"Terror on Every Side" Part 2 July 29, 2018 AM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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August 5, 2018

Sunday Morning, July 29, 2018 AM "Terror on Every Side" Part 2 Michael Dirrim Pastor

"Covenantal Justice: Guarding the Gates " Part 3 September 9, 2018 AM

00:32: Let's pray together. Lord, you are so great in all that is right and all that is good.
01:07: Because of who you are and what you have done through Jesus Christ, you have made all things well with our soul.
01:21: That we have a reconciliation with you, that we know why this world is and where it's all going.
01:33: Lord, we give you glory, we give you honor, we give you praise because of the way that you are shepherding all of history into the fold of your glory.
01:56: And that fold is Christ -shaped. And Lord, I thank you for graciously grabbing hold of our attention, revealing yourself to us through your
02:13: Son, giving us this holy scripture so that we are not left anchorless, tossed in the storm.
02:27: You have given us this eternal and changing word to put our attention where it needs to be.
02:35: And I pray that you would give us the grace today, in repentance through faith, to submit to your word, that we would do so joyfully, that we would do so eagerly.
02:49: Lord, you have proven your love for us by giving us your
02:54: Son, Jesus Christ, as a propitiation for our sins. And may we prove our love to you today by faith in Christ, as we worship through your word.
03:08: I pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ, with whom you are well pleased. Amen. I invite you to open your
03:16: Bibles and turn with me to Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter 19, and we will be reading in a moment, beginning in verse 10.
03:24: Jeremiah chapter 19, verses 10 through chapter 20, verse 6, will be our focus this morning.
03:32: This is a second part to what we began last week in Jeremiah 19, verses 1 through 9.
03:41: The operative phrase in this passage is a name that was given to a priest by the name of Pasher.
03:50: We'll learn about him today. But the operative phrase in this passage is terror on every side.
03:59: We talked a little bit about that last week, as that's the language that comes from lamentations, and the actual description in the morning of the disaster that came to Jerusalem, the judgment of God.
04:13: But last week we began talking about the breaking of the covenant of God, that this is what
04:22: Judah is guilty of. In their constant pursuit of idolatry, in their refusal to hear the word of God through the prophets, in their lack of repentance and faith, they break the covenant of God.
04:39: This is nothing minor. This is akin to trying to overthrow the government. They were trying to overthrow the government of God, and of course they fail miserably.
04:52: And in verses 1 through 9, we have the helpful image of court in session, that God decides to hold court with the representatives of Judah just outside Jerusalem in view of Topheth, a valley full of idolatry and defilement.
05:09: The charges are read, and the sentencing of judgment is also given.
05:17: And Jeremiah is the one telling them all of this. He stands a little bit like the bailiff of God as he reads all this information, as he has organized the court.
05:29: And Jeremiah is holding in his hand a jar. He has in his hand a clay jar.
05:36: This was a very common jar. This was a little jar that many of the
05:42: Israelites needed several of because they were often on their rooftops pouring out oblations in worship to the goddess of heaven.
05:54: And Jeremiah holds this jar in his hand. And we're about to read what happens to the jar and what happens to Judah.
06:02: So if you would please stand in reverence to Christ. We're going to read Jeremiah 19 verses 10 through chapter 20 verse 6, where Christ is revealed.
06:15: God says to Jeremiah, Then you are to break the jar in the sight of the men who accompany you, and say to them,
06:24: Thus says the Lord of hosts, Just so I will break this people and this city, even as one breaks a potter's vessel, which cannot again be repaired.
06:37: And they will bury in Topheth, because there is no other place for burial.
06:43: This is how I will treat this place and its inhabitants, declares the
06:49: Lord, so as to make this city like Topheth. The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like the place
07:00: Topheth, because of all the houses on whose rooftops they burned sacrifices to all the heavenly hosts and poured out drink offerings to other gods.
07:16: Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy, and he stood in the court of the
07:24: Lord's house and said to all the people, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I am about to bring on this city and all its towns the entire calamity
07:36: I have declared against it, because they have stiffened their necks, so as not to heed my words.
07:45: When Pastor the priest, the son of Emer, who was chief officer in the house of the Lord, heard
07:50: Jeremiah prophesying these things, Pastor had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put him in the stocks, which were at the upper
08:01: Benjamin gate, which was by the house of the Lord. On the next day, when
08:06: Pastor released Jeremiah from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, Pastor is not the name the
08:11: Lord has called you, but rather Magor Misaviv. For thus says the
08:17: Lord, Behold, I am going to make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends, and while your eyes look on, they will fall by the sword of their enemies.
08:28: So I will give over all Judah to the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will carry them away as exiles to Babylon and will slay them with the sword.
08:39: I will also give over all the wealth of this city, all its produce and all its costly things, even all the treasures of the kings of Judah.
08:47: I will give over to the hand of their enemies, and they will plunder them and take them away and bring them to Babylon. And you,
08:53: Pastor, and all who live in your house will go into captivity, and you will enter
09:00: Babylon, and there you will die, and you will be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have falsely prophesied.
09:11: This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. When I look at Jeremiah and his prophetic ministry, you can't fault him for a lack of converts because he was a bad speaker.
09:33: He really does follow all the best rules of public speaking. Pastor didn't throw him in the stocks and have him beaten because Jeremiah was not clear.
09:43: He was too clear for Pastor's taste. But Jeremiah is an excellent public speaker.
09:50: He knows his audience. He selected the most impactful venue for his sermons.
09:56: He used repetition to clarify his meaning. He even employed visual aids, and he left his audience with a phrase that they could remember and think about.
10:12: Megor Misabev. What should have been berekah,
10:17: Misabev, blessing on every side. Genesis 12, 1 -3.
10:24: Blessing on every side. That's what God wanted. That's what God declared concerning Abraham and his seed.
10:30: What should have been blessing on every side was Megor Misabev, terror on every side.
10:38: This God named the blind man leading the blind people into the pit. It's a warning that should quash every hope of rebellion against God.
10:50: As we begin to think about the whole message that which we looked at last week, the broken covenant and what we're going to look at this morning, a way to capture the whole narrative is as follows.
11:03: Opposing God's covenant does not break his word, it just breaks you. That's Jeremiah's message.
11:11: I think then the ultimate application of that is this. Opposing Christ cannot depose him as the
11:20: Lord. It only denies him as the Savior. Let's begin talking about a broken people according to verses 10 -13.
11:33: Just when Jeremiah has the full attention of the elders and the priests, for he has summoned together the civil leaders and the religious leaders to this court of God's law just outside the
11:48: Dung Gate, just outside the Potsherd Gate, the southeast corner of Jerusalem. They're in view of Topheth, this valley which
11:56: God has said will be renamed the Valley of the Slaughter. Topheth is this valley in which idolatry has been and still is rampant.
12:09: Jeremiah is finishing up his sermon. He's just got to the point where he's telling them that in the judgment of God, when the
12:19: Babylonians come and lay siege to Jerusalem, those in Jerusalem, the
12:25: Jews, by the end will be eating each other. Cannibalism. You may imagine the kind of looks that Jeremiah is getting from the civil leaders and from the religious leaders.
12:37: And God has a plan. Just when these men are most exercised, he says to Jeremiah, this is when you take the jar and you break it.
12:49: Verse 10, then you are to break the jar in the sight of the men who accompany you.
12:55: And this sign, Jeremiah taking this little jar and taking it and smashing it on the ground into so many pieces, that is the sign of condemnation.
13:06: For God says very clearly, verse 11, That is a word of condemnation.
13:32: It's not merely a word of warning. It's not even a matter of possibility.
13:41: It's just this. This is what I will do. And do it in such a way that there is no coming back from it.
13:50: You can't take that little pot that Jeremiah just threw on the ground. You can't put that back together in any kind of useful way.
13:57: God says, this is what I'm going to do to this people in this city. Totality of the condemnation.
14:05: And as we often do when we come to passages like this in the Bible, we may scrunch our eyebrows and, why in the world is
14:14: God so upset? Why is his condemnation so total?
14:22: How can he say that kind of thing? But then again, we may be forgetting the context.
14:32: And we know, of course, that God is just and he is righteous and he is good. So why is he condemning them in this way?
14:42: For hundreds of years, the prophets came and preached. Sometimes they had a multi -generational ministry.
14:50: And they would preach and preach and preach for decades and call the people to repentance and faith.
14:55: And time and again, the people would not listen. And they would often live as if there was no
15:02: God, as if he would never follow through on his promises, on his warnings about the curse.
15:09: But as easily as Jeremiah shattered that little clay jar, so easily
15:16: God will shatter Judah and Jerusalem beyond recovery. It is clear that those who break the covenant, that those who try to overthrow the government of God, that these are traitors to their own creator.
15:30: They are would -be usurpers of the throne of Christ. And there is only one thing to do about such reprobate turncoats.
15:38: And that is execution and exile. It is always the answer to those who try to overthrow the government, isn't it?
15:45: It is always the answer to those who try to overthrow the government. You execute them and exile them. This is exactly what
15:50: God is doing. How far will the carnage spread? How high will the bodies pile?
15:56: Verse 11 continues, they will bury in Topheth, because there was no other place for burial.
16:03: Why is that a bad thing? The practical people would say, well, it is a big ditch. It is a good place to put the bodies.
16:09: You have to understand what Topheth is. Topheth is a valley that runs from east to west just to the south of Jerusalem.
16:17: It was a place that had become a place for demon worship.
16:23: It was a haven for idolatry. During Manasseh's half -century reign, it became the headquarters for idolatry, for the worship of even
16:35: Molech, where many infants and small children were offered as burnt offerings to these false gods.
16:43: When Josiah became king, he wanted to see that end forever in the kingdom.
16:50: How will he keep these Jews? Yes, even if they're idolatrous, how is he going to keep them out of that valley, out of that pit?
16:58: We'll defile it. We'll take everything that is most heinous in our city, all the garbage, even the broken pottery, all of the human waste, and the bodies of the criminals that we don't want to bury in our city.
17:15: We're going to take it all and throw it into this valley, Topheth, and it will become this stinking, rotten, defiled place, and nobody in their right mind will ever go back.
17:28: We'll just shut her down that way. And yet, for all of his efforts, Josiah was not able to remove the defilement and the rottenness in the hearts of the people.
17:39: For after his untimely death, the worship in Topheth began again.
17:45: No matter the amount of defilement and rottenness and brokenness in that valley.
17:52: If you look at Topheth, there the Jews went to cast away all their broken pots, but they carried another brokenness with them in their hearts back into the city.
18:01: There the Jews cast all their defiling waste and brought defilement back with them into their homes.
18:08: There the Jews tossed the bodies of all the condemned, and yet, by their love of the practices in Topheth, they sealed their own condemnation.
18:19: This is the issue. The people of Zion loved the practice of Topheth.
18:34: That was the problem. That the people of Zion loved the practice of Topheth.
18:45: And so, the city of Zion became ever as much a pit of sin as the valley.
18:59: And it came to be that God in his holiness could smell no difference between Topheth and Zion.
19:08: And in fact, when you look at the idolatry that was rampant in both places, it looked like the very same place.
19:14: The only difference was the ruinous look of Topheth. But God would eliminate that last distinction.
19:23: Notice in verse 12. This is how I will treat this place and its inhabitants, declares the
19:30: Lord, so as to make this city like Topheth. The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like the place
19:40: Topheth. So, God says, I'm going to make Zion like Topheth. Why?
19:48: Because Zion had made herself like Topheth. I'm going to make
19:54: Zion like Topheth in destruction, because Zion made herself like Topheth in defilement.
20:00: Verse 13 continues. Because of all the houses on whose rooftops they burned sacrifices to all the heavenly hosts and poured out drink offerings to other gods.
20:09: Do we see how just and how right God's judgment is? It fits the crime.
20:16: This is the way that God always works. Romans 1 verse 18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
20:29: What is this truth? Verse 21 says, for even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks.
20:37: The end result is in verse 28. Just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind.
20:46: It's the fitting judgment of God. We need, therefore, to diagnose the brokenness rightly.
20:56: God promises to break this people. He says, even as this jar was broken, so I will break this people and this city.
21:06: When we understand from the text that Judah was already broken, this makes sense.
21:12: The brokenness was not so much on the exterior. I mean, they still had their land. They still had their autonomy. They still had their capital city.
21:19: They still had their temple. They still had their religious system. So it appeared that everything was going fine.
21:24: And that there were certainly cracks that were obvious. Idolatry was rampant.
21:30: And any time idolatry is rampant, so also is sexual immorality and social injustice.
21:36: Read Jeremiah 5. Cult prostitution and child sacrifice were common.
21:45: And these sins proved the brokenness -ruined apostate hearts of the people.
21:51: So the people broke themselves in the breaking of God's covenant.
21:57: We must not rehabilitate sin through sympathy. We cannot call villains victims.
22:08: The reason why we're broken, the reason why things don't work right, is because of sin.
22:14: And sin begetting sin. And even if we are wronged, we respond in sinful ways.
22:20: That is the nature of who we are apart from God. Brokenness, quite simply, comes from opposing
22:33: Christ. Did he not call himself the cornerstone?
22:40: He's the cornerstone. He's the cornerstone of creation. He's the unmade firstborn, highest in rank.
22:46: He's the cornerstone of revelation. Only through his person and work do we ever understand the scriptures.
22:51: He's the cornerstone of the church, of the new humanity. The cornerstone to whom the apostles and prophets adhered in the establishment of Christ's body.
23:00: Christ is the stone which the builders rejected. But he has become the chief cornerstone. And he warns in Luke 20 verse 18,
23:08: Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces.
23:13: But on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust. That's why there's brokenness.
23:21: It's because of opposition to Christ. And let judgment begin with the household of God, Peter says.
23:29: I want you to notice it was the people of Zion who adapted and adopted the practices of Topheth.
23:37: They're the ones who brought the God to the pit and to the house of Zion. As I said before, it came a point in time when
23:46: Zion and Topheth smelled the same. Smelled the same to God. I remember growing up in rural northeast
23:53: Oklahoma. We were so far into the sticks. My address was something like Route 3. I don't remember the rest of the address.
24:02: But we had no trash service. And so we had this brick incinerator behind our house. And we just throw the trash in there until we knew it was time to burn it.
24:10: And you knew it was time to burn it when it smelled really, really bad. My dad would get up there.
24:15: He'd pour a bunch of gasoline on it and light it. It was always exciting to see stuff exploding inside. The more garbage that was thrown in there, the more it smelled horrible.
24:26: And the more the practices of Topheth were brought into Zion, the more it smelled like an incinerator ready to be lit.
24:34: And the same relationship should go for the world and the church. The state of the
24:41: Western evangelical church is like this. A reporter was interviewing a shepherd as part of a series on ancient occupations in modern times.
24:53: The haggard -looking shepherd spoke about the difficulties of ever turning a prophet in wool and mutton.
24:59: In fact, he had to have a second job in order to make ends meet. Curious about the second job, the reporter pressed for details.
25:05: He said, oh, I have a night job as a wolf conservationist. What do sheep have to do with wolves?
25:17: When you bring in Topheth's worship, you invite Topheth's ruin. Listen, Zion is not going to reach the world for Christ by reaffolstering her aesthetics to impress
25:28: Topheth, or inflaming her passions to woo Topheth, or reimagining her vows to wed
25:34: Topheth. We need to stop stealing ideas from the world to feed and nourish the church.
25:42: Proverbs 20, verse 17 says, Bread obtained by falsehood is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth is full of gravel.
25:50: It's rather one of the more darker sayings of Solomon. The idea is that a man who gets his bread by constantly swindling people, and lying to people, and cheating people, and stealing from people, that he's eventually going to stop having stolen bread in his mouth, and there's just going to be another shovel full of gravel going into his mouth as he lays there in a shallow grave dead.
26:10: It's a pretty dark saying of Solomon, but the truth is that if a man continues to try to do that, eventually that's going to be his end, his destruction.
26:19: The church needs to stop stealing from the world and saying that this is nourishing to us.
26:28: The brokenness of the church today, our ineffectiveness to clearly proclaim the gospel, to stand up for the truth, or to demonstrate biblical righteousness, has everything to do with our lack of commitment to Christ.
26:38: There is an absence of trusting submission to our head shepherd.
26:44: He knows what's best for us. He knows what we need. And so under shepherds, like the elders here, we've got no business pursuing a night job as a wolf conservationist.
26:53: And sheep aren't supposed to make their fold a safe space for wolves. Zion is not to conform to Topheth.
27:02: Fleeing the pit, let's make for higher ground. Aspiring to the blessings of God at the right hand.
27:10: We are to be conformed to Christ, who is the image of the invisible God. The problem with Zion was that they loved the practice of Topheth, and you see the destruction that occurs.
27:21: We should take warning. Also, finally, after we see the broken covenant and the broken people, we see an unbroken word.
27:30: An unbroken word in verses 14 through verse 6 of chapter 20.
27:36: Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy. Well, where's he going?
27:44: I mean, Jeremiah has given a great speech. The imagery difficult to ignore, the shattering of the clay pot impossible to forget.
27:51: He's a marked man now. He has made himself odious to the religious and civil leadership in Judah.
27:58: I mean, it's a good day's work. Maybe you should go home. Sweet home shalom.
28:03: Get some rest. But he does not rest. He takes the sermon he just preached outside the potsherd gate near Topheth.
28:14: He takes that same sermon and he goes up to the temple, to the temple courts. Verse 14 says, he stood in the court of the
28:23: Lord's house and said to all the people, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the
28:29: God of Israel, Behold, I'm about to bring on this city and all its towns the entire calamity that I have declared against it, because they have stiffened their necks so as not to heed my words.
28:43: It's a summation of the same thing he had been saying down at the potsherd gate. What Jeremiah preached at the dung gate, he preaches at the temple's gate.
28:52: And the cause is again listed, the cause for the calamity. And in this we see
28:58: God's word ignored. I want you to see in verse 4, there is the cause for the calamity. In verse 4, why is the calamity coming?
29:05: Chapter 19 verse 4, because they have forsaken me and have made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods.
29:13: So the cause is idolatry. Verse 13 of chapter 19, because the calamity comes because of all the houses on whose rooftops they burned sacrifices to all the heavenly hosts and poured out drink offerings to other gods.
29:27: So what's the cause? It's idolatry. And now we come to verse 15 and he says,
29:35: Because they have stiffened their necks so as not to heed my words.
29:42: And do you know, we're not really dealing with something different.
29:51: Here's something really sad. You want to see a sad scene. A Jew, despite all the oracles and the covenants of God, besides all the blessings, besides the temple being there in plain view, despite all the advantages, the
30:07: Jew bowing down before some lump of stone, offering some sort of incense or cake to the stone idol, bowing down before it, praying to it, and all the while this stone just sits there, unmoving, unblinking, unresponsive.
30:37: Isn't that sad? That's just a sad scene. And now here's something sadder.
30:49: The prophet of God comes with the word of God, declaring the truths of God to these
30:55: Jews, and they sit there like lumps of clay, unhearing, unblinking, unresponsive, because of the idolatry.
31:17: When you read about the stiff neck, stiff neck people, yeah, that means stubborn, but it's a kind of stubborn.
31:25: It's an idolatry. As G .K. Beale points out, we become what we worship.
31:31: We resemble what we revere. And these people were worshiping clay idols of a stiff neck, and they themselves were stiff necked.
31:39: The idols couldn't hear, so they couldn't hear. The idols couldn't see, so they couldn't see. And that's really sad.
31:50: Well, God's word is ignored. Does that spell doom for God's word? Will his word be broken?
31:58: Not only is God's word ignored, but it's also attacked. In contrast to the stony reception by the people is the violent reaction to God's word by the priest.
32:09: I know that it might be hard to imagine that God's word receives a stony reception by many and a violent reaction by others.
32:17: That's not hard to believe, is it? What happens today is what has always happened to the preaching of God's word.
32:25: So we see Pastor the priest in verse 1 of chapter 20. Pastor the priest, the son of Emer, who was chief officer in the house of the
32:32: Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, and Pastor had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put him in the stocks that were at the upper
32:43: Benjamin Gate, which was by the house of the Lord. I think at this point we see the scribe
32:49: Baruch writing, and the Holy Spirit, through Baruch, wants us to pay attention to this conflict of authority.
32:57: For the very first time, we hear this phrase, Jeremiah the prophet. It's the first time we hear it in the book.
33:02: And he is pitted against Pastor the priest. So here you have two religious authorities facing off, and they are in disagreement.
33:12: Jeremiah the prophet versus Pastor the priest. Who won? Jeremiah fired first, but Pastor fired back.
33:20: Who's right? I mean, I know we're on Jeremiah's side and everything, but from a different perspective, you're wondering, which one is right?
33:26: Which one is really representing God in this matter? Oh, perhaps in their contradiction, the fact is they're both wrong.
33:35: They're both right. They're both wrong. Jeremiah is wrong for his intolerant hate speech, and Pastor is wrong for his violence against a fellow human being.
33:47: And postmodern Preston and PC Polly, they shake their heads in dismay. You know, if only these men could agree to disagree on their particular beliefs, they have so much in common.
33:59: Don't they recognize that they have a shared love for Judah, for Jerusalem, and Jehovah?
34:06: Really, they're on the same side, don't they desire, both of them, Judah's flourishing?
34:12: Shouldn't they accept one another and just engage in conversation? In the words of my mother,
34:21: Gaga Maggot, how preferable that the prophet is beaten and thrown into the stocks.
34:33: How preferable that is. By his suffering, Jeremiah proves his willingness to lose everything for God and to confess the word of the
34:39: Lord, the very one who came to him. Better, better that the word of God be attacked with vicious hatred by those who oppose than that God's word be bound, gagged, and sacrificed as a peace offering to those who oppose.
34:59: People ignored God's word? The priests attacked God's word? Does that spell doom for God's word?
35:05: No, God's word will not be broken. God's word prevails. Now, when a preacher is beaten 40 times with rods and thrown in the stocks overnight, you'd think he'd get the hint and tone down the rhetoric.
35:18: But if Pasher was hoping to have blunted God's arrow that night, he met with God's sharpened ax in the morning.
35:25: Verse three. On the next day, when Pasher released Jeremiah from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him,
35:31: Pasher is not the name the Lord has called you, but rather, Magor Mizabev. See, his parents named him
35:40: Pasher, which means freedom. He's all about freedom. God renamed him
35:47: Terror on Every Side. He tried to live up to his first name. He rejected any word coming from the prophet
35:53: Jeremiah or anybody else for that matter, and said that they're going to have to live in captivity. No, no, no. Freedom is the name.
36:00: But he would know the truth of his second name when he was taken into captivity, he and all those he loved. Verse four.
36:06: For thus says the Lord, behold, I'm going to make you a terror to yourself and to your friends, to yourself and to all your friends, and while your eyes look on, they will fall by the sword of their enemies.
36:19: So I will give over all Judah to the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will carry them away as exiles to Babylon and will slay them with the sword.
36:26: I will also give over all the wealth of this city, all its produce and all its costly things, even all the treasures of the kings of Judah, I will give over to the hand of their enemies, and they will plunder them, take them away, and bring them to Babylon.
36:37: And listen, the irony is so thick just now. Verse six. And you, pasture, and you, freedom, and all who live in your house will go into captivity, and you will enter
36:50: Babylon, and there you will die, and there you will be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have falsely prophesied.
37:03: This gives me sympathy, it gives me compassion on those who preach false gospels, who preach false messages.
37:25: They're really not to be parodies that you poke at for fun, because look at what happens to pasture.
37:31: He really believed his message, he really believed that everything was gonna turn out all right, and he kept on telling everybody that until he felt it to be absolutely true for himself, and at the very end, while he looked on, the people he loved and the people he preached to who rejoiced at his message of peace were slaughtered by Babylon, and those who survived, he would live with in exile for the rest of his life, and they would know he lied.
38:02: What a sad, sad end. Opposing God's covenant does not break his word, it just breaks us.
38:11: Opposing Christ cannot depose him as the Lord, it only denies him as the Savior. Now some things that we need to recognize from this passage.
38:19: First thing is this, what is preached at the gates of hell must be preached in the halls of Zion. What Jeremiah preached down there at the dung gate in front of Topheth is the very same thing he preached in the temple courts, and we need to take hold of that model of consistency, one that we find ultimately in the person of Christ.
38:42: No matter where he was, he preached the same message. There is a consistency that we should learn.
38:49: Do we speak one way here, and another way at home? Do we speak one way in church, and another way in the marketplace?
38:56: Do we condemn sin in Topheth, but not in Zion? Do we claim the exclusivity of Jesus Christ in the pews, but not in the world?
39:06: Do we bemoan bail in the streets, but protect sacred cows in the church? What is preached at the gates of hell must be preached in the halls of Zion.
39:17: In all places, among all peoples, at all times, we have this one message, Christ and Him crucified. There has to be this consistency, because the alternative is peddling false teaching, and that makes you a terror to the one you love.
39:32: God said to Pasher, you're going to be Megor Mesa B. You're going to be terror on every side, because you're going to be a terror to those you love, to those in your own household, to your friends, to your neighbors.
39:45: You will be a terror to them. How many times did He assure His wife and children and grandchildren that everything was going to be all right?
39:53: How many times did He comfort His neighbors and His friends with proclamations of peace, peace?
40:00: How many idolaters did He affirm in their lawlessness? And when it all collapsed,
40:08: He lived every day in captivity, remembering the sights of those that He had led astray, being slaughtered, and living in the sight of those who knew
40:18: He was a false prophet. That kind of thought is so sobering.
40:26: We have to remember that in Christ, we are called to be mediators, that we are called to be in the ministry of reconciliation, according to 2
40:39: Corinthians 5, the ministry of reconciliation, bringing the lost to Christ, and that we have this calling to preach the truth and proclaim the truth and share the truth with others, and we have to be very cautious about committing the sin of Jeremiah 6, of healing, saying, peace, peace, when there is no hope to save, nor does it save yourself.
41:06: Thirdly, there's going to be no space for true believers. All those who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
41:14: Jeremiah is not an aberration. He's consistent. And Jesus says in His primer on discipleship, if you ever want to know what it means, in verses 32 and 33, that unless we confess
41:23: Him before marriage, it means we have to own the offense of His crucifixion on the cross.
41:29: Otherwise, we're not going to stand with Him in the judgment because we don't really believe in who He is. When we know
41:42: Christ as Lord, then we know Him as Savior. Then we know Him as Savior.
41:48: Megor Misabeb, the terror on every side, is a critical warning here in the story of Jeremiah, but it is not the final word.
41:58: It is not the final word for those who are in Christ. We're never going to have a safe space, but we will have
42:05: Shalom. The difference between a safe space and Shalom is that the truth still exists in Shalom.
42:11: Truth is not allowed in safe spaces today. But in Shalom, we will be in the presence of the truth
42:17: Himself. We will know the perfect relationship with God, the perfect relationship with one another, and the perfect relationship with the new creation.
42:28: In this world, we will have trouble, but be of good cheer. Jesus Christ has overcome the world.
42:36: We have this hope in Christ. We have this hope of what
42:42: He will bring about that is immeasurable to anything else that we find in this world. We don't have a true and lasting peace in Christ and a joy in Christ to look forward to.
42:57: We don't have troubles and tribulations forever. We have a time when we will be with Christ and every tear will be wiped away and all sickness and sorrow will be gone.
43:11: Let us not exchange the crown jewels of our faith for the flimsy promissory note of relativism.
43:20: There is no hope except we have in Christ. And as John says at the end of his first letter, little children, guard yourselves from idols.
43:30: Little children, guard yourselves from idols. Let's pray.
43:39: Father, I thank You for the time You've given to us this morning. I pray that You would help us to take these warnings to heart and to remember the worth, the value of Your truth.
43:57: Let us not throw it away for the cost of some temporary ceasefire.
44:04: Help us to faithfully serve Christ. To continue on,
44:14: I pray that You would remind us of what we have ahead of us and that as we look forward to, we'll know an abiding joy in the here and now.