"Our Most Necessary Repentance"

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Pastor Michael Dirr

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Jeremiah chapter 8 and verses 4 through 12 will be our focus this morning.
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So we continue in the message of Jeremiah, passage by passage, line by line.
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And we have received a dire warning in the previous passage, a scene that can only be described by a line from the text itself, the valley of the slaughter.
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And after this incredibly dark warning, we come to a text in which we are confronted with our most necessary repentance.
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And I encourage you to give praise to Christ as I read, you shall say to them, thus says the
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Lord, do men fall and not get up again? Does one turn away and not repent?
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Why then has this people, Jerusalem, turned away in continual apostasy?
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They hold fast to deceit. They refuse to return.
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I have listened and heard. They have spoken what is not right.
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No man repents of his wickedness saying, what have
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I done? Everyone turned to his course like a horse charging into battle.
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Even the stork of the sky knows her seasons and the turtle dove and the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration.
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But my people do not know the ordinances of the
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Lord. How can you say we are wise and the law of the
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Lord is with us? But behold, the lying pin of the scribes has made it into a lie.
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The wise men are put to shame. They are dismayed and caught. Behold, they have rejected the word of the
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Lord. And what kind of wisdom do they have? Therefore, I will give their wives to others, their fields to new owners, because from the least of them to the greatest, everyone is greedy for gain.
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From the prophet to the priest, everyone practices deceit.
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They heal the brokenness of the daughter of my people superficially saying, peace, peace.
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But there is no peace. Were they ashamed because of the abomination that they had done?
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They certainly were not ashamed and they did not know how to blush.
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Therefore, they shall fall among those who fall. At the time of their punishment, they shall be brought down, says the
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Lord. Let's pray.
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Heavenly Father, you know what we need before we even ask. And we should ask because you are our
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Heavenly Father. And we ask for this most necessary of our needs.
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We ask for the grace of repentance. We need this more than our daily food.
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Father, turn us away from deceit. Turn us away from the lies we would tell ourselves.
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And turn us to the wisdom of your word. Turn us to the truths of Jesus Christ.
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Pray these things, seeking these mercies for Christ's sake.
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Amen. In 1985, at the
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University of California, there was a great debate. Christian philosopher, Greg Bonson, versus outspoken atheist,
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Gordon Stein. The title of the debate was, Does God Exist?
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In the opening statements by Greg Bonson, tongue firmly in his cheek, he says,
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I concede to my opponent all issues pertaining to the maturation and control of ovaries in Japanese whales.
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Because that was the subject of his dissertation. So obviously, Gordon Stein is an expert in that sliver of science.
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And so Bonson says, I'll let him be the expert about that tonight, as we debate whether or not
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God exists. And Greg Bonson went on to demonstrate the irrationality of the atheist worldview.
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That unless God, the God of Scripture, is presupposed, the world is full of irrational absurdities.
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Gordon Stein, in his opening statement, retorted, I will grant to Dr.
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Bonson his expertise on a conditional resolution of the apparent paradox of self -deception.
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And went on to show how much more relevant that dissertation would be to that night's debate than his own.
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Waiting a couple of hours until his concluding statements, Greg Bonson answered that doubt by saying,
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Gordon Stein has doubted whether or not my dissertation on self -deception would be relevant to tonight's debate, but it is.
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He says, it's relevant because people can know the truth and yet work very hard to rationalize the evidence.
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As Paul says, they suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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In order to convince themselves that there is no God. And this is exactly what
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Gordon Stein was doing. And the truth is that God does not believe in atheists.
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His word says that all people everywhere know that God exists, believe it in their hearts, even though they will suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
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Self -deception. Self -deception is one of the prime characteristics of folly, of being a fool.
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Now, folly has her champions of self -deception. We read about some of them in the Bible. We read about Samson, who thought he could do anything and God would still be with him.
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We read about Goliath, who thought the outward appearance was far more important than what was on the inside.
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We read of the rich fool, who was rich in all things, except he wasn't rich toward God.
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And that very night his soul was required of him. We read of the church in Laodicea, who was doing just fine, had all the money they ever needed.
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Had all the outward appearance of everything, dressed fine, good health, plenty of wealth, but Jesus wasn't even inside.
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He's at the door knocking, saying, y 'all gonna have church without me again? Self -deception.
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And all of these fools in their folly demonstrate this truth, self -deception terminates in self -destruction.
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Self -deception terminates in self -destruction, and that frames our most necessary repentance, which is this, we must turn away from the folly of deception to the wisdom of God's word.
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That's what our text is about. Our passage is about turning away from the folly of deception to the wisdom of God's word.
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Now I've listed atheists in Samson, I've listed Goliath, I've listed the rich fool and the church in Laodicea, so all of us feel really safe right about right now.
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That's not my crew, that's not my group, I'm not like them. Boy, those are the worst of the worst.
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I'm nowhere near them, so I'm safe. Not so much, because I could have listed other people. How many lies did
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King David tell to himself to pursue Bathsheba and murder her husband and cover it all up?
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How many lies did Peter have to tell himself when he thought he would not fall to the temptation of denying
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Christ? We can all succumb to self -deception, because we're made of the same stuff as Adam and Eve, and we're prone to fall to deception, and we're willing to lie to ourselves and about ourselves in order to make ourselves look like we're okay.
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Our most necessary repentance is to turn from the folly of deceit to the wisdom of God's word.
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Let's take a look at folly's preference. Now, you know that folly has a persona in the
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Bible. If you read Proverbs, anyone read Proverbs? And there are two women in Proverbs, one of them is
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Lady Wisdom, and every young man should get to know Lady Wisdom and fall in love with her before he ever goes and tries to date and find a wife for himself.
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There's another woman in Proverbs, do you know who it is? Anybody know? Miss Folly. Miss Folly.
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And Miss Folly has some things to say in the life of Judah. Miss Folly is a celebrity in the streets of Jerusalem during the time of Jeremiah.
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She is adored by all of Judah, and it seems to me that her first statement is this, give me deception or give me death.
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Notice verses 4 through 6. You shall say to them, thus says the Lord, do men fall and not get up again?
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Does one turn away and not repent? Why then has this people of Jerusalem turned away in continual apostasy?
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They hold fast to deceit. No man repents of his wickedness, saying, what have
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I done? Everyone turned to his course like a horse charging into the battle.
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Notice verse 4. Common sense. Common sense has become such a rare substance in the life of Jerusalem, in the lives of those in Judah, that it seems like only one man has any common sense left, and that's the prophet of God.
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And through Jeremiah, God says, what is going on here?
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Do people fall down on the ground and just stay there hugging the manure?
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No, they get back up. What's going on here?
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Do people get lost and then just keep on plunging ahead, not knowing where they're going?
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Never turning around? That makes no sense. No, you stop and you retrace your steps until you know where you are again.
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But Judah has no common sense left. They fall down, they don't get up. They get lost, they keep going.
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They're a bunch of fools. They're devoid of any common sense in the psychosis of their sin.
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Now verse 5, that gives some context to verse 5, doesn't it? Verse 5, some of your translations will say backsliding.
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Does anybody have that in their text? Backsliding. Depending on what tradition you were raised in, backsliding may sound like a temporary regression in your sanctification.
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An acceptable temporary regression in your sanctification.
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That's a terrible way to understand backsliding. Because in the context, the term is actually apostasy.
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They fell down, they're not getting back up. They got lost, they get more lost. They've turned away from God. They hate
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God. They're running from God. This is apostasy. This isn't having a tough time in sanctification, in growing in holiness.
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This is abandoning God. God says, why are they doing this? Why are they continually turning away from me?
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Because they hold fast to deceit. The previous passage tells us what it means to hold fast to something.
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How did they treat their idols? They loved them, they served them, they went after them, they sought them, and they worshiped them.
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They had a five -fingered hold on their idols.
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They hold fast to deceit. They love, serve, go after, seek, and worship their idols.
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And because they're holding fast to deceit, they do not speak what is right. They love lies, they speak lies. No man repents.
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God can't find anybody who will repent. All he finds are fools who, like a war horse, hearing the trumpet call, charges headlong into death.
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Like a dam breaking and the water surging out. There's no stopping them.
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There's no stopping them. Folly shows her preference. Her preference is for deceit.
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Give me deception, which brings about death. Folly prefers it this way, and she sneers at common sense and any lesson from the created order.
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She says, repentance is for the birds. Verse seven. Even the stork in the sky knows her seasons, and the turtledove and the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration, but my people do not know the ordinance of the
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Lord. It's very fitting, because the people of Judah have been caught up into the idolatry of worshiping astral deities.
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They worship the sun, they worship the moon, they worship the stars. They have gone so far as to put an altar to the queen of heaven in the courts of the temple.
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They look up into the sky, and they worship what they see there, and God says, while you're looking up, could you pay attention to the birds?
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Do you notice how the birds follow my design for their lives, and that they migrate? And one part of the year, you'll see them going that way, and another part of the year, you'll see them going back that way.
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Why won't you return? Why won't you repent? Why won't you come back to your creator?
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Why won't you respond to all of the evidences of my covenant love? Because they are fools, and they have a preference for deceit.
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They do not know the ordinance of the Lord. That should sound very strange to us as we think about Judah, as we think about the people who live in Jerusalem with a temple.
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They don't know the word of God. They don't know the scriptures. They will protest in verse 8 that they do, but you should know something about the word no, especially in the
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Old Testament. That word no has a lot more to do with choice than it does about facts.
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They knew about the Bible. They knew about the Tanakh, the Old Testament. They knew the scriptures.
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They weren't choosing the scriptures. They were not setting themselves to value
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God's word. They preferred deceit. They preferred telling themselves the things that they wanted to know and wanted to believe, and so they were self -deceived.
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Our most necessary repentance is to turn away from deceit to God's word.
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This takes two things. One, it takes diligence. It requires very little work to tell yourself what you want to know, what you want to believe.
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Very little work at all. That's a very quick thing to do. Consult the self.
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Self, what do I want? Ah, this is what I shall tell myself. Boy, that doesn't take any effort at all.
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But it takes diligence to turn away from the folly of self -deceit, to turn to the wisdom of God's word, and to labor in the scriptures to read and to think and to ponder and to meditate and to apply to your life the truths of God's word.
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That takes work. It takes some diligence. A .W. Pink says, There's no verse of scripture yields its meaning to lazy people.
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There's some labor involved. It also takes brokenness.
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Not just diligence, but it takes brokenness. Because you should never, ever expect to come to the scriptures and walk away unconvicted and unchanged.
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Do you read your Bible on a daily basis? Do you read your Bible on a regular basis? Do you ever take up the
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Bible in a very difficult time? How do you take it up? Do you take it up and say,
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This is like taking a vitamin. I might slightly be improved. Or do you take up the Bible and say,
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This is the very word of God. This is eternal truth. And I want to be transformed.
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I want my mind renewed. I want God to change me in ways I would not expect.
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How do we approach the word of God? We should approach with brokenness.
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A .W. Toaster says, The Bible was written in tears. The Bible was written in tears and yields its best results to those who read it in tears.
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Willing to be broken over sin. Willing to be changed and altered by God. Notice this question.
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Did you see this question that they do not ask? Verse six. This is the question they do not ask.
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This is the question we ought to ask. Verse seven. No man repents of his wickedness saying,
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What have I done? That's the question. That's the question we need to be asking of ourselves.
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Do you remember the story of the prodigal son? Do you remember how he insulted his father and said,
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I wish you were dead, essentially. Give me the inheritance now. I want to go spend it in pleasures according to what
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I want to do. His father gives him the money and he runs away from home to a different land where he spends the money on everything that is worthless and sinful and then runs out of money and friends at the same time, which is so often the case, and then a famine hits the land and the only job he can find as a formerly upstanding
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Jewish young man is to feed pigs, of which for a Jew is the worst job possible.
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And he's sitting there thinking, I'm so hungry, I want to eat pig slop. And you know what happens next?
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Some of you know what happens next. He comes to himself. You ever had that happen to you? You're staring at the pig slop and you think maybe that would taste good and you come to yourself and the question that you come to yourself asking is,
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What am I doing? What have I done? It's the question
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God asked Eve. Adam and Eve have sinned.
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They're hiding. They're running into the forest trying to cover themselves with leaves. They're hiding from God, but God confronts them, wants to bring them to repentance.
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And so what does he ask Eve? What's the first thing God asks Eve? He's, what have you? That's the question we've got to ask ourselves.
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But you know, it presupposes a standard. It presupposes that there is truth and then there is falsehood.
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It presupposes that there was right and that there was wrong. That there are absolute standards in this world established by God, revealed in the scriptures, imprinted upon our hearts.
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What have I done? An absolute essential question to ask, which requires some diligence in the word and some brokenness before the authority of God.
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Foley's preferences for deceit. Now notice Foley's perversion of the truth of God. Verses eight through 10.
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We have been told that Judah does not know the ordinances of God. That they have, we've read in verses eight through 10 that they reject the word of God.
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And what is the results there in verse 10? Therefore God says in judgment, I will give their wives to others, their fields to new owners.
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There is a absolute fracturing of the image of God. Created to love
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God supremely, love each other rightly, steward the creation responsibly in their sin against God, and even their most primary human relationships will be devastated and their primary connection to the land will be severed as well.
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What brings about such a disastrous judgment? Their approach to the
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Bible. Their approach to Scripture. Miss Foley protests that she does know the
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Bible. Verse eight. How can you say, we are wise and the law of the Lord is with us?
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That is Judah's immediate retort to what he says in verse seven. He says, they don't know the ordinances of the
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Lord. No, no, we too are wise. We've got the law of the Lord right with us. We've not lost all common sense.
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We too, too know the Bible. We have several copies of the law right here. We read them, we copy them down.
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It's the kind of protest many make today when some absolute claim is made about the exclusivity of Jesus Christ.
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I am the way, the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father except through me. This is a claim.
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This is what people will say when someone says the gospel has to be preached in order for people to be saved.
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How shall they hear without a preacher? This is the kind of thing someone says when the
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Bible was read about the eternal damnation of the lost. The smoke of their torment rises forever and ever in the presence of God and the lamb on the throne.
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Revelation. The uncomfortable, difficult to explain truths.
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People will say, oh, I've read the Bible too. I've got a Bible. I go to church. I have a preacher. And you know what?
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That's not the only way to think about these things, which is the second point that Ms. Foley wants to say. My view of scripture is just as valid.
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Notice verse eight, but behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. Yeah, you have the law of the
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Lord with you. Yes, you have the scriptures with you, but the lying pen of the scribe has turned it all into a lie.
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The wise men are put to shame. They're dismayed and caught. Behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord and what kind of wisdom do they have?
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Here are the scribes and they're protesting against what Jeremiah is saying. We do have the Bible.
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We do have the scriptures. And God says, no, no. Your interpretation of the scriptures, the way that you read them, the way that you understand them, the way that you apply them is all a lie.
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And so maybe you have lots of copies of the Bible in your possession. Maybe you've written out the
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Bible by hand. Maybe you have more of the Bible memorized than anybody else in your entire culture.
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But if you interpret it wrongly, you live according to a lie.
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You see that? You see what God just said to the scribes? Isn't it the exact same thing that Jesus said to the
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Pharisees? The Pharisees who knew more of the Bible and had more of it memorized than anybody else in the entire land of Israel?
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And what did Jesus keep on asking them again and again and again? You ready for it? Have you never read?
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Have you never read? You can have a lot of Bible in your head.
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You can have a lot of Bible in your life. You interpret it wrongly, it's a lie. It's a lie.
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Well, what are they lying about? What are they lying about? Well, look down.
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Verse 11. Peace, peace, when there is no peace.
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They're twisting the Bible. Why? Verse 10, they're greedy for gain. They practice deceit, greedy for gain, claiming peace, peace.
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They twist the Bible in their idolatrous ways to cover the sinfulness of their land. And eventually though, because Scripture interprets
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Scripture, because the Bible is all completely true and interprets itself according to Christ, eventually the false interpretations and the false readings of the
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Bible get exposed and get revealed for what they are. And then the scribes are in shame.
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Now listen, we've got to turn away from Folly's perversion of the truth to love
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God's Word as it is meant to be understood. Now what the scribes are doing is what
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Peter says in 2 Peter 3 .16, that they distort the Scriptures to their own destruction. Do you hear it?
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They distort the Scriptures to their own destruction. Self -deception terminates in self -destruction.
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So when we interpret the Bible, we say a lot about ourselves. We say a lot about ourselves, don't we? When we interpret the
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Bible. If we love self, we're going to interpret the
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Bible accordingly. And if we love Christ, we will interpret the
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Bible accordingly. When you give your interpretations of the Bible, is it about me, myself, and I?
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Here's how I see it. The Bible is really all about me? Or do you love
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Christ? The Bible is not yours to say what you want it to say. The Bible is not mine for me to say what
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I want to say. The Bible is Christ's for him to say what he wants to say.
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Charles Spurgeon said that the Scriptures are the royal chariot in which
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Jesus Christ rides. They're about him. Let's be honest with God's word.
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God's word is to melt us like soft wax so that the stamp and the seal of Christ can be put into our lives, impressed upon us permanently.
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We need to study God's word, spend a great deal of effort in it, and as we do, take responsibility for one another.
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Do you realize that self -deception flourishes most in a community of people deceiving themselves and one another?
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This is why when someone is struggling with an addiction, one of the steps to move them away from that addiction, from their constant lying to themselves, is to break them free of that community that they're a part of, that is perpetuating the addiction and reinforcing the self -deception.
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But you have to break free from that community of deceit so that you can be saturated with the truth and not allowed to lie to yourself.
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And in the church, this should be a community where we do not abide self -deception to remain.
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We will not allow self -deception to remain. But instead, we will lovingly, compassionately take responsibility for one another's spiritual health.
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And if we hear something, if we see something in someone's life that looks like self -deception and the commitment to sin, that we will gently and we will lovingly and prayerfully speak the word of God into their lives.
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We want to be a community of truth. It's not the church, the pillar in the ground of the truth.
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We have a responsibility. The lie refers, and the scriptures that she perverts into a lie, do not remain only in the mouth and in the mind, but also in the life.
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We see all this practice throughout the rest of the text. I'll pick up the reading there halfway through verse 10.
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Because from the least, even to the greatest, everyone is greedy for gain. From the prophet, even to the priest, everyone practices deceit.
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Now this is really Folly's answer to the God's question back in verse five. Do you remember his question? He asks, why has this people
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Jerusalem turned away in continual apostasy? Why do they do that?
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Here's the answer, because everyone is greedy for gain. Everyone is greedy for gain.
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In the Hebrew, this is Botse Batse. It's even more catchy than greedy for gain.
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It's a little bit catchy, but Botse Batse, that's really catchy. Now violence is the essential ingredient in both of those terms.
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Violence. It's the kind of covetousness that resolves in some form of violence, some kind of oppression against others in order to gain what it is that you want.
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Botse Batse. The thing that you gain, you have gained by oppressing. You have gained by violence.
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Botse Batse. And this is what Judah is all about. Everyone is greedy for gain.
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These are the same terms that were used of Ahab and Jezebel when they took the vineyard from Naboth, killing him by a mob in order to gain the vineyard that was close to the palace,
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Botse Batse. And all of Judah is now Ahab and Jezebel.
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They're all doing this, but they're going to get theirs.
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Notice the parallelisms in the text. From the least to the greatest, prophet and the priest, everyone greedy for gain.
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Everyone, hear it, practicing deceit. They hold to his idolatry.
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They love, serve, go after, seek and worship idols. And the deceit they practice is idolatry, offering sacrifices to idols.
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And as we talked about last week, what they did in Topheth in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom was to offer some of their infant children as a burnt offering to Molech.
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That was part of their practice of deceit, part of their practice of idolatry. They were offering infants as burnt offerings to false gods.
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Why? Because Molech promised more crops. Molech promised more herds. Molech promised strength over adversaries.
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Molech promised prosperity. And for the sake of gain, for the sake of prosperity, for the sake of wealth, they did violence to their own children, offering them up as burnt offerings so they could get a little bit more economic wealth in the world.
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They're gonna get theirs. I'm gonna get mine, Miss Folly says. She is callous and she is cold.
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Why? Because she's insulated in the comfort of everyone. Everyone is greedy for gain. Everyone practices deceit.
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And so she is cold and callous, insulated, because everyone's doing it. And she goes further and says,
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I'm good with God, verse 11. They heal the brokenness of the daughter of my people superficially, saying,
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Peace, peace, but there is no peace. When a scribe or a prophet would say, Shalom, shalom, what they meant was everything good between us and God, between us and each other, and us and the world, everything's at peace.
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Shalom, shalom. And that's what they were preaching. That's what they were declaring. They could find many good passages in Isaiah.
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They could find some good passages in Hosea. They could find some good passages throughout the text of the
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Scriptures to preach peace, peace. In fact, they would do two of them. Because, you know, by the power of two witnesses, every word is established.
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And so they would find one passage that says, Peace and shalom. They'd find another one, Peace and shalom. And that's all they would talk about.
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They would never talk about God's warnings. They would never talk about God's judgment. They would not talk about anything they didn't want to hear, because they were deceiving themselves.
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And they were not loving God's truth. And so they would just say what they wanted to say, what they wanted to hear, what they knew other people wanted to hear.
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And they say, we're all good with God. And God says, just declaring it to be so, just saying,
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I declare peace. He says, that's superficial. He says it right there. Do you see it?
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They have healed the brokenness of my people superficially. He says, there's a wound in my people so deep that it severs the bone.
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They're offering their babies as burnt offerings. And you just want to say, peace, peace.
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What are you doing? Superficial. But Miss Folly still insists,
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I ain't done nothing wrong. Verse 12, were they ashamed because of the abomination they had done?
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They certainly were not ashamed. They didn't even know how to blush. Therefore, they shall fall among those who fall at the time of their punishment.
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They should be brought down, says the Lord. Remember that first question, verse four.
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Remember the question? Do men who fall not get up again?
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Remember that question? Here is the stunning and ironic answer. For the people of Judah, this is so.
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They fall and they're not going to get up again. Because of God's judgment.
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This is the end of self -deception. It's self -destruction. We talked about this last week and the week before.
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But when people choose against God and say against God, against God, against God, against God, you know what
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God eventually says? Amen. He says, so be it.
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You get what you want. And this is what happens. They're not even able to blush.
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They have no more shame in their spiritual adultery, in their abominations. Only those who deceive themselves can so override their
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God -given conscience that they can actually eliminate shame. Now, shame is healthy. Shame is healthy.
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Living without shame in a moral universe with a final judgment is like living without nerve endings in a burning house.
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We need shame. We need to blush. And although it seems to me,
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I may be wrong, but it seems to me that those who are in control of the higher universities, higher learning, and in control of the movies and the
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TV, that their one goal in life is to eliminate all forms of blushing and all forms of shame from our national conscience.
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It is a good thing to blush. It is a good thing to be ashamed of abominations. It is a good thing to stand with God and say that there are things that are so reprehensible we ought not talk about them in public.
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God says that's a good thing. God says that's a good thing. Our most necessary repentance involves our learning
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God's word and loving God's word, choosing it above anything else, but even more, living out
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God's word. You see that Miss Folly is consistent in that she lives out her folly. The question is, are we going to live out the wisdom that we learn and the wisdom that we love?
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Are we gonna live it out? Very important passage, James 1, verse 22. Prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers that delude themselves, who deceive themselves.
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If we're gonna escape that gravitational pull of self -deception, we have to follow all the way through and live out the word of God and practice the wisdom that we read and study and know and love, which means particularly for this text, what we've been talking about, it means blushing at abominations.
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It means being ashamed of sin and not allowing the immorality of everyone to insulate us and make us callous and cold.
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It also means that we need to strive to heal brokenness at a deep level, at a deep level, the level of godly sorrow and true repentance, and to recognize every time we find injustice, it is being fueled by idolatry and it's no good to just say peace, peace and be done with it, but that we have to strive together for a true healing and a true genuine peace, genuine shalom.
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It also means if we take this text seriously, if we're gonna live out and not just be hearers of the word, but doers of the word, we must refuse to make material gain our greatest goal.
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That's what they were doing. Material gain was so important to them, they were sacrificing their children over it.
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You can tell where their priorities are. Where are our priorities? Is material gain the most important thing to us?
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We have to come to the scriptures. We have to turn away from the folly of self -deception to the wisdom of God's word, choosing to diligently, humbly submit ourselves to the scriptures rightly interpreted by Christ so that he will have his way in our lives.
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This is our most, most necessary repentance. Let's close with a word of prayer.
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Father, I thank you so much for your scriptures. I thank you that they are living and active and more powerful than any two -edged sword cutting down to the very marrow of who we are.
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You lay us open and expose us for who we are. This is no mystery to you, but it's often layered in shrouds of self -deception, and we often refuse to tell the truth about ourselves.
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But your word, your word is so powerful and so strong, so vitally brought to us by the
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Holy Spirit that you cut through all of that and show us who we are, that we may repent, we may turn away and run to you and find in Christ, having confessed our sins, finding in Christ forgiveness of our sins and cleansing for all of our unrighteousness.
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For you are faithful and just to do these things because of Christ for us.
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I pray that for those who are here this morning and have been greatly convicted by their sins, they fear that they are mired by self -deception.
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I pray, God, that you would grant them repentance. It would turn to you. It would run to you, seeking salvation in Christ and Christ alone.
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Lord, I pray that you would help us to keep in front of our attention the most necessary repentance that we have to act out every day, turn away from the folly of deception to turn to the wisdom of your word.
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would do so for the glory of Christ. We pray these things in his name. Amen.