Sunday Morning, April 19, 2020, AM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for the many blessings that you have poured out upon us through your

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Son, Jesus Christ, due to His merits, because of His life, death, resurrection and reign.

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We thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit who indwells us, who daily convicts and guides and leads us according to your word, who brings us into sweet communion with you in the warm acceptance and love and glory we enjoy because of Jesus Christ.

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I thank you for the surety of your word, the truth of your scriptures.

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And do not change. No matter what the season, no matter what the time, no matter which century or generation in which we live,

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Father, you know our frame, you know that we are but dust, you know that we tend to live only in the ups and downs of a month or a week or a day.

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And you have instructed us to trust you and to not live by worry and by anxiety, and that each day we ought to trust you, not worrying about tomorrow, that tomorrow has enough trouble of its own, but in all things that we are to trust you as our

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Heavenly Father, that you know our needs before we even ask. And though we must live our days one at a time, we know that we are in your hands, that our time has already been scripted by your loving, providential hand.

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And seeing that you are a good and great and powerful and glorious God, I come to you this morning, eager to receive from your word the food that you have prepared for us for this time.

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And we ask that by your Holy Spirit that you would give us a warm reception to your word that would not simply fall upon our ears, but that it would fall upon our hearts and make an impact and a change there that would bring you glory.

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And I ask, Father, that you would give us wisdom and understanding about how we are to take up your word.

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And seeing there the glory of Christ as you transform us into his image. That we would know what it means to live it out, that we would know what it means to prove the worth of Christ in every area of our lives, and I pray that you would accord these graces to us.

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On the basis of your love for your son, Jesus, and it's in his name that we pray, amen.

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Well, returning to Jeremiah 44 and verses 1 through 30, we'll be reading verses 15 through 30 in a moment.

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I think I may have mentioned earlier on in this series that I'm listening to a lot less radio and media and so on.

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And I think part of the reason for that is that it's difficult. It's difficult to listen to folks speak so authoritatively and dogmatically about incomplete and fluctuating information.

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But enough about sports. On to the news. One gentleman on the radio a couple of weeks ago was bemoaning the uncertainty of the times.

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And he penned his hopes of higher quality prognostications on a bright future.

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And the bright future that he was hoping for was as follows.

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He said, we'll go back. We'll go back to a time when people aren't out there dying, sick and suffering.

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He said, we'll go back to a time when people are not out there dying, sick and suffering.

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Now, of course, if you're a Christian, you're looking forward to a time. We're looking forward to a time when there's no more dying, sickness or suffering, certainly.

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But perhaps just a slip of the tongue, a misguided, unfortunate statement from this man.

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He said, we'll go back to a time when people aren't there dying and suffering and sick. And I don't often yell at my radio, not very often.

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But after a stern and vociferous rebuke, I silenced the blithering machine.

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Yeah, we'll go back. We'll go back to that perfect time, the flu -free, cancer -free, murder -free time, good old 2018.

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You remember, when every infant was safe in her mother's womb, when every media outlet spoke gospel truth, and the sparrows played nicely with the squirrels.

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And I'd forgotten that Christ had returned and removed every trace of the curse and wiped every tear from every eye and then took a sabbatical in late 2019, which precipitated the arrival of the

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God COVID, who hath smote the earth. And I think it's important that we laugh at ourselves, because it can lead us to repentance.

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We are not immune from the same kind of foolish thinking that this gentleman had on the radio. It exposes our own kind of assumptions.

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Death and depravity are just as prevalent before COVID -19 as they are now.

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But there's a great deal of mental contortion and hand -wringing. But why are we so fragile?

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Well, remember this, dearly beloved. The fear of death is slavery. That's Hebrews 2 .15.

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The fear of death is slavery, and the fear of man is a snare. Proverbs 29 .25.

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The fear of death is slavery, and the fear of man is a snare.

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But the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom.

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Proverbs 1 .7 and Proverbs 9 .10. And what are the fears that are plaguing us the most these days?

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Is it not the fear of death and the fear of man? Are we not more afraid of death now than we have been?

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We're more afraid of becoming sick and dying than we have been prior.

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That this has been heightened. And if not personally, if some of you are strong enough to not be affected by it,

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I'm not strong enough to not be affected by it. But if the fear of death has risen in your soul, remember that the fear of death is slavery.

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And that the fear of man is a snare. If you have concern about what man may do.

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If you are afraid of what the civil government might do in overreach.

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If you're concerned about what your neighbor may do in not taking enough precautions. If you're afraid of what men may do, remember that the fear of man is a snare.

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But rather than fear death or fear of man, we are called to fear the Lord. That is the calling for those who are people of faith.

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To follow after Christ. We are to fear the Lord. The beginning of knowledge and wisdom. And have not we been feeling the need for understanding?

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For better understanding. For better knowledge. For better information. Have not we been thinking that we need better knowledge about the situation in which we now live?

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Have we not been considering the need for wisdom? We need more wisdom to know how to handle ourselves and handle our affairs in a time such as this.

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Well, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. The fear of the Lord is a fountain of knowledge.

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And it is the source of wisdom. So the truth of the matter is, as long as we fear the

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Lord, as long as we fear the Lord, we will be thinking and speaking and acting with knowledge and with wisdom.

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And it could not be otherwise. This Jewish remnant down in Egypt that we are reading about in Jeremiah 44, the

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Jewish remnant down in Egypt are not there because they have feared the Lord. No. They're there because of the fear of death and the fear of man.

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The reason why they are in rebellion to the Lord and have fled down to Egypt is because they fear death and they fear man.

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After the assassination of Gedoliah, the remnant that remained was afraid that Nebuchadnezzar would come with the sword and with great disaster upon them because of the situation.

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They were afraid of dying, afraid of death. They felt like they were in an exposed, undefended location.

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They also feared what Nebuchadnezzar would do. We have no control over what this powerful king might do.

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And so they were afraid of man. They were afraid of death. And this is why they are in Egypt in rebellion to the

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Lord. So, as we read Jeremiah 44, we're reading something that is incredibly fitting for our time.

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It is just exactly the kinds of things that we need to be thinking about.

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So I invite you wherever you are to stand with me as I read verses 15 through 30 of Jeremiah 44. And here we are to learn from the wrath of God revealed in the

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Word of God. Jeremiah chapter 44, and we will begin in verse 15.

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That all the men who were aware that their wives were burning sacrifices to other gods, along with all the women who were standing by at the large assembly, including all the people who were living in Pathros in the land of Egypt, responded to Jeremiah saying, as for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the

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Lord, we are not going to listen to you. But rather, we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings, and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.

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For then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune. But since we stopped burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have met our end by the sword and by famine.

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And, said the women, when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and were pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?

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Then Jeremiah said to all the people, to the men and women, even to all the people who were giving him such an answer, saying, as for the smoking sacrifices that you burned in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your forefathers, your kings and your princes and the people of the land, did not the

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Lord remember them and did not all this come into his mind? So the Lord was no longer able to endure it because of the evil of your deeds, because of the abominations which you have committed.

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Thus your land has become a ruin, an object of horror, and a curse without an inhabitant as it is this day.

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Because you have burned sacrifices and have sinned against the Lord and not obeyed the voice of the

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Lord or walked in his law, his statutes or his testimonies, therefore this calamity has befallen you as it has this day.

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Then Jeremiah said to all the people, including all the women, hear the word of the Lord, all Judah who are in the land of Egypt.

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Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, as follows. As for you and your wives, you have spoken with your mouths and fulfilled it with your hands, saying, we will certainly perform our vows that we have vowed to burn sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.

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Go ahead and confirm your vows and certainly perform your vows. Nevertheless, hear the word of the

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Lord, all Judah who are living in the land of Egypt. Behold, I have sworn by my great name that says the Lord, never shall my name be invoked again by the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, as the

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Lord God lives. Behold, I am watching over them for harm and not for good.

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And all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt will meet their end by the sword and by famine until they are completely gone.

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Those who escaped the sword will return out of the land of Egypt to the land of Judah, few in number.

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Then all the remnant of Judah who have gone to the land of Egypt to reside there will know whose word will stand mine or theirs.

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This will be the sign to you, declares the Lord, that I am going to punish you in this place so that you may know that my words will surely stand against you for harm.

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Thus says the Lord, Behold, I am going to give over Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt, to the hand of his enemies, to the hand of those who seek his life, just as I gave over Zedekiah, king of Judah, to the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who was his enemy and was seeking his life.

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This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. We are to learn from the wrath of God revealed in the word of God.

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That goes for us who are in Christ, those who have no fear of the wrath of God upon us directly for our sins, those of us who would certainly be in Christ and therefore know no condemnation, those of us who are covered by the blood of Christ.

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There are still many things that we are to learn about and learn from the wrath of God.

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There is much to consider and much to apply to our lives as the glory of God in judgment is wrought in the good of our salvation.

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Now, we've been going through this series. The title is unavoidably undeniable. And the central truth is this, that God sovereignly rules over all and is directly involved with each.

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And we see this in his word and his will and his wrath, that his word is inescapable, his will is inevitable, and his wrath is indisputable.

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If we're considering the rightness of God's wrath, though men would want to complain about it, though men would want to take issue with it, though man would want to isolate some particular story involving the wrath of God and bring it to bear upon the character of God revealed in Scripture and find fault with his own maker,

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God's wrath is indisputable. There is no successful argument against it.

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There is no way to bring an indictment against it. One measure of complaining against the wrath of God, one measure of trying to escape the wrath of God, is to use excuses.

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And we've talked about that last time. We talked about the ways in which we tend to excuse sin, which are evident in our text.

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There's three basic excuses. Everyone's doing it. I like doing it. And they said

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I could do it. I mean, those are the three basic excuses that pop up again and again. We found them in the generation of Jeremiah.

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We found them actually available in the Garden of Eden. And so those are the three excuses. Everyone's doing it.

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I like doing it. And they said I could do it. And that goes with the points we talked about last time, that there's the homogenous majority.

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Everyone's in agreement that this is okay. There's the experiential testimony. I've never had any problems with it.

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Here's my personal story, so it must be okay. And then there's the rebellious authority.

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I can find some authority figures somewhere who's in rebellion against God who will give me the go -ahead to also rebel.

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Now, those excuses don't hold up with a clear focus brought to them by the word of God.

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And we began thinking about the indictments of sin we have in our passage in verses 15 to 25.

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And the first one was the matter of headship, that the husbands of these wives, they are accountable for the fact that they were passive in their wives' idolatries, that they were permissive in this area, and in that they actually participated.

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Many of them in the idolatry of their wives. And so we see that God's wrath is indisputable, that it is the right thing to do, that God was right to bring his judgment to bear upon this remnant of Judah because of the way in which the husbands had rejected and put off their responsibilities and their headship.

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They had led their families awry. They had led their families wrongly, and this brought the judgment of God.

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Now, a second matter for us to consider in this passage is reprobation, reprobation.

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In other words, in considering the remnant of the Jews here in Egypt, just how far gone are they?

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Just how far gone are they? What stage of reprobation is this remnant currently in?

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And considering that will not only serve as a point which underscores the rightness of God's wrath, but also the reality of God's wrath.

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Not just the rightness, but also the reality. And notice verse 16 again. You can hear the reprobation of the people in verse 16.

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This is how far gone they are. Verse 16, as for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the

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Lord, we are not going to listen to you. That they clearly acknowledge that this is a message that is spoken to them by none other than Jeremiah the prophet.

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And that it was spoken to them in the name of the Lord, but they refused to hear it. They have long been the recipients of God's word.

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For 40 years, Jeremiah has been preaching. His messages from the

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Lord have all been soundly ratified by the rest of Holy Scripture then in existence.

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He has declared the truths of God by the spirit of Christ himself. And in four decades, there has never once been a failed prophetic word.

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And in fact, this people's current desperation and sad situation are proof positive that what

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Jeremiah said would happen, happened indeed. And now they're telling this man, this prophet of God, who has spoken to them in the name of the

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Lord with 40 years worth of evidence that he indeed is God's man with God's message.

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They're telling him, not listening, not listening. You're not the boss of me.

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And that's how far gone they are. And thus we see the rightness of God's wrath.

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We see that it is fitting that God's wrath fall upon them in accordance with all his covenant curses that are listed for us in Deuteronomy 28, 15 through 68.

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So we see the rightness of God's wrath and God brings it home. Look at the airtight case in verse 23.

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Because you have burned sacrifices and have sinned against the Lord and not obeyed the voice of the

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Lord or walked in his law, his statutes, or his testimonies, therefore this calamity has befallen you as it has this day.

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We see both their sins of commission and their sins of omission. What do they commit?

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They commit idolatry. They commit immorality. They have committed injustice and their sins of omission.

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They do not obey. They do not walk in the way of God's word. They do not adhere to God's word.

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And so the case is airtight. God's judgment is righteous. God's wrath is indisputable.

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So we see the rightness of God's wrath because of their reprobate condition. But also in this condition, we are shown the reality of God's wrath.

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When you listen to verse 16 and they say, this message you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we're not going to listen to you.

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Yes, this of course shows us that God is right to judge them, but it actually shows how they are already under the wrath of God.

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Notice verse 25. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the

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God of Israel, as follows. As for you and your wives, you have spoken with your mouths and fulfilled it with your hands saying, we will certainly perform our vows that we have vowed to burn sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.

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Go ahead and confirm your vows and certainly perform your vows. So when we look at this,

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God is saying, you have refused to hear the word of my servant Jeremiah.

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You have determined, you have promised to follow through on your vows of worshiping the queen of heaven.

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And so then God says, go ahead, go ahead.

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You see, in that we see the reality of God's wrath.

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Certainly he is right to judge them for it, but the fact that he gives them to it shows us the reality of God's wrath, the level of their reprobation.

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It is important for us to remember when we think about the wrath of God that the wrath of God is not some cartoonish spurt of flame.

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It is not a limited, uncreative, inflexible expression of holy anger any more than God's love is some sentimental reduction of grandma's apple pie.

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Those notions themselves are the projections of an increasingly idolatrous, futile mind.

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God's wrath is revealed from heaven against those who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. God's wrath is revealed from heaven against those who exchange the truth of God for the lie, worshiping and serving the creature rather than the creator.

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This is what Romans 1 tells us. And in what manner, according to Romans 1, is the wrath of God revealed against such as these?

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And those who are being described in Romans 1, their mugshot looks exactly like this crowd here in Egypt.

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How is God's wrath revealed against these who suppress the truth in unrighteousness and exchange the truth of God for the lie, worshiping the creature rather than the creator?

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Well, Romans 1 tells us, God gives them over to the lust of their hearts to impurity.

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God gives them over to degrading passions. God gives them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper.

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So we see that God in his wrath, he turns the rebellious over to a reprobate mind if they do not repent.

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And in their reprobation, they proceed from bad to worse, incurring more of the judgment of God, and they do this willingly.

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They do this, Romans 1 says, they do this knowing the dire penalty, but they choose to hallow and celebrate sin.

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They construct a culture of death. And by the way, it is part and parcel of that mindset to impugn the holiness and the sovereignty of God by saying,

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I'm going to do things the way I want for as long as I want, and when it's time for me to get mad or straight with God, I will.

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That's part of that mindset that brings people under the wrath of God.

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Now, it is interesting that the way in which that God judges this pattern is evident even in God's response to Adam and Eve.

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Not that Adam and Eve were necessarily reprobate, but the pattern is definitely there.

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Now, consider that God drives Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, and he drove them out, it says in Genesis 3.

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And why did he do this? Precisely because of the rebellious determination to decide good and evil for themselves.

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You see, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what God said to them concerning that tree was they should not eat the fruit of that tree, for the day that they eat of it, they would surely die.

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It is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not because by eating the fruit, one would then gain new information.

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For the first time, understanding what evil is and what good is, because before they had no idea about those categories.

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The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is thus described, has this title, because it was at that place, it was at that juncture of deciding whether to obey

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God or not, that mankind was determining whether they would let

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God define good and evil, or whether they would take it for themselves. And that they would determine good and evil.

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The knowledge of good and evil means the definition of good and evil. It's the tree of the definition of good and evil.

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Would mankind submit to God and say, you define what good and evil is, we'll trust you.

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We'll do the good, we'll stay away from the evil, you're in charge. Or would they disobey God, and then they would try to determine good and evil for themselves, which of course they did, and determined that it was evil for them to refrain from the tree, and good they should eat of it.

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And then what does God say? Genesis 3, 22 -24.

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So the Lord was no longer able... Oh, I'm in Genesis, I'm in Jeremiah. Genesis 3, 22 -24.

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Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.

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And now he might stretch out his hand and also take from the tree of life and need to live forever.

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Therefore, the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So he drove the man out, and at the east of the garden of Eden, he stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword, which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.

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Every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. Just a reminder.

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Man has tried to come to the tree of life on his own from every direction, but there's no way back except through the one way, and that is

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Jesus Christ. Now we see the rightness of God's judgment about Adam and Eve. They ate from the forbidden tree, so they were removed from the everlasting tree.

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But there's also the reality of God's judgment. Notice what punishment is dealt to mankind for determining good and evil for themselves.

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They are sent away to keep on doing just that. There is an ethical and intellectual death here, along with the spiritual, physical, and eternal death.

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It's a culture of death. Look, he is to cultivate the ground from which he is taken. That's just a shorter portion of the earlier sentencing, just a few verses back.

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By the sweat of your face you will eat bread till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

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The judgment of God is right, and it is overwhelming. The wrath of God is indisputable.

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The will of God is inevitable. Word of God is unavoidable. Do we see our need for Christ?

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Do we understand? Are we in awe of the wonders of salvation?

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It is not a small thing. It is not a small thing for God the

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Son to take upon human flesh, and come, and live, and suffer, and die, and be raised for our salvation.

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How we need that. How we need that. Outside of the grace of God, there is no hope for us.

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Thanks be to God, he has sent us his Son, Jesus Christ. Now, what exactly is

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God bringing indictment upon these Jews for? Their worship.

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Their worship. Remember that we are made in God's image, and so the worship switch is hardwired on. We never, never stop worshiping.

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Even people who say that they don't worship anything, or anyone, or anywhere. People who say that they are completely atheist or agnostic, and they just don't have any worship going on at all in their lives, are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

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Because the fact is, we're made in the image of God, and the worship switch is always turned on. It's hardwired on.

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We're always taking in worth, and then ascribing worth. We're always worshiping.

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And what's going on here in Judah's worship? Judah's worship is compromised. They have not given off all worship of the

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Lord God, but they have mixed it. They have brought other things into it.

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They are like Nadab and Abihu in God's sight. Just there's more of them, and their judgment is in slower motion.

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But as we noted last week, the men and women of Judah defend their idolatrous worship of the

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Queen of Heaven, and they cite their experiential proofs in verses 17 and 18.

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And we see it's clear for them, everything rose and fell on their adherence to this goddess.

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They said, when we worshiped the Queen of Heaven, things were good. When we did not worship the Queen of Heaven, things were bad.

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You see, they're living their life. They're saying, we can tell. When we worship the Queen of Heaven, we have all sorts of benefits.

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When we do not, all sorts of bad things happen. That's what they believe. We saw the foolishness of that. That's not what really was happening, but they believed that.

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I mean, how backward is that? That's laughable, to live one's life as if all the ups and downs have to do with how devoted one is to a goddess.

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It's a good thing we don't live in the ancient Near East. We might have to submit our diplomatic ties and our economic philosophy, our harvesting of natural resources, and our meteorological vocabulary to some goddess.

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We might talk about weather disasters as having some sort of angered, capricious personality behind it.

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We might have to listen to endless mini -sermons about new and improving holiness codes, reduce, reuse, recycle, plant a tree.

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Don't bathe and wash laundry on the same day. Cows are evil. And all these little mini -sermons coming in the name of a goddess.

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But you do realize that the proper name of Mother Earth or Mother Nature is Gaia. It's a goddess by the name of Gaia.

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And she'll go by Mother Earth and Mother Nature as well. And also, people talk about Mother Nature and Mother Earth, but the name is

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Gaia. And this worship of Gaia is on the rise. Many gods are worshipped in our land today, and Gaia is one of the more popular ones.

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Children are sacrificed to her regularly in the name of reducing overpopulation, which she hates.

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Every natural disaster is claimed as her doing in response to our flushing the toilet too much. In fact, the

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Pope just claimed that the COVID -19 virus is a result of the man -made climate change.

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Many people's job security and political power rest on how well they honor her name.

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Her devotees view Christian families as a breeding pestilence.

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And those who reject her claims are called, not atheists, which was the old pejorative term, but they are called anti -science, which is just a pseudonym for the old insult of atheists.

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That's okay. Early Christians were also called atheists. It does no good, however, just simply to acknowledge the fact that the goddess

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Gaia is worshipped and we ought to reject such paganism. It does no good just to do that and then replace

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Gaia with other gods, such as a bull and a bear, and to fear and tremble at their incessant battle and the ups and downs that happen on Wall Street.

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Or to interpret all of morality and ethics by the measure of the haves and the have -nots.

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And even if we were to reject Gaia and the bull and the bear, there's other gods and goddesses that may take their place.

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What about the goddess Lady Liberty? Even if the Bill of Rights were correctly and fully applied by all civil government, and even if all the best aspirations of Hamilton, Jay, and Madison were realized, if we do not submit to Christ, we just make a different type of cesspool than the one we've got now.

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Faithfully adhering to the tenets of liberty without knowing, honoring, and serving the savior who liberates, that's idolatry.

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Faithfully stewarding our wealth according to sound economic philosophy would only change the kinds of sins we might have the resources to commit.

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Wise fiscal management without knowing and honoring and serving Shiloh, the one to whom the wealth of nations belongs, that would be idolatry.

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Responsibly caring for the lands, animals, and resources entrusted to us with an eye to our great -grandchildren has the genuine ring of wisdom.

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But doing all this without knowing and honoring and serving the one who has inherited all the universe as his rightful possession, that's just plain foolish idolatry.

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Liberty, wealth, and the earth belong to Christ. And none of the gods or the goddesses of our world are anything but a fog and light show put on by raging nations, a vain plot by people who would cast off any restraint, deny any obligation to Jesus Christ, who is king of kings.

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And we have to be clear that that kind of idolatry is ripe for God's wrath. We ought to clarify that there's a difference between standing for what are good and healthy and right things under the submission and headship of Jesus Christ versus clinging to those things and making them our

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Savior, making them our Christ. There's a clear distinction between those two things.

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As we look at the remnant of the Jews in Egypt, as they are being addressed by Jeremiah, God's man.

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This is the focus that God brings upon this people, that they were idolatrous in their worship.

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They did not give God the glory that he deserved. They were exchanging that glory for a lie, worshiping and serving the creature rather than the creator.

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And this is why they were so susceptible to the fear of death. This is why they were so susceptible to the fear of man.

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This is why they went running down to Egypt rather than staying in the promised land. Because they were full of idolatry.

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But if they were full of the fear of the Lord, they would be freed from that slavery. They would be freed from that snare.

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And they would have remained right smack dab in the middle of the blessings of God no matter what the situation is.

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Now look, if we rightly criticize civil leaders for pretending like the

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Bill of Rights and so on don't really apply to pandemics, we ought to be all the more seeing that we should remove the log out of our own eye before we remove the speck out of somebody else's eye.

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We ought to be all the more critical of ourselves and remind ourselves of the truths of the scriptures, the sovereignty of God, the power of God, the purpose of Jesus Christ in the church.

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All these things that we hold near and dear to ourselves in times when pestilence is not the headline still apply even now to us.

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Let's pray together. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us in your word. Lord, it is clear that you know exactly how we tend to think and the things we struggle with.

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Just like these Jews did when they ran down to Egypt.

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You knew what message they needed to hear. That you knew exactly what needed to be said. And even if they wouldn't hear you,

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Father, you knew. This is a word for all generations. It's a word for those living in exile in Babylon.

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It's a word for those who had returned to the land after the exile.

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It was a word for the people of the Jews growing up in the promised land during the time of Christ.

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Jesus learned these very words. It's a word for us today that we should fear you rather than death or man.

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And that our worship should be of you, not of something else. Father, I pray that you would give us joy as we work these truths out in our lives today and this week.

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That we would purpose ourselves to worship and glorify you as you deserve.

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We pray these things for the sake of Christ. The peace of God, our heavenly

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Father, and the grace of Christ, the risen

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Son. And the fellowship of God the

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Spirit, keep our hearts and minds within his love.

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And to him be praise for his glorious reign.

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From the depths of love to the heights of heaven, we declare the name of the

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Lamb once slain, Christ eternal, the

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King of kings. May this peace which passes,

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Christ eternal, the King of kings.

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Well, may the love of the Father and the grace of the Son and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all until next time.