Declaring God's Truth in the Midst of a Disintegrating Culture

The Word of the Lord in Jeremiah’s Call and Commission

Last year we began the Reformation celebration, which we now are making an annual event, and one of the men that I was introduced to last year was Pastor Steve Jennings, and since that time has become a very, just very precious man in my life, and certainly a man of whom I find great wisdom and encouragement and spending time with, and his message last year was just so encouraging and actually spawned a series.

You don't even know that. I'm preaching through Acts. You know, you were in Acts 13 last year, and the series I'm doing now in our Sunday morning worship is Beyond Our Borders, and it was a lot based on what you brought out in the message last year of the missionaries being sent out from the Church of Antioch, so I'm very thankful for the ministry that you've done in my life and the ministry you're doing today.

Steve Jennings is the pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church here in Jacksonville, and he has served conservative Presbyterian congregations in Arizona, Alabama, and Florida for almost 30 years. A graduate of the U .S. Naval Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, he is retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.

His doctrinal education came through the godly men who taught at Covenant Theological Seminary and Reformed Theological Seminary. He and his wife Mary have been married for 44 years. They have three children and seven grandchildren.

Brother, come and bring the word for us now. We are, again, very thankful to have you.

Keith has been an encouragement to me. It's been a mutual friendship growing, and I appreciate that very much. Let's again stand, shall we, in reverence for the Word of God. The message I'm going to bring this afternoon is somewhat different than the way I usually preach.

It might sound almost impossible, but I'd like to use the whole book of Jeremiah somewhat as my text, which means I'm going to be reading small verses or portions from several chapters, but I want to begin in the first chapter.

It'll set a foundation for us. Jeremiah chapter 1 and verse 1. Our Father, we pray we might reverently attend to the Word of God. How grateful we are that you had no obligation from us to communicate at all, but out of the sheer goodness and generosity of your nature and being, you're a God who wants to communicate yourself.

We trust you do that primarily through the Word of God, making your own presence tangible and understood by us, who today, again, ask for forgiveness of our many sins and ask for the freedom to speak forth your word with the Holy Spirit's unction.

Father, many men can speak, but what matters is you speaking the Word of God made powerful by the Holy Spirit. We pray, O Lord, that we might not only hear, but we might inwardly digest and bring into application that which we hear today.

For Christ's sake we pray, amen. The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amnon, king of Judah, in the 13th year of his reign.

It came also in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the 11th year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you and appointed you a prophet to the nations. Then I said, ah Lord God behold I do not know how to speak for I am only a youth.

But the Lord said to me, do not say I am only a youth, for to all to whom I send you you shall go, and whatever I command you you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them for I am with you to deliver you, declares the Lord.

Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me, behold I have put my words in your mouth. See I have said you this day over nations and kingdoms to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.

And the word of the Lord came to me saying, Jeremiah what do you see? And I said, I see an almond branch. Then the Lord said to me, you have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it. This is the word of God.

Thanks be to God. Please be seated. I thank you Keith for the last message I think, and I pray this will build into that in a good way of a complimentary nature. How do you use the whole book of Jeremiah?

As a sermon text. I want to build around ten statements that I want to give one at a time. I guess you could say we might even be moving into application right from the beginning here. But if you are able to remember some of the headline kind of news that we heard in the last hour together, the question becomes again, how not only can we understand these times that we are living in, but how do we live in the midst of them?

And my major preposition or proposition today would be this. Jeremiah's day gives us a context to understand the day in which we are living and especially to give us the confidence that we are not in this alone as though it has never happened in human history.

We need to understand, now listen, that the fate of our nation, in fact the fate of any nation that has ever existed on the face of planet earth, the fate of our nation is determined by the manner in which we respond to the word of the Lord.

Do you agree? Think about that. The fate of our nation is determined by the manner in which we respond to the word of God. I read twice just in the sermon text as I began, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.

Those are the first two instances of the 47 instances in the whole book that the word of the Lord came to the prophet. How does he describe that experience? In the encouragement of the Lord who's speaking to him, this wonderful thing, amazing as it is, God is able to declare, my word have I put, where?

Where? In your mouth. Are you willing to accept that could happen today? That's what gives us the energy to stand up in a place like this or for you to stand in your workplace or on your street corner.

The word of the Lord has been placed in your mouth. Now, part of the context in which I would address this whole scenario would be this, and I'll give away a little bit of my eschatology, I suppose, which is still not completely formed, but Revelation chapter 11 is one of the most critical verses giving me a sense of world view in our world today.

What happens in Revelation chapter 11? There's two witnesses, right? And you might have understood them as two individual people or you might have understood it more broadly as I tend to do. These two witnesses are more than just two prophetic voices that might come in the end day.

They're also the sense that the church today has been given the divine privilege and obligation to witness to the word of God in our culture. Those two witnesses, remember one had the power to stop the sky from raining and the other to what?

To turn the waters into blood? What does that remind you of? Well, it should remind you of Elijah and Moses. And what do Moses and Elijah remind you of? And the answer is the law of God and the prophetic word, all right?

And the church corporately seen as doing the job of these two witnesses in the latter days, announcing the law and the prophets continue until when? It's one of the most comforting verses in the Bible to me.

When they have, does anybody know? When they have finished their testimony. When they finished it. It's saying the people of God walking with the Lord, they're indestructible until God's purpose with them is finished.

All right? After they've announced the word of the Lord, what happens? They're put to death and they lay in the streets of Sodom, Jerusalem for three and a half days until what happens? Harpazo is the Greek word.

They get harpooned. You know what that means? They get carried up violently. They get raptured. There's no reason for them to stay on the earth anymore because they've finished their testimony and God takes them home.

It's time. Do you understand? Now, maybe that's just two people at the end of the age that we haven't seen yet, or maybe it's the job given to all of us until Christ comes back again. And if that's true, God says, my word have I placed in your mouth.

What are you going to do with it? Because the fate of our nation is determined by our response to that word of God. Doesn't matter what age you live in or where in the globe you live. That's it. How are we responding to the word of God?

The setting is this. You know, I said I wasn't going to preach. I said I was going to just talk. I feel a kindred spirit to Jeremiah. And I don't know if you do or not. I read it and I've reread it and I've read it again.

Jeremiah, have you seen Rembrandt's painting? If you haven't, write it down. Go search for it. The weeping prophet with his hands cradling his head as he cries with the flames of Jerusalem in the background as the city burns.

Doesn't it remind you of Christ weeping over the city of Jerusalem on his way to the cross? Jeremiah was a prophet of the Lord for 41 or 42 years of his life. That's a long time. That's longer than some of you have ever lived yet.

He was living in the midst of a cultural collapse. No one was listening to what he was saying. In fact, in the ESV, that word listen is found over 200 times. But more than twice the number of times it's used in Jeremiah, it's used twice as much as any other book of the Bible.

Because the idea of listening to the Word of God is the critical thing. Because the fate of our nation is depending upon our response as we listen to the Word of God. Jerusalem and Judea didn't fall in a day.

In fact, what does it say? Declaring God's truth in the midst of a disintegrating culture. How do things disintegrate a little bit at a time? In fact, in the 13th chapter of Jeremiah, Jeremiah is told, here's the Word of the Lord to you.

Again, take a linen sash, a girdle, a waistband of some kind. Remember? Probably an ornament kind of dress. And he has the strange assignment, now go down to the river and bury it in the dirt. Okay, yes sir.

And the Word of the Lord comes back to him after some amount of time passed. And what does the Word of the Lord tell him to do? Go back to the river and what? Dig up the belt. What was the point? The idea is, if you go bury a piece of clothing for a couple of years and then go dig it up, it's going to be what?

It's going to be disintegrated. The wholeness of it is just unraveled. And it's like you can just pull it apart without any kind of effort whatsoever. It is useless because it has been disintegrated. You know, when you integrate something, what do you do?

You make it whole. When you disintegrate it, you bring it to its useless condition. And the point being, God is saying, that's what's happened to you all. You've become disintegrated. Now, there was still a form of strict godliness being practiced, was there not?

People were still going to the temple, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. Don't trust in saying the temple of the Lord, because God's not interested in the outward external formalism of your religion together.

You have a form of godliness, yes, as Isaiah would say, but the power of that to motivate and to change your life to look like the wholeness of Christ is absent. It was not a problem of professed belief, it was a problem of practice.

Do you understand? Which poses an interesting question still for all of us. Does our doctrine determine our practice? Or, the alternative would be, does our practice determine our doctrine? Now, both can be true, but I would say, to a large degree today, it's our practice that's determining our doctrine or our teaching.

Why? Because in the midst of depravity, we feel this inner motivation to downgrade our theology to match our practice, to accommodate our doctrine to justify our sin. Do you understand? So that the practice then determines the doctrine.

It's a horrible condition to be in. Here's the word of the Lord coming to Jeremiah. He's a young man, I wouldn't say he's a child, he's not a teenager, because let's say at the end of his life, when he's probably in his mid-sixties perhaps, if he's been doing this for 41 or 42 years, he's probably 23, 24 years old, a young man for sure, approaching maturity.

And his first assignment was something like this. What do you see, Jeremiah? Because the prophets were what? They were seers. And you know what a homonym is? Remember that from English class? It's two words that sound the same, but have different meanings.

So Jeremiah says, I see an almond tree. And God says, what? Good, you see correctly. We'll check you with a good grade on that one. What's the point? God says, yes, I'm watching over my what? Word to make sure it's accomplished.

Now in the Hebrew, it's like a homonym. Because the word for almond branch and the word for watch sounds almost the same. Right? It would be like, I hope this is correct. Lord help me. It would be like, what do you see, Steve?

And I say, I see a watch. And unless God helps me know what that means, I'd say, so what? But if I say, I see a watch, and God says, ah, you saw rightly, because I am watching over my word to make sure it will come to pass.

That's what's going on here. As the word of the Lord comes to him. Probably as a 25-year-old young man, just starting his ministry. Let me say this first of all. There's a time when the negative is needed before the positive can be restored.

I've appointed you this day, look, over the nations. Isn't it an amazing thing, a 25-year-old is the one really in charge of the affairs of the whole world? I mean, can you grasp that? Such is God in his work.

Why would this 25-year-old have, in a sense, the rule of the world? Because why? The word of the Lord had been placed in his mouth. I've appointed you over the nations to what? To pluck up and break down.

To destroy and overthrow. Do you understand? There's four words there that indicate we have to take things down to the foundation before we can ever do the final two things, and that would be to build and to plant.

Could we be living in such a day that God's saying what's there has to be torn down before anything in replacement can be built back up? Isn't that what happens in a person's salvation? What has to happen to your self-esteem or your sense of deserving salvation?

Unless you're completely understood and undone like Isaiah that unless the law of God becomes bitter for me, salvation can never be sweet for me. The law has to come before the gospel. That's why it says in four and three, break up your what?

Fallow ground and do not sow among the thorns. Why would you sow among the thorns? It's not going to do any good unless the negative is addressed before the positive can replace. Number two, there's a time when the whole culture is under the judgment of God.

There's a time when the whole culture is under the judgment of God. In 12 verse 7, I have given the beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies. Now that's not denying that the elect people of God are still the beloved of his soul, but he's giving them over to the hand of the enemy.

See, we're apt to hear even still today at this late date of disintegration. People say such things as, you know, we're coming up upon a tipping point for our nation. We only have one sense left that this might be the last straw, that we might be approaching a point of no return.

I want you to consider very seriously that we're not at a tipping point anymore. We have tipped already. There's a time when the conscience has been seared. There's no shame anymore. How else can we be informed as a nation that not only are we aborting a million unborn babies a year, but we're harvesting their body parts for profit.

And there's not enough outcry from the culture to say, stop it. Whatever it takes for me personally to make this thing stop, I will do it. If every professing Christian in America would say, the IRS is not getting that portion of my taxes that's going to Planned Parenthood, would that not make some difference?

And if it makes no difference, would you at least have a clear conscience to say, I did what I thought I could? Now, the problem is, there's no leadership to allow that to happen. But the fact that there's no leadership is part of the very judgment of God in which we're under.

The conscience doesn't work anymore. Logic does not operate. This is what Romans 1 talks about when it talks about a reprobate mind. What's a reprobate mind? It's a mind that just can't function anymore.

It can't go from A to B connecting the dots as though, of course, you're going to have this consequence if we take this action. Jeremiah lived as we do in a time that Amos described as a time of famine for hearing the word of God.

Not because the Bible was externally removed, but because we have lost our ability to hear the word of God. See, Amos doesn't say a famine of the word of God. He says a famine for hearing the word of God.

We have lost the ability to hear it. So when the watchman gives his warning, who's hearing? Who's listening? And 1610 of the book says they cannot listen. They've lost the ability. The trumpet blares, but the ears are deaf.

Those in authority will throw the most valuable commodity into the fire to burn. Skipping ahead to 36th chapter. Jehoiakim. When the word of God is brought to the people and read before the king, the king is in his winter quarters before the brazing fire.

And as the columns are read, what is Jehoiakim doing? He's taking his pen knife and he's slicing the scroll. And what is he doing with the paper? And the answer is he's tossing it in the fire. Beloved, this is the most precious commodity that can ever be given to human people.

What is it? It's the word of God. And you're going to treat it in such an irreverent way? I would say to you that there are other ways of destroying the word of God rather than burning it in the winter fire.

Why don't we just deny its inerrancy? Why don't we just deny its sufficiency? Why don't we just say it's another one of those religious holy books that stands alongside of all the other world's religions holy books?

Why don't we just say we'll put on one of the cable TV programs some idea that by textual criticism we can debunk the authority of the Bible? Do you understand? That's maybe a more subtle way, but it's no different than what the king was doing in Judea's day.

Just tossing it aside. But what did God say to Jeremiah from the beginning? No, I'm watching over my word and it will bring, I will bring it to its conclusion. Number three, there's a time when personal confrontation is required in order to faithfully speak forth the word of God, sometimes even to specific people and using their individual names.

It's a wonderful chapter in the 29th chapter of Jeremiah. In fact, there's so many interesting characters in Jeremiah. I think what I'd like to do after this is make a study of the characters in Jeremiah, the who's who of Jeremiah.

And you come to people like Pasher. Who's Pasher? He's the priest, but he's an enemy and he wants to see Jeremiah put to death. There's this other man named Hananiah chapter 28. You see, because God had said to Jeremiah, you're under judgment.

People didn't want to believe that, but God told Jeremiah to wear a yoke. What's the idea of a yoke? Well, you're going to be servant slaves of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king. And probably for a couple of years, Jeremiah is going around wearing a yoke like a slave, but Hananiah doesn't like that.

And in a public way of confrontation, Hananiah goes to Jeremiah and says, Jeremiah, I've got the word of the Lord. And the word of the Lord that's come to me has said, although many of us have already been gone into captivity into Babylon, it's only going to last, you know how long?

What does he say? Two more years, two more years. And Jeremiah has a wonderful response to that. He says, amen. I hope it's so. But God has told me and will tell me again that at least I heard him say to me, 70 years.

70 is a lot longer than two. But I'll tell you what, I mean, I really hope you're right, but I need to go and wait for the word of the Lord to come to me. And Jeremiah peacefully left. The statements were made.

The confrontation has occurred. The word of the Lord comes back to Jeremiah. No, it's 70 years. Jeremiah goes back armed with the word of God to Hananiah. It's going to be 70 years. And because you've proved yourself to be a false prophet, running where the Lord did not send you with a message that's designed to make these people trust in a lie, you're going to die.

And within a few months, Hananiah was underground, dead. Isn't that a wonderful story? Yeah. You better be careful when you announce what the word of the Lord is. I did not send these prophets, but they ran anyway.

What were they saying? Peace, peace. What's the problem? There's no peace. This is not a peaceful time. How can there be peaceful time? You know, I'd ask the question, and this is a complimentary question.

When you heard Keith's message in the last hour, did you go away saying, oh, that was an encouraging message? Did you? And yet I've been in places, in churches that are evangelical with Bible believing pastors, that the number one thing they want to hear is what?

We need to be encouraged. Encourage me, brother. I want to feel good. Tell me about peace, peace. And the prophet of God today needs to say sometimes, there is no peace going on right now. There are things that are unraveling.

Who's going to speak out against them and tell people not what they want to hear, but what reality is? Who's going to do that? Pastors can engage in this self-protective holy huddle sometimes. I've seen it.

I've probably participated in it, because sometimes the world and even your congregation around you seems to be beating on you and expecting all these things from you. And what you want to do is have somebody take you and pat you on the back and put their arm around you.

I understand that. But listen, when a person can become a pastor these days, it's almost like he becomes one of the untouchables. You know what I mean? Don't tell me what I'm doing wrong. Don't rebuke me.

I'm the pastor. Yes? The question is, are you hearing the word of God? Are you just trying to tickle ears? And I would say as well, in the culture today, the government certainly knows at this point that they don't need to control the population by blunt brute force.

That's not happening yet. You know why? Because the elites wielding power understand that the people are already enslaved, not by brute force. What are they enslaved by? Pleasure and entertainment. You understand?

As long as they can watch Monday night football, they're not going to worry about the gays in the military. Number four, unpopularity can be expected when you announce the word of God, even in your hometown.

Because later on, chapter 11, for instance, the people of Anathoth, what's Anathoth? We learned it's Jeremiah's hometown. His dad's a priest. He's of a priestly clan. Now he's become a prophet. The people in Anathoth, the people you grew up with, you went to kindergarten with them.

They want to murder you. The men of Anathoth, your hometown, are giving you an ultimatum. 26 and 8, 36, 22 to 24, either quit prophesying or die. One of the problems is Jeremiah's being labeled a traitor.

Why? Because he says the word of the Lord comes to me and says if you want to survive, you need to repent and you need to surrender to Nebuchadnezzar's army. What? My patriotism won't allow me to do that?

My sense of nationality won't allow me to be a surrenderer? Jeremiah says to the king who summons him to his private audience, what do I need to do? I told you what you need to do. Surrender. And it will be well.

Would that do that? You traitor. The one who loved his people the most was the one who was accused of treason. I sometimes wonder why is our preaching unlike Paul's? Why is our preaching not causing riots?

You ever wonder? Say, well, that doesn't happen. No, it doesn't happen today. But it certainly happened with Paul. He goes from where? All through Asia Minor, Berea, Thessalonica, Athens. What happens?

Every place he goes, they want his head. Why is that not happening today? Because the message isn't offending anybody. Or it's just being told to a holy huddle who just nods their head anyway. But it's not happening in the public arena.

When's the last time you heard the word of God quoted anywhere in a news interview? I would say to you, you probably heard the Koran quoted. Why would we submit to hearing the Koran read on the news channel and go ballistic if somebody quotes a Bible verse?

Who's going to oppose us? And who would be more painful, the enemies of the Babylonians or our friends from childhood, our Jewish brothers? Number five, you need to understand that when people reject the message, they may well hate the messenger, right?

It's the ad hominem argument. I don't like what you say, so I'm going to attack you. Stop. I don't care if you attack me or not. And I've been attacked. If you're a preacher and you say I've never been attacked by someone, I'd say I don't think you're preaching well.

You're not making enemies. You're going to be known by your enemies as melding your friends. But when you're attacked back, you say stop, stop, wait a minute. I don't care if you want to pillory me. Did you hear what I said?

What was unsound about what I said? Let's talk about that. Discouragement and tears can be expected. They're natural to men during such times. Jeremiah was a wear your heart on your sleeve kind of personality.

In chapter 15 and chapter 20, for example, it comes about that he's saying my pain is perpetual. My woundedness is incurable. It's a hard verse in chapter 15 because Jeremiah is the one who's preaching repentance to the people and basically what God is saying back to him is Jeremiah, you haven't got enough moral fortitude to keep standing.

I'm not going to let up on you at all. If you will extract the precious from the worthless, what? If you, Jeremiah, will extract the precious from the worthless, you will be my spokesman. I will not let you let up being the messenger of my word.

Let them turn to you, but don't you turn to them. But at one point in the ninth chapter, Jeremiah says, my pain is so perpetual. You know what he wanted to do? I can relate to this. He wanted to run out to the desert and what?

Do you remember? He said, just let me be an innkeeper in the desert. I want to get out of here. Just let me run a hotel out there in the middle of nowhere. Please. God says, no, listen, if you have fought in these battles and if you've kept pace with the men on foot in the infantry and they have worn you out, which evidently they have, what will you do?

You know what comes next? What will you do when you have to keep up with the cavalry? When you have to keep pace with the horses? Then what are you going to do? You're worn out with the footmen. And you say, thanks, Lord, for the encouragement, right?

Except for the spirit of God who can make men in hard situations. We used to talk about when the ships were made out of wood and the men were made out of iron. Now the men are made out of wood or less and the ships are made out of steel.

God's more interested in the man. Was Jeremiah a lonely man? I have a tendency to be a melancholic personality by nature. So maybe this isn't catching your heart the way it has mine in the past. But the loneliness of Jeremiah can only be helped and remedied by what?

The only thing that's going to help lonely Jeremiah is to get in the presence silently of the God of the universe, who he can call my redeemer and the one who loves me beyond my understanding of love.

Number six, Jeremiah, if we take this example, this template, you understand what I'm trying to get? A template for living in this day in which we're living. The template is what? It's the book of Jeremiah to a large extent.

How well do you know it? God says basically, here's the lesson. It's real easy. Keep on. Don't stop. Persevere. Live by the maxim that soft preaching produces hard hearts. Keep telling me peace, peace.

You're just going to make my heart that much harder. Hard preaching is going to produce soft hearts. Peter Brown wrote a biography of Augustine. Listen, because I think if you look past Jeremiah's day, maybe the best other example of the day we're living in is the fall of the Roman world.

Augustine was living through that from his place in Hippo in North Africa. Peter Brown writes this, quoting Augustine, the gift of perseverance was the greatest of God's gift to the individual. The elect received this gift so that they also could tread the hard way of Christ.

Like the martyrs, Augustine's heroes also might have to follow in the footsteps of Christ's passion. Predestination, an abstract stumbling block to the sheltered communities of Hadronitum and Marseilles as it would be to so many future Christians.

Predestination, that subject had only one meaning for Augustine. It was the doctrine of survival. A fierce insistence that God alone could provide men with an irreducible inner core of character. Number seven, Christianity cannot be spoken of as living the American dream as though it's the modern success story.

If you want to do more thought on this, I commend to you again from church history, especially from Martin Luther, his battle with the Romans over the theology of the cross and the theology of glory. Because what did he see in the Catholic church?

The glorious basilica in Rome being built on the backs of the German deception. This is the theology of glory. It's the American or the Roman success story. And Luther was seeing very clearly from the beginning of his ministry, no, I'm not a theologian of glory like that.

I'm a theologian of the cross. And the thing Jesus said most often is if any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. And the most beautiful and powerful thing in the Christian faith is the seeming tragedy of suffering and cross bearing.

I'd commend to you Carl Truman on that subject, especially in his biography of Luther recently published. We need to preach regardless of immediate results. Jeremiah would say, if I am silent, what happens?

Your word in me is what? Is like a fire? It's more painful to hold it in than to release it, even though the fire comes back at me. I can't hold it in. He says in 20 and 11, the Lord is with me like a dread champion.

I love it. You know what a dreadnought was from the past in the Navy? It was this boat that just was so powerful on the seas that nobody could sink it. It was the master of the seas. It was the dreadnought.

All right. Jeremiah says the Lord is with me. I'm alone. Almost. But the Lord is with me like a dread champion. It's going to be 70 years. And even after 70 years are completed, it's going to take a long time for a society to be remade, take longer than 70 years.

I'm just saying, folks, have we already tipped? I mean, you have to demolish before you can build back. Shall we complain about that? How can you complain? How can I complain? Well, Jeremiah was tempted to complain all through.

I wish mother you'd never born me into the world. Curse be the day in which I took my first breath. Everybody considers me their worst enemy. Well, he had his bouts of depression. But listen, the fact that we live today, who's responsible for that?

Hello? It's God who put us here for the day. We didn't have a choice about it. He had a good reason for that. We must not complain. We who have the guarantee to be spared from God's ultimate wrath at the final judgment, we would say continually, I mean, even if Keith is right, he welcomes his son through planes of glass in the prison.

I mean, what are we going to say? I see reality clear enough that I know I deserve a lot worse than this. That's the attitude you have to take. Don't you deserve a lot worse than this? Why is it that you're not experiencing it?

And it's only by the grace of God. He has given us today to live for such a time as this. Number eight, speak with the attitude of a Jeremiah. What do we mean by that? I think there'd be three possibilities here.

Number one, we've already touched on in the midst of our living out our law, prophet, gospel, witness, we could not speak at all, just be silent, because it's too distasteful to talk about. It's a hot button for me, folks.

People who know me and who I know say, you may not talk about politics from the pulpit. I'm not talking about politics. I'm talking about morality. I'm talking about God's law. And I would say back to you, okay, so Machen wouldn't preach a pro-life sermon today.

Okay. But you know what that equates to for me? Then Luther wouldn't have preached about justification by faith alone in Christ. Because in his day, that was a political issue. If you're going to go that low, what are you going to preach about then if it's not Christ alone for justification?

You could not speak at all. Number two, you could speak with gladness and glee and gloating. You could speak with pleasure, like, boy, have I got the moral superior ground over you. I could take that illustration to the pulpit with me Sunday and say, I want to tell you that I demolished that opposer who hated God.

I don't think that helps at all. I mean, wouldn't that be somewhat like Moses when God judges him for striking the rock? You understand? There's no gloating about we're the superior ones because we see clearly.