Sunday Morning, Febuary 10, 2019 AM

I just want to thank you for the prayers that have already been lifted up to you, with which we agree, the hymns that we've sung,

Lord, especially this new hymn we sung today, so simple and yet clearly edifying the truths of your word, sung into each other's ears and to our own soul, building ourselves up on our most holy faith.

We thank you, Father, for the gift of hymns. Thank you for the scripture that was read to align our lives with your wisdom, fullness of which is revealed in Christ.

Now Father, we ask that you would bless us with a spiritual bread, the food that we need.

Father, you say that man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from your mouth.

These words, these holy words, Father, help us to truly live, to thrive, made in your image by paying attention and receiving what you have given to us in your word.

We thank you that you testify so clearly, so powerfully and eternally of your son in this word, a word that has been inspired by the spirit, the same spirit who indwells your children.

We ask for these mercies, we give you these praises all in the name of your son,

Jesus Christ, with whom you are well pleased. Amen. I invite you to open your

Bibles to Jeremiah 25, Jeremiah 25, and we'll be reading verses 1 through 14 in a moment.

Last week, we looked at Jeremiah chapter 24, in which we saw an image, an illustration of two baskets of figs, in which we saw the analogy of grace, that there really is in the character of those who were taken away by the king of Babylon in that first exile, when you consider the character of those that were taken away into exile and the character of those who were left behind, there was no difference.

They were all inherently, completely sinful, that they all had contributed to the demise of the nation through their idolatry, and it was only grace that made the difference.

It's grace that makes the difference, it's justice that makes it permanent. Well, now we turn our attention to chapter 25, and before I read,

I just, I don't want there to be any confusion. If we were all as conversant with the times as Jeremiah's first audience, we would have no confusion at all.

If you have a pen, you might, if you feel okay with it, you can write down in the margins of your

Bible, next to chapter 24, just write down 597, that's 597

BC. Chapter 24 relates what happened when the king of Babylon invaded and Jeconiah capitulated against the siege.

He went out with the royal guard and the skilled craftsmen and artisans, the royal household, and he surrendered to the king, and he was taken away to Babylon along with the gold of the temple.

That's 597 BC. That was an exile, but it wasn't the final act of judgment.

In chapter 25, in verses 1 through 3, if you'll just mark down next to those three verses, this date, 603

BC. So when you read chapter 24, you're reading about the events in 597, and when you start chapter 25, you are backing up seven years.

Now, again, we've said it before, but it's important to remember that in the first portion of Jeremiah, these passages are not set in chronological order exactly, but more thematically arranged.

Later on, we get to the end of Jeremiah, there'll be more chronological stories that we can follow through.

Now, one last date to mark down, and you'll see this as I read through, but in chapter 25 in verse 9, if you look at verse 9, go ahead and write out next to the margin 586

BC, because that verse speaks about what was going to happen in the final exile, the ultimate destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.

With that in mind, if you will please stand with me, and I'm going to read for us

Jeremiah chapter 25 verses 1 through 14. Herein Christ our

King is revealed. The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, that was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, which

Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, from the 13th year of Josiah, the son of Ammon, king of Judah, even to this day, these 23 years, the word of the

Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.

And the word and the Lord has sent to you all his servants, the prophets, again and again, but you have not listened nor inclined your ear to hear, saying, turn now everyone from his evil way and from the evil of your deeds and dwell on the land which the

Lord has given to you and your forefathers forever and ever. And do not go after other gods to serve them and to worship them.

And do not provoke me to anger with the work of your hands and I will do you no harm.

Yet you have not listened to me, declares the Lord, in order that you might provoke me to anger with the work of your hands to your own harm.

Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, because you have not obeyed my words, behold,

I will send and take all the families of the north, declares the Lord, and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these nations round about and I will utterly destroy them and make them a horror and a hissing and an everlasting desolation.

Moreover, I will take from them the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp.

This whole land will be a desolation and a horror and these nations will serve the king of Babylon 70 years.

Then it will come, then it will be when 70 years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, declares the

Lord, for their iniquity and the land of the Chaldeans and I will make it an everlasting desolation.

I will bring upon that land all my words which I have pronounced against it, all that is written in the book and this book which

Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations. For many nations and great kings will make slaves of them, even them and I will recompense them according to their deeds and according to the work of their hands.

And this is the word of our Lord. You may be seated. Later on today, if the

Lord wills, I'll be heading out to Tecumseh to Central Oklahoma Justice Juvenile Center to try to share the gospel with some residents there, you can't call them inmates.

First time I went, I spent some time with some young men and I was trying to give an illustration out of Genesis.

I was trying to explain the creation of the world, right, let's start at the beginning and I began to talk about how

God separated the waters, the waters from above from the waters below and the firmament, the sky being between the waters above and below and I tried to point out, there were many clouds that day, so I pointed at the clouds and talked about how they were full of water and of course these give us the rain and then the water on the earth in ponds and rivers and those kinds of things.

And one of the young men did not know, had never heard that the clouds were full of water and did not know where the rain came from.

Well that was one thing among many that he was never taught. He had no idea about the water cycle and yet the water cycle just keeps on.

I don't know how you feel about the water cycle, I mean are you for it, are you against it? Have you thought about it?

But whether you care about it or not, whether you pay attention or not, whether you reject it out of hand, it just keeps going, doesn't it?

It just keeps going. And this of course is the way the word of the Lord is. In Isaiah chapter 55, and I'm going to begin reading in verse 6,

I want you to hear the way in which the word of the Lord and its effectiveness is compared to the water cycle that God has made.

Beginning in verse 6, seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near, let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to the

Lord and he will have compassion on him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Now here's the water cycle, verse 10. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bare and sprout and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so will my word be which goes forth from my mouth.

It will not return to me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which

I sent it. The water that God sends to the earth returns to the heavens through the water cycle.

We know this. The water comes down and then is evaporated through the heat of the sun, returns to the air and it continues and it always does the job that God wants it to do.

So also his word, so also the scriptures, so also what

God says always accomplishes what he desires it to do.

In other words, it's unavoidable. We certainly may not care about what

God has said. We certainly may refuse to listen to what

God has said. We may indeed reject it out of hand. Nonetheless, God's word, his authoritative heaven sent word will accomplish all that he desires with or without us, for us and in spite of us, the word of God.

What we have in Jeremiah's time is very much like our own time, an effort to swerve around God's authoritative word.

You ever have to swerve when you're on the highway? I had three of my children with me.

I was going down I -40 and it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, had just had breakfast with my mom's side of the family and we're coming home and someone had left a 16 -foot ladder in the highway at the perfect part of the rise of the hill right next to a bridge so that you come up on it and all of a sudden it's there.

And it was laid just so in the lane and I had several thoughts all at once.

And I realized that if I hit it, I'm going to either wreck or really mess up the van and I haven't recently checked my blind spots so I don't want to swerve that way.

And there was only one thing to do and it was maneuver my van like this right over it and I don't even want to know how close my tires were to actually hitting it but God was gracious and we made it.

But I had to be completely in line with that ladder. I had to stick, that ladder told me to go this way and there really wasn't anything else for me to do.

And that's the way that God's will is. God's word will come at us and all of a sudden we say, I can either try to swerve around and avoid it and who knows what's going to happen or I'm going to have to be in line with it even if it takes me out of my original plan.

And Jeremiah has been preaching the word and we hear this for 23 years and the people keep on trying to swerve around it and avoid it.

I want to talk to you this morning in verses 1 through 6 about God's word revealed. God's word revealed.

If a miracle happens and we make it to the second point, is God's word rejected and then

God's word remains. But first, God's word revealed. Seven times in our passage there is an emphasis upon the spoken word of God.

This is the word of God which was spoken by Jeremiah, by the prophets. This is what the Lord declared time and time again.

It's all about what God has said. Over and over our attention in the passage is put upon the very words of God, the things that he said through his servants throughout the ages that are recorded in his word.

Why is it important for us to pay attention to the word of God? Because it is at the

DNA level, the authority of the universe. Everything hinges on the word of God.

When God speaks, he creates, he commands, and he controls.

Every time he speaks, this is what happens. He's either creating something or he's commanding something or he's controlling something, even down to the very definition of words.

Every time he speaks. So we've got to pay attention to it. There's no way to avoid it.

We're either going to have to try to swerve around it or we're going to have to be in line with it. And the warning of our text is this, swerving around God's authoritative word crashes straight into God's sovereign will.

There's really no way to avoid God. Where will we go to hide from him?

You can't get away. So swerving around God's authoritative word crashes straight into God's sovereign will.

And I know God's authoritative word, that's kind of redundant, and God's sovereign will is also redundant, but I use authoritative and sovereign just to emphasize.

Now God's word is revealed personally. Notice in our text that God's word is revealed personally to the particular time, to the particular people and their particular issues in verses one and two.

See we read about Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. It was after he had, verse 25 verse one, the word of the

Lord which came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah.

This was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. So we know the particular time in which the word of the

Lord came and we're already hearing what the people involved. We know the king of Judah and we hear that Jeremiah is the prophet there.

Now verse two, which Jeremiah the prophet spoke to all the people of Judah and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

See when God speaks, he speaks personally, which means he speaks to the situation. There's a particular time in Jehoiakim's fourth year.

There's a particular people, all of Judah and those who were living in Jerusalem and there were particular issues going on.

We read about idolatry, about their commitment to false gods. We read about in Jeremiah, the people were unjust and full of immorality.

And so God speaks personally to the situation. He gets very personal through his spoken word.

Many times, people are excited about the idea of getting a personal word from the

Lord as if that this is more important than what he says in the

Bible, folks. What he says in the Bible is personal. This is his personal word.

Even when you read about in the Proverbs and the parables, these things that can seem timeless and not as attached to historical contexts, he's still speaking to us in the time in which we live, in the time of which we live under the curse and all of the issues that we have, we are his creatures made in his image.

And when he speaks to us, he speaks personally through his word. If you want a personal word from the

Lord, open your Bible. As we read what happens in the context of Jeremiah and we view that and understand that through the context of who

Christ is, we receive the personal word from the Lord. He speaks to the situation and he speaks through his servants.

God's word is revealed personally because he speaks to this particular situation and he speaks through his servants, meaning that when

God spoke, he didn't write it in the sky to drift along with the clouds in an impersonal way.

But he spoke through his servants and they went eyeball to eyeball with the sinners. And Jeremiah had to take

God's word and go stand in the crossroads of Judah and in the marketplaces of Jerusalem and look at his fellow countrymen and look at them eyeball to eyeball, point the finger and say, thus saith the

Lord. And that way, God made it as unavoidable as possible.

God is too gracious and too kind to hide his word down in the great deeps.

He is too kind and too gracious to hide his word up into the high heavens where only a few people will ever know what it is.

He revealed his word time and again throughout the history of redemption through his personal servants so that it would be unavoidable.

You had to deal with it. They had to live with Jeremiah as their neighbor. When he had said all these things about what

God had said and they had to live with this guy and they had to see him from day to day and know the

Lord had spoken, he had spoken through this man and we have to deal with it. You know, when someone confronts us with the truth, we tend to avoid them hereafter.

But it's hard. Everything in our life has changed. You know, if someone has spoken to us the truth, the truth we didn't want to hear, but we kind of needed to hear it, but we're not ready to give up on what we were doing and what we were saying and what we were believing.

And someone has confronted us with the truth, you know what we have to do? We have to alter our whole lifestyle because this person, we know this person because of these people and this person is in these places at these times and now

I've got to avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid. What a grace, what a grace that God speaks personally through his servants so that people have to alter their lives just to try to hide and every time they try to hide, they have to think about the fact that they're swerving around the revealed word of God.

Well just as God is unavoidable, so is Christ. You know, when we look at the fact that God's word is revealed personally to the situation and through his servants, is it this not exactly what is going on in John chapter one?

How did God reveal his ultimate word? In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was

God. He was in the beginning with God. Who is this word? The one who brings light to all men, who brings the revelation of who

God is to all of us. Verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw his glory.

Glories of the only begotten from the father, full of grace and truth. Grace and truth realized through Jesus Christ.

Verse 17, Christ is the word and he is

God's servant to our situation. This is a personal word to us precisely because God has sent his servant, his only begotten son,

Jesus Christ, and he has come to give us the truth of God to our dire situation.

To speak to every last bit of our situation. His personal word,

Christ revealed in the scriptures, Christ to us. He is the imago dei for every day.

In Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 4 and verse 12, we have a familiar passage for the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

How is that possible that a word from an ancient prophet to an ancient people about a situation that no longer exists has anything to do to pierce our souls?

It is because what was written by Jeremiah for the people of Judah thousands of years ago has everything to do with the person and work of Jesus Christ and as the

Holy Spirit takes the living and active word of God and shows us Christ from the pages,

Christ who is the very image of the invisible God, takes the word of God and pierces down to the very core of who we are because he is us.

He is fully human and fully God and he says to us, this is who

I want you to be. This is what I want you to do. This is the truth.

God brings his personal authority to bear through Christ revealed in the scripture.

His servant to our situation. God's word is revealed personally and it is revealed persistently.

Persistently. It's hard to avoid a personal word. Someone gives a personal word, it's kind of hard to avoid it.

But it's also even harder to avoid something being said when it's both personal and persistent.

They won't stop telling you. They won't stop coming after you to tell you what you need to hear.

That makes it even harder to avoid. Even harder to swerve around. But notice how persistent

God is in giving the word to the people. In verse 3, from the 13th year of Josiah, the son of Amon, king of Judah, even to this day, these 23 years, the word of the

Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.

Actually in the original, it's a Hebraism, rising early and speaking. For 23 years,

Jeremiah's alarm clock goes off, turns it off, gets up, heads out the door, and starts preaching.

He says, rising early and speaking. This is a word of such importance, we're not going to let it last, we're not going to leave it until the evening, we're not going to let it lie until the noon, we're going to get up in the morning.

And this word is of such importance that it's what you have got to hear from the very beginning of the day.

And Jeremiah had been doing that for 23 years, making it his priority, his all day long priority of speaking the word of the

Lord for 23 years. No wonder they tried to kill him.

All day long, persistently, and also all history long. Notice verse 4, and the

Lord has sent to you all his servants, the prophets, again and again, but you have not listened nor inclined your ear to hear.

And again, it's the same expression, just a little bit different. He says, the Lord has sent you all his servants, the prophets, he says, rising early and sending.

Rising early and sending. And we know that God doesn't, you know, go to bed and get up when

Jeremiah gets up. But the expression is this, he has made it his persistent priority.

And God made his word unavoidable by his persistence in sending them his word all throughout history.

He sent them all his servants. Now, Jeremiah says he's been preaching for 23 years. And you might hear a little bit of a, for 23 years.

He ain't got nothing on Noah. Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and every day, rising early.

You could hear the hammer on the nails on the ark. You could hear the bleeding of some of the animals as they gathered.

And here is Noah and his sons, rising early, building the ark, and him chanting out and preaching the message of the gospel.

The spirit of Christ through him, preaching to those who did not listen.

Did not listen. Well, that was B .C., right? Before Christ. What about D .C.

during Christ, right? Luke, Luke chapter 13, verses 33 and 34.

Jesus says, nevertheless, I must journey on today and tomorrow and the next day. For it cannot be, it cannot be that a prophet would perish outside of Jerusalem.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who sent to her.

How often I wanted to gather your children together. Just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but she would not have it.

Would not have it. God was persistent, sending his prophets all the way along.

And they would be killed time and time again, often in the city limits of Jerusalem.

And now Jesus has come. And now Jesus comes, and he preaches, and he gives the word of the

Lord. And how often he declares the gospel and calls for repentance and faith.

But they would not listen. Well, does God's persistence end with Christ?

Will his word go silent with the departure of Christ? No, Matthew 23, verses 34 and 36.

Therefore, behold, Jesus says, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes.

Some of them you will kill and crucify. Some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city.

So that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth. From the blood of righteous

Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem. And indeed it did. The destruction of Jerusalem in A .D.

70 was God's judgment upon that city. Not only for the murder of all the prophets that they murdered over the centuries, but also the murder of his only begotten son.

And the destruction that Jerusalem felt in A .D. 70 was unlike the destruction of any other city. It was beyond horrible description.

But God was persistent. All day long, all history long, sending his servants, preaching his word.

And because God's word is unavoidable, we only are left with two different options.

We're either running from God or we are running for God. And the diagnosis of which way we're running has to do with our relationship to his word.

Are we trying to swerve around it? Are we embarrassed by it?

We keep apologizing for it? Keep trying to hide it, cover it over with more presentable ideas?

Are we running away from God? You know how it is when a politician makes a horrible gaffe.

All his former friends start running away from him. And honest to goodness, so many people in the church today think that God has made some horrible gaffes in his word.

Oh, that's just awful. Why would he ever say such a thing? They begin to distance themselves from the clarity of what

God has said. We're either running from God or we're running for God unapologetically. Unapologetically.

Oh, that we would rise early and speak the word of God. That we would rise early and look at one another, the people that we love, the people right next to us, and speak the words of God.

That we would rise early and send the word of God. Send it on your email, send it on your text, send it.

Rise early and run for God. God's word is revealed personally, persistently, and prophetically.

Prophetically, verses 5 and 6. Thus says the Lord God of Israel, like these...

Oh, sorry, I keep on going to verse 24. Verse 5, chapter 25, it's saying, Turn now, everyone from his evil way and from the evil of your deeds, and dwell on the land which the

Lord has given to you and your forefathers forever and ever. And do not go after other gods to serve them and to worship them, and do not provoke me to anger with the work of your hands, and I will do you no harm.

This is the word that God says he sent through his prophets again and again. Rising early and sending.

This is what Jeremiah said. This is what the other prophets said. This is the prophetic word. When we speak of a prophetic word, there's two things.

There's two things. There's a highway and there's a horizon. In every prophetic word, there's a highway and there's a horizon.

The highway is also called foretelling. It's just preaching. And then there's the foretelling, often called prediction.

But there's two things together. There's the highway you're on and there's the horizon over there. And most of the prophetic word is the highway.

Most of the prophetic word is the foretelling, is the preaching. And, of course, all these things have to be oriented along the compass to be at the right distance in the horizon.

That which is coming down the road. And so, we see the prophetic word is turn, repent.

You're doing evil things. There's judgment that's coming. Here's how you're supposed to live. Won't you turn?

The prophetic word. You run into this word again and again in the

Bible, but you come into the word behold. If you're doing your annual Bible reading, you've probably seen many beholds by now.

Behold this. Behold that. There's three things about this prophetic word.

Behold what is. Behold what should be. And behold what will be.

The behold what is and the behold what should be, that's the highway. That's the foretelling.

That's the preaching. That's saying this is what is and what should be. The is and the ought.

And then there's the third part of the preaching, the prophetic word, which is what will be.

That's the horizon. That's the prediction. That's saying what's coming. That's what

Jeremiah did, rising early and speaking for 23 years. He got up and he told the people of Judah this is what is, but this is what should be, and this is what will be over and over again.

We need the word of God. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

We have to have the what is from God. We have to have the what should be from God. We have to have the what will be from God.

If we don't live on that, we're not living as human beings. What makes us real, true, vibrant human beings, living in the image of God is when we feast upon his word and we have his what is, what should be, and what will be.

Consider 2 Timothy 3 .16, All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, training, and righteousness.

The doctrine and the reproof, that is the what is. Doctrine, this is what is.

This is the truth. This is who God is. This is who you are. This is what the world is.

The doctrine, the reproof, where you're wrong. I'm just going to lay it out the way it is.

You're wrong. The Bible says it to us again and again and again. You're wrong. The word of the

Lord tells us what is, the doctrine and the reproof, and what should be. It doesn't leave us in the what is.

Thank God there's the what should be. There's the correction. There's the repent, turn away from your sins.

Look for forgiveness in Christ. And also the training and righteousness. Here's how we live

God's way. Here's how we grow in the image of God. So scripture is profitable for the doctrine, the reproof, the correction, and training, the what is and the what should be, and also the what will be.

The what will be. The Christ is coming again, certainly, suddenly, soon, victorious in the white horse.

We ought to be ready. Now, why would folks want to swerve around the word of God revealed in this way?

I mean, why? Why is it that we want to avoid God's word?

Especially when we, I mean, personally and persistently, especially prophetically, why do we want to avoid that word?

When's the last time you really enjoyed someone telling you how things are? Let me tell you how the word works, okay?

I don't know. When's the last time you really enjoyed someone being very personal with you and not giving up and being very insistent on the way things ought to be?

Is that a great conversation to have? And ever feel uncomfortable when someone is, you know, right in front of you and being very insistent on how things are going to turn out, how it's all going to end up?

What is it in our souls that just rubs me the wrong way?

What do we really like for people to do? To hear what we have to say and say what?

Oh, man, you're right. Or, wow, I've never heard of that.

That's amazing. Your insights are the best insights I've ever had, I've ever heard of, you know.

We want people to affirm us in what we believe is. We want people to affirm us in what we believe ought to be.

We want people to affirm us in our view of what's to come. We just want affirmation. We don't want correction.

We don't want to feel like we have to learn something. And what's rubbing us raw is the fact that we have pride, that so often in our pride we're listening to the devil's hiss.

Is that really what the Word of God says? Did God really say? That's the serpent's hiss.

And we're full of arrogance and pride when we listen to that and hold on to that. And we're full of humility when we say,

Thus saith the Lord, Amen. In our world today, when good is called bad and bad is called good, we are being told that if we are dogmatic and say,

Thus saith the Lord, Amen, that that is arrogance, that that is pride.

And if we say, with the devil, and we hiss right along and say, Well, I don't really know.

Who can really tell what God is really? The Bible is very old and confusing.

Who knows if that's really what God meant when He said that? That if we say that, the world lauds that and says,

Ah, you are humble. But it's actually the reverse. It's actually the reverse.

We prefer to be self -determined. Like Adam and Eve, we want to eat from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, meaning we want to determine for ourselves what is good and evil.

We prefer to be self -determined. And that is why, at the root of it, you and I have that temptation time and again to swerve around the

Word of God. Anytime we would say,

Well, I've read through the Bible. Well, I don't have to do that again. If we ever have to say, Well, I don't really need to meditate on the

Scriptures. I don't need to memorize God's Word. I don't need to read God's Word. If we're ever in the position of swerving around the truth of God, why is it?

Because we want to be self -determined. But though we would abandon the bread of life,

Jesus Christ revealed in the Word of God, if we would abandon the spiritual food that God has given to us, and if we would go out and feast for all of our life and gorge ourselves on the banquet of the devil's lies, we would starve, starve on the feast of Satan.

We must be sustained in the Word of God. You know, when you think about it, when

God's Word is revealed personally, persistently, and prophetically, these reasons why people would maybe want to avoid

God's Word, these are actually all reasons to embrace God's revealed authority. These are all the reasons why we would want to embrace it.

How loving is it that God would speak to us personally through his

Son, by his Holy Spirit, that God would condescend to us and speak to us on our level in a clear word that we can understand about his

Son whom he gave to us because he loved us in the grace of his persistence.

He says, the whole day long I have held up my arms to a stubborn and stiff -necked people.

That God would show his Word persistently to those who never would seek for him, yet they would find him because he was persistent in revealing his

Word, his Gospel to them. What grace that he is persistent, and what power we find in this prophetic

Word that so immediately and simply diagnoses who we are and what we need and what's to come.

As we think about the blessing of the revealed Word of God, here's a final thought.

God's Word is revealed to us personally, persistently, and prophetically. We're either running away from God or running with God.

Let us be personal and persistent and prophetic in our witness and our edification.

Let's look at one another in our families, let's look at one another in our church, and let's speak the

Word of God to one another in that way. Be personal eyeball to eyeball. Be personal, warm, compassionate, and loving to the situations that we're in.

Be persistent. Don't give up. Don't give up. Keep speaking the

Word of God to one another as the Word of God, not your word. Everything we need to know about what is and what ought to be and what will be is right here.

It's what we need to know. Not everything there might be to know, but what we need to know is all right here.

So let's be that for one another, and let's be that in our witness. Let's be that in our witness when we speak to others. Personal, persistent, don't give up.

Don't give up. Use the Word of God as the Word of God in its real authority, and give

God the glory. Let's close in prayer. Father, I thank you for our time in your Word. It is indeed a special gift that you would so lovingly and graciously and powerfully reveal your truth to us as you showcase the glory of your

Son, Jesus Christ, in these scriptures by your Holy Spirit. O Lord, I pray that you would give us a growing appetite and desire for your

Word, and that as you bring it again and again into our life, that you would have your way in us.