The Prophet Jeremiah Part 35

Let us pray, and then we will get into it. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word, we ask through your

Holy Spirit to help us to rightly understand what you have revealed there. May we be attentive to your word, not cast your words behind our backs, but instead, as you have said in our gospel text today, that if those who abide in his words are truly your disciples, and the truth will set them free.

We pray that you would set us free from error, set us free from the deception of our own sinful flesh.

We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, now, I feel like William Tapley at the moment here.

And what I mean by that, if you're familiar with William Tapley, for many years, I covered

William Tapley on the audio podcast of Fighting for the Faith. And William Tapley, we always started the segments with him playing his

Casio, and the song that he sang was, ♪ Doom and gloom, coming soon, listen to 30 goals tuned.

♪ And it was such a, his mad

Casio skills really carried that tune very well. But all of that being said, the reason

I'm saying that is that you'll note that last week's Bible study was doom and gloom.

And so I thought I would just pile on a little bit more doom and gloom on top of the doom and gloom, because that's kind of the section that we're in.

But I thought maybe this would be a good place to do this, because we've already read in the prophet

Jeremiah about the fall of Jerusalem, which is absolutely tragic.

The sheer number of people who were, they lost their lives. 90 plus percent of the people living in Judah at that time lost their lives in the campaign of Nebuchadnezzar.

And the reality is, is not a single one of them needed to lose their life at all. A simple trust in God and his word to the prophet

Jeremiah would have meant that they were still breathing. They wouldn't have had their families destroyed and themselves destroyed.

And so when we consider what's going on there, we're gonna do a little excursus here into a book that, again, it's not an easy book to take a look at, but it's one that I think is necessary.

It's not long, but it is a very important text as we study out the prophet

Jeremiah, and it's the book of Lamentations. It is this book that is the reason why

Jeremiah gets the moniker of the weeping prophet.

And it's only five chapters long, and you need to know something here as we work our way through this book today.

And that is that you're really not gonna hear words of hope until about halfway through Lamentations.

This one's a tough pill to swallow, but you'll note that these tough pills are important for us.

They keep us sober -minded and grounded in God's word and keep us from engaging in or believing in vain hopes, hopes that are not grounded in scripture.

And again, it holds for us in three -dimensional space, if you would, because God's word is living and active.

It holds up for us the reality of God's wrath and his judgment and just how utterly devastating that is.

So we read in Lamentations chapter one, how lonely sits the city that was full of people.

Right off the bat, you have this post -apocalyptic look at Jerusalem.

At this time, the wall had been breached and broken. It will not be rebuilt until the times of Nehemiah.

The temple, gone. Solomon's temple, it is just gone.

And the implements, the things that were used in the temple, the menorah, the bowls, the incense bowls, the trumpets, these have all been carried off to Babylon for safekeeping, for sure.

But, and so looking at Jerusalem at this point, one has to wonder, is the stench of death still in the air as Jeremiah's writing these words?

Oh, how like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations. She who was a princess among the provinces, she has become a slave.

She weeps bitterly in the night with tears on her cheeks. Among all of her lovers, she has none to comfort her.

All of her friends have dealt treacherously with her. They have become her enemies. And you'll note that all the political alliances that were designed to keep

Judah safe, they all failed. They all failed. And those who were supposed to be allies became enemies.

And you'll note, this also kind of hints at the idea that none of the false deities that Judah was invoking were able to come and save at all.

Judah has gone into exile because of affliction and hard servitude. She dwells now among the nations, but finds no resting place.

Her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. The roads to Zion mourn for none that come to the festival.

All her gates are desolate, her priests groan, her virgins have been afflicted, and she herself suffers bitterly.

Her foes have become the head. Her enemies prosper because Yahweh has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions.

Her children have gone away captives before the foe. Who afflicted her?

Yahweh, right? I was recently having a conversation with somebody who attends our services online.

In fact, I should probably check to see if he's online, if he's among those who are joining us today.

But he was telling me his story and how he was in the New Apostolic Reformation.

He was in an NAR church, and he did the unthinkable. He decided he was gonna do a

Bible study on the book of Job. And that messed him up.

Because he was not properly equipped through New Apostolic Reformation doctrine to rightly handle that text, and he had twisted it up, and somebody in the class actually pointed out his error and noted that God says that Job committed no sin.

That's not why he was suffering. And that ended up messing up his theology bad.

Did the Holy Spirit tell him? Well, I would note, he didn't add that as part of his story, but you'll note that I never hear

Joel Osteen preaching through Job. And when was the last time Joel Osteen meaningfully taught any biblical text, let alone

Lamentations, right? But Lamentations here talks about the devastation that has taken place, and it is the

Lord is the one who's brought all of this. When people paint God out to be an elderly, doting grandfather who is completely blind to how spoiled his grandchildren are, that is not portraying

God properly. There you have God kind of sucking on his dentures and he gives his bratty little grandchildren, here's a

Worthington, one of those butterscotches, right? Oh, you're such a good little child.

No, this is not how God is, okay? And God legitimately punishes sin, and when provoked, he will act in wrath.

And so now, less than 5 ,000, let that number sink in, less than 5 ,000

Jews have survived the assault of Nebuchadnezzar. Jerusalem is a ruin at this point, and it is the

Lord who has afflicted Judah, and all of this he brought about for the multitude of her transgressions.

Her children have gone away, captives before the foe. From the daughter of Zion, all of her majesty has departed.

Her princes have become like deer that find no pasture. They fled without strength before the pursuer.

Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and wandering all the precious things that were hers from the days of old.

When the people fell into the hand of the foe, and there was none to help her, her foes gloated over her, they mocked at her downfall.

So you'll note that not only did they lose, but the people whom

God sent as the means of his wrath, that they kind of twisted the knife and gloated over the downfall of Judah.

Jerusalem sinned grievously, therefore she became filthy.

All who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness, and she herself groans and turns her face away.

Her uncleanness was in her skirts. She took no thought of her future, therefore her fall is terrible.

She has no comforter. O Yahweh, behold my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed.

The enemy has stretched out his hands over all of her precious things, for she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary, those whom you forbade to enter your congregation.

All her people groan as they search for bread. They trade their treasures for food to revive their strength.

Look, O Yahweh, and see, for I am despised. Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?

Look and see. Is there any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which

Yahweh inflicted on the day of his fierce anger? And you'll note this is, there's kind of a, for lack of a better way of putting this, there's a politically liberal way of despising the anger of God, and then there's a politically conservative way of despising the anger of God.

Within the liberal churches, and I'll say politically liberal, okay, they absolutely mock anyone who believes that God would act in wrath.

You guys remember Rob Bell, okay? I remember when Rob Bell's book,

Love Wins, was about to come out. And Rob Bell was one of these fellows who really learned really early on how to use media, to use video effectively in kind of getting his message across and building for himself a following.

And when he was talking in one of these videos, in one of his videos, he was talking about an event that had taken place, like some kind of an art show or whatever.

And there was a portrait of Gandhi in this particular art show, and I think it was taking place in a church.

And somebody had written a note, well, too bad, Gandhi's in hell, right? And Rob Bell's response was, really?

Gandhi's in hell? How do you know? How do you know? How do you know, right? There's this kind of scoffing kind of thing.

And so he was basically inferring that somebody who had rejected, consciously rejected

Christ as Messiah and Savior, for all the good that Gandhi had done in pushing back against some of the evils of colonialism and the excesses of colonialism that were in India at the time,

Gandhi had thought really long and hard about Jesus Christ and didn't want to have anything to do with Christ.

And so there's Rob Bell kind of overlooking that one fact. Well, we learn then in his book Love Wins that Rob Bell was pretty much a universalist, right?

And then I find this a fascinating thing. Brian McLaren, Brian McLaren of the

Emergent Church, he bristled at the idea of God acting in wrath.

He hated that idea. And so he would focus exclusively on what

Christ did in his first advent and rejected any description of Christ's second coming that would include

Christ acting in wrath. And he said, and he had a funny, kind of a funny analogy that he had put together.

Decades ago, Weird Al Yankovic had put out a movie. And I think the name of the movie was

UHF, okay? And in typical Weird Al fashion,

Weird Al has a really funny sense of humor. I really enjoy his comedy. But there was some kind of a commercial that shows up in his movie

UHF where he talks about the second coming of Gandhi. And this time

Gandhi's really mad and he's gonna take it out on people. And this time it's real, right?

And so Gandhi, the guy who made a career of his peaceful protests and him refusing to eat, in protest to the excesses of colonialism.

It's funny because the claim was that when he comes back, he's gonna come back and he's really gonna be mean and he's gonna, some heads are gonna roll and stuff like this.

And McLaren would point to the movie UHF in that particular little snippet from it and say, believing that Jesus is going to return in glory to judge the living and the dead and act in wrath is as ridiculous as believing that in the second coming of Gandhi and this time it's gonna get real.

Okay, that was his thing. But here's the thing. What does the scripture say?

Jesus is not Gandhi. Right, Jesus isn't Gandhi and Jesus is Gandhi's judge. And we're gonna note this that over and again when somebody is overturning what the clear passages of scripture teach regarding the wrath of God, this is the thing we're being saved from by the way.

Okay, we're not being saved from a bad hair day or a hangnail. We're being saved from the very wrath of God that will be revealed on the last day.

But McLaren, he went so far as to write a book called A New Kind of Christianity where he legitimately thought that he had the prerogative, the authority to propose a

Christianity 2 .0. And in Christianity 2 .0, the narrative that he gave as to why the

Bible talks about the wrath of God. Well, if you're gonna reject the wrath of God, how do you explain its prominence in scripture as a major theme?

It's not a minor theme. It's a major theme in scripture. How do you explain it? And McLaren's explanation was this, that the reason why the human authors of the

Bible, and they were merely human authors, he would say, is that they wrote this way is because their understanding of God hadn't evolved far enough then.

So they were still writing with their religious biases and those biases got put into the scripture.

And the scriptures are not inerrant or infallible, nor are they inspired. They are instead, he likes to liken them to, they are a diary, a historical diary of man's musings and experiences with the divine.

And when God shows up in a way that McLaren doesn't agree with in the Bible, he chalks that up to, well, that's just an example of the ignorance that they had at that time.

But we've come so much farther. We have a far better understanding of God, McLaren would say. And so he would then use that metanarrative to basically say that God does not act in wrath at all.

And McLaren is a universalist. And so is Rob Bell, and so are many in the emergent church.

And so they would really, really have a hard time preaching a text like this because you can hear the yeah, buts.

Now I know it says Yahweh inflicted all this stuff on the day of his fierce anger.

Yeah, but. We can't really believe that God behaves this way. That would be unbecoming of God, right?

This is how they talk. This is really reflecting Jeremiah's biases and his limited understanding of what

God is like. And therefore, we can reject this idea that God acts in wrath. That's the argument. So then does he complete that?

Yeah, he does. Yeah, and in fact, here's the thing. In the liberal mindset, in the liberal mindset, the most offensive doctrine, and I mean this, the one that literally causes their heads to spin and for them to spit words of hate at you is the doctrine of Christ's penal substitutionary atonement on the cross.

For them, that is a bridge too far because if you're saying that Jesus died in our place, suffered the wrath of God in our place as our substitute, what's forefront of all of this?

The wrath of God, right? Jesus took our punishment upon himself.

And so in Brian McLaren's book, Everything Must Change, which is again, it's just stunning that anyone could call themselves a

Christian and talk in these terms. Everything Must Change is the name of the book. He comes up with his own atonement theory.

Why is it that Jesus was on the cross? Because one has to ask the question. And in Brian McLaren's rejection of the idea of penal substitution, he overtly embraced some other liberals who talked about the belief that Jesus died for our sins is the equivalent of believing that God is guilty of divine child abuse.

He abused his son in order to save us if you believe in penal substitution. This is how they talk, right?

So McLaren, his explanation then for what Jesus was doing on the cross is that Jesus was, the reason he laid down his life and allowed his body to be torn apart was because Jesus knew how seductive imperial thinking was.

An empire is bad in these people's way of thinking. And so what

Jesus did is, in McLaren's book, Everything Must Change, he describes Jesus' decision to allow himself to be crucified as to him being a sheep who willingly walked into a pack of wolves and let his neck, put his head down to give his neck to the wolves so that they would tear him apart.

And the whole point then of him being torn apart by the wolves of empire is so that his disciples would see the true nature of imperial thinking and would reject it for the rest of their lives.

That's his explanation. That's his explanation in Everything Must Change. What does he do with the fact that he?

He doesn't let any historical or biblical facts get in the way of his musings, okay?

And here's the thing, there is no biblical text that teaches any of this, right? He's making this whole cloth up in his imagination, and I would say probably with the help of demons.

But at one point, I was at an emergent church conference. I used to do primary research by going to the emergent church conferences that they put on.

That's where I met Nadia Bowles -Weber. That's where I met Doug Padgett and Tony Jones and Brian McLaren and a whole host of people, luminaries within the emergent church movement, including

Phyllis Tickle. And I went up to McLaren afterwards after he spoke one time, and I said, hey,

Brian, I have a question for you. We were on first -name basis at that point because I'd seen him a few times. I have a question for you.

I just got done reading Everything Must Change. I said, what do you do with Isaiah 53?

He was pierced for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and God has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Quoted it from memory for him. And without blinking, he looked at me and he says, well, it all depends on what you mean by the word for.

That's what is is. Yeah, that is Bill Clinton's answer.

It all depends on what is is, right? It's the same postmodern word game.

It's absolutely horrifying when you think about it. But what's the problem here?

He has come to God's word, and he is now the arbiter, the decider of which portions of God's word we're going to keep and which portions we're going to get rid of.

And it's gonna be based upon his cultural feelings and what he believes according to his reasoning is offensive and which is valuable, and he's gonna chuck part of it out and he's going to accept part of it, okay?

You'll note there's something really backwards here, and that is that rather than God be

God, who is God in this scenario? McLaren. I think of Thomas Jefferson, the

Thomas Jefferson Bible. Are you familiar with this thing? If you were to Google the

Thomas Jefferson Bible, it is a Bible where Thomas Jefferson took an X -Acto knife, and any place there was a miracle, he took his

X -Acto knife and went, whack, whack, whack, whack, and took it out, okay? Because Thomas Jefferson, a deist, did not believe that God had anything to do with being involved in the creation.

He believed in an unrevealed deity, you know, a deity, a nonspecific one, an unrevealed deity who was responsible for the creation of the universe and winding everything up and making it work with the precision of a clock, but he absolutely believed that that deity could not, not just would not, but could not have any interaction with his own creation, and as a result of that, everywhere in the

Bible where there's a miracle, that would be God interacting directly with his own creation, he took an

X -Acto knife and got rid of it, and the reality is this, is that our sinful nature is really kind of enthralled by this approach, and sits there and go,

I wonder, you know, if I allowed myself to be Lord over the scriptures, what

I could get rid of, right? Yeah, yeah, so, you know, nowadays, what's the big text that everybody denies?

God created the male and female, right? God created the male and female. The nations are raging today.

I think about my friend, Phil Johnson, who we had speak at Kongsvinger a few years ago at one of our

Pirate Christian Conferences. Just a couple weeks ago, my friend, Phil Johnson, he was suspended on Twitter.

You know what he was suspended for? Because he, well, he took a look at what was happening in California.

Certain cities in California, they've now hired transgendered crossing guards, okay?

And they are showing up on street corners and helping the kids to cross the street while dressed in their trans, you know, costumes.

And in responding to this, Phil Johnson said, this is state -sponsored grooming.

That's all he said. And Twitter said, you're done. They suspended his account.

Before or after Musk took over and fired all the - That was before. So I'm wondering if,

I'm wondering if Musk will spring Phil Johnson and the Babylon Lee from the clink soon, you know?

Transgender crossing guards know which way the kids are crossing. Oh! I see what you did there,

Don. So the question was, did the transgender crossing guards know which way the kids are crossing? Right, wow, okay.

The ultimate dad joke. Okay. So, but all of that being said, when you have to approach the scriptures in a way where you are

Lord over the scriptures and you and your sanctified ego is the determiner of what stays and what goes, you are guilty of breaking the first commandment in the highest order.

Not only do you believe in a false deity, you are that deity. You are the one deciding for God what should stay or what should go.

And one of the things I love about being a confessional Lutheran is I don't have to play that game anymore. I've played that game.

I remember as a Nazarene, you know, going and talking to my youth pastor and saying, you know,

I read this thing in the Bible and it seems to contradict what it is that we believe.

And he would say, well, you know, some people think this way and some people think that way and some people interpret it in this manner, but we interpret it this way and so it's all good.

It's all good. And it never settled with me. It was just, hmm, something wrong.

Now, let's talk about the conservative way, okay, politically conservative, I'm gonna put it that way, in which

God's anger is denied. I would hold up men like Hank Kunneman, Ken Copeland, right, and others who are notable

Trump supporters, okay? They are politically conservative, but Ken Copeland over and over and over again denies these clear biblical texts that God acts in wrath, that God sends disaster, that God is the one who even sends diseases and plagues and things like this.

It was this false theology of his that led him to engage in the buffoonery that he engaged in when he held that thing in the early months of COVID where he blew the wind of God on COVID -19.

Obviously, this was just an embarrassment, right? But, yeah, see, that's what happened.

My daughter, Faith, has noted that the wind of God ended up becoming a super spreader. That is the problem, clearly.

God is canceled. Yeah, and so you'll note that the politically conservative groups, like those in the

Word of Faith heresy, doesn't matter who they vote for. If they vote Republican or not, that's not the issue.

They are every bit as much corrupt in their doctrine and their theology as the liberals are.

I think a good way to think about this is that oftentimes heresies manifest themselves in binary pairs, okay?

Whereas I see Ken Copeland and Hank Kunneman as the flip side of the exact same coin that Brian McLaren and Tony Jones and Doug Padgett and Rob Bell are on.

It's the same coin, it's just the opposite side of it. And so this kind of goes to one of the things that my mentor used to say over and over again.

There were Rosenblatt -isms that we used to, we would write these things down.

And I've noticed that some of you are writing down Roseboro -isms. Oh, my goodness, I'm beginning to think

I was taught by the best. But Rosenblatt would say things like this. The opposite error of an error is never the truth.

The opposite error of an error isn't the truth. Martin Luther would talk about it this way. He says that when it comes to those who believe falsely, they're like a drunk trying to ride a horse, okay?

One minute they're falling off one side and the next minute they're falling off the other side.

They can't seem to stay in the saddle at all, right? So one of the things we have to be aware of is the danger of falling off the horse of sound doctrine either to the right or to the left.

Biblical Christianity is not on the same coin that Rob Bell and Ken Copeland are on.

It's a different thing altogether. And many people get lost because they think that the choice is between those two things, either wingnut, wackerdoodle -ism,

NAR, word of faith, prosperity, because they vote Republican, or social justice, emergent, goofy nonsense, right, on the other side of it.

And they think, well, those are my only two choices. Wrong, they're both wrong.

Are you insinuating? Yes, so the question that I was just asking, am

I inferring that the road to salvation is narrow and that there are big ditches on either side?

Yes, okay? So what do we do with a text that says the Lord inflicted these things upon his, on the day of his fierce anger?

You know what the answer to the question is? You sit there and go, God has fierce anger. You don't yeah, but it, let it stand.

And the reality is this, is that when you look at the picture of Jesus' return given in the book of Revelation, Jesus isn't coming back looking like the original

Gandhi, okay? And Jesus isn't coming back as a rainbow flower child.

He's not gonna be taking sunflowers and popping them into the barrels of soldiers who have lined up to kill him.

That's not what Jesus is, he's not a hippie, okay? He hasn't come to give the world a

Coke and a smile, all right, he hasn't come to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, right?

That's not what Jesus is coming to do. And if you don't believe me, I would just point out there's a clear biblical text,

I'm gonna point out a word in the book of Revelation, give me a second here. All right, here we go.

All right, let's take a look. Revelation 19, Revelation 19, all right, take a look at that, rejoicing in heaven.

Here we go, marriage supper of the lamb, rider on a white horse. This isn't Gandalf, man, okay?

Then I saw heaven opened, behold, a white horse. The one sitting on it is called

Faithful and True. In righteousness he judges and he what?

Makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire. On his head are many diadems.

And he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He's clothed in a robe dipped in blood and the name by which he is called is the word of God.

Halagos to Theu. If you're not sure who that is, I would point you to first John, John chapter one, verse one.

Anache en halagos, kai halagos en proston theum, kai theos en halagos. In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was

God. We know who this is. The armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure were following him on white horses.

The what? Armies. This shouldn't surprise anybody because over and again when you read in the

ESV when it talks about the Lord of hosts, hosts, savah in Hebrew, that means armies.

The Lord of armies, Yahweh. And the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure were following him on white horses.

From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.

He will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the

Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written,

King of kings and Lord of lords. You'll note that Jesus doesn't wear a supreme sweatshirt, he's got his own designer clothing.

And on his designer clothing, King of kings, Lord of lords. And then I saw an angel standing in the sun with a loud voice and he called all the birds that fly directly overhead.

Come gather for the great supper of God to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.

And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army.

And the beast was captured and with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worship the image.

These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur and the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.

This is a gruesome picture of the wrath of God. Well, it doesn't really mean that.

Well, what does it mean? Rainbows, unicorns and butterflies? Should we get all of our furry friends together and we can talk with the squirrels and the chipmunks and maybe a swallow will come and sing a song to me on my fingertip?

What are you talking about? Right, this only applies to the mega people.

Okay, got it, right? So you'll note, the scriptures are clear.

This is what we are saved from. And the reality is this,

I have earned the right to be numbered among the armies that had gathered against Christ.

I have earned by my sin to have my body gorged by these beasts on the day of Christ's return and for Christ to strike me down with the sword of his mouth.

So have you. When we talk about salvation, it's important for us to recognize we are being saved from the wrath of God and from the fate of those who are thrown into the lake of fire alive.

Doom and gloom coming. It's a hard word, right?

So no yabbits when it comes to the wrath of God. No yabbits. You give me a yabbit,

I'm gonna get in your face and rebuke you and you need to put the yabbits away, right? From on high,

God sent fire, Lamentations write, into my bones he made it descend. He spread a net from my feet, he turned me back, he's left me stunned, faint all the day long.

My transgressions were bound into a yoke by his hand, they were fastened together, they were set upon my neck.

He caused my strength to fail. Yahweh, the Lord gave me into the hands of those whom

I cannot withstand. It's a picture here. All your sins, God then basically binds them up, creates a yoke and puts that thing right on your neck and you gotta carry this, right?

The Lord rejected all my mighty men in my midst, he summoned an assembly against me to crush my young men.

The Lord has trodden as in a winepress the virgin daughter of Judah. Tough words, man.

For these things I weep, my eyes flow with tears, for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my spirit.

My children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed. Zion stretches out her hands, there's none to comfort her.

Yahweh has commanded against Jacob that his neighbors should be foes. Jerusalem has become a filthy thing among them.

Yahweh is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word but hear all you peoples and see my suffering.

My young women and my young men, they have gone into captivity. I called to my lovers but they deceived me.

My priests and elders perished in the city while they sought food to revive their strength. Look, oh

Yahweh, for I am in distress. My stomach churns, my heart is wrung within me because I have been very rebellious.

In the streets the sword bereaves, in the house it is like death. So you're gonna note here, in Jeremiah's prophecy and lamentations, he doesn't stand outside of those who have sinned against God, he puts himself rightly in the midst of all of them.

And how can one do such a thing and expect to survive, right? But that's the thing, you either recognize what

God's word says about you that you have rebelled against God and then humble yourself and cry out to God for mercy or God's gonna humble yourself and you're going to recognize that you are a rebel but you will have no words of comfort or forgiveness.

The verdict of the law will stand apart from the gospel if you will not repent and be forgiven. So they heard my groaning, yet there is no one to comfort me.

All my enemies have heard of my trouble. They are glad that you've done it. You have brought the day, you announced, now let them be as I am.

Let all their evil doing come before you and deal with them as you have dealt with me because of all of my transgressions.

For my groans are many, my heart is faint.

How the Lord in his anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud. He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel.

He has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger. The Lord has swallowed up without mercy all the inhabitants of Jacob.

In his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah. He has brought down to the ground and dishonored the kingdom and its rulers.

He has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel and he has withdrawn from them his right hand.

In the face of the enemy he has burned like a flaming fire and Jacob consuming all around. He has bent his bow like an enemy with his right hand set like a foe.

He has killed all who were delightful in our eyes. In the tent of the daughter of Zion he has poured out his fury like fire.

The Lord has become like an enemy. He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all of its palaces.

He has laid in ruins its strongholds. He has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

He has laid waste his booth like a garden laid in ruins his meeting place. Yahweh has made

Zion forget festival and Sabbath and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest.

The Lord has scorned his altar, disowned his sanctuary. He has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of our palaces.

They raised a clamor in the house of Yahweh as on the day of the festival.

The Lord determined to lay in ruins the wall of the daughter of Zion. He stretched out the measuring line.

He did not restrain his hand from destroying. He caused rampart and wall to lament.

They languished together. Her gates have sunk into the ground. He has ruined and broken her bars.

Her kings and princes are among the nations. The law is no more and her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.

The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence. They have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth.

The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground. My eyes are spent with weeping.

My stomach churns. My bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.

Because infants and babies faint in the streets of the city. They cry to their mothers, where is bread and wine?

As they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city as their life is poured out on their mother's bosom.

What can I say for you to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem?

What can I liken to you that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your ruin is vast as the sea.

Who can heal you? Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions. They have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes.

They have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading. But don't worry, Michael Brown says that it's still true prophets, right?

Right. And all who say otherwise, they are hypercritic. All who pass along the way clap their hands at you.

They hiss, they wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem. Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all of the earth?

All your enemies rail against you. They hiss, they gnash their teeth. They cry, we have swallowed her.

Ah, this is the day we long for. Now we have it, we see it. Yahweh has done what he purposed.

He has carried out his word, which he commanded long ago. He has thrown down without pity.

He has made the enemy rejoice over you and exalted the might of your foes.

Their heart cried to the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears stream down like a torrent day and night.

Give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite. Arise, cry out in the night at the beginning of the night, watches.

Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord. Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children who faint for hunger at the head of every street.

Look, O Yahweh, and see with whom have you dealt thus.

Should women eat the fruit of their womb, the children of their tender care? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the

Lord? In the dust of the streets lie the young and the old. My young women, my young men have fallen by the sword.

You have killed them in the day of your anger, slaughtering without pity. You summoned as if to a festival day my terrors on every side.

And on the day of the anger of Yahweh, no one escaped or survived. Those whom

I held and raised, my enemy destroyed. And then comes a little bit of the turn.

I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his, God's wrath.

He has driven and brought me into darkness without any light. Surely against me he turns his hand and again and again the whole day long.

He has made my flesh and my skin waste away. He has broken my bones. He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and with tribulation.

He has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago. He has walled me about so that I cannot escape.

He has made my chains heavy. Though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer.

He has blocked my ways with blocks of stones. He has made my paths crooked.

He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding. He turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces.

He has made me desolate. He bent his bow and sent me as a target for his arrow. He drove into my kidneys the arrows of his quiver.

I have become the laughing stock of all the peoples, the object of their taunts all the day long.

He has filled me with bitterness. He has sated me with wormwood. He has made my teeth grind on gravel and made me cower in ashes.

My soul is bereft of peace. I have forgotten what happiness is. So I say my endurance is perished.

So is my hope from Yahweh. Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall.

My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind and therefore

I have hope. The steadfast love of Yahweh never ceases. His mercies never come to an end.

They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Yahweh is my portion, says my soul, therefore

I will hope in him. And here's where this just stands out in stark juxtaposition to everything that Jeremiah has written in the first three chapters and 21 verses of this book.

And here's where I would note this. We Christians don't like to suffer.

That's part of the reason why we do not like the concept of the wrath of God. It is not a pleasant thought to think, you know what, maybe the reason why

I'm suffering is because God is disciplining me. And the reality is

I deserve far worse, right? But in the midst of that horribly bleak description that Jeremiah gives, you get this resounding note.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. When I was in high school, one of my algebra teachers, he actually wrote, he wrote his own version of this, this song, and then

I think it may become popular, but the way he put this to tune, and he was really good with his guitar.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning, new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness, O Lord. Great is your faithfulness.

Have you ever stopped to think that in the midst of God's wrath, He is still faithful and merciful?

For all who trust in Him, who lament their own sin, and rightly, with Jeremiah, confess their participation in the rebellion, we've all participated in it, and cry out to God for mercy, even if we should see the earth melt, and the mountains being thrown into the sea, and the earth, and the moon, and the sun, and the stars melting, as on the day of God's wrath, even if we should see these things, the steadfast love of Yahweh never ceases.

His mercies never come to an end for those who are in Christ. His faithfulness is great, so great to save even somebody like me or like you, but again, we must remember what we are being saved from.

We are being saved from the just wrath of God against our participation, against us, and our participation in the rebellion of Satan himself.

We were all born belligerents against God. We have all participated in the rebellion of the devil himself, and we deserve his fate, but God has seen fit to not give us that, and his mercies towards us never come to an end.

His mercies are new every morning, and should we be here on the day of Christ's wrath, then note that you are in him, he is your fortress, and you need not fear, as even if you were made to see the horrors of God acting in his wrath, still his mercy towards you has not changed, and he will see you through, but no one wants to hear this message.

This is an old message. This is one that challenges people because it confronts them with their own wickedness and the just punishment of sin, and no one likes to see that, so they like to pretend that God doesn't care, that God doesn't actually act in this way, but God does, but that's not the only way in which

God acts. He acts in law and gospel. He acts in justice and in mercy, and it's important for us to recognize that.

So, like I said, doom and gloom coming soon. Let me check questions real quick here. Let's see what we can do with this.

All right, hang on a second here. It was the book of Job, there we go, that helped open

Jeff's eyes and got him out of the word of faith. Oh, that's good to know, too. Good old Job and his sufferings.

Yep, that word of God will mess everybody up. Okay, Bible study catered also. Okay, I love

Weird Al. Did any of y 'all watch Daryl Brooke's trial? Doesn't this remind you of his behavior during the trial?

Arrogant, deluded, argumentative, disruptive, thinking he knew better than the judge. Yeah, wow, okay.

Good point, Karen. Let's see here. I watched it along with a commentary by LawTube. Lawyers, it clearly showed how messed up the sovereign citizen movement is.

Wow. Thank you, Jennings family, for your, I've got a compliment that my

Clinton impersonation was spot on, so. That's about the only bit I can do regarding Bill Clinton, though.

The man says, I watched the whole trial, Karen. It was appalling to watch his behavior, and then the third week, looking at the judge, saying, stop calling it a book.

It's the book, the Bible. The judge, Daryl, said, can't argue with that. All right, it looks like most of the comments here are a conversation regarding that trial, so.

All right, this is where I'm gonna jump off, and I'm gonna, I need to head out to Emmanuel, so this is where I need to end our study.

If you have questions that you still further need answered, maybe, maybe, just maybe email my wife, secretarycongsingerchurch .org,

and maybe we can work that into future Bible studies, so. All right, brothers and sisters, I am out of time, and I will see you next week. I have to head out, peace.