Ask for the Ancient Paths

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Well, we come now to the time to hear the word, and I'd like to take just a moment to introduce our guest preacher today.
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For some of you, I know David is certainly not a stranger.
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He has been some of your minister, I believe, in the past, as he was the pastor of Ortega Presbyterian Church up until this year, and I believe it was 17, 16, how long was it? 21 years at Ortega Presbyterian, and retired just this past year, or during this year, and as soon as he did, I was excited because I could never have him on a Sunday morning before because he was always preaching.
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So we were glad to have him, and David and I met many years ago at a pastor's forum that I attend about every three or four months.
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We'd go to his church and we'd pray, and I've spent many hours hearing his wisdom, talking to him, sharing with him my own struggles, and as many of you probably understand, ministry is not always a picnic.
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In fact, it rarely is, and having another minister, an older minister, to share his life with me and his wisdom with me has been a great blessing.
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So I'm excited to invite him now to come and preach the word to us.
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It's certainly a pleasure to be here with you today.
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I want to thank you for the privilege and honor of not only preaching but worshipping with you here at Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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I've known a number of you for many years and also have the utmost respect for Pastor Keith and his faithful ministry here.
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Keith and I don't get to spend much time together, but when I have, that opportunity is always sweet and a blessing.
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And it's also especially great to finally meet Brother Gedash and his better three-fourths back there.
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I've profited over the years from his ministry and some great book deals, and thank God for men like this.
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I'm sure his wife is involved quite a bit who provide such godly and great literature and understand that most of the good things are written by dead guys, and so very thankful.
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But secondly, it's a great pleasure to be with you here today as we remember and celebrate the great work of God's sovereign grace and power in bringing revival and renewal to his church during the days of what we know as the Protestant Reformation.
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God's bringing vitality and faithfulness to an apostate church through the power of his word, ministered through such men as Luther and Melanchthon, Zwingli, Ferrell and Calvin, and Bullinger and Butzer and Knox and Kramer, Wycliffe and Tyndale and Jan Hus, Hus, the goose.
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All these and many others God used as his instruments to reform the church according to the authority and pattern of the holy scriptures, restoring the power and the truth and the glory and the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ as the outward means of salvation through faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone, so that in all things our God would have all glory alone.
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As you know, this past Tuesday, October 31st, marks the 500th anniversary of that event in which God in his wise providence used the fan, used to fan the smoldering embers of gospel proclamation through precursors of the Reformation like Wycliffe and Hus and the Valdensians and others into the flame of reformation that spread like wildfire through the churches of Europe.
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It was of course on October 31st, 1517 that Luther nailed, or at least is alleged to have nailed his famous 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Chapel.
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There are some now who are suggesting that maybe he didn't really do that, although that's the tradition, but what is absolutely certain is that on that date he at least mailed his theses to the Archbishop of Mainz on this date, but nevertheless, I think we all agree that on that date Martin Luther did nail it.
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Presbyterians can smile, by the way, and Calvinists of course.
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Of course, that's the great event that touched off the events that not only brought rescue and refining to God's church, but also, and we often forget this, transformed Western civilization as we know it.
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So such a great work of God in revival and reformation is well worth remembering and celebrating.
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But it seems to me as I've thought about this, that as much as we can profit by remembering those that God used at that time to rediscover and apply God's work to correct the errors of the medieval church, that we need to remember that we must ourselves consider how far the church in our own day needs to be revived and reformed.
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And as we do so, we also need to remember how our own lives and practices need revival and reformation.
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And if that is going to happen, it must happen according to the Holy Scripture.
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So what I want to do with you in the short time, Pastor Keith told me I had an hour and a half to preach because that's what he usually does, but I guarantee it'll be less than an hour and a half.
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But in thinking about this, I wouldn't be reformational if I didn't exposit God's word.
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So what I want to do is to look at the first 21 verses of Jeremiah chapter 6, because in this chapter, Jeremiah points to the methodological way alone that reformation can come when, of course, blessed by the Spirit of God in Christ.
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Because Jeremiah faced an apostate church, the church of the Old Testament that needed to be revived and to be reformed.
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And the principle that he calls the church of the Old Testament to heed was the same principle that characterized the reformers in the very thing the church in all ages must do.
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And you'll find that as I'm reading it in verse 16 of Jeremiah 6.
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Out of respect for God's holy and true word, I would ask you to please stand as I read Jeremiah 6, 1 through 21.
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I'm reading from the ESV.
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Hear the word of God.
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Flee for safety, O people of Benjamin, from the midst of Jerusalem.
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Blow the trumpet in Tekoa and raise a signal in Beth-Hakarim, for disaster looms out of the north and great destruction.
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The lovely and delicately bred I will destroy, the daughter of Zion.
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Shepherds with their flocks shall come against her.
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They shall pitch their tents around her.
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They shall pasture each in his place.
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Prepare war against her.
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Arise and let us attack at noon.
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Woe to us, for the day declines, for the shadows of evening lengthen.
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Arise and let us attack by night and destroy her palaces.
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For thus says the Lord of hosts, cut down her trees, cast up a siege mound against Jerusalem.
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This is the city that must be punished.
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There is nothing but oppression within her.
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As a well keeps its water fresh, so she keeps fresh her evil.
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Violence and destruction are heard within her.
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Sickness and wounds are ever before me.
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Be warned, O Jerusalem, lest I turn from you in disgust, lest I make you a desolation, an uninhabited land.
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Thus says the Lord of hosts, they shall glean thoroughly as a vine the remnant of Israel, like a grape gatherer, pass your hand again over its branches.
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To whom shall I give speak and give warning that they may hear? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen.
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Behold, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn, they take no pleasure in it.
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Therefore, I am full of the wrath of the Lord, I am weary of holding it in.
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Pour it out upon the children in the street and upon the gatherings of young men also.
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Both husband and wife shall be taken, the elderly and the very aged.
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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 the Lord.
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For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain, and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.
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They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.
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Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed, they did not know how to blush.
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Therefore they shall fall among those who fall.
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At the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord.
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Thus says the Lord, Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
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But they said, We will not walk in it.
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I set watchmen over you, saying, Pay attention to the sound of the trumpet.
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But they said, We will not pay attention.
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Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what will happen to them.
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Hear, O earth, behold, I am bringing disaster upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not paid attention to my words.
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And as for my law, they have rejected it.
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What use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.
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Therefore thus says the Lord, Behold, I will lay before these people stumbling blocks, against which they will stumble, fathers and sons together, neighbor and friend, shall perish.
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Thus far ends the reading of God's holy word.
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O Lord, bless the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts.
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May they be acceptable in thy sight, we pray, in the blessed and powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all God's people say, Amen.
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Please be seated.
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The point that I want to make from this passage is this, that following what the prophet says in verse 16, thus says the Lord, stand by the roads and look and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is, and walk in it and find rest for your souls.
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It is this, that we best remember and honor the reformers and the reformation in a God glorifying manner.
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When we pray and labor to conform our worship, our ministries, our churches, our families, and ourselves, body, mind, and soul, to the doctrines and practices of God's word, as centering of course in the Lord Jesus Christ, and as understood, confessed, and applied by God's covenant community, the true historic church of the living God.
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Consider first Jeremiah and the ancient paths.
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Jeremiah, as you may recall, was a prophet to the southern kingdom of Judah in its last days.
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During the last days of good, his ministry began during the last days of good King Josiah's reforms that sputtered out after his death in 609 B.C.
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in the battle against Pharaoh Necho.
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Jeremiah's ministry would continue through the rapid and tragic decline of Judah all the way through and even after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.
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He would see all these things.
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His people taken into exile, the walls of Jerusalem demolished, the temple leveled.
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He's known as the weeping prophet, and as the lament is recorded in the next book of scripture, Lamentations, after this prophecy, he saw the hardening and unwillingness of Judah's leaders to repent from their idolatry and unfaithfulness, and as I've said, himself an eyewitness of God's judgment that came upon them.
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His call was to preach the word of God, thus saith the Lord, not to add to it or take away from it, but to preach it to a people who would not only reject that word, but they would fight against that message as the Lord tells Jeremiah in his call.
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It was a message of warning, of impending judgment, and of devastation from the north that God was about to unleash upon the land, a judgment that people brought on themselves by rejecting the Lord and his covenant and his word.
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It would be a message that would certainly include a call to repentance and the promise of grace, but that call would be unheeded and rejected.
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Here in chapter 6, the prophet's warning is more intense because the judgment that is coming is, as it were, at the very gates.
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In the previous chapter, Jeremiah had preached about this coming judgment, but here it is, imminent, virtually at the gates of the capital city, Jerusalem.
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He urgently warns Judah that its refusal to repent of its idolatry, unfaithfulness and rebellion against the Lord has resulted in God's rejection of his own people, and of God sending the pagan and powerfully brutal Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon against them as his instrument, God's instrument of judgment.
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In verses 1 and 2, after Jeremiah had previously in chapter 4, it's recorded how he urged the Jews to flee to the fortified cities to find shelter and safety from the coming disaster.
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In this chapter, he now says, flee Jerusalem for disaster is coming from the north.
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That is, the Babylons who were at, and Babylon is toward the very extreme southern end of the Euphrates, the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.
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They would soon be marching up the Euphrates and north over, north of the Arabian desert and then turning south through Syria, marching relentlessly to Jerusalem.
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Disaster is coming.
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He says, blow the trumpet in Tekoa, interestingly, Amos's, the prophet Amos's hometown, raise a signal in Beth-Hakarim, for this disaster looms out of the north.
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Heed the warning cries, the warning fires, the blast of the trumpet, for disaster is coming.
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Where in verses 3 and 4, Nebuchadnezzar's army would come upon the city and they would regard it as a place simply to shepherd their troops and place them wherever they want to, as it were, feed on the land.
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Nebuchadnezzar, his army would invade Judah and so intense are they to invade that instead of waiting until morning when you would normally attack, it's already noon day, time is getting on, we can't wait.
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We will go even at midnight.
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You see the urgency of this judgment that God is sending and when you see and look at verses 6 and 7, it's as if God himself is leading the army.
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For thus says the Lord, cut down her trees, cast up a siege mound against Jerusalem.
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For the Lord of hosts is sending his army.
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This is the Lord who is absolutely sovereign, who marshals all the forces of heaven, whom none can resist and this God through the hand of this pagan people is coming to Jerusalem.
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Be warned one last time, Jeremiah please in verse 8, be warned oh Jerusalem, lest I turn from you and disgust, lest I make you a desolation and an uninhabited land.
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Almost beyond imagination at this very moment when Nebuchadnezzar's army is marching one more time, there's this call to repent.
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Such is the amazing grace and mercy of our God.
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But the people will not repent.
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So in verses 9 through 15 we see the reason for God's judgment.
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The Lord of hosts absolutely irresistibly sovereign has as I've said assembled the mighty angels and powers of heaven to do his bidding through the Babylonians, the Chaldeans whom he will send to glean and take captive those who survive.
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Taking them as it were as the few remaining grapes from the vine that the harvester missed.
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In verses 10 and 11, Jeremiah fully aware of God's wrath against the unrepentant evil of this people and identifying with the Lord's righteous anger, cries out in protest, Oh Lord, to whom shall I speak and give warning that they may hear? Behold their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen.
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Behold the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn and they take no pleasure in it.
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Identifying with the righteous anger of God, Jeremiah says, therefore, I am full of the wrath of the Lord.
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I am weary of holding it in.
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So he pours out this word of God of judgment upon his people.
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In verses 11, the second part of verse 11 and 12 we see that the Lord's wrath is so hot that it will be poured out upon all children and young adults, husbands and wives, the elderly and the aged, their houses and lands will be taken by the conquerors.
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All the inhabitants of what remained of the promised land will feel the dreadful reach and clutch of God's hand and judgment.
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None will escape.
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But why such fierce wrath against all? Look at verse 13, because all the people from the least to the greatest of them had broken covenant with God.
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The God of all grace and mercy had saved them and led them to this land of promise.
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They had spurned him and turned against him.
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None of them was concerned with the Lord's covenant claim upon them, nor the gain that they would reap from faith and obedience.
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For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain.
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We read in this verse that that included the prophets and the priests, the very ones whose currency was to be truth and worship, but who instead traded in lies and fraudulent dealings with those under their charge.
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As the commentator J.A.
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Thompson says of verse 14, at a time when religious leaders might have been expected to utter at least some words of warning, all they could say was peace, peace, when there is no peace.
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They were spiritual physicians of no value, misleading the people into thinking that all was well, like applying a band-aid to a gangrene rotting piece of flesh.
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They had been warned that a radical transformation was needed, not superficial responses.
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Had not Isaiah delivered God's command, break up, chapter 4 verses 3 and 4, break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.
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Circumcise yourselves to the Lord.
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Remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my wrath go forth like fire, and burn with none to quench it, because of the evil of your deeds.
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But they would have none of it.
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And as verse 15 tells us so tragically, their consciences were seared and hardened.
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They had no sense of shame, especially these leaders, for their abominable pagan practices, their lies, their greed, or their other loathsome disease.
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As leaders responsible for the care of souls, they would be held especially accountable.
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God would overthrow them.
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So then we see in verses 16 through 21, God's call for reformation.
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We see that this call is refused.
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In verses 16 and 17, we get even more insight into why the Lord's judgment came upon Judah.
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Faced with the choice of looking for the ancient way, the good paths, the way to find rest for weary souls, the people of God's own choosing.
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His covenant people, the one he had rescued from the bondage of slavery in Egypt, and had brought into the land of promise in spite of their stiff necks and rebellious ways.
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Those who were given God's word, they were given judges and prophets and priests and kings.
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They were given a sacrificial system that pointed to Christ and the way of atonement for their sins.
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God's covenant promises and his protection again and again and again.
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And a host of mercies and graces and precious promises.
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And a way back to him from their waywardness Oh but turn to the ancient paths.
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But they would not.
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They rejected God's gracious offer.
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They broke covenant.
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They spurned the prophets.
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They refused to pay attention to God and his warnings.
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The sound of the trumpet from the mouth of Jeremiah and the other prophets had sounded.
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They followed their own devices.
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Not the ancient paths, but their own devices.
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New self-made false religion that brought no peace, no rest, no consolation, no salvation, no deliverance from the guilt, misery, and power of sin.
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Not the true old revealed ways from Abraham and Moses and Samuel and David and Isaiah of God's covenant of his call to obedience to his law and the way of forgiveness and atonement of sin through trusting in God's provided substitute for sin and atonement.
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Ultimately Christ foreshadowed the old covenant sacrificial system.
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Oh what tragedy.
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So as we see in verses 18 and 19 there's a result.
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God calls the nations of the lands as witnesses to the judgment and disaster he is bringing upon his people Judah.
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For in truth they were bringing this disaster upon themselves by spurning God's covenant, ignoring God's word and rejecting his law.
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Had not the Lord for instance way back there in the book of Deuteronomy.
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Remember at the end chapters 27 and 28 when God's people were gathered and they heard the antiphonal sound of the promises and the curses of the covenant and at Mount Ebal particularly that along with the promises of blessing for covenant obedience there are curses for covenant disobedience.
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What amazes one is not that these curses are coming down here in Jeremiah's time but what's amazing is that they hadn't come down countless times before.
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How God's grace is so amazing but you cannot thumb your nose at God and expect to survive.
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And that's what the covenant people of God who had broken covenant were doing.
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So the only response the Lord could make was to fulfill his warnings for such flagrant determined and by now essentially complete apostasy.
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And as the last two verses that I've read 20 and 21 tell us though Judah might go to great lengths to appease the Lord by elaborate and costly ceremonies, frankincense from Sheba, very expensive stuff that was imported from southwest Africa, sweet cane it's thought that that had to have been imported from as far away as India.
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Though they would do these things these would be of no avail.
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Had not the Lord's prophet Samuel told Saul years before as the Lord is great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord.
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Behold to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen and the fat of the lambs.
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No, as one of my favorite Bible teachers would put it, the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart.
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And their heart was far from the living God.
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Like their ears it was uncircumcised, covered with sin and hardness.
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And thus there was no recourse, no way to stay in Jerusalem and escape even though that was the place where God had promised to meet with his people.
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You could not escape the disaster of God's judgment.
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The Lord would lay unavoidable stumbling blocks before his defiant people whether of their own making, their doctrine and practices that were powerless to save and were damning to souls or the devastation of Nebuchadnezzar and his army or probably a condemnation, a combination of both.
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In either case, father and sons together, neighbor and friend shall perish.
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The only hope for God's people was the ancient paths, the true tried and true ways of covenant faithfulness, of new life through the cutting away of the flesh and the new regenerated life represented in circumcision and represented by baptism as we saw this morning.
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Worship and life carried out in obedience to God's revealed word and the sure promise of forgiveness and atonement for sins and fellowship with the living God, the repentance for sin and trust in God's provision for sin, a substitutionary sacrifice of the innocent lamb, its body broken and its blood shed, pointing to the lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world, foreshadowed in the Pascal lamb of the Passover and all the sacrifices of the old covenant sacrificial system.
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What I want you to see is when Jeremiah called the people to account and laid these ancient paths before them as the way to God and the way to find rest for their souls, he was no innovator.
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He didn't come up with something new.
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He was simply acting as God's spokesman, God's instrument to deliver God's word.
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Thus says the Lord.
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Stand by the roads and look and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is and walk in it and find rest for your souls.
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For in that good way, his brother Gadash has already told us ultimately is Christ.
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This calling the people to God to stand and look for and ask for and walk in the ancient paths.
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This is the great principle that underlies reformation to go back to reform according to the pattern of the ancient paths.
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And my friends, this is exactly what the Protestant reformation was about.
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No more and no less.
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It's the ancient paths that have to do with the reformation.
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In the days prior to the reformation, the church in Europe represented by the Roman Catholic Church had like Judah of old departed from the ancient paths.
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Like Judah, it stopped listening to God's true word.
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Not totally of course, yet substantially.
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For though the church of Rome did claim scripture as its authority, it wasn't its sole authority.
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Alongside the scripture was the authority of the tradition of the church and the decisions of the councils and creeds and respected leaders.
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Moreover, the medieval church believed that it, the church, especially centering in its leader, the Pope, could infallibly interpret scripture.
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And with that infallible interpretation bind the consciences of souls.
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And as we know, so many of its interpretations, scriptures clearly went beyond or fell short of the clear meaning of God's word.
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Essentially, the Roman Catholic Church was listening more to itself than it was to God speaking in His word.
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Most importantly, to allow anyone or anything to in any way overshadow or obscure the authority of God as He speaks in His holy and true word is to stop listening to God.
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One simple proof of this is the church's refusal to hear and receive and rejoice in the preaching of the reformers.
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It's one thing to be ignorant.
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It's another thing to hear the gospel and the teaching of God's word and reject it.
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Another thing that when you hear it, you burn at the stake those who preach it like John Huss or excommunicate and put a price on the head of a Martin Luther.
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Or to say it another way, just as apostate Judah rejected and killed the prophets with a capital P, so the church of Rome rejected and killed God's prophets, prophets with a little P who spoke forth God's true word.
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And also like Judah, the Roman church was corrupted by greed, greed for power, greed for wealth, greed for the things of this world, greed for those things that they had supposedly forsaken for the sake of Christ.
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By traditional calculations, the medieval church owned at least one third of the land of Europe.
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In some places it was a greater percentage than that.
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This translated into enormous power and influence and wealth and temptation.
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So alluring was all of this that it was commonplace, the accepted way of doing things to buy and sell ecclesiastical positions because when you did that, you would get an automatic source of ongoing wealth and status and influence.
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You could buy a guaranteed living and you didn't necessarily have to be there to earn it.
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In fact, John Calvin's dad, Gerard, not Jerome, it wasn't Jerome, it was Gerard, when Calvin was 12 years old, his dad acquired for him a chaplaincy in the cathedral of Nyon, Calvin's hometown.
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And then later on, when Calvin was an 18 year old student in Paris, he procured for him, which means he bought it, he bought for him the income of a parish priest.
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The only thing was that Calvin was a student, he wasn't in the parish preaching, but that was the point.
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In his case, at least he was doing something profitable, but many others weren't.
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By the way, in 1534, soon after Calvin's conversion, he gave up these so-called preferments.
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Though crasser than others, Tetzel, the man who really infuriated Martin Luther, and it was his craziness that really prompted and made urgent this challenging of the sale of indulgences.
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He was probably crasser than others.
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He was infamous for his sale of indulgences, you know, you toss the coin and when you hear the sound that was the soul getting out of purgatory, actually that had not been the teaching of Rome, but he advanced it because this sounded great and it was a great marketing tool.
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Why was he doing all that? Because it was sanctioned to pay for the Medici Pope Leo X's expensive building projects, particularly St.
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Peter's Basilica, but it was sanctioned by the Archbishop of Mainz, and the reason he was so glad to sanction this is that half the money that Tetzel collected would go into his pocket.
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What a deal.
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Greed led to lust for other things, supposedly forsaken for Christ.
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The unbiblical vow of celibacy, for instance, led, and this is a bit dark, but you have to understand the extent of this greed.
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It led to a torrent of fornication, adultery, homosexuality, sodomy, pedophilia, bestiality, and the begetting of numerous children.
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That's just by the popes.
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Similarly, like Judah, the leadership of the Roman Church continued to oppress the people, persist in a host of abominations, and heal the wound of the people lightly by withholding the gospel salve of saving grace appropriated by grace through faith alone and Christ alone, as well as the blessedness of gospel worship and the proper administration of the sacraments and other means of grace, and a host of other things, and all the while proclaiming peace, peace, when there was no peace, and the leaders did this without blush or shame.
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I think we all know that Rome talked a lot about grace and faith.
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It still does.
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But in essence, theirs was a religion of works.
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Grace was seen, for instance, as being automatically infused by the sacraments.
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Forgiveness of sins was supposedly by grace, and yet, because of indwelling sin and ongoing sin, grace needed to be supplemented with ongoing works of auricular confession and penance.
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You kind of deviate from grace and you'd have to go confess your sin and do penance to come back.
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Did you know that, at least according to a reliable source that I have, the average layman in the days of Luther only made it to confession once a year? That's a lot of sins unconfessed, and a lot of penance that you don't do.
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So there was this real cool thing that the church came up with.
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They had all these monks and nuns and all these people.
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They were full-time doing all this religious stuff, and so they had time not only to do enough to do penance for their own sins, but they could do it for you too.
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And you could cash in on it.
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And maybe you didn't quite get to deal with all your sins in this life, but hey, no problemo.
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You've got purgatory, and you can finish it up there.
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But Martin Luther saw all the foolishness and the oppressiveness of all this.
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He came to understand the sinfulness of sin, and he wore out his mentors by going and confessing again and again and again.
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And they would tell him, enough already, Brother Martin, enough already.
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But he knew it wasn't enough.
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And there was no peace.
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There was no rest for his soul, because the way of gospel salvation through justifying faith robbed him and multitudes of peace of conscience and assurance that results in the blessedness and knowing God's forgiveness in Christ.
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And the saving, sanctifying Word of God was withheld.
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What little of it that was given was typically given in Latin.
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The priests were amazingly ignorant of even the simplest facts, much less the truths of the scriptures.
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The Bible was essentially unavailable.
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The cup signifying and sealing the shed blood of Christ was withheld from the laity.
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Superstitious practices, elaborate ceremonies, pilgrimage, works of penance, and buying of indulgences all were of absolutely no spiritual value.
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And yet these were all encouraged as ways to deal with problems.
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And add to this the worship of relics and saints and Mary, how these obscured and often supplanted the true godly fear and blessedness of worship of the living God in fellowship with Him around the means of grace, centering in the author of life himself, Jesus Christ.
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The one alone High Priest, who in his once for all sacrifice of atonement for the sins of Calvary's cross was, is, and always will be the one true propitiation of God's wrath and the one in whom we can know the love and the fellowship of our God.
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True enough, there was a counter-reformation when some of the corruptions pointed out by the Protestants were addressed, but ultimately all this was little different than Judah's frankincense from Sheba and sweet cane from a distant land.
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The core issues of error and oppression did not change.
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The official response of the Council of Trent was called primarily to condemn and refute the beliefs of the Protestants, such as Luther and Calvin.
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And among the Council's affirmation, which changed little if anything, among their affirmations was this statement about sole fide, faith alone.
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If anyone saith that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works, but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not a cause of increase thereof, let him be anathema.
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To teach and preach the gospel of free grace and justification through the instrumentality of faith apart from works was a damning offense.
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That was their official response to the preaching of the gospel of the reformers.
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Many more things could be said, but the observation and point I want to make are these.
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First, the observation, all of the factors that I've talked about and many others, they not only justified, but made the Protestant Reformation necessary, and they stem from the one root cause of the medieval church's departure from the ancient past.
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This was the root cause.
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And as our brother so wonderfully told us in the previous hour, the truths and principles and doctrines of God's word.
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This is the big issue.
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All else flow from it.
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The way of salvation, the nature of God, the manner of worship that pleases him, the nature of the gospel, the place and relationship of faith and works, the principles that define faithful ministry, the relation of church and state, and so many other issues were already laid down in scripture.
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And as a matter of fact, when you read the church fathers, though they weren't perfect, but you would go back and read men like Augustine and others, most all the things that the Roman church got wrong had at one time been preached and taught in the church, even the post-apostolic church.
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And this second, not the observation, but the point, is that the way to deal with this was not by inventing anything new, but by simply understanding and believing and trusting in and applying what God had already revealed in scripture.
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Reformation was a matter of reforming, of bringing back the form that the church had lost according to the pattern and principles of God's word and truth, and that is exactly what the reformers did.
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They did not invent anything.
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It's like Jeremiah, it was a call to return to the ancient path.
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Just one example of this.
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In the introductory part of John Calvin's Institutes, the systematic theology, if you will, of the reformation, in the prefatory address to King Francis, he answers the charge of his opponents, the opponents of the reformers, that the doctrine of the reformers was, quote, new, quote, of recent birth.
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And this is what Calvin wrote.
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By calling it new, they do great wrong to God, whose sacred word does not deserve to be accused of novelty.
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Indeed, I do not at all doubt that it is new to them, since to them both Christ himself and his gospel are new.
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But he who knows that this preaching of Paul is ancient, that Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification, Romans 4.25, will find nothing new among us.
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That it is lame, long, unknown, and buried is the fault of man's impiety.
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Now, when it is restored to us by God's goodness, its claim to antiquity ought to be admitted at least by right of recovery.
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They recovered it, and there it is.
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Truth is truth.
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God is God.
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The basic issues of man cannot change, because they have to do with the essence of what it means to be God and to live in this world created by God.
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So you see the point for us today.
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We need those ancient paths.
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We are here to remember and celebrate the Reformation, and we do so because we believe that the attainments and truths of the Reformation form a model and paradigm for the church today.
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We're not saying that if you didn't do it exactly like John Calvin or Martin Luther, anathema to you, of course not.
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They didn't get everything right, but they got most all of it right.
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And all of it right when their hearts and minds were subdued to scripture.
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And what you see, for instance, in John Calvin, not the hard, nasty man that you hear about.
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He's the theologian of the Holy Spirit.
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His institutes are warm, although he does go off now and again on some errors.
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But again and again and again, you see the heart of a man whose mind and heart are captive to the Word of God, just like Martin Luther's.
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We celebrate the Reformation because we recognize that Reformation is still needed today, not only to celebrate the past, but to remember it for the sake of the present and the future.
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But how do we do this? Back in 1996, it was actually the year my wife and I moved from Wichita, Kansas to Jacksonville, Florida.
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Hardly knew what it was like or about.
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First time I came here to candidate, the chill factor at Kansas City Airport was 30 degrees below zero.
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We got off the airplane, it was 72 degrees.
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Lord, we're going to Florida by your grace.
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Back in 1996, James Montgomery Boyce, Michael Horton and others, concerned about the drift from biblical truth that was so apparent to them, and hopefully it should be to us as well, and the so-called Evangelical Church met in Cambridge, Massachusetts to discuss these matters.
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As a result of that meeting, they formulated and issued an important call to the modern church to reflect and repent.
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It's known as the Cambridge Declaration, and this is how it begins.
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Evangelical churches today are increasingly dominated by the spirit of this age rather than by the spirit of Christ.
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In the course of history, words change.
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In our day, this has happened to the word evangelical.
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In the past, it served as a bond of unity between Christians of a wide variety of church traditions.
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Historical evangelicalism was confessional and embraced the essential truths of Christianity as those who were defined by the great ecumenical councils of the church.
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In addition, evangelicals also shared a common heritage, the Solos of the Reformation of the 16th century Protestant Reformation.
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Today, the light of the Reformation has been significantly dimmed.
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The consequence is that the word evangelical has become so inclusive as to have virtually lost its meaning.
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We face the peril of losing the unity it has taken centuries to achieve.
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Because of this crisis, and because of our love for Christ and his gospel and his church, we endeavor to assert anew our commitment to the central truths of the Reformation and of historic evangelicalism.
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These truths we affirm not because of their role in our traditions, but because we believe that they are central to the Bible.
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Then they go on to outline many of these truths and contrast them with modern erosions of faith and practice.
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And you know how they do this? By simply following the five point outline of the Solos of the Reformation.
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Sola Scriptura, Solus Christus, Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Soli Deo Gloria.
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Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone, glory to God alone.
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What these contemporary leaders all agree upon is that the way of Reformation is not innovation.
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It is not the spirit of the times.
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For the sake of the church, we must be for the church by being against such innovations.
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It has to do with a recommitment to the ancient paths of scripture truth as, for instance, rediscovered and articulated in the insights and teachings and then the writings and catechisms and confessions either pinned by or spawned by the Reformers.
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It's not to say that the Reformers were infallible or as I've said that they figured everything out.
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They didn't agree upon the nature of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper, the relationship of church and state or even the use of the law.
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Luther struggled with what we call the third use of the law, but nonetheless and particularly in the Reformed wing, virtually all the key doctrines of the faith were agreed upon and clearly expressed in the mature confessions of the church.
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The Westminster Confession of Faith and its catechisms, the three forms of unity, that is the Belgic Confession, Canons of Dort and the Heidelberg Catechism and along with closer than a kissing cousin, the 1689 London Confession, which differs only essentially in the areas of baptism and church government and in fact is otherwise virtually the Westminster Confession.
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With very few exceptions, Luther says, these confessions remain as faithful summaries of scripture and a definition and exposition of what the Reformed faith really is.
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So what does it mean to be Reformed today? Many answer this by quoting what has become in some circles a pretty popular phrase, Ecclesia Reformata Semper Reformanda, Latin for the church reformed, always reforming, to which is added Secundum Verbum Dei.
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Any Latin scholars here? You can tell that I don't pronounce it perfectly, but that means according to the word of God.
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And the idea of course is that the church is comprised of sinners and always prone to wander from the ancient paths of scripture, so a truly Reformed church is always reforming.
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The problem is there is no evidence that that comes from the Reformation and in fact was popularized in the 20th century by the Neo-Orthodox theologian Karl Barth and is loved by liberals who are always wanting to keep reforming the church, that is diddle with the church, change it, change doctrine like good marines, adapt, overcome the truth of the ancient paths.
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As some have researched that the phrase comes from more or less from the Dutch Puritans as it were and they, one of them said something like the church reformed and always being reformed, not always reforming but being reformed, that is taking those things and applying them that we have learned from the scriptures to be consistent with them, not always diddling with things and changing them as people who claim to be reformed do in our day.
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Calvin actually believed that in his day the church had essentially been reformed, not perfectly but they had essentially reformed the church according to the scriptures and his counsel to his fellow pastors was not to keep reforming the church, it was rather not to ruin the church and to guide them he and others formulated catechisms and confessions to guide the church as it faithfully proclaimed God's word, centering the gospel, the proper administration of the sacraments and the faithful exercise of church discipline.
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These were the marks of a faithful church coupled of course with lively faith, hope and love.
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So to be reformed means that we are absolutely committed to the sole and supreme authority of scripture, that you and I by God's grace subdue our hearts and minds, our doctrines, our practices, our very lives to the supreme authority of that word, that we preach it and teach it fearlessly both law and gospel and I love it that in your church walls are these two things that we primarily are to focus upon, the law of God and his will for us and the gospel, the solution for us falling so woefully short of that will and to be renewed that we might live out of love according to the pattern of godliness of the scriptures.
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Preaching then both God's word, both law and gospel, centering the good news of free grace to save us from our sins, to repent us from our sins in faith in Christ.
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This faith alone is the only instrument of being right with God, of justification that will be proved as the spirit implanted in us outflows in love for God and Christ and love for his word and law, expressing itself in holiness of life and obedience to God's law.
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These are the things we are to teach and preach knowing that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ but we do so with a doctrine of sola scriptura not solo scriptura.
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We don't see ourselves as the people who now in our own day alone and disregarding the history of the church and its creeds and confessions come up with stuff all by ourselves.
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No, no.
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We know that we are saved into a community of believers, a covenant community that extends all the way back to Adam and extends all the way to all those elect whom God will bring into his church until he returns and even now when we gather, we gather with the heavenly host and the saints who have already gone before and mysterious way we are all united in the mystery of union with Christ.
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True reformation is not continually seeking to rediscover the wheel but use the reflections of the church as confessions, preaching the Bible as preeminent but allowing all of that to be shaped and guided by what the church has already attained.
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Not too long after my wife and I came here, by the way I know I'm getting close to the hour and a half so I'm about done here.
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Not too long after my wife and I moved here, a man that I got to know, a Columbian, had been converted.
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He and his wife had been converted about the same day and they didn't know it and they were each coming to the other's study in their home to tell each other this awful thing that had happened, former Roman Catholics and they're both converted at the same time, kind of independently and this man from Columbia who had been trained for a while as a priest has this burden to go back to his home country and tell them of what he has discovered and he's saved in the context of a robust reform ministry.
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He's first commissioned this ministry at 10th Presbyterian where James Montgomery Boyce was pastor and he gets guys like me who in high school always wanted to go to South America but never got to go and I got to go and what we did was started setting up conferences on the soul laws of the Reformation and you cannot believe what happened.
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We didn't take anything new but we would speak often in Pentecostal churches.
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I remember one, a big church in Cartagena and these people, they let us in and they invited all sorts of people and they start hearing the truths of the gospel and the word of God and the Reformation for the first time.
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They'd never heard these things and by the end of this two day conference the pastor not only invites us back but he says when you get back you see these five posts in our church building? They're going to have little plaques on them named for all the soul laws of the Reformation.
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This ministry was called Gospel to Columbia but through preaching these things Reformation began.
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Now it's called Gospel through Columbia because they're sending missionaries all over South America and even to Central America.
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I remember preaching there one time and saying to one of the men, I just pray someday that God will send some of your people to our country because we don't see this kind of response to the gospel in our country.
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Today in Houston, Texas one of those pastors that was a layman that came to one of those conferences graduated from a Reformed seminary that was established to this ministry and is now the Chancellor of a Reformed seminary, Reformed Baptist by the way, just so you know, in Houston, Texas.
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I told Brother Keith, one of my pastors, Gordon Keddie, he had this saying, it was a Scott, and if a Scott says something you know it's got to be true, it sounds so holy.
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And he said about doctrine, if it's new it's not good and if it's good it's not new.
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The only thing new about the ancient paths is the glory of the new covenant.
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When the shadows and the types are fulfilled and the clarity and the beauty of our Savior Jesus Christ and the doctrines are more explicitly explained in the light of Christ and the revelation of God in Him.
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And that gospel is going out to the nations and it's gone out to us all sorts of ethnic backgrounds represented here.
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I found out that my brother Gadosh, it's a Czech name, Slovakian, yeah and my daughter in law is from Slovakia, what wonder.
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But you see it's the word of God that comes from the God whose son is the center of it, who is the same yesterday, today and forever.
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Brethren we best remember and honor the Reformers and the Reformation in a God glorifying manner when we pray and we labor to conform our worship, our ministries, our churches, our families and ourselves, body, mind and soul to the doctrines and practice of God's word as understood, confessed and applied by God's covenant community such as the Reformers, the true historic church of the living God.
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May God grant us courage to be Protestant, to preach the gospel and set men free.
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Let's pray.
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Lord our God, we aren't here certainly to forget men like Luther.
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He is in heaven and his labors follow him.
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But we best honor these men greatly used of you when we follow in the ancient paths that lead to Christ and lead to that good way, the way to find rest for our souls.
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Oh Lord God if there is anyone hearing these words who still hasn't found that rest, it won't be found in all the nonsense and the newness and the craziness of a postmodern world that even denies the idea that there is absolute truth.
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It will be found in the good way, the ancient paths that lead to the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Oh open hearts to believe.
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And Father for those of us who know Christ, give us the courage to be against the world for the world by clinging to the truths that transform in the Lord Jesus Christ and the whole of that word, relevant today as ever.
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We pray in Jesus name, amen.
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Let's stand and we'll prepare our hearts for communion.