Hope During Political Madness

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to the 45th chapter of the prophet Isaiah.
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If you want to stick a bookmark in Romans 1, you may.
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You notice on our overhead we have, it says Romans 1 next to Isaiah 45.
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I'm going to be making references to Romans 1 and quite possibly looking at it towards the end of the message, but I just wanted to make it part of, make it known that it's part of our study today, because these two passages are going to flow together in the theme of what I want to say.
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On September the 8th, 1861, Charles Spurgeon preached a message on the sovereign purpose of God in all things.
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The reason why he preached that particular message on that particular Sunday was because the week preceding that Sunday, there were two terrible railroad accidents that had occurred near his church.
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They both took the lives of many people.
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And when the news hit that so many people had died so tragically, so close to home, the masses of people were disturbed and many looked to the church for comfort.
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And it reminds us that there are times when it is incumbent upon the minister of the gospel to speak to the age and to the issues of the age.
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Spurgeon was not one who preached verse by verse.
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It's interestingly that he's held up as the high standard of preaching, because oftentimes we think of men like MacArthur and others who preach verse by verse of the Scripture.
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So it wasn't uncommon that Spurgeon would move from passage to passage as he preached his messages.
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And he did at times use the events of the day as the background or the focus for the reason for whatever it was he was preaching.
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Some men don't do that.
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Some men will never deviate from whatever it is they're preaching to deal with a particular issue or topic.
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They just go straight through books, and God bless them for their tenacity.
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But it is my desire today to break from what we had been doing, which was an exposition of Acts, to look at the subject matter of our day.
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And while we might say, well, this is not a train wreck, I can't imagine someone looking at our particular political climate and describing it in much of any other way.
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We are facing a severe challenge as believers and as a nation for our integrity, for our fidelity to God, for our confidence at all in our leaders.
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And what do we do? Well, today we're going to look at the subject of the sovereignty of God.
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The title of the message is, God will still be on His throne Wednesday.
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And you might be saying to yourself, I have seen that title before.
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Yes, you have.
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Four years ago, I preached the same message.
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Of course, if you listen to the two side by side, they'll be different.
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They always are.
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But four years ago, the title of the sermon was, God will still be on His throne Wednesday.
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And it was an exposition of Isaiah 46.
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Why this message? Why this passage? Well, I hope you'll see in time why.
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I will say this, though.
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This is not the reason.
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It is not because we're voting for the 45th president.
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Some people say, well, Isaiah 46 talks about Cyrus, and Cyrus is the 45th.
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I'm not making any claims to some type of extra-biblical, numerological, prophetic utterance this morning.
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I'm going to Isaiah 45 because this is, in fact, the place where God declares that He will have His way in history.
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And if you are concerned about Tuesday and the results of Tuesday and what they're going to be, I understand your concern.
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Just this last week, a major Christian city over in the Middle East was overtaken by Muslims.
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And Christians are, even today, being beheaded for their faith.
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It's happening right now.
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I share your concerns about what could be in our nation, what could come as a result of a lack of fortitude, a lack of leadership, a lack of standing for truth.
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I share those concerns.
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But you must always understand, and this is my heart for you today as a pastor, as one who loves you, and as one who has been called and commissioned to preach the gospel to you, if we do not have confidence that God is sovereignly working out His will, even in the things that make us concerned, then we have no reason for our hope.
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Our hope cannot be in our government.
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Our hope cannot be in a presidential candidate.
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Our hope cannot be in senators or governors or Supreme Court justices.
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Our hope must be in Christ.
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And so today, I want us to find, again, our reason for our hope.
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Can we stand and we'll read Isaiah 45? Not the whole chapter, but we are going to read some specific passages.
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We're going to read verses 1 through 13, and then we're going to jump down to verse 22.
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Thus says the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him, and to loose the belt of kings, to open doors before him, that gates may not be closed.
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I will go before you, and level the exalted places.
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I will break into pieces the doors of bronze, and cut through the bars of iron.
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I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hordes in secret places, that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by name.
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For the sake of my servant Jacob and Israel, my chosen, I call you by your name.
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I name you, though you do not know me.
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I am the Lord, and there is no other.
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Beside me there is no God.
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I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me.
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I am the Lord, and there is no other.
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I form light, and create darkness.
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I make well-being, and create calamity.
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I am the Lord, who does all these things.
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Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness.
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Let the earth open, that salvation and righteousness may bear fruit.
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Let the earth cause them both to sprout.
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I, the Lord, have created it.
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Woe to him who strives with him who formed him.
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A pot among earthen pots.
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Does the clay say to him who forms it, What are you making? Or your work has no handles? Woe to him who says to a father, What are you begetting? Or to a woman, With what are you in labor? Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and the One who formed him, Ask me of things to come.
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Will you command me concerning my children and the work of my hands? I made the earth and created man on it.
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It was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their hosts.
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I have stirred up in righteousness, and I will make all his ways level.
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He shall build my city and set my exiles free, not for price or reward, says the Lord of hosts.
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Verse 22.
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Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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And Lord, you know that this week I have given much thought to these words and sought to find within them what you would have me to say.
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I pray that I would be faithful to the text and not engage in error or in fruitless speech.
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I pray that I would not mishandle or misuse the text for political benefit, but to simply speak what your word has to say.
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I pray, Lord, for your people, open hearts that they might believe your word, open minds that they might understand your word, and for the unbeliever, as many of there may be among us, Lord, that they might be called to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, outside of whom there is no salvation and in whom there is no condemnation.
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And it's in his name.
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Amen.
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Most people, when I talk to them about history, are quite ignorant of history as far as dates and names and things.
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Some people study and some people really seek to know history, but in general, when you make a conversation with someone, they might know the last 50 years or the last 100 years or even the last 200 years, the birth of America and whatnot.
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But when you start going back to the Middle Ages or to the first millennium after Christ, and you start talking about those times, you really begin to see that people sort of float things together.
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They don't know what happened or when it happened.
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It really doesn't seem to matter much.
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Some people don't believe that anything really matters until they were born.
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Some people believe that this generation is all that matters because it's theirs.
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You know? And when thinking about this week and thinking about what I wanted to say, I really got to thinking about history.
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History is a great teacher regarding our confidence in what God can and will do.
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And when we look back to the prophets and we look to Isaiah and the other prophets, oftentimes we read their words, and we don't really have a sense of the history that they're speaking from because we weren't there.
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And even if we look at a timeline and we say, okay, here's Adam and here's Noah and here's Abraham and here's Moses and here's David and Solomon, and then those who came after, the kings of the north and the kings of the south.
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And so we look at those kingdoms, and then we see, okay, there was a time where they went into exile, and then there was a time they were brought back from exile.
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And we sort of look at that timeline and it sort of becomes sort of unreal because we're just looking at numbers on a page with a big line.
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But something I want you to understand today is sort of what we call the existential reality of Scripture.
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It's not existentialism, so don't confuse the two.
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But when I'm telling people how to read Scripture, when I'm teaching people how to read the Bible, because it seems like a simple thing, but really when you're teaching people how to read to understand, I say one of the things that you can do, and this actually R.C.
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Sproul taught me this in one of his lectures, was if you learn to read the Bible existentially, meaning that you learn to read the Bible understanding that these people existed at a certain time and a certain place, and such as like when you're reading the story of Abraham taking his son onto Mount Moriah, we can read that sort of cold and callous.
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Well, here's a man of God doing what God called him to do.
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Oh, how noble was he? But then you think, this is a real guy with a real son.
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You know, and if you read Genesis 22, Take your son, thy only son, whom thou lovest, and sacrifice him.
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And you stop for a moment, and you think it's a real guy, in a real world, in a real time, with a real knife, and a real block of wood, and a real torch.
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And it becomes very real.
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The reason why I mention all that to sort of start us out is because Isaiah lived at a particular time in history too.
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Isaiah lived some 800 years before the time of Jesus Christ.
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Cyrus also lived.
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Cyrus lived some 600 years before Christ.
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Now, I don't know how good you are at math, and I know I am not very good.
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But if you did a little math just now, you would realize that what I just said is Isaiah lived 200 years before Cyrus.
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And Cyrus was a real man.
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I mean, history tells us about Cyrus and his conquering of the Babylonians.
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There's even a thing called the Cyrus Cylinder.
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It's a clay cylinder that's been reconstructed by archaeologists, which talk about the things, the accomplishments of this man named Cyrus.
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And the things that he did.
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And he was considered very humanitarian in what he did, because he was willing to go in to these places where it had been captured.
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You remember the Babylonians had captured the Jews, and not just the Jews, but many other people groups, and had enslaved them, and had put them into exile from their nation, and had taken them into captivity.
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And here comes Cyrus, who obliterates that army, obliterates that nation, sets up his own rule, and he says, go home.
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You who have been put into exile, you're released.
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Now, and some people see Cyrus as a very genteel and loving character.
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I don't necessarily think he was genteel and loving.
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I think he saw this as the politically expedient thing to do, rather than keeping all these people fighting for freedom, and give them their freedom, and they will be allegianced to you.
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I mean, you give people freedom, and their allegiance is to their one who is the one who set them free from their oppression.
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Their liberator becomes their hero.
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And to many people, Cyrus is a hero of history.
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And in a way, he was.
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He set the captives free.
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And out of that, out of the story of Cyrus and the things that came, we get the story of Ezra, when you read the Old Testament, and then the story of Nehemiah, the rebuilding of the temple, and the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem, which had been obliterated by the Babylonians.
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So Cyrus has this important place in history, a real man at a real place at a real time.
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But what I'm trying to get across to you this morning is Isaiah writes about this guy by name.
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Two hundred years before he does what God says he's going to do.
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A hundred and fifty years before his birth, he is written about by name.
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This is one of the most specific verses of Scripture regarding prophecy that exists.
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In fact, in all of the passages about Jesus, and we often talk about what we call messianic prophecy.
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The Bible in the Old Testament is filled with prophecies about the coming of Jesus.
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We go back and we look at Psalms, and we see all through the Psalms references to the Messiah and what he's going to do.
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He's going to have his hands and feet pierced, surrounded by his enemies and these things, and his clothes are going to be taken off, and they're going to be casting lots for his clothes.
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It's all in the Psalms.
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We see this and it's filled in the New Testament.
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We see it's fulfillment.
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The book of Isaiah talks about the suffering servant, and Jesus Christ who would come, and he would be the Lamb of God who would be taking the sins of God's people.
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And God will smite him on behalf of his people.
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We know all of these references to Jesus, but not once does anywhere in the Old Testament say, and his name will be Jesus.
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In fact, it says his name will be Immanuel.
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But Immanuel is not a name.
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Immanuel is a title.
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God with us.
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That's what it was.
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That he shall be called Immanuel.
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And he was.
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Jesus was called Immanuel, God with us.
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So these prophecies about Jesus, while hugely important, never mention his name.
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Nowhere in the Old Testament does it say, and Jesus is coming.
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It would be nice if it did.
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I think it would be interesting if he did, but of course I'm not calling into question God's ability to be wise enough to write his own Bible.
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But when we come to the 45th chapter, actually the 44th because he's written in there as well, you see this reference to Cyrus by name.
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200 years before Cyrus will do any of this.
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And I don't know about you, but that's overwhelming.
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You know I've been sitting on that all week, just waiting to say it.
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I haven't thought about much else.
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As I was thinking about this, that's all that's said in this passage about what he's going to do.
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I'll go before you.
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I'll break into pieces the doors.
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I'll give you the treasures of darkness.
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I'm going to do this.
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And by the way, if you start at verse 2 and make your way down to verse 5, you'll see God saying, I'm going to do this.
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I'm going to do that.
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I'm going to do this.
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And we're going to talk about that in a minute because that's God's sovereignty at work.
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But I can't get past verse 1.
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Thus says the Lord to his anointed to Cyrus.
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This man doesn't even exist yet.
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Anywhere but in the mind of God.
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Now, later historians come along and they say, you know what? I don't believe Isaiah wrote this.
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Because it's too specific.
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And there are some people who call this the Deutero-Isaiah.
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Deutero meaning second.
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And they say, this was not the Isaiah of the 800's.
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This guy came along after Cyrus and he filled in the blanks.
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Might I tell you the only reason why anyone would believe that, it's not based on archeology or history.
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The only reason why anyone would believe that is because they don't believe that God can actually make a prophecy so specific.
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If you have trouble believing it, it's not because of history.
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It's not because of the text.
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It's because you have trouble believing in a God who can make the future what he wants it to be.
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And who can declare it.
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Go back to Isaiah 46 for a moment.
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We read this for our opening passage.
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But this passage, I tell you, every time I read this, I get little, like my heart is warmed by this passage.
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And it's not one of those, you know, Jesus loves the little children passages.
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And that's an important passage.
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That warms my heart as well.
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But this passage, Isaiah 46, verse 8.
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Remember this and stand firm.
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Recall it to your mind, you transgressors.
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Remember the former things of old.
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For I am God and there is no other.
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I am God and there is none like me declaring the end from the beginning.
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You can just stop right there.
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God knows the future.
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But do you understand that God knows the future not because He has a crystal ball in heaven that He can look into and see what's going to happen.
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God knows the future because He determines what will happen.
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He is the arbiter of history.
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Not the observer of history.
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The problem in the modern church is that we have turned God into a spectator.
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God knows what will happen because He has decreed what will come to pass.
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I want to read to you from a systematic theology textbook.
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Now don't go to sleep on me.
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This is good stuff.
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James Pettigrew Boyce wrote the first systematic theology textbook for the Southern Baptist Movement.
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This is it.
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This is obviously a copy.
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This isn't the one.
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But in writing this, he wrote about the decree of God.
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Because if you talk about, especially if you talk to Arminians, people who are not reformed, if you talk to them about the decree of God, they will bend over backwards and try to say, God, I don't know if God decrees everything.
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I don't like to think that God decrees bad things.
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I don't like to think of bad things.
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We can't lay those at God's feet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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I want you just to hear the way that someone much smarter than me put this.
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Because James Boyce, his writing is so clear and so beautiful.
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And I've read this to some of you before, but I just find this passage of this book very helpful.
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Because some people say, I don't like the term decree.
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I don't like to think that God decrees all things.
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This is what Jim Boyce says.
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The term decree is liable to some misapprehension and objection because it conveys the idea of an edict or some compulsory determination.
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Purpose has been suggested as a better word.
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Plan will sometimes be more suitable.
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The mere use of these words will remove from many some difficulties and prejudices which make them unwilling to accept this doctrine.
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They perceive that in the creation, preservation, and government of the world, God must have had a plan.
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And that that plan must have been just, wise, and holy, tending both to His own glory and the happiness of His creatures.
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They recognize that a man who has no purpose nor aim, especially in important matters, and who cannot and does not devise the means by which to carry out that purpose is without wisdom and capacity and unworthy of His nature.
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Consequently, they readily believe and admit that the more comprehensive and at the same time the more definite is the plan of God, the more worthy is it of infinite wisdom.
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Indeed, they are compelled to the conclusion that God cannot be what He is without forming such a purpose or plan.
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Beloved, if you say, I don't know about the decree of God, well, just change the word to God's plan if that helps you.
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But know this, if He has a plan, He's working that plan out.
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And if He has, because He has a plan, and because He's working that plan out, we can be confident in Him.
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You realize in a 200 year span of time, so many things that could have happened that Cyrus not even be born? What if Cyrus' great grandmother had been hit by a team of horses and she killed and Cyrus never come along? What if Cyrus would have gotten a disease at birth and died? You say, well, that couldn't have happened because it wasn't the plan of God.
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Well, that's my point.
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And if God had a plan for Cyrus, cannot we be confident that He too has a plan for us? And if God's plan was so meticulous in Cyrus, cannot we also be confident that His plan is meticulous for you and for this nation and for this world? And thus when we look this week and we say, oh, but what if this person or that person becomes the president? God will still be God and His plan will still prevail.
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Turn with me to Romans 1 if you will because I want to show you something else.
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In Romans chapter 1, the Apostle Paul is describing man in his nature as sinful.
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And he says in verse 18, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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Stop right there just for a moment.
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The very nature of man is not one of nobility.
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We talked about this last week in our look at Ephesians 2.
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Men are born dead in their trespasses and sins.
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They are by nature children of wrath.
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And thus when we come to this passage, it says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
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Do you know anyone who suppresses the truth? Do you ever suppress the truth? Look at the world around you.
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Look at how people treat the truth.
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They treat it as something to be hated.
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Truth is now called hate speech, right? The truth is something to be hated.
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It's something to be denied.
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It's something to be suppressed.
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It's something to be put under.
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We don't want the truth.
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So we suppress the truth.
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And how do we suppress it? We talked about this in Sunday School this morning because we looked at this passage.
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How do we suppress it? We suppress it in unrighteousness.
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We suppress it through unrighteous deeds.
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I mentioned this earlier.
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I'll mention it again.
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The teenage years and the early adulthood years are the times when we are becoming most familiar with our sense of ought.
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That sense of ought that is given to all men.
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You ought or you ought not do this or do that.
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And coincidentally, as if there were such a thing as coincidence, it is also the years of late teenage and early adulthood that the rise in drugs and drinking and sexual addiction all come into play.
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Because as we begin to feel the sense of ought and ought not, we look for those things which we can suppress those oughts and ought nots with.
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What do we call alcohol if not the great bringer of no inhibitions? So they say alcohol does, right? It removes all inhibitions.
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Well, what is an inhibition? It's your sense of ought telling you not to do such a thing.
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So I drink to suppress.
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I smoke the drug to suppress.
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I shoot the needle to suppress.
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I have the sex to suppress the ought in unrighteousness.
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And there is no satisfaction therein, so I return to the drink.
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I return to the needle.
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I return to the bed.
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I return because the suppression needs more and more and more.
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You say, Pastor, you took a hard left.
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You were talking about the sovereignty of God.
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This passage, Romans 1, is about the sovereignty of God because this is what he says.
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He says from verse 19 down to verse 23 that people know God, and not God in general.
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People know the true God.
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He says, For what can be known about God is plain to them.
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These people who are suppressing the truth.
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What can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them.
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His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.
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So they are without excuse.
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No person will ever face God and say, Well, I just didn't have enough information.
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God, I just didn't know that you were there.
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They will be without excuse.
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For although they knew God...
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Notice that.
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By the way, the next time somebody tells you that they're an atheist, you don't have to tell them that they're not telling you the truth, but know that they're not.
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Because they knew God.
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Although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him but because they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.
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Claiming to be wise, they became fools.
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Boy, if that doesn't just...
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Should that not be painted on academic walls today? The walls of the universities.
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Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
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And this is Paul's way of reminding us that men turn to idols as a way of suppressing the truth.
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They turn to something else to worship.
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Have you ever heard someone say, and you will hear this often, I don't believe in a God who will send someone to hell.
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And I say, that's because the God you believe in is an idol.
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You believe in a God that doesn't exist.
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You believe in a God that you've created in your own mind.
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You are an idolater.
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See, you don't have to take a chunk of wood and carve out a calf and overlay it with gold to make an idol.
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The most profound factory of idols is the human brain.
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It creates idol after idol.
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And we live in a land of idolatry.
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We live in a land that has replaced the God of Scripture with a deistic spirit that is in every way a lowercase g God.
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And we have decided to put His name on our money.
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And we have decided to put His name on our banners.
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But He is no different than Paul seeing that stone in Athens that said, To the unknown God.
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Because the people who today will say, I believe in God, know nothing of Him in their spirit.
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And they will turn Him every which way they choose.
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What happens as a result? The text tells us, Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever.
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Amen.
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What happens when a people turn from God? What happens when a people close their hearts to their Creator? What happens when a people see the created order and they turn their face from it and believe in something other than the God of Scripture? God gave them up.
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I don't know what God's plan is.
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But I know this.
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John Calvin made a statement that we mustn't forget.
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He said, When God chooses to judge a people, He gives them wicked rulers.
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When God chooses to judge a people, He gives them wicked rulers.
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People say, I can't imagine this person being president.
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They would bring with them the judgment of God.
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Know this.
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They are the judgment of God.
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We're not standing on the cusp of it, ladies and gentlemen.
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We are knee deep in it.
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We are there.
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We're not heading towards the cliff.
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We're hanging off the other side.
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I am not a bringer of bad tidings, but I am also not going to whisper sweet nothings in your ear.
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We kill 3,000 babies every day.
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And the blood of those children cry out from the ground.
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And we say, God bless America.
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Never without adding the words with repentance.
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Because unless we repent, unless we fall on our faces in sackcloth and ashes, we deserve nothing but the judgment of God.
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And if you don't like that, I am sorry.
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Because what way can you tell me, what way can you tell me that this culture has not turned its back on Him? You say, well, what about the churches? What about God's people? God's people were in Israel when Israel went into exile.
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You remember Daniel? And you remember his friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael.
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Not Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
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You know why? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was the names that the Chaldeans gave them so that they would try to lose their heritage, so that they would try to lose their faith.
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Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael, the names that referenced the God of Israel, that was their names.
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But we only remember them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
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They're Chaldean names.
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Will you maintain your faith when it's hard? Will you stand for your faith when the government will not protect you? Will you stand for truth when the lie is all that's being taught? This is very real for me.
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I have enough audio and video of myself proclaiming these things that I could easily be the target of anyone who wanted to call me a hate-monger, anti-Muslim, anti-gay.
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It's all out there, and I couldn't get it back if I wanted to.
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The love of God gave them up, but it's not final.
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I want to take you back to Isaiah now.
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Go back to Isaiah.
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We read all the way through verse 13, and I'm not going to try to take the time to give an exposition, but I want you to look at verse 22.
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Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is no other.
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Do you want hope today? Do you want comfort today? Because you might leave this place saying, boy, Pastor Schur kicked us in the gut today.
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Pastor Schur gave us a hard time today.
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He said our nation's gone to pot, we're under the judgment of God, and we're facing the judgment of God, and we're here, we're hanging off the cliff.
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Pastor Schur read us the right act today.
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Listen to me now.
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I can't give you any comfort about this election.
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I can't give you any comfort about our government.
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I can give you comfort in this.
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God is still God, and He is still working out His plan from the beginning, even up until now, and will continue.
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And if you will turn to Him, and if you will trust in Him, you will find a comfort that will see you through the most difficult times, through the most outlandish government, through the most difficult times of persecution.
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You will find a God who will be with you in the fire.
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You remember Hananiah, Azariah, Mishael, they were thrown in that fire.
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Why? Because they would not bow.
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What did they say to Nebuchadnezzar? He says, don't you understand what you're doing? Don't you understand that I have the power to throw you into the flame? What did they say? They said, whether we die or not, we will trust in God.
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Job said, though He slay me, I will trust in Him.
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That's the attitude.
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No matter what we face, no matter what may come, no matter who is president, if America shall stand or if she shall fall, God will still be God, for He is God and there is no other for now and forever.
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Turn to Him and find your hope and comfort in Him.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the truth.
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I pray that those under the sound of my voice would turn to You today.
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Lord, if they have tried to find their peace in political candidates, if they've tried to find their comforts in governmental systems, if they've tried to find their assurance in Supreme Court justices, Jesus God, may we repent of such idolatry and may we find our peace in You.
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Lord, I know there are unbelievers here today who might hear what I've said as the rantings of a madman.
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May You be gracious to them and open their hearts to understand that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved than that of Jesus Christ.
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For He is our Savior and our Lord and in Him is true comfort and peace, a peace which passes all understanding.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.
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Let's stand and sing and prepare our hearts for communion.