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Peace and peace to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.
Lord Jesus Christ, welcome to the corporate worship of our great God. Please stand. Oh come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord, our maker, for he is our God. And we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.
Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers tested me. They tried me, though they saw my work. For forty years I was grieved with that generation and said, It is a people who go astray in their hearts, and they do not know my ways.
So I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. May we, the people of God, not be those who grieve him and his spirit, but that we would fully commit ourselves to following him in everything. Come now, let us worship him.
Please pray with me. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with great joy we come into your presence. Our hearts filled with thanksgiving because of Christ and his salvation, his grace, his mercy for us. Oh Lord, we pray that you would attend our prayers, that our worship would be pleasing in your sight, oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. I'm going to ask you to kneel for the corporate confession of sin. Let us now confess our sins in unison. Oh Father, we are gathered before you. Amen. Please stand.
When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who are under the law, so that we might receive the adoption as sons. Oh people of God, if you be in Christ, take heart today and rejoice.
In him you have the forgiveness of sins. Amen. What a fitting song to sing in light of this. We have a great king and he ought to be worshipped. Let us sing hymn number two, Oh Worship the King, together.
Number two, Oh Worship the King.
I ask you to take the insert, and it's going to be on the inside of the fold.
Find Psalm 19, a tremendous psalm. A psalm that is familiar to us if you've been here for some time. This was one of the first psalms of the month that we had the privilege of singing together. So I'm going to ask Alyssa to play it through one time to bring this to remembrance.
Let's sing with great joy Psalm 19.
The goodness of God to convince us that we should be a psalm singing church.
Imagine 100 or 200 years of a congregation singing the psalms. What that would mean for the kingdom. Please remain standing for the reading of the word from Hebrews in chapter 5. Chapter 5, the word of the Lord.
For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can't have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness.
Because of this, he is required, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer sacrifices for sins. And no man takes his honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not glorify himself to become high priest, but it was he who said to him, you are my son, today I have begotten you.
As he became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him, called by God as his high priest, according to the order of Melchizedek, of whom we have much to say and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God. And you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.
But solid food belongs to those who are full of age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us confess our common Christian faith with the saints by singing the Apostles' Creed.
Please take up the Trinity Hymnal once more and turn to number 689.
Be still, my soul. 689.
Let's pray together in unison.
Almighty and everlasting God, in whom we live, especially do we praise you for having delivered us from the dangers and uncertainties of this past week, humbly beseeching you to accept this, our morning sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, for his sake who lay down in the grave and rose again for us, your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us, granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. Amen. I ask your prayers for God's people throughout the world, for our denomination, the Covenant Presbyterian Church, for this church, and for all ministers and missionaries.
Pray for the church. Lord, hear our prayer. I ask your prayers for the poor, the sick, the bereaved, for the burdened and for the widows, orphans, and prisoners. Pray for those in any need or trouble.
Lord, hear our prayers. I ask your prayers for those who do not know Christ and for all of those who seek a deeper knowledge of him. Pray that they may find and be found by him.
Lord, hear our prayers. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you that you are a God of grace and mercy and that you hear the prayers of your people. I pray that today your kingdom would grow and expand as the gospel goes out today across the world, that many would be saved and brought into the body of Christ.
I pray that those who seek a deeper knowledge of him, all those who are gathering today when the gospel is preached, that we would grow in the knowledge of Christ our Lord. I pray for covenant faithfulness in families who are raising children, that the children, all the days of their life, especially here in Ascension, would love God and honor him.
Christ, let me pray. Amen.
I ask your prayers for our children and future generations which will be born to them. Pray that the knowledge of the Lord will fill the earth through them.
Lord, hear our prayers.
You are God to our children. We pray, Lord, that for your glory, by your grace, by the operation of your Spirit, that our children would become thousands and ten thousands, that they would possess the gate of their enemies, that you would use them to push back the gates of hell on earth, that they would do this through holy living by the proclamation of your gospel.
And we pray, Lord, that you would grant us, in this generation, faithfulness, that we would not do away with the duties you've given us as parents and elders and aunts and uncles. We ask this all in Jesus' name.
Pray that we may have grace to glorify Christ in our own day.
We glorify you in your name. We serve you as a face upon Christ. We would follow him. No matter where he calls us to go. Amen. Please stand again.
And we are singing for the last time as the Psalm of the Month for April, Psalm 22. I want to sing it heartily unto the Lord. Please turn in your Bibles to Zechariah and Chapter 11. The Book of Zechariah, the next-to-last book of the Old Testament, in Chapter 11.
This is God's holy and infallible word. Open your doors, O Lebanon, that fire may devour your cedars. Wail, O Cyprus, for the cedar has fallen, because the mighty trees are ruined. Wail, O oaks of Bashan, for the thick forest has come down.
There is the sound of wailing shepherds, for their glory is in ruins. There is the sound of roaring lions, for the pride of the Jordan is in ruins. Thus says the Lord my God, feed the flock for slaughter, whose owners slaughter them and feel no guilt.
Those who sell them say, Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich, and their shepherds do not pity them. For I will no longer pity the inhabitants of the land, says the Lord, but indeed I will give everyone into his neighbor's hand, into the hand of his king.
They shall attack the land, and I will not deliver them from their hand. So I fed the flock for slaughter, in particular the poor of the flock. I took for myself two staffs, the one I called Beauty, and the other I called Bonds, and I fed the flock.
I dismissed the three shepherds in one month. My soul loathed them, and their soul also abhorred me. Then I said, I will not feed you. Let what is dying die, and what is perishing perish. Let those that are left eat each other's flesh.
And I took my staff, Beauty, and cut it in two, that I might break the covenant which I had made with all the peoples. So it was broken on that day. Thus the poor of the flock who were watching me knew that it was the word of the Lord.
And I said to them, If it is agreeable to you, give me my wages, and if not, refrain. So they weighed out for my wages thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, Throw it to the potter, that princely price they set on me.
So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw it into the house of the Lord for the potter. Then I cut into my other staff bonds, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. And the Lord said to me, Next take for yourself the implements of a foolish shepherd.
For indeed, I will raise up a shepherd in the land who will not take care for those who are cut off, nor seek the young, nor heal those that are broken, nor feed those that still stand. But he will eat the flesh of the fat and tear their hooves into pieces.
Woe to the worthless shepherd who leaves the flock. A sword shall be against his arm and against his right eye. His arm shall completely wither, and his right eye shall be totally blinded. May the Lord be pleased with our consideration of his most excellent word.
Please pray with me. O Lord, we cry out to you for help this most difficult chapter. We pray that your spirit would provide illumination and unction and power and comfort and conviction. But most of all, O Lord, we seek the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
May he be magnified and exalted in our hearts today. We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. Brethren, we have before us the most difficult, probably, chapter in the Old Testament to interpret. And I've questioned my life decisions these last couple of weeks, knowing this is coming.
Today, we are going to focus only on the first three verses, and I hope to have two additional messages in chapter 11 the following two weeks. So you have to be here for each of the lessons for all of this to make sense.
Today, I have a single point for you to consider if you're taking notes. I'd like you to write this down. And that is this. The future desolation of Israel. One point. The future desolation of Israel.
The title of the message today is Wailing Shepherds. And this section is a poetic lament regarding the future desolation of Israel. Now, what's so startling about the language of chapter 11 is this. We've been cruising on the grace of God, the mercy of God, his covenant promises, his deliverance of his people.
They've been brought back into the land. There's a promised king, all of this wonderful thing about a hope and a future. Residing and centered on the person and work of Christ. But now we have this. What is this about a completely different shift in tone and perspective?
The promise here is that one day Israel is going to be destroyed. How can it be? He's kept his promises. He's delivered them again and again. He's just recently brought them out of captivity. How can he plunge them into nonexistence in the future?
That's what happens. The future desolation of Israel. Well, let's look at the first three verses. Then I'm going to do some page turning today, unfortunately. But it's going to be required for us to set the stage for us to understand all of chapter 11.
Open your doors, O Lebanon, that fire may devour your cedars. Lebanon was known for and is still known for her cedars. Beautiful, strong, majestic trees. This is the stuff that is used to build David's kingly house.
It was the wood portion of the temple. They used cedar. It's an emblem, a picture of strength. If you know your geography of this part of the world, Lebanon is basically the northern border, just over the northern border of Israel.
Israel's oppressors and attackers have often come from the north, coming down from Lebanon. We've already seen that language here in Zechariah. They would come from this direction in their military campaigns.
They would begin to pick off Israel's little army on the way down from the north to the south. The Jews themselves thought they were strong by reason of their mountain, Mount Zion, their fortifications, their temple built with the cedars of Lebanon.
They felt that no enemy now could come and hurt them. The Lebanese themselves, the people of Syria, were very much convinced that their hilly terrain and their cedars would prevent any foreign invader to come upon them.
It would be impossible to climb through the thickets of their forest to get to them. Here the prophetic word, this poetic lament is, Open your doors, O Lebanon, that fire may devour your cedars. When God sends the enemies to harass his people, it's already happened historically.
It's going to happen in a monumental, decisive way in the destruction of the temple in A .D. 70. The fortifications, the doors, the gates will be thrown open to receive their destruction. I don't know if you know anything about the history of the siege of Jerusalem in A .D. 70.
The final straw that broke the camel's back was the people inside Jerusalem, inside the walls, are starving, and they throw open the gates. Rome comes in, General Titus comes in, and ravages the city, killing at least a million Jews.
Taking into captivity 97 ,000, or thereabouts, into captivity, and this decisive death blow to national Israel as we knew it. The language here of cedars in Lebanon is picturesque of the language of the leaders and the shepherds, who are the focal point of this section of Israel.
They have all of the accoutrements of power and strength. Think of the Sanhedrin in the time of Jesus, allowed to have sovereignty over Jewish affairs under Roman occupation. But what about the power of the Sanhedrin in A .D. 70?
It came to nothing. All the political maneuvering they were doing, all the things they were hoping to accomplish, all of their plans and purposes are overturned in an instant. The fires of God's judgment and wrath come upon the wicked rulers.
This is the wicked magistrate, and this is the wicked priesthood. It flows downhill from there. If the cedars don't hold, if the cedars, which are such an impenetrable fortress, don't stand, what will become of the fir tree?
Look at verse 2, or the cypress. I don't know if you guys know this, but I prefer the fir tree interpretation of this language. The shape of the cypress and the fir tree are very similar. What we know to be the cypress may not be what they know to be the cypress, but cypress usually requires a lot of water.
We have those here in Florida. But the point is this. If it's a fir tree, have you ever seen a Christmas tree burn? Put the Christmas tree in the fire, and that thing blows up. So the picture, the imagery here is the slow burn of the cedars.
They're toppled, they're taken over, they're defeated. What will become of the fir trees? If the cedar has fallen, what will become of the lesser powers? The mighty trees are ruined. There's also a picture here, geographically.
If we had time to go through a map, sometime we could talk about this. It's very interesting. If you look at the language and the order, this desolation travels like it has done in previous times, from north to south.
That's just how the Roman army proceeded into Jerusalem, beginning first in AD 66, and concluding in that final big campaign in AD 70. The cedars are devoured with fire, the cypress are exploded, the fir trees are blown up, the mighty trees are ruined.
The traveling army of God's judgment comes down, and it comes to the Sea of Galilee. The cry of the prophet here is, Wail, O Oaks of Bashan, because down on the eastern side of Galilee, they're going to be defeated.
The oaks are pretty strong, too, but the thick forest has come down. If the strong men are destroyed, the weaker men are not able to resist. If Lebanon's cedars are toppled, if the fir trees burn up, what will become of the oaks of Bashan?
The thick forest, it says, has come down. There is the sound of wailing shepherds, for their glory is in ruins. There is the sound of roaring lions, for the pride of the Jordan is in ruins. If you travel down the map from the Sea of Galilee in the east, you come to the Jordan River, and it flows all the way down into the Dead Sea.
The other side, just beyond the bottom of the Dead Sea, to the east, to the west, I should say, would be places at the top of Bethlehem. All those kinds of sites are very important in the life of Jesus.
Most of his ministry is up in the north. When you go to the south, you run into the border down south. So what we have here in this poetic lament is the utter desolation of Israel. Now, you have to believe me on this, because we're going to learn more about this in the coming weeks.
That is what is happening here in Zechariah 11, 1 through 3. But I have to instruct you in something else. What is a lament? A lament is a prayer that expresses sorrow, confusion, pain, loss, all of those kinds of things.
I was thinking about this this week, and I think one of the reasons we're in such a place and state in our culture, when it comes to mental illness and depression and all these things, is we have not adopted God's way of dealing with grief.
We've adopted the ways of the world. We are to be a lamenting people. We never want to have a message that doesn't have a perfect, happy, rosy bow tied on top. We don't ever want to leave the church building without being encouraged.
We're going to have some encouragement today. But the message today is one of lament. Lament is the way, the chief way that Christians are to express grief in the presence of God. I don't know that we know how to grieve.
Maybe the Lord will help us today. Here are some of the elements or important elements of lament with a psalm reference first. In order to lament, we need to turn to the Lord. Psalm 4 says, Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness.
You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. Whenever anything befalls you, I urge you to run and turn and seek the Lord's face. Turn to him with all of your grief and all of your trouble.
Don't try to come up with a man-made solution and your own resources to come up with a way to fix this problem. We as the people of God, when we encounter trials and afflictions and difficulties, our first impulse must be to turn to the Lord.
Answer me, cry out to him, say, O God, will you hear my prayer? You're my God. You're my righteousness. You have given me relief in the past when I was in distress. O Lord, be gracious to me and hear my prayer.
That's how we should turn to the Lord. Second, and this sounds dangerous, we are to bring our complaints to the Lord. But be careful with this because in our complaining, we have to make sure we have it right.
The thing that we're upset about, Psalm 94 says, O Lord, how long shall the wicked prosper? That's something you can pray. The Lord will accept that prayer of lament. Third, and this is the part that starts to get very exciting and very optimistic.
This is the stages of grief that we should be following. Third, in our asking, we should ask with great boldness. You and I are now compelled by Christ to boldly approach his throne of grace. Hebrews 4, 16, because we are united to Christ, we run into the throne room of God because we're accepted there because we belong to Christ.
There is no timidity in us because we are his. We run in, we we burst the door open. We ask with great boldness, always with reverential fear and awe. But we we come in with boldness because of Christ.
Psalm 17 arise, O Lord. Confront him, subdue him. Deliver my soul from the wicked by your sword. From men by your hand. We implore our God appealing to his character. Any healthy lament involves this intercessionary component.
And finally, it's so difficult for many of us. The fourth element of lament is trust. The teleological end of lament is trust. So calamity has fallen upon us. We turn to the Lord. We bring our cause, our complaint to the Lord.
We air it out with him. We say we don't like how you're doing this. Oh, God. And he corrects us because we're wrong. But we say, why are the wicked prospering? He hears our prayer. We ask boldly for deliverance.
That will be Christ exalting and edifying to the church. Largely larger than us. And that'd be beneficial for our own growth and godliness. And then we have to trust. The end of this all is trust. We cling to the steadfast love and turn finally to him and hope.
Psalm 31 says, I trust in you, O Lord. I say, you are my God. Now, what about the desolation of Israel? How can there be a desolation of Israel? Chapter 9, we have the promise of the triumphal entry of Christ.
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. He is just and having salvation. He's lowly and riding on a donkey. Occult, the foal of the donkey.
He shall speak peace to the nations. His dominion shall be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. How can there be desolation coming to Israel? Well, the simple answer is, Israel is going to follow her historic pattern.
And she's not going to accept the great shepherd, the good shepherd. She's going to reject Christ. Now, I want to show you how Zechariah 11. We got some really amazing stuff coming up. I don't know if you caught the 30 shekels of silver reference.
It's very big. But I want you to think about this. We have the arrival of the Lord Jesus Christ. The triumphal entry in Chapter 9. The glorious promises being meted out in Chapter 10 in some measure. And now we have, like, the door slammed on all of this blessing, it seems, in Chapter 11.
There is a beautiful chronology of this that works itself out in redemption. Where we are today is that place where the shepherd has come to Israel. And she's not heeded him. In order to illustrate this, I'd like to turn first to Matthew Chapter 21.
Please turn to Matthew 21 with me. Matthew 21, Matthew 23, and Psalm 79 are going to help us understand the hardest chapter in the Old Testament. Matthew Chapter 21. We'll begin reading in verse 33 of Matthew 21.
And what's going to happen in Zechariah 11 is we're going to learn something about Zechariah. And Zechariah is going to, like who he's prophesied about, Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest. Zechariah himself is going to, in action, become a type of Christ in this section of Zechariah.
He's going to appoint a vineyard owner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country. Now, when vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the vinedressers that they might receive its fruit.
And the vinedressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first, and they did likewise to them. Then last of all, he sent his son to them, saying, they will respect my son.
Apostate Israel is not going to respect the son, the son of God. Their judgment is deserved. Verse 38, when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.
So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers? Jesus is anticipating his own betrayal and death.
He's also outlining what's going to happen to the unfaithful shepherds, to the leaders, and all the people whom they lead who follow the false leaders, the false shepherds. What is the answer that the apostles give?
Verse 41, the owner comes. What's he going to do with the wicked vinedressers? They said to him, he will destroy those wicked men miserably and lease his vineyard to other vinedressers who will render him the fruits in their seasons.
Jesus said to them, have you never read in the scriptures, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone? This was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.
Whoever falls on the stone will be broken, but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder. Now the chief priests and Pharisees heard his parables. They perceived what he was saying of them. But then when they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitudes because they took him for a prophet.
I should point out to you that Zechariah is one of the prophets who gets beaten and killed in the vinedresser analogy. Let's put it to the test. Turn over to Matthew chapter 23. Matthew 23, I appreciate your patience.
We'll begin reading in verse 13. Describes in the Pharisees discern in Matthew 21 that the judgments that Jesus is pronouncing, according to his understanding. They understood him to say that those judgments were going to fall on them.
That's what Jesus says in Matthew 23. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. For you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte. And when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing.
But whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it. Fools and blind, for which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing.
But whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it. Fools and blind, for which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and all things on it.
He who swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And he who swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits on it. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith.
These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. Blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence.
Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish that the outside of them may be made clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly but inward, are full of dead men's bones in all uncleanness.
Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the mountains of the righteous and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.
The covenant lawsuit has a lot of evidence. Verse 31, therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up them the measure of your father's guilt.
Jesus is saying, the Pharisees are welling up the full measure of the guilt of the apostatizing rebellious Jews, their forefathers, who rejected God. There's always been a faithful remnant. This is addressing those who are breaking covenant with him.
Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth.
Now, I want you to listen carefully. The weight of judgment is going to fall heavy on apostate Israel. From the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Barakiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. I am making an interpretive stand that this is Zechariah, our prophet. 2 Chronicles 24 speaks of another Zechariah, probably 150 to 200 years before.
He's not described as Zechariah, the son of Barakiah is. If we were to go back to Zechariah 1 .1, it says, Zechariah, the son of Barakiah. Zechariah is going to be the last martyr of the Old Covenant testamental period.
You could argue that John the Baptist would be the first of the transition period during the time of Jesus, the first of the New Covenant martyrs in one sense. All of the weight of Israel's apostasy has been building like a snowball running down the hills of Lebanon.
And what's going to come on apostate Israel is all the righteous blood shed on earth and its consequences from the blood of righteous Abel, from A to Z, to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barakiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. I favor, of course, this being the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, in Israel's desolation. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones who are sent to her.
How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. See, your house is left to you desolate. For I say to you, you shall see me no more till you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Zechariah is talking about Jesus, and he's talking about Matthew 21, and Matthew 23, and Matthew 24. That's what Zechariah is talking about in chapter 11. God sent the prophets to Jerusalem, but they were mistreated, and some of them were even killed.
In these last days, God has sent his son. Surely, they're going to hear him, but they killed him as well. But the killing of the son, our Lord Jesus Christ, turns out to be our salvation. This is amazing stuff.
Pray the Lord will help us as we begin to get deeper into chapter 11. There's more exciting things to come. I have a couple of words of application for you here we're gonna conclude. Though God himself has promised deliverance for his people, he continually throughout scripture has warned us as people against falling away.
One of the cruel ironies of our section is the Pharisees probably sang the biblical laments, the Psalms, like Psalm 79. I didn't have time to read that. It's a great song in connection to this. And they didn't realize that they themselves were the wicked ones.
So they're singing joyfully, God, you're going to punish the wicked, and they themselves are the wicked ones. The application for us is that we would never be the subject of lament, that we would be lamenting over our sins individually as families, as churches, that we would not even suffer a communal lament.
The judgment of God, we must make it our aim to not fall away. The people of God have been prone to wander and to fall away. Our churches are in the verge of apostasy in our age. Many of them have gone over, but many who were formerly faithful, they're on the way to apostasy, and judgment, and condemnation.
May it never be said of us, we will remain true, we will remain faithful to all he's commended. Secondly, God's truth in every age is unpopular. And his prophets are always condemned. The servants aren't greater than their masters.
If you don't have the steel will and the determination and the backbone to stand in the face of opposition, you better grow that and get it now. For us to stand and make a stand for Christ, we're gonna suffer many blows.
We have to be resilient, strong men, women, and children to endure whatever the enemies shoot at us. The believing remnant, third, is always saved. Do you know, the people who believed in Jesus Christ, they understood their times, and Rome started making its incursions into Jerusalem in 8066.
They left with the gospel. They weren't there. The streets were not filled with their blood, cuz they followed their master. They heard the good shepherd's voice, and they followed him. The believing remnant, hallelujah, praise the Lord.
That's us if we believe, we're gonna be saved. He's gonna preserve us from every danger. Finally, fourth, a very basic covenant renewal before we participate in the covenant renewal in our worship. Are you willing to say, and really profoundly, deeply, and sincerely mean it, as for me and my house, you'll serve the Lord.
No quarter to the enemy, no compromise, no vacillation, no moving to the left or to the right. We are fixed and determined to be alive and only follow Christ. Are you determined to be that kind of person?
Is that gonna be your family? Is that gonna be the legacy of your family? Is that gonna be the legacy of your elders in this church? As for us, as for our house, for me, this church, we're gonna follow the Lord.
That's some of the takeaway I think we should carry into this week. And I'm eager and looking forward to continuing our study in Zechariah 11. Please pray with me now. Lord, we thank you for the hard passages of scripture.
We thank you for the prophetic word of Zechariah that talks about the blessing of the king's arrival. And he also talks about the rejection of the king. And Lord, we read it in the pages of the New Testament.
It's exactly what happened. Thank you for the clarity you provide to us, your people, the church. Lord, I pray that you would teach us to be a lamenting people, that we would properly grieve over sin, personal, family, church, national.
But that we'd always end in hope and trust because you are our God. And Lord, I pray that you would not allow desolation to come to this church or all the faithful churches in our land and in the world, that you'd enable us to flourish and thrive because we are singularly in allegiance to you.
I ask these things in Jesus' name.
Let us continue our worship through the presentation of our tithes and offerings. Please stand and let us pray. Our gracious God and Father, you have promised to meet all of our needs. But thankfully, Lord, you have not only met all of our needs, but you have greatly exceeded them.
Our cup runs over, and we are so thankful, Lord, that we can, as part of our worship to you, render back for the service of your local congregation a portion of what you have given us. We pray, dear Father, that as we have given, we have done so freely and joyfully, and that we pray that these gifts, which are given to the service of the local congregation, would be used wisely.
We pray for this in the name of Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen. As we've heard preached the great promise keeping God, let us glorify him by singing the Gloria Patri.
The Lord be with you. And also with you. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord. It is right and a good and joyful thing that we should, at all times and in all places, give thanks to you, Holy Lord, Father Almighty, Everlasting God. Because you sent your beloved son to redeem us from sin and death, and to make us heirs in him of everlasting life.
That when he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, we may, without shame or fear, rejoice to behold his appearing. Therefore, with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we praise and magnify your glorious name, evermore praising you and singing.
Please be seated and let us pray. God, the father of all mercies, and God of all consolation, grant your gracious presence and effectual working of your spirit in us. And so to sanctify these elements both of bread and wine, and to bless your own ordinance, that we may receive by faith the body and blood of Jesus Christ, crucified for us.
And so to feed upon him, that he may be one with us, and we one with him, and that he may live in us, and we in him. And for him, who has loved us and given himself for us, we ask this in his name, amen.
On the night in which our Lord was betrayed, he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, take, eat. Do this. Likewise, after supper, he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he said, this cup is the cup of the new covenant in my blood.
As often as you drink it, do so in remembrance of me. As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Therefore, we proclaim the faith. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ.
Let us pray together. We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table, but you are the same Lord who always shows mercy.
Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear son, Jesus Christ, and to drink of his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us, amen.
Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.
Therefore, let us keep the feasts.
The gifts of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Spiritually, we have been fed physically at the table. Now let us make this prayer of commitment together. Almighty and ever-living God, we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of your son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
And for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the body of your son and heirs of your eternal kingdom. And O Lord, grant us this other benefit, that you will never allow us to forget these things.
But by having them imprinted on our hearts, may we grow in anchor. Now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. To him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit, the honor and the glory, now and forever.
Amen. Please stand. Receive now the blessing. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Amen.
