Sunday Morning, April 5, 2020 AM

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Sunday Morning, April 5, 2020 AM "Unavoidably, Undeniable" (Part 3) Jeremiah 44:1-30

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Well, good morning. Let's go ahead and pray together and ask God's blessing on our time together.
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Father, I thank you for the day that you have made. We know that you are God and that you are all -powerful.
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You are our sovereign creator and our provider.
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Lord, help us to fear you and to trust you. Thank you for the ways in which you have been teaching us to depend upon you, to rely less upon our own wisdom, our own strength, our own resources, to humble ourselves before you, to truly learn what it means to trust you for our daily bread, for protection from evil, even as we hallow your name and give you the praise and the glory.
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Lord, I pray that you would help us today as we look in your word, that you would feed us from your word, that you would nourish us with this most necessary food.
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I pray that you would have your way in our hearts, that by the power of your
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Holy Spirit, you would take up this holy word, which is all about your
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Son, Jesus Christ, that you would transform us, that you would conform us to your image, the image of your
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Son, that we would be changed, that we would be blessed, that you would strengthen us to do your will to advance the kingdom of Christ.
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We pray these things in his name. Amen. Well, a lot of things have changed over the last few weeks, which is an understatement, but one of the changes that I have made is not listening to the radio or the news as much.
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I don't listen to as many of the podcasts as I used to, and nonetheless,
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I still hear all I need to know. I'm a little tired of hearing about all the coronavirus.
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I don't like to listen to it. I know that it's going to be around for as long as it's going to be around, and it's good to be safe, and so on and so forth, but it seems that there's only one topic being discussed.
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Every other topic relates to that topic, and even when somebody wants to purposefully avoid talking about it, they say something to the effect of, this is going to be virus -free, but the coronavirus has infected everything.
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It is unavoidably undeniable. Even if its properties and its prognosis and its predictions are somewhat uncertain, everyone is still talking about it, but there is a sense of hope in all of this.
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There is a great insight that we have received. All it takes, all it takes to get the entire planet thinking and speaking and acting about the same thing is thousands of deaths, hundreds of thousands infected, and all by a single virus.
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How this providential judgment of God is effective, it shows us our creatureliness.
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It shows us his mastery of our world, that he can do that with something so small, and this brings to question, do we doubt that he can subject all of his enemies beneath the feet of Christ?
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I mean, think about it. What will it be like when there's only one topic being discussed, and every other topic relates to it?
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What will it be like when the supremacy of Jesus Christ radiates through everything?
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What will it be like when all over creation, it'll be like Palm Sunday, everyone talking about Jesus Christ?
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Do we doubt God's promise that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the
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Lord as the waters cover the sea? How can this and so many other glorious promises come to pass when men are so wicked, when this world is so cursed, when the church is so fractured and weak?
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Well, if God can so easily capture our attention and move all of humanity with a microscopic protein, don't you think that he can achieve every last aim and fulfill every last promise and gain every last victory through his risen, reigning, and returning son,
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Jesus Christ? His glory is unavoidably undeniable.
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So, I invite you to stand with me as we, if you're able to, wherever you are, to stand with me as we read
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God's holy word. And as we do, as we read Jeremiah 44 verses 1 through 14, remember this,
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God is sovereign over all and directly involved with each. This is the word of the
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Lord. The word that came to Jeremiah for all the Jews living in the land of Egypt, those who were living in Migdol, Taphanes, Memphis, and the land of Patheros, saying, thus says the
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Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, you yourselves have seen all the calamity that I have brought on Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah.
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And behold, this day they are in ruins and no one lives in them because of their wickedness, which they committed so as to provoke me to anger by continuing to burn sacrifices and to serve other gods whom they had not known, neither they, you, nor your fathers.
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Yet I sent you all my servants, the prophets, again and again saying, oh, do not do this abominable thing which
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I hate. But they did not listen or incline their ears to turn from their wickedness so as not to burn sacrifices to other gods.
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Therefore, my wrath and my anger were poured out and burned in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, so they have become a ruin and a desolation as it is this day.
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Now then, thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, why are you doing great harm to yourselves so as to cut off from you man and woman, child and infant from among Judah, leaving yourselves without remnant, provoking me to anger with the works of your hands, burning sacrifices to other gods in the land of Egypt, where you are entering to reside so that you might be cut off and become a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth.
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Have you forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, the wickedness of the kings of Judah and the wickedness of their wives, your own wickedness and the wickedness of your wives, which they committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
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But they have not become contrite even to this day, nor have they feared nor walked in my law or my statutes, which
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I have set before you and before your fathers. Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, the
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God of Israel, behold, I am going to set my face against you for woe, even to cut off all
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Judah, and I will take away the remnant of Judah who have set their mind on entering the land of Egypt to reside there, and they will all meet their end in the land of Egypt.
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They will fall by the sword and meet their end by famine. Both small and great will die by the sword and famine, and they will become a curse, an object of horror, an imprecation, and a reproach.
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And I will punish those who live in the land of Egypt as I have punished Jerusalem with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence.
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So there will be no refugees or survivors for the remnant of Judah who have entered the land of Egypt to reside there and then to return to the land of Judah to which they are longing to return and live, for none will return except a few refugees.
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This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. We come back to this passage that we've been studying.
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The title of this series of sermons is Unavoidably Undeniable. So we talk about God's word and God's will and God's wrath, unavoidably undeniable.
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All of these themes have in common this truth that God is sovereign over all and directly involved with each.
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This truth is unavoidably undeniable. We've talked about God's word, how it is inescapable.
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We considered the range and the aim of God's word as He speaks to those rebellious
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Jews in Egypt. And we're talking currently about how God's will is inevitable in verses 2 -14.
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Verses 2 -14 take us along a trajectory of past, present, and future.
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These are the sins of the past. Here are the sins of the present. And here's the judgment of the future. Last time we were together, we said that we should not explain away, we must not explain away
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God's wrath. And this is an objective that God has through His prophet
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Jeremiah for this Jewish remnant who fled down to Egypt. He will not let them get away from the truth that what has come upon them is
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His judgment. They were witnesses to the calamity, to the covenant that God made, to the correction that God offered, and to the corruption of their own society.
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They were witnesses to it all. And God will not allow them to easily explain away what has occurred, although they might want to explain it away, perhaps not to feel bad about themselves, perhaps to allay their fears of what is to come, perhaps to give themselves permission to continue in sin.
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But He will not allow them to explain away God's wrath. We must not look at the judgment of God and call it something else.
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Currently, we're talking about verses 7 -11. And in these verses, we see that we must not revoice our wickedness.
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We must not revoice our wickedness. We must not change our tone, change our way of talking, change our vocabulary about wickedness.
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We talked about the consequence of wickedness in verses 7 and 8, that wickedness destroys man and that wickedness angers
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God. And now we've come to the character of wickedness in verses 8 and 9. God's will is inevitable.
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We must not explain away God's wrath. We must not revoice our wickedness. And in this, let's consider the character of wickedness in verses 8 and 9.
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You see, in order to revoice wickedness, what is required for you to revoice wickedness, to try to change vocabulary about it, what must you do?
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You must deny, downplay, or distract from the consequences of wickedness.
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This is true. But you must also necessarily sabotage the dictionary.
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You must create alternative histories. You must offer new categories ex nihilo.
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You must embrace that new ability that we as humanity paid so much for in the garden, that new ability of playing
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God by deciding good and evil for ourselves.
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That's what is required of us to revoice wickedness. However, we will not actually succeed in changing the character of wickedness.
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We may bludgeon our heads against the granite pillar of truth, but all the alterations will be on our side of that engagement.
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Consider, first of all, that wickedness is shameful. Wickedness is shameful.
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Verse 8, middle of verse 8, so that you're doing all these wicked things, so that you might be cut off and become a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth.
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They fled their homeland of Judah. They, in disobedience to God's word, they fled their homeland of Judah.
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This remnant has fled down to Egypt, where they continue to offer up sacrifices to false gods.
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And God says, this is going to cut you off. This is going to make you a reproach, a curse among all the nations of the earth.
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Wickedness is shameful. In order to revoice wickedness, you have to reinterpret that shame into something else.
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To be really effective, this shame has to be re -envisioned as something that will only solidify one's commitment, one's entrenchment to that sin.
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It is a remarkably sinister device of Satan to turn the heartfelt shame of wickedness into a heartfelt oppression of the wicked.
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It is a sinister device of Satan to make shame seem like oppression.
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I'll give you an example. Greg Johnson is pastor of a PCA church in St. Louis, Missouri.
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He identifies himself as a gay Christian. He hosted the
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Revoice Conference at his church each year and hosts all manner of homosexual arts and crafts throughout the year at their church.
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And he was telling his story to the Presbyterian Church of America General Assembly last year, and he was telling everybody there.
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It's a public story. You can watch it on YouTube, if you want. And he was talking about his suffering the effects of homophobia from other
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Christians, and his personal story was how he attended a wedding at a church, and during the ceremony, he realized that while everyone was admiring the bride for her beauty, he could not take his eyes off one of the groomsmen.
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And suddenly he realized that everybody in the room knew of his sexual attraction to this man, and they all began to stare at Greg in disgust.
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Now, how he knew what everyone in the room was thinking and where everyone was looking all at once is a kind of omniscience, which
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I think can only come from an overly active and unsettled imagination. What Greg experienced was not homophobia from the wedding party and the guests.
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What he experienced was internal from his own heart. It was a healthy, God -given grace called shame.
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Shame. What happens, though, when enough labor has effectively seared the conscience so that internal shame no longer offers any deterrent to continuing in wickedness?
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Well, what happens then? This was certainly the case with Jeremiah's fellow Jews. They had lost all shame in their idolatrous lifestyle, and we can see from reading the rest of the chapter that they were actually fairly proud about their commitments to worshiping the queen of heaven, their false goddess.
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You see, when the internal shame has failed, what does God say? You will be cut off and become a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth.
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You may be able to burn out the internal shame, but that does not mean that the external shame will go away.
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The curse and the reproach remain. The objective truth of shame remains.
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Proverbs 13 verse 5 says, a righteous man hates falsehood, but a wicked man acts disgustingly and shamefully.
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This doesn't say that the wicked man always knows that, but that the fact is that it is disgusting and shameful.
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That's what wickedness is. Wickedness is shameful, even if the internal conscience, even if the ability to recognize that from within is gone.
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Let us say there is a woman who has lost her sense of decency, and she knows no shame. She dresses like a prostitute demon witch and calls it stylish.
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Well, those who have working consciences will experience a collective cringe at her brazen and bombastic shamelessness.
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And the very same thing, you'll know it, you'll feel it. The very same thing happens when you're around an angry, bitter man whose mouth constantly overflows with profanity and vileness.
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The same is true of a foolish son who grieves his father and is a bitterness to his mother.
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Although the internal shame may have gone away, and any potential shade of shame within is explained as some kind of prejudice or ignorance, the objective reality of shame remains.
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Wickedness is shameful whether or not that is personally recognized in the heart of the one doing the wickedness.
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And to deny this objective reality of shame, to deny the objective reality of the shame of wickedness is to play act as if it does not exist, and to do so in the name of compassion or diversity or inclusion or equity, that is sin.
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That is sin. For anyone to play along with the wicked one who is shameful and that person is saying,
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I'm not shamed, I'm oppressed, and to play along with that and agree with them about that and to deny the objective reality of the shamefulness of wickedness is to lie and is to sin.
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Our response should be one of compassion. It should be one of sadness.
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It should be one of mercy. It should be one of being willing to reach in and pull people out of the fire.
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But there is a special kind of sadness, a breaking of the heart when Christians encounter those who have lost their sense of shame.
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It is like watching sailors with no compass desperately trying to make headway on a ship with a broken rudder slowly sinking into deep water.
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Wickedness is shameful. And verse 9 reminds us of something that just might be the most controversial claim of the day.
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Wickedness is wickedness. Verse 9, have you forgotten, this is
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God asking the remnant of Judah in Egypt, have you forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, the wickedness of the kings of Judah, the wickedness of their wives, your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
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Wickedness is wickedness.
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That's pretty controversial, actually, in our day. I mean, surely there's at least a few dozen threads of nuance that we are obliged to tie off before we can ever claim that wickedness is wickedness.
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I mean, what about the mitigating circumstances? What of the cultural context? What about our own behavioral, intellectual, and experiential shortcomings?
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Surely we should countenance our language with terms like journey, challenge, conversation, and humility.
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Lots, lots of humility. Meanwhile, you'll notice in the text in verse 9,
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God just wants to know what this remnant's problem is. He says, are you oblivious to your own wickedness?
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This term translated forgotten refers to mislaying something, to be oblivious of something due to the lack of memory or due to the lack of attention.
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No, they had not forgotten the information. They had not mislaid the memories of their conduct, of their ancestors, the conduct of their kings, and the conduct of their own sins as they lived in Jerusalem and Judah.
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They had the memories, but they paid them no mind. They gave no attention to them.
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They lived oblivious to their own wickedness, not considering it wickedness.
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Thus, God calls it wickedness five times in a single verse.
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Jeremiah 44, 9 is the only verse in the Bible that outdoes
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Enoch's sermon preserved in Jude 1, 15. Maybe you remember that verse,
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Jude 1, 14 through 15. It was also about these men that Enoch and the seventh generation from Adam prophesied saying,
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Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of his holy ones, now here's verse 15, to execute judgment upon all and to convict all the ungodly of all of their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
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It's interesting to see that Jude, as he writes to help the church defend the faith against those who would corrupt it from within, that he must draw upon a sermon which calls ungodliness, ungodliness four times.
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Jeremiah does it five times. Wickedness is wickedness.
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We must not revoice wickedness. We must call it what it is. The question is, do we even notice wickedness as wickedness anymore?
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Or are we so numb that we have forgotten what it is? Wickedness is not a tendency.
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Wickedness is not an allergy. Wickedness is not an unfortunate incident.
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Wickedness is certainly not evangelicalism's new effeminate euphemism for abomination.
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Are you ready for this? This will kill you, probably more than one way. Here's the new evangelical definition for abomination.
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Are you ready for this? Choosing what is less than the very best which
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God has for us. That's evangelicalism's new way of talking about abominations and sin.
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Stop revoicing wickedness. That's the devil's domain.
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And he can do that job without the church's help. Wickedness is wickedness.
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Because if we do not know that wickedness is wickedness, how do we know if righteousness is just?
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How do we know if the holy is sacred? What happens when speaking in clearly defined categories is deemed heresy by the paganized and subsequently canceled?
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If we cannot agree with God in this most fundamental manner, how will we ready ourselves for sin's consequences?
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How will we warn others or keep ourselves from being cut off? Wickedness is wickedness because God is holy,
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God is righteous, and everything must be laid alongside the comparison of who
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God is revealed in holy Scripture. And God does not change.
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Well, we must also consider in this need to not revoice wickedness, the cutting off of the wicked in verses 10 through 11.
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As we come to these verses, we find the third time that we have this language of being cut off, verses 10 and 11.
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You notice in these two verses that their sins cut the...in
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verses 7 and 8, you'll see that their sins cut them off. You see that God and His anger will cut them off, and He promises to cut off all of Judah here in verse 11.
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So you'll see the importance then, you'll see the importance then of not revoicing wickedness as something which
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God chooses to overlook. We must not speak of wickedness as something that God would even hallow within human dignity.
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We must not revoice wickedness as something which will bring treasure into the new Jerusalem. The truth of the matter is this, unless the wicked repent and find in our merciful
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God's loving gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, all their guilt forgiven, all their sins forgiven, all their salvation accomplished, they will be cut off.
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They will be cut off. And so we see the need to not revoice this wickedness.
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We see that the wicked in verses 10 through 11 are cut off in two ways. Number one, they're devoid of grace, and two, they're damned by God.
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Verse 10, but they have not become contrite even to this day, nor have they feared, nor walked in my law or my statutes which
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I have set before you and before your fathers. The kings of Judah, the fathers and the mothers of Judah, the men of Judah and their wives, they are devoid of grace.
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And that they know the common grace of God, they know daily bread and hourly strength, their momentary breath, all grace, but they are devoid of God's saving grace.
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Jeremiah and Baruch are like Joshua and Caleb, exceptions amidst a reprobate generation.
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So look there, verse 10, there's no repentance. They have not become contrite even to this day.
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Look there in verse 10, there's no faith, nor have they feared. Look, there's no fruit, nor walked in my law or my statutes which
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I have set before you and your fathers. The saving graces of repentance and faith are not there.
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The continuing grace of holiness is not there. This remnant is devoid of grace. While the
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Jewish church could rejoice and glorify God in Acts 11, 18, saying, well, then God has granted repentance to the
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Gentiles, also the repentance that leads to life, even though they could rejoice about that concerning the
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Gentiles, Jeremiah in this situation had no such joy concerning his own countrymen. Faith is the gift of God that no one may boast,
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Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, but this remnant had boasting, but they had no saving faith.
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God is at work in the save, both to will and to work his good pleasure, but this remnant showed no fear and trembling, and were not at all working out the salvation which is in the
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Messiah alone. For all these reasons, it is clear that these wicked people about to be cut off by God were devoid of grace, and that is a horrifying thought.
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They had been turned over to a reprobate mind due to those things which are not fitting. They had not repented at the dethronement of Jeconiah in 597.
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They stuck to their sins and they grew worse. They had not repented at the destruction of Jerusalem in 586. They stuck to their sins and they grew worse.
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They had not repented at the murder of Gedoliah. They stuck to their sins and grew worse, even fleeing to Egypt to worship their idols there in a more fortified position, in a more prosperous fashion.
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Oh, what will we do? What will we do after our shelter -in -place rules go away, after all the restrictions leave, as the judgment of God begins to fade away from our daily lives?
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What will we do? Is your life devoid of the grace of God?
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Sure, you may know the blessing of living in God's good creation, of knowing and living with God's born -again people, but are you broken over your sins?
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Do you repent from your sins? Do you fear God? Do you trust in Christ as the
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God -man, righteous, crucified, buried, risen, ascended, and returning?
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Are you changed and being changed by the grace of God as you pursue holiness and follow
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Christ? And if not, to put it in the words of Christ, you must be born again. You must be born again.
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What is that like? Do you see how this whole world is consumed with, all about, focused on, held captive by the fear of the coronavirus?
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Do you want your life so consumed, all about, focused on, and held captive by Jesus Christ?
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Would you know and love and trust and serve Christ, the God -man, the Savior King, who rules over the kings of the earth, who is head of the church and head of every man?
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The time is now. The kingdom of heaven is right here. Repent and believe in the gospel.
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Psalm 2 says, worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling.
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Do homage to the Son so that He not become angry and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled.
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How blessed are all who take refuge in Him. This remnant was devoid of grace, and they were damned by God.
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Verse 11, notice. Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I am going to set my face against you for woe, even to cut off all
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Judah. So we're back to this exalted arrangement of divine names and titles.
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Here is Yahweh Sabaoth, Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, just like in verse 1.
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We are reminded that He sovereignly rules over all, and He directly involves Himself with each.
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You see that same title in verse 2 of this chapter.
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His sovereignty and His involvement are employed here in verse 11 to dreadful effect.
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What will it mean that He will cut them off, even this whole Judean remnant? He says, behold.
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He says, behold. That means to look. In this case, it means to stare with haunted eyes and gaping mouth.
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Why? For God will set His face against them for woe, and that is exactly what it means when
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God damns you. He sets His face against you for calamitous misery and sorrowful trouble.
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It is the opposite. It is the opposite of the Levitical blessing. It is the opposite.
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The Lord curse you and cast you away. The Lord set His face against you and be wrathful to you.
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The Lord turn His back on you and make war against you. That's what it means.
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Such is the end of the wicked and their wickedness. Such is the end of the wicked and their wickedness. And while some may try to revoice all of this as peace, peace, shalom, shalom, there is no peace unless it comes by repentance and faith in Christ, salvation in Christ alone.
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Well, God's will is inevitable. We must not explain away God's wrath. We must not revoice our wickedness, and we cannot work around God's will.
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We see that in verses 12 through 14. Let's read that again.
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And I will take away the remnant of Judah who have set their mind on entering the land of Egypt to reside there, and they will all meet their end in the land of Egypt, and they will fall by the sword and meet their end by famine.
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Both small and great will die by the sword and famine, and they will become a curse, an object of horror, an imprecation, and a reproach.
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And I will punish those who live in the land of Egypt, as I have punished Jerusalem with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence.
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So there will be no refugees or survivors for the remnant of Judah who have entered the land of Egypt to reside there and then to return to the land of Judah to which they are longing to return and live, for none will return except a few refugees.
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God's will, as well as His word, is unavoidably undeniable.
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It is true whether God's will is considered on the level of His sovereign rule over all, or it is true on the level of His direct involvement with each of us.
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Jeremiah's message in these three verses declares that when man's plans meet
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God's purpose, God's power is made manifest. I'll say it again.
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When man's plans meet God's purpose, God's power is made manifest.
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Look at man's plans being made here. The remaining leaders of the Jewish remnant here in Egypt, they had made plans.
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In the wake of Gedoliah's death and the slaughter of the Chaldean representatives there at Mitzpah, the
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Jews were afraid of what Nebuchadnezzar might do to them. After all, he left them there and said, you know, don't make any trouble, and then what do they do but make trouble?
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And so after Johanan had led the last of the guerrilla bands to rescue the people from the assassin Ishmael, he led this ragtag remnant not back to Mitzpah, where they might be found by Nebuchadnezzar, that's where he left them, but he leads them to somewhere else.
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And we read this in Jeremiah 41, 17 -18, a reminder. And they went and stayed in Geruth -Kimham, which is beside Bethlehem, in order to proceed into Egypt because of the
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Chaldeans, for they were afraid of them, since Ishmael, the son of Nethaniah, had struck down Gedoliah, the son of Ahiakim, whom the king of Babylon had appointed over the land.
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So long before they consulted with Jeremiah about the will of the Lord, they had responded to the fear and they had made these plans.
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They had set their faces toward Egypt and they had lifted up their hearts to this plan of action.
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They had set their mind, verse 12 says, they had set their face toward Egypt. Now think of it this way.
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In order to set their face upon Egypt, they necessarily had to turn their back on the promised land.
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That may seem like a minor point, but in this day and age when categories are heresy by definition, it is important for us to remember simple facts such as these.
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You cannot face south without turning your back to the north. And I know that gives some people indigestion, but it's just the facts.
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They had to choose one or the other. They have to set their mind upon this plan of settling in Egypt, dwelling there for some time.
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What are they doing? They're trying to avoid the sword, they want to avoid the famine, they want to avoid the pestilence that they are so afraid of, and they believe that this is a plan that will give them success.
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And because they are stiff -necked, getting them to turn their face away from this plan will prove futile.
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And they have not only set their mind, but they have lifted up their soul, verse 14 says. They are longing to return.
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They are coming down to Egypt to live until they think it's safe, and then they're longing to return back to the land of Judah.
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They have lifted up their soul to this plan. What are they really up to?
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What are they really up to? Their desire was to flee a less protected situation to a more protected position, and there, as they are sheltering in place in Egypt, they are offering their sacrifices to the queen of heaven until they have made their decision on how they will handle this judgment of God and how they are going to go back into their own land.
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They're not dealing in repentance, they're dealing in workarounds. So, God's purpose is met here as man's plans have been made.
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This is their plan. They're coming down to Egypt. They're going to stay there for a while, worship their gods and goddesses, and then they'll go back up.
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But they run right into God's purpose. And we're reminded in Proverbs 19, 21, many plans are in a man's heart, but the counsel of the
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Lord will stand. What they sought to avoid, the sword, famine, and pestilence, they actually will encounter in abundance.
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Verses 12 through 14 tell us. Their end will prove such a horrific end. Their demise will become proverbial like that of Sodom.
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Verses 12 through 13 remind us of the wrath of God. They're trying to avoid God's judgment, but God says, no, the sword, the famine, and the pestilence will come down to you in Egypt.
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So, he says, I'm going to do exactly what I said I will do. How I judged you in Judah, I will judge you in Egypt.
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And you will prove a warning, he says in verse 12. Their end will reverberate as a solemn warning to everyone.
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Notice, they will become a curse, an object of horror, an imprecation, and a reproach.
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Now, what does that mean? It means that they will go down so hard and so obvious that folks will begin to use their name in oaths like this.
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May God end me like the Jews in Egypt if I fail to perform this vow.
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Their name will become a horror, something to speak of for generations, just like they did of Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Folks would use their demise as an imprecatory curse. Angry with someone else, they say, may
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God make you like the Jews in Egypt. And their name would become synonymous with disaster and sin, just like we have today the terms sodomy and sodomite.
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The point God is making here in verse 12, the point he will make through the destruction of this
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Jewish remnant, wickedness and stubbornness make for an explosive, destructive end.
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God's will is inevitable. We see that man's plans are made,
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God's purpose is met, and when man's plans meet God's purpose,
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God's power is made manifest. We see this in verse 14. Now, you'll notice in verse 14,
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God says there's no refugees or survivors for the remnant of Judah who have entered the land of Egypt to reside there and to return to the land of Judah to which they are longing to return and live, for none will return except for a few refugees.
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And at first that sounds like it's contradictory, but it is not. God is clearly stating that all of the
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Jews who entered Egypt to reside there, who plan to use this place as a refuge and then desired to return back to the land of Judah at some point in time, all of those who had invested in that plan, all of them would fail.
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None of them would return to the land of Judah, but they would be consumed by his judgment. Now, there would be some like Jeremiah and Baruch who were taken to Egypt and who were in clear opposition to this plan.
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They would not face the same demise. And also, God had ordained a remnant to return to the land of Judah, but not from Egypt.
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He would bring them home from Babylon. These Jews who were in exile in Babylon, these who were farther away, who had been longer removed,
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God would bring them back to the land of Judah as a testimony to his power and his goodness.
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But none will return from the Egyptian remnant. You see, the will of man does not and cannot overpower or outmaneuver
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God's will. When man's plans meet God's purpose, God's power is made manifest.
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Now, we are obviously instructed practically by that truth, and we're also encouraged under great hope.
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We have been instructed, have we not? We've been instructed in the fear of the Lord from this passage.
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And truly, as we apply the word of God to our situation as of late, as we are sheltering in our places and listening to the litany of woes echoing throughout the world, the lessons of James 4, 13 through 16 seem all the more poignant.
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Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in profit and business and make a profit.
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Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
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Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.
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But as it is, you boast in your arrogance, and all such boasting is evil. And is that not exactly what the
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Jewish remnant had done? They said, here's our plan. We're going to avoid the wrath of Nebuchadnezzar, and we're going to leave the land and go down to Egypt, do our thing there, and come back at a later time.
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They had all these plans, but they did not fear the Lord. And we do the very same thing when we do not fear the
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Lord. Have we not seen our lack of foresight? Have we not come to grips with the weakness of our hands?
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Have we not been routed and overwhelmed in the heart of what we thought was our greatest defense by this microscopic protein?
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By the will of God, have we not been humbled and humiliated? Proverbs 18, 11 says, a rich man's wealth is his strong city and like a high wall in his own imagination.
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But actually, we know the truth. The name of the Lord is a strong tower, and the righteous run into it and are safe, which is why we are to fear the
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Lord and put no confidence in the flesh. We are practically instructed, are we not, by this passage, when man's plans meet
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God's purpose, God's power is made manifest. But there's also encouragement here. There's an encouragement to our hope from Jeremiah's Egyptian preaching campaign.
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And here's the encouragement. God's will is inevitable. Man will not overcome or outsmart
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God. What he has promised, that he will perform, and he will bring it all to pass in his
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Son, Jesus Christ. Did not even Nebuchadnezzar learn that lesson about the
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Lord? Think of Nebuchadnezzar's role in this whole situation. He's the one who brought the judgment upon Jerusalem in 597 and 586.
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He's the one who they feared will bring judgment upon them for the murder of Gedoliah. He's the one God's going to use to come down to Egypt and affect all the judgment down in Egypt.
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He's the boogeyman everyone's afraid of. But what did Nebuchadnezzar learn? Well, seven years eating grass in the pasture, sleeping outside like an animal, at the end of that period,
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Nebuchadnezzar said this. Daniel 4, verses 34 through 37, this is what he said.
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But at the end of that period, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the
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Most High and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation.
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All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth, and no one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done?
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At that time, my reason returned to me.
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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of reason, and my majesty and splendor were restored to me for the glory of my kingdom, and my counselors and my nobles began seeking me out, so I was re -established in my sovereignty, and surpassing greatness was added to me.
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Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt, and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are true, and his ways are just, and he is able to humble those who walk in pride."
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That's a revival. That is a spiritual awakening, and all it took was seven years eating grass like a cow.
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I wonder what God might do through 70 days of COVID -19, or seven months of COVID -19, what might be on the other side to the glory of God.
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The mightiest empires in the world, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome were collapsed beneath the stone of God's choosing, and this stone,
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Daniel says, became a great mountain. Hebrews says this is Mount Zion, which fills the whole earth.
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Christ's kingdom will never be destroyed. The kingdom given to the Son of Man will endure forever, and why is that?
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Because God's will is inevitable. Praise be to Him.
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He is our hope. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us in your
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Word. You are high, and great, and good, and you have blessed us today.
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May we respond in humbleness, confessing what you say to be true, submitting our lives according to what you say is right.
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Have your way in us. Do your work through us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.
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Well, until next time, may the Lord bless you and keep you.
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May He cause His face to shine upon you. May He be gracious to you and give you peace.