, as we open your word, we ask that through the

Holy Spirit we may rightly understand what your word is saying, what you have revealed, that our hearts and minds would be transformed and renewed through your word, and that we would bear fruit in keeping with repentance and love towards neighbor and others.

We ask in Jesus' name, amen. All right, let me do this real quick here. I gotta try at least to keep myself somewhat organized, because if I don't, it'll start to look like my desk, or like my office.

The pirate cave is not a place where more than one person can actually survive. It's uninhabitable most of the time.

Just my wife would say, yes, yes, yes. All right, so last week we were wrapping up the book of Esther.

So I'm going to duplicate this tab, and we noted that one of the themes that we saw in the book of Esther is that God purposely makes it so that we can defend ourselves, even with lethal force, and not be guilty of breaking the commandment, you shall not murder.

And so this then forms the basis of the military, our police force, and we recognize that rightly so that there is a normal process and a way in which justice is to be meted out, but from time to time you might end up being the first responder in a situation, or you might be threatened with physical harm, like the

Jews that were in Susa and other places within the Persian Empire were threatened, and you'll note that God, in rescuing them, he rescued them by giving them the right to defend themselves, and a lot of people died in this plot that was put together by Haman.

And I would also kind of make another issue, and that is that we human beings, holy smokes,

I don't know what has gotten into us, but sin is so corrupting that we will listen to all kinds of weird narratives for the purpose then of demonizing people and our groups, and then engage in their murders, and Haman, he concocted this scheme due to a vengeful spirit because he was very angry that Mordecai wouldn't bow down to him and treat him as a god and wouldn't tremble in his presence.

But the fact that more than 50 ,000 people rose up within Persia for the purpose of killing

Jews and they had to defend themselves in that skirmish tells us that there's this always this kind of undercurrent, and that is a hatred of those who bear the name of God or who believe in the one true

God. And also, you'll note that racism is a real thing, even anti -Semitism, it is a legitimate thing.

And I think back to the narrative of the Nazis. The narrative of the Nazis, if you know your history, is that Germany was pretty well wrecked by the peace treaty that was signed at Versailles to end

World War I, and they had to pay very large war reparations for the purpose of at least them taking responsibility for starting the war and for the damage that they had done in the war.

And as a result of it, the German economy in between World War I and World War II was just a mess.

Inflation was running amok and completely out of control. And there are stories, news stories, and you can see photographs from the time of people in Germany bringing wheelbarrows full of Deutschmarks to the store, and with one wheelbarrow full of Deutschmarks, they could only purchase a few things, like a loaf of bread or something like that.

That's how far out of control the inflation was. And in the midst of all of this, the brown shirts and the

Nazis, they arose, and they had a narrative. If you haven't read the narrative, you can find it in Mein Kampf.

But the basic narrative is that all these woes that had befallen the German people, it wasn't because they were rightly being punished for their role in World War I.

Instead, the way it worked in Hitler's narrative is that there was a conspiracy, a cabal of very powerful

Jewish bankers, that they were the ones controlling the world's economy, and they were the ones responsible for the misery that the

German people were going through. And so what he did is that he took a very real situation, which was legitimately a real problem, and that was the out -of -control economy.

And as the out -of -power party at the time, and their failed coup attempt,

Hitler basically demonized and created this conspiracy theory, an absolute conspiracy theory, that everything that was happening to them, all the evil that had befallen them, was a result of Jews.

And in that narrative, then, when the Nazis take power, the Nazis then, who believed this narrative, set about to take revenge against the

Jews for the evil that they had foisted on to the

German people. And that was the jet fuel behind the whole

Holocaust. And yes, the Holocaust occurred. Yeah, it really happened.

And I would note, then, that what we saw, then, was a complete breaking of the

Eighth Commandment, absolutely slandering our neighbor, but doing so in a way that we were slandering an entire people group, and basically saying that the woes that we're experiencing are a result of their scheme, their plan, their agenda, their conspiracy.

And it's absolutely tragic. I traveled to Germany for the first time back in 2019.

I have family from there. My mom was born in Wiesbaden after the war, and I have many family members who live in and around Wiesbaden and Frankfurt.

And one of the things that struck me as I was walking through Wiesbaden is, you see all these little brass plates that are kind of embedded into the bricks on the ground as you're traveling through the old part of the city.

And those brass plates have names on them. And what they had done is they had collected up the names of all the

Jews who had been wrongly arrested, sent to the concentration camps, and on there, it has the date that they were terminated, they were killed.

And it's a horrifying thing. But what we see here in this particular case is not mere antisemitism.

This is a hatred of a people group, or a group of people, specifically because the god they worship is different than the gods that are being worshipped.

And the god that they worship makes them stand apart rather than in unity with the reigning people.

And in that situation, they were put into a situation where they had to defend themselves. But you'll note that we human beings are capable of atrocities against each other.

And as Christians, we are promised suffering and persecution. And Christ himself promises that in the days immediately before his return, that all nations would hate

Christians on account of his name. And so I would say, I kind of put it this way, people are tolerant of Jesus insofar as you use the name

Jesus, but what you mean by that name is not the guy who's actually in the Bible, in the claims that he makes.

It's a Jesus of our own making, an idol that we've created, one that is politically correct.

A Jesus who's woke, a Jesus who's about social justice, a Jesus who is okay with you worshipping other deities.

He doesn't have a problem with that, you know, stuff like that. You get the idea. So, in wrapping up then,

Esther, the balance of it, we'll take a look, hang on a second here, I just want to, you know, we made it partway through chapter nine.

So, the Jews accepted what they had started to do, and what Mordecai had written to them. Haman, the

Agagite, the son of Hamadathah, the enemy of the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them and cast the

Pur, that is cast lots. That's why the feast is called Purim, and to crush and to destroy them.

But when it came before the king, he gave orders in writing, this evil plan that he had devised against the

Jews, would return on his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows. Therefore, they called these days

Purim, after the term Pur, therefore, because of all that was written in the letter, and of what they had faced in this matter, and of what had happened to them, the

Jews firmly obligated themselves and their offspring and all who joined them, that without fail, they would keep those two days according to what was written, and at the time appointed every year, that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation in every clan, province, and city, and that these days of Purim should never fall into disuse among the

Jews, nor should the commemoration of these days cease among their descendants. Then Queen Esther, the daughter of Abahel and Mordecai the

Jew, gave full written authority confirming the second letter about Purim. Letters were sent to all the

Jews, to the 127 provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus in words of peace and truth, and these days of Purim should be observed at their appointed seasons as Mordecai the

Jew and Queen Esther obligated them, and as they had obligated themselves and their offspring with regard to their fasts and their lamenting.

The command of Esther confirmed these practices of Purim, and it was recorded in writing.

King Ahasuerus imposed tax on the land, of course he did, he's a politician, that's what they do. Sorry, did

I say that aloud? Yeah, I did. And on the coastlands of the sea, and all the acts of the power and might and the full account of the high honor of Mordecai, to which the king advanced him, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia?

For Mordecai the Jew was second in rank to King Ahasuerus, and he was great among the

Jews and popular with the multitude of his brothers, for he sought the welfare of his people and spoke peace to all his people.

So you'll note that Mordecai is a fellow who rose to the ranks and had a very powerful position within the

Media -Persian empire, very akin to Daniel. Daniel also had an extremely high -ranking position within not only the

Babylonian empire, but the Persian and Media empire as well, because they kind of morphed into those things.

And God is the one who placed them into those positions. But you'll note that it says of Mordecai that he spoke peace to all of his people.

So Mordecai did not look only with favor on those who were genetically related to him, but in his official capacity in the government of King Ahasuerus, he spoke peace to all people, all the people of the land.

And so you'll note that if you're a Christian and you find yourself in political power, you serve the whole nation, not merely

Christians. That's an important aspect of all of this. So Jen says,

Jen, you make a great point.

And this is where we have to be super careful, because the first commandment is you will have no other gods, none.

We are to only worship the God who exists. And it's absolutely true, and the scriptures teach it,

I'll show you, that you can use words like Jesus, Holy Spirit, and gospel, and mean something totally different than what the

Bible says, completely different. That's the danger of it. And so I'm never impressed when somebody uses the word

Jesus. My immediate question is, well, which one? And if they say, well, what do you mean there's only one?

No, no, no, tell me the details of the one that you believe in. Because you get the idea. So I'll show you the text that bears that out.

And this is where we as Christians are to be vigilant. We are to only believe in the real Jesus.

We are only to believe in the real Holy Spirit. We are only to believe and trust in the real gospel.

And these things are defined for us very clearly. But in 2 Corinthians chapter, let me go back to 10.

In chapter 10, Paul, I think I'm going to go to 11, hang on, there we go, yeah, we'll go to chapter 11.

Paul here in his correction of the so -called super apostles, what a stupid name that is, by the way.

Is it better than the Greek? I'll show you the Greek when we get to it. But the so -called super apostles, these guys legitimately had good public speaking skills, good rhetoric.

And back in the days before television, that's an important thing. They were making a very healthy living as itinerant preachers going into church services.

But they were commanding the highest dollar, if you would, although that wasn't the actual currency being used, the greatest amount of money for their speaking engagements.

But that poor apostle Paul, he comes into Corinth, and he plants a church, and he doesn't charge them anything.

And there's a reason why that Paul doesn't charge anything, because he's a tent maker as a missionary.

So he pays his own expenses wherever possible, and other churches from time to time would support him in his missionary work.

And he did this so that he would never be a burden on those churches that he was planting. He wanted to get them up and running at the lowest cost, if you would, save that initial investment money and not burn through it quickly so that they could eventually call a pastor and stuff like that.

This is how the apostle Paul rolled. Well, the super apostles who commanded the highest amount of money possible for their speaking engagements, they legitimately were writing a slanderous report about Paul and saying that the reason why

Paul doesn't charge is because he's so boring when he speaks and he's so hard and ugly to look at that even if he were to charge, nobody would pay him for his services.

Yeah, a little two -buck check will fix that right up. Put some beer goggles on you and Paul will look great, you know, but, um, sorry, right.

And I always like to say in this regard, it is absolutely true that not only is

Paul not a great public speaker, he even says that, he is legitimately guilty of killing somebody while preaching.

Okay, I still have yet to do that, so, so close, yeah.

So, you know, he was droning on for like three hours, some poor fellow fell out of a window and died, but thankfully he can operate in the signs of the apostles, so he just raised him from the dead and dusted him off, you know.

But, um, so that's context here then, Jen. Here's our text, 2

Corinthians 11, I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me. For I feel a divine jealousy for you,

I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I'm afraid as the serpent deceived

Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims to you another

Jesus, there's another Jesus, okay, then the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a heteros, a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different heteros gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

And he's not, he's not patting him on the back here, this is, he's actually speaking words of like, you should not, you shouldn't be doing this.

Different spirit, different Jesus, different gospel, right? Those exist. And if you remember in the book of Galatians chapter 1,

Paul calls down the greatest condemnation on the Judaizers, and he says, even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a different gospel or gospel than the one already preached, let him be anathema, let him be damned.

And so you'll note then, this is a call for us to do some serious work. So right now, the super -de -duper popular internet movie is

The Chosen, right? And you know, you have all these people who are just going goo -goo over this thing, you know, basically it's a fan fiction about Jesus, you know, but the claim is, is that The Chosen is in movie format, the most authentic rendition or depiction of Jesus out there.

That's what their claim. But here's the thing, major producers and mucky mucks within, you know, working in that film or that series, they're

Mormons. And even Dallas Jenkins basically doesn't understand why anybody would draw a line regarding, you know, regarding Mormons being

Christians. And what's really sad is you have Glenn Beck, you know, I heard him recently say that he had a conversation with Billy Graham, and Billy Graham told

Glenn Beck that Mormons are Christians. But is the

Jesus that Mormonism believes in, is that the biblical Jesus? Not even close.

Okay, let me give you just some, a couple of the highlights, all right?

According to Mormonism, Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer.

They are both direct descendants of a God named Elohim who lives near a mysterious star on a planet, you know, called

Kolob. Have you ever heard of the Kolob Mountain Range in Utah? Okay, that's named after the mysterious star that, you know, apparently

Elohim, you know, his planet is near. And he and his celestial wives are engaging in eternal sex and procreation, creating spirit babies, and the whole purpose of creation as we understand it is so that these preexisting babies can then be given a human body so that they can then be tested to see whether or not they will be obedient to Elohim, because if they follow the program of Mormonism, then they, like Elohim, can become gods, okay?

This has nothing to do with biblical Christianity. And so Elohim, according to them, was once a god who became a god by being obedient to his god.

And there are many, many, many, many, many, many, many gods, you know, like this weird infinite reductio of deities that we aren't even aware of.

And as the story goes, when Elohim was working with Jesus and Lucifer to plan out planet

Earth and life on planet Earth, Lucifer put forward a plan where he was going to force everybody to become gods, but Jesus, he rebuked

Lucifer, and he presented to the council of gods a plan instead that allowed human beings to maintain their free will.

And so the other deities liked Jesus' plan better, and this really upset Lucifer.

And so Lucifer led a rebellion against Elohim and against Jesus. He lost the fight.

They were cast to Earth. They became the, well, actually, they were cast to Earth and became the demons.

And this is also part of the explanation as to where people with dark skin come from.

I'm not making this up. It's just horrifying. But Joseph Smith did. Yeah. So, all of that being said, the

Mormon Jesus is not the biblical Jesus. Not even close.

He's not the same. Oh, and by the way, the Virgin Mary in Mormonism, the Virgin Mary conceived not by the power of the

Holy Spirit, but because Elohim showed up at her door and said, hey, baby, let's get together. And Elohim apparently had actual physical relations with the

Virgin Mary and how she stayed a virgin after that. I don't know. But that's how that all went down.

So, you know, and by the way, I learned Mormonism from the Mormons. This is creepy stuff, all right?

So, a great example, then, of somebody believing in a Jesus that isn't the biblical

Jesus. And there's different nuances that you can get along these lines. Mormonism is kind of the extreme.

But if you were to think about it, the more I study the charismatic

Pentecostal NAR movements, the more I'm convinced that the Holy Spirit that they believe in isn't the

Holy Spirit. It's a different spirit altogether. They are not operating under the biblical

Holy Spirit. And their definition of the Holy Spirit, how the claims that they make for him have nothing to do, in fact, the very things they practice in their churches are contrary to the things we know that the

Holy Spirit would do. So I think they're operating under a different spirit. And then a different gospel, in the case of the

Judaizers, the Judaizers denied that salvation is by grace through faith apart from works.

I can name entire denominations that anathematize the idea of salvation by grace through faith apart from works.

And so the gospel they preach isn't the biblical gospel, it's something very different. So yeah, Jen, I think you're right.

There's a lot of deviation, but that's kind of the way the devil operates. So the way the devil operates is by creating all of these counterfeits and flooding the market with the counterfeits.

And then when you point out, you said, there you go, that's a slug nickel right there, you couldn't spend that. And people get mad at you.

That's not a slug nickel, this is a diamond. No, it's a slug nickel, you know. Yeah.

Yep. All right, so let me come back up here. So April says, when

I met my neighbor, and I was so excited to talk about Jesus. She talked about Jesus too, but the more she talked,

I realized she didn't know Jesus. She was talking about the Jesus of the Mormon religion. Yeah, right.

So yeah, when you hear somebody talk about Heavenly Father, pre -existence, and stuff like that, it's crazy stuff.

Okay, Jen says, so I find it so interesting, actually, how much Jesus has influenced everything.

Jesus matters to Hindus who have merged Jesus into their system and continue to mention and acknowledge key episodes of the

New Testament gospels. And I would note that this is kind of the standard way in which the pagan religions have tried to deal with the threat that Jesus is.

So if you were to think of like, one of the things that all of the old school pagan religions have in common, is at their core, they are fertility cults.

And along with that is going to be old school

Egyptian Gnosticism, and things like this. So what has happened is that Christianity poses a threat because Christ says to go and proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins to all nations.

He says to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is why we need the word

Catholic back, by the way. We need that one back, because Rome's misusing it. But the idea is that the message that we have of the good news that Christ has bled and died for our sins, that God takes on human flesh, born of the

Virgin Mary, suffers under Pontius Pilate for our sin and for our salvation, that everybody everywhere needs to hear this.

Everybody everywhere needs to hear this. And that's the point.

That's the Catholicity of it. But what happens is that you'll note that you see this in the

Book of Acts, you even still see this in this day, that people who are steeped in a pagan mindset, and by paganism

I'm not talking about atheism, by paganism I'm talking about a religious belief that keeping the gods happy is necessary for fertility of the earth as well as human procreation and things like this.

That's ultimately kind of where the focus is. What they do is they find a way to assimilate a version of Jesus into their system so that Jesus fits well as kind of a pinnacle concept of a fertility deity.

And so there was a YouTube video that went viral more than a decade ago called

Zeitgeist, and I did a very long

Fighting for the Faith episode debunking the claims of Zeitgeist. But this is the standard pagan and gnostic narrative, that Jesus really didn't rise from the dead.

He didn't really die for our sins. That Jesus is a myth and he's just like Osiris, he's just like Horus, he's just like other pagan deities that die and rise from the grave, and it's all a story about the fertility of the earth.

But that's ultimately a gnostic narrative, and the

Hindus do it today, but you've got to be careful then, because you'll note that gnosticism is alive and well in the world, and not only that,

I would argue within the visible church. And gnosticism wants to basically take away all of the hard edges of Christianity.

And if you remember, I always come back to Brian McLaren's book. More than a decade ago, the book that went like wildfire through evangelicalism was a book by Brian McLaren called

A Generous Orthodoxy, where he made the claim that you can be a worshiper of God in the way of Buddha.

And he, after the publication of that book, A Generous Orthodoxy, he celebrated

Ramadan with his Muslim neighbors.

And Christianity Today covered it, and the Emergent Village blog was up and running at the time, and there were evangelicals like Bill Hybels and others who were praising and lauding

Brian McLaren because of just how generous his orthodoxy is.

But in McLaren's orthodoxy, it's generous towards paganism and very intolerant of biblical

Christianity. Best way I can put it. So yeah, and the

Jesus that McLaren worships, I don't recognize that deity at all. And that's the point.

All right, Rachel says, emotionally charged music worship services makes me think they're worshiping a physical feeling.

Yeah, you're not wrong. Dopamine is their God. Joshua here just said that dopamine is their

God, and I think that's kind of the issue, is that when you think of some of these worship services, they're in a dark room, you've got the heavy beat music and the redundant words sung over and over and over and over.

Everything is designed to kind of beat your brain into submission, but it's a very emotionally charged thing. And the dopamine release is a thing in those services.

I think you may be onto something there. And it's the God of their own imagination, especially when they neglect to read and study the scripture.

Yeah. And that second part, that last part, when they neglect to read and study the scripture,

I'm still in shock about the sheer number of people that are joining us online.

And over and again, one of the common themes is that they don't have anywhere else to go in order to hear the word.

And it's like, what are pastors doing? What are they doing?

Are they so busy on a Sunday morning, they can't crack open a Bible? They preach for 45 minutes.

How does the scripture not get rightly handled and preached and taught? So yeah, okay.

Feeling disappears as soon as all that music, light, stage magic is gone. Louise, that's a good point.

Part of the reason why I do the reviews that I do, I go straight to the sermon part and I review the actual content of the sermon because by doing so,

I can remove it from the context of the rock and roll Smoke and Light show. And when you do that, then it makes it so that now you're thinking objectively in an environment where everything was designed to make it so you don't think objectively.

And then people sit there and go, what was I listening to? I didn't even realize it was that bad. Seems to me that all the

New Agers, progressives elevate experience rather than reading, studying scriptures.

And I would note, just a little bit of a note, that every American and probably everybody in Western civilization has been catechized into this idea of listening to their feelings.

And you say there, how? Have you seen the Star Wars movie? Any Disney movie, all the

Star Wars movies, it's all about reaching out with your feelings. It's the

Sith who operate in absolutes. Just think about it. Everything in our movie consumption, all the popular themes and the most popular movies, the whole

Star Wars franchise, the good guys, how do they operate? On feelings.

And the bad guys deal in absolutes. You think that's an accident?

All right, so let's do this. We have some time, we have a little bit of time, and I would like to get back to our study of the book of Jeremiah.

We have a lot of ground to cover, and I'll keep this here, and we'll talk, but when we were working our way through Jeremiah, we made it up to partway through chapter five.

And I'm going to back up just a little bit in our context, and we're going to keep working through the prophet Jeremiah. I am absolutely convinced that this book is like, in our day, mandatory reading and mandatory study.

The better you can see what's going on in the apostasy at the time of Jeremiah, the better grip you're going to get on the current apostasy that we seem to be running through right now.

And a little bit of a note, if you remember in the setup, when we started studying

Jeremiah, we talked about how bad the state of affairs were. In Solomon's temple, they had set up incense altar to Asherah, to Baal, and the worship of Moloch was there.

They had a male cult prostitute in Solomon's temple, and they made their living there on the temple grounds.

It was part of the worship that was there. And I would say this, is that in our day, there are Gnostics, people who are openly

Gnostic, who are claiming that what the worship was like at the time of Jeremiah was true

Judaism. And when they got rid of that and imposed monotheism, that that's the aberration.

That's their claim. There are people overtly claiming that. There are whole books claiming that now.

There's one book in particular called, When God Had a Wife. When God Had a Wife. Their claim is that real

Judaism was polytheistic and had both male and female deities.

And that monotheism, Trinitarian monotheism, is a demonic aberration.

And murderous. Okay? Speculative or religious history. Right. So just so you know, that's how their narrative works.

But here's what God says to the people of Judah at the time when all that was going down.

God says, How can I pardon you? Your children have forsaken me. They've sworn by those who are no gods.

When I fed them to the full, they committed adultery. They trooped to the houses of whores. They were well -fed, lusty stallions, each neighing for his neighbor's wife.

Shall I not punish them for these things, declares Yahweh? And shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?

So you'll note, God doesn't play well with other deities. So Jesus did not drive a 1969

Volkswagen van with a co -exist bumper sticker on the back.

I just want to make that very clear. Nor did he wear Birkenstocks.

I'm just going to also make that clear as well. I happen to like Birkenstocks myself.

All right. Okay. So go up through her vine rows and destroy, but not a full end.

Strip away her branches, for they are not Yahweh's. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have been utterly treacherous to me, declares

Yahweh. They have spoken falsely of Yahweh and have said, He will do nothing.

No disaster will come upon us, nor shall we see sword or famine.

And these are important words here because not only are they saying no disaster will come upon us, they're saying that in the context of kind of two things.

Number one, what God threatened to do to them in the book of Deuteronomy, when it got to the curses section of the

Mosaic covenant, they said that that will never come back. This is an overt denial of what scripture said.

And it's also an overt in your face repugnant denial of what the prophets that God had been sending up recently within the recent history of both

Israel before they went into exile and Judah before they're going into exile. And they're basically saying those prophets and Moses are liars.

Okay. We all know that God is love and love is God and he just wants you to love the one you're with and he's tolerant and he really is okay with any deity you want to worship.

He ain't. All right. The prophets will become wind. The word is not in them.

Thus shall it be done to them. Therefore, thus says Yahweh, the God of hosts. Again, just a reminder.

I recently got somebody who really mad at me because they noted on my

YouTube channel that every time I come across the word L -O -R -D when it's all caps in an

Old Testament text, I always say Yahweh because that's the Hebrew word behind it. You're a heretic because you say

Yahweh. The Bible doesn't say Yahweh, it says Lord. No, it says

Yahweh. And the translators put L -O -R -D there rather than Yahweh.

All right. Therefore, thus says Yahweh, the God of hosts. Saba, again, is army. The God of armies. Because you have spoken this word, behold,

I am making my words in your mouth a fire. And this people would and fire shall consume them.

You'll note that God uses fire often in imagery that regards judgment. Somebody says,

I really want to have the baptism of fire. No, you don't. You really don't want that.

Because if you get that, you in hell. That's the baptism of fire. So behold,

I am bringing against you a nation from afar, O house of Israel, declares Yahweh. It's an enduring nation.

It's an ancient nation. A nation whose language you do not know, nor can you understand what they say. Their quiver is like an open tomb.

They are all mighty warriors. They shall eat up your harvest and your food. They shall eat up your sons and your daughters.

They shall eat up your flocks and your herds. They shall eat up your vines and your fig trees and your fortified cities in which you trust.

They shall beat down with the sword. And here's the bit. Who got it right?

Jeremiah got it right, right? Jeremiah got it right. You're going to note that he's been vindicated.

This is how this went down. And those prophets, those priests and priestesses who are saying

Yahweh will do nothing. Yahweh is tolerant. There's nothing but peace and prosperity in your future.

And you should expect a breakthrough in a suddenly in 2022. They were all lying.

Jeremiah was speaking the truth. But even in those days, declares Yahweh, I will not make a full end of you.

And he can't because God always keeps his word. And you'll note that in the tribe of Judah, and this is who

Jeremiah prophesied to Judah, in the tribe of Judah, it's out of Judah comes the Messiah. So for the sake of the salvation of the whole world,

God is not going to make a full end of Judah. This is why they go into exile rather than being dispersed and ceasing to exist.

So when your people say, why has Yahweh our God done all of these things to us?

You shall say to them, as you have forsaken me and serve foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve foreigners in a land that is not yours.

Have you ever noticed that God, when he judges, he just has this really interesting thing that he does.

He finds a way of judging in a way that recalls the actual crime, the actual sin that was committed.

You worship foreign gods, I'm sending you to a foreign nation. And you can think about your life decisions, right?

So declare this in the house of Jacob, proclaim it in Judah. Hear this, oh foolish and senseless people who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear.

And that's all of us, by the way, apart from regeneration. We are, whoa, blind and deaf when it comes to the things of God.

Do you not fear me, declares Yahweh? Do you not tremble before me? I placed the sand as a boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass.

Though the waves toss, they cannot prevail. Though they roar, they cannot pass over it.

But this people has a stubborn and a rebellious heart. They have turned aside, they have gone away.

They do not say in their hearts, let us fear Yahweh our God, who gives the rain in its season, the autumn rain and the spring rain.

And by God saying this, by the way, God is poking Baal in the eye by saying that.

Because Baal's narrative is, Baal's the one who brings the rain, no he ain't, okay?

So Yahweh's the one who brings the rain in its season, the autumn rain and the spring rain and keeps for us the weeks appointed for the harvest.

Your iniquities have turned these away and your sins have kept good from you.

Wait, what? There's like weather consequences for sin?

Yeah, okay. There's even like pandemic consequences for sin.

For wicked men are found among my people. They lurk like fowlers lying in wait.

They set a trap. They catch men. Like a cage full of birds, their houses are full of deceit.

Therefore, they have become great and rich. They have grown fat and sleek.

They know no bounds and deeds of evil. They judge not with justice the cause of the fatherless to make it prosper.

They do not defend the rights of the needy. Shall I not punish them for these things?

So you're going to note that as wickedness increases and people worship and serve foreign gods, you know what goes up as well?

All kinds of wickedness. Theft, deceit, schemes, along those lines also human trafficking, slavery, those all just go right through the roof.

Humans become our greatest danger, okay? I got to admit, you know,

I'm not worried about being bitten by a rattlesnake here in Minnesota. I'm not worried about being killed by a moose, okay?

But I got to be on my guard against other people. And I mean, and pay attention if scammers get a hold of your computer or something, you know.

I hear horror stories of people who've lost their entire life savings from people who scam them, you know, while by pretending to help them, all right?

And shall I not punish them for these things, declares Yahweh? Shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?

An appalling, horrible thing has happened in the land. And listen to this last part. So here's this fun little takeaway.

An appalling and horrible thing has happened. What happened? What was so appalling? What was so horrible? The prophets prophesied falsely.

Bingo, all right? Yeah, that sounds really familiar. And the priests, they rule at their direction.

They do whatever they want. My people love to have it so. But what will you do when the end comes?

And so, you know, in the types and shadows, Jeremiah prefigures the apostasy right before the return of Christ.

Pastors ruling at their own direction. Prophets prophesying falsely. And my people love to have it so.

Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, right? You know, it's just, it's crazy.

It's absolute bonkers. But that is the way sin works.

Chapter 6. Flee for safety, O people of Benjamin, from the midst of Jerusalem.

Blow the trumpet in Tekoa. Raise a signal on Beth Hacharem, for disaster looms out of the north.

Great destruction. The lovely and the delicately bred, I will destroy.

Oh, there go the Kardashians. Oh, no. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

The lovely and the delicately bred, I will destroy. The daughter of Zion. Shepherds with their flock shall come against her.

They shall pitch their tents around her. They shall pasture each in his place. Prepare war against her.

Arise, let us attack at noon. Woe to us, for the day declines.

The shadows of evening lengthen. Arise, let us attack by night and destroy her palaces.

For thus says Yahweh of armies. Cut down her trees. Cast up siege mound against Jerusalem.

This is a city that must be punished. There is nothing but oppression within her. As a well keeps its water fresh, so she keeps fresh her evil.

Violence and destruction are heard within her. Sickness and wounds are ever before me.

So be warned, O Jerusalem, lest I turn from you in disgust. Lest I make you a desolation in uninhabited land.

Do you think God takes sin seriously? I'm thinking that he might actually care about this stuff.

So thus says Yahweh of armies. They shall glean thoroughly as a vine the remnant of Israel.

Like a grape gatherer, pass your hand again over its branches. To whom shall

I speak and give warning that they may hear? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised. They cannot listen.

Behold, the word of Yahweh is to them an object of scorn. They take no pleasure in it.

And I think there's your problem right there. Could it possibly be that one of the reasons why there are so many churches nowadays where the pastors don't preach the word is because God's word is an object of scorn to them and they take no pleasure in it.

They legitimately don't believe it. And they find that God's word gets in the way of the deity they want to believe in.

I think that's part of the problem here. Therefore, I'm full of wrath. I'm full of the wrath of Yahweh.

I'm weary of holding it in. Pour it out on the children in the street and upon the gatherings of the young men also.

Both husband and wife shall be taken, the elderly and the varied age. Their houses shall be turned over to others, their fields and wives together.

For I will stretch out my hand against the inhabitants of the land, declares Yahweh. For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain.

So you're gonna note here, in describing the symptoms of the apostasy, is there just only one symptom?

No, it's like everything has gone wrong. Murder, adultery, greed, breaking of the second commandment, idolatry, rampant.

It's coveting like you wouldn't believe. Everything's a mess, right?

Every one of them is greedy for unjust gain. From prophet to priest. Oh, do you know anybody who claims to be a prophet who seems to be greedy?

I can think of a few. Or pastors, megachurches, any of them you know that seem to be greedy?

Everyone deals falsely. They've healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace.

Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed.

They do not know how to blush. Now a little bit of a note here. I'll give you an example of something

I think is akin to this, all right? So prior to Christmas, right before Christmas, there was a news story in the

Chattanooga newspaper in Tennessee regarding Tavner Smith, a fellow we've covered on Fighting for the

Faith for years. And Tavner Smith is one of these megachurch pastors, and he had eight members of his leadership team quit a week before Christmas because he was having multiple affairs with multiple women in his congregation, including one of the major women on the worship team.

They confronted him with video evidence of him smooching with the worship leader girl.

And he argued that because they don't actually have video of him doing the deed with her, that he's not guilty of adultery.

So the eight members of the church quit, okay, on their leadership, they quit and went public by going to the newspaper.

And when the story went out, Tavner not only did not offer any public explanation about what happened, he didn't resign.

And now he's put himself on a month -long sabbatical where he's getting counseling, okay?

So the scenario is set up here where you're gonna have an impenitent multiple adulterer going to be preaching and being a megachurch pastor in just a few short weeks because he's, you know, it's unbelievable.

This guy has like no shame. So listen, were they ashamed when they committed? No, they weren't at all ashamed.

They didn't even know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall. At the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says

Yahweh. Thus says Yahweh. Stand by the roads, look and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is and walk in it.

I love this, okay. What's the solution? It's the ancient path. Where do I find that?

It's in this book called the Bible. You familiar with this thing, all right? So nothing changes.

The message that they needed to hear is the message we need to hear. And in our day, we don't need some fresh revelation.

We need the ancient path. We need the same message that Jeremiah preached.

We need to hear what the prophets preached. We need to hear the message of the apostles and what Christ proclaimed, right?

So ask for the ancient paths where the good way is. Walk in it. Find rest for your souls.

I would say this. I love that phrase. Have you guys noticed that like the real gospel gives you legitimate peace?

Have you noticed how amazing and wonderful and loving God is? And how the gospel, over and again, hearing the assurance of the forgiveness of your sins gives you confidence that you've been reconciled to God, that you have peace with God.

But when you are listening to false prophets and false doctrine and false nonsense, right? There is no peace.

You're always kind of scratching your head going, I can't seem to figure this out. There's no peace for your souls because false gospels and false gods can't give you peace.

All they can do is convict you of sin. But they said, we will not walk in it. So I set up watchmen over you saying, pay attention to the sound of the trumpet.

But they said, we will not pay attention. You'll note that in the blindness of sin, we have this contentious thing that we do.

God says black, we say white. God says stop, we say go. God says,

I created you male and female. And we say, uh -uh, there's zeh and meh and bleh, okay? It's just crazy how we operate, all right?

Therefore, hear, O nations, know, O congregation, what will happen to them. Hear, O earth, behold,

I am bringing disaster upon this people, the fruit of their devices. This is the consequences for their sin because they have not paid attention to my words.

And as for my law, they've rejected it. You think that paying attention to God's word is a big thing.

Yes, okay, why use to me, what used to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba or sweet cane from a distant land.

Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifice is pleasing to me. Therefore, thus says Yahweh, behold,

I will lay before this people stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble. Fathers and sons, neighbor and friend shall perish.

Thus says Yahweh, behold, a people is coming from the north country, a great nation is stirring from the farthest parts of the earth.

They lay hold on bow and javelin. They are cruel, they have no mercy. The sound of them is like the roaring sea.

They ride on horses set in array as a man for battle against you, O daughter of Zion.

We have heard the report of it, our hands fall. Helpless anguish has taken hold of us, pain as of a woman in labor.

Go not out into the field nor walk on the road for the enemy has a sword, terror is on every side.

O daughter of my people, put on sackcloth, roll in ashes, make mourning as for an only son.

Most bitter lamentation for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us. What is it called for?

Repentance, humbling yourself, sackcloth, ashes, the garb of the penitent.

I have made you a tester of metals among my people that you may know and test their ways.

They are all stubbornly rebellious, going about with slanders. They are bronze and iron, all of them act corruptly.

The bellows blow fiercely, the lead is consumed by the fire.

In vain the refining goes on for the wicked are not removed. Rejected silver they are called for the

Lord has rejected them. Well, this doesn't make my ego feel good.

My self -esteem is hurt by these harsh words. How dare you tell me that God acts in anger and all that kind of stuff, uh -huh, right.

So we'll pick up at chapter seven next week, Lord willing. But let me check the last couple of things before we get going today here.

All right, Mormonism is really messed up. Yes, it is, all right. Tony says,

Lewis thought it was going to be Christianity versus Hinduism. I think C .S.

Lewis knew the dangers of pagan Gnosticism and I think he said what he said as a very informed individual.

Why would anyone believe that all religions lead to God when none of them agree on essential claims? Jen, that's kind of the issue, is that on our sin we reject the idea that what

God says is true and what God says is exclusively true and that counter to that would be things that are false.

And the way human beings want to be, they want to basically say, well, listen, my neighbor next door, he's a

Hindu and my neighbor over there, he's a Muslim and they're nice people, you know. And so I think it's just cruel to believe that somehow they're not going to go to heaven because they don't believe in Jesus.

Don't you think that's capricious of God and stuff like this? And so what they do is that they basically, they come up with a schema in their own mind and I would note that this is kind of reinforced in the religious ethos of Freemasonry.

All that matters is you believe in a higher being, okay? It doesn't matter which one.

You can call on the great spirit in the sky, you can call on Yahweh or Allah.

What matters is that we have this idea that we are all a brotherhood together regardless of the

God that we worship and we'll take all of our language regarding God down to some kind of nebulous, undefinable type of thing.

Rather than talking about Yahweh, the one true God, we'll talk about the grand architect or something like this, right?

And so this is our proclivity and you'll note that in the days of Jeremiah, that's exactly what played out.

In the apostasy, it was an apostasy of idolatry and a belief that it was okay and sanctioned by Yahweh to worship other deities and Yahweh didn't care.

That's why Yahweh was the host for Asherah and Baal and the starry host of heaven and all these things.

He was hosting them in his temple in Jerusalem and so this is where we always end up, all right?

This is always where we end up, nothing changes and this is the thing we face to this day. But my apologies,

I'm going to have to jump off here because I'm heading off to Radium to take care of another congregation.