"Make Some Noise" Part 2

Jeremiah’s Judgment Oracle and the Call to Hear It

Old Testament book of Jeremiah and we're going to be in chapter 9 as we were last week. And we're going to begin our reading in a moment with verse 9. So Jeremiah chapter 9, beginning our reading in verse 9.

We are in a chapter that is very noisy. There's a lot of noise in Jeremiah chapter 9. There is wailing, there is chaos, there's a bunch of lying going on. There is a call to stop one kind of boasting and to start up another kind.

There are noises that should not be going on that are going on and noises that are missing. This chapter is a lot about noise. But ultimately, this chapter is about facing up to the truth that God is a holy God.

That God is a God who, the psalm says, has indignation to everyone, that he bends his bow, he makes his weapons of judgment ready, and that we need to accept the fact that he is a holy God and that we are a sinful people and deal with the God that we find revealed in the scriptures, not the God that we are in the process of inventing in our own society.

The symphony of God's judgment that takes place in our text this morning, and we need to take consideration of that. But as we read, it would be best for us, as we think about the holiness of God and the righteousness of God, as we think about his revelation of himself to mercifully warn, we give all the praise to Christ, beginning in verse 9.

Shall I not punish them for these things, declares the Lord? On a nation such as this, shall I not avenge myself? For the mountains I will take up a wailing and weeping, for the pastures of the wilderness a dirge, because they are laid waste so that no one passes through.

And the lowing of the cattle is not heard, but the birds of the sky and the beasts who fled, they are gone. I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without inhabitant.

Who is the wise man? Who is the wise man that may understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of the Lord has spoken that he may declare it? Why is the land ruined, laid waste like a desert, so that no one passes through?

The Lord said, Because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, nor walked according to it, but have walked after the stubbornness of their heart, and after the bales as their father taught them.

Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will feed them this food, and give them poisoned water to drink. I will scatter them among the nations whom neither they nor their fathers have known.

I will send the sword after them until I have annihilated them. And then if you'll skip down to verses 25 and 26. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, that I will punish all who are circumcised and yet uncircumcised, Egypt and Judah, Edom and the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all those inhabiting the desert who clip the hair on their temples.

For all the nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised of heart. Let's go to the Lord and ask for his help today, as we consider the truth of his word. Heavenly Father, so many times in a week and in a day, we sit before a mound of food that you have given to us, and we give you thanks.

We thank you, God, for the food that you have given to us. We ask you to bless it to the nourishment of our bodies. We ask that you would bless the hands that prepared it. We give you praise for giving us our daily bread, what we need, and ask that you would bless the outcome of our eating the food, giving ourselves into your hands time and time again.

Father, it is in this simple and trusting way that I ask that we would all come this morning. Father, that we look to you and we thank you for the food you have set before us. These scriptures, this word from your text, this living word, this sustenance for us.

Now, we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from your mouth, these words from the scriptures. Father, we need your help. You have prepared it. You have placed it before us. I ask that you would help us to eat it, to consume it, to chew on it, to meditate on it, to think about it.

I pray that you would bring it into our lives and that it would change us and you would make us evermore into the image of your son, Jesus Christ, recreating us, renewing us, making us into what is best for us, reflecting you and living for you.

This is our great hope. This is why we are here this morning. We ask that you would fulfill your promises to us, that your word would not return void, but accomplish the purpose for which you sent it.

We pray for these graces and we claim these promises all for the sake of Jesus Christ, with whom you are well pleased.

Amen.

The Noise of Judgment and the Problem of Hearing It

The 4th of July is great as holidays go. I really like 4th of July day. Flags are flying. Barbecues are fired up. Air smells good. Everything looks nice. Everyone, most everyone has some sort of time off or a day off or plans to celebrate, so everyone seems to be in a fairly good mood unless you're shopping.

And then comes July 4th evening. I don't mean to be a curmudgeon at my young age, but I find it hard to rejoice in mass civil disobedience, which occurs in my neighborhood. As people take their hard-earned money, stuff it full of black powder and light it on fire and explode the neighborhood over our heads again and again.

It's hard to sleep. Hard to get any rest. Hard to be nice and sweet in the morning. Isn't that right, honey? Sorry about that. What do I do? How do I cope? Well, as a father of five and some of them very young, I have learned that those big headphones that you use to shoot off your pistols and your rifles and use when you mow the lawn and saw wood in your garage, those are great also for sleeping.

That when there are loud noises that you just can't bear to have going on and you want to get some sleep, you just put on your soundproof headphones and try to get some sleep. Sure, it gives you a slight headache and a stiff neck, but at least you slept.

Soundproof headphones because I don't want to hear the noise. I know it's a noble reason we should be celebrating the birth of our country, and there's this whole story about the Ford and the flag and the bombs and a noble reason to celebrate.

But I don't care about that when it's too noisy. So I put the headphones on. I think in similar fashion we all have the capacity to put headphones on spiritually when we don't want to hear certain kinds of noise.

When we come to certain themes in the Bible, when we are confronted with certain truths from the scriptures, we tend to reach for the headphones. And put them on so that we don't have to hear that noise.

We often mute the sounds of judgment as we read our Bibles. And we forget, we tend to forget that what our good heavenly Father puts on our plate to eat, we should eat it all and it's all good for us.

As I was a young man, I found very creative ways to hide some of the food that was put on my plate. And I caught, not my youngest son, but my next to youngest son, doing one of those very creative things and hiding his carrots in a very creative way so he didn't have to eat them.

But they're good for him. They're good for him. It was put on his plate because it's good for him even if he doesn't want to eat it. In similar fashion, we tend to not want to listen to nor consume nor think about nor meditate on certain parts of the Bible because they bother us.

We don't like it. But we must listen, we must understand, and we must respond to the theme of God's judgment in the Scriptures. It's difficult to imagine why we should subject ourselves to these themes when there are so many other more pleasant things to consider in the Bible.

Is it possible, however, that we have spent a great portion of our lives or to some degree a great percentage of whatever degree that we are spiritual, that we have spent a disproportionate amount of our Christian lives in only certain types of themes and certain portions of Scripture?

And maybe we need the balance that God puts before us in His Word. It's a thought we need to consider. We must not fail to listen to the sounds of God's judgment. I know you want to put on the earphones and block it out.

But He has our good in mind. He has a noble reason for telling us what He tells us about His judgment. So we're going to think about God's judgment, a symphony of God's judgment. We began last week in verses 2 through 8 considering the cacophony of man's lies and how there was so much chaos and static in our world today, even in our own lives, due to the rampant lying and deceit that goes on.

But now we turn our attention to an additional theme, and really it's full of questions as to whether or not we are going to escape God's symphony of judgment. And as we read verse 9, let's read it again, and we have two questions side by side.

They basically ask the same thing, and you may sense that they are rhetorical. And they are for some people. Verse 9, The things He's talking about are things like lying to one another about yourselves and about others, gaining advantage over them, setting up traps of deceit and slander, living your life in a culture of deceit, lying and trying to gain money over other people, and going through your life looking for ways to betray your covenant faithfulness to your spouse or to your family.

This is a treacherous society. It's a society that is built on deceit. It is a society that is full of violence, and God has listed the offenses, and then He says this, He asks this question, on such a nation as this, shall I not punish them for these things?

Shall I not avenge myself? Shall I not avenge myself? These questions, if you read the Scriptures closely, and if you read them fluently and fully, you understand that these two questions in Jeremiah 9 -9 are rhetorical.

God has already, in the context, set out the charges against the people of Judah, and we know what kind of a God God is, in His holiness and in His goodness.

So when He asks,.

Shall I not judge them? Shall I not avenge myself? The answer, obviously, begged for from the context is, yes, yes, you should judge. Yes, you should take revenge. But we live in a culture today that would find these questions shocking.

Jeremiah lived in a culture that would find these questions shocking. The answer from folks today would be to the contrary. Many would say, no judges?

A God who punishes people?

That's not Christian. A God who takes personal vengeance, who avenges himself?

If He's really a God,.

What could we ever do to Him? I mean, what kind of a God gets upset about what puny little mortals do? Surely we could have no capacity to ever really bother Him.

What a small idea of God.

How petty.

This sounds like the beat stick of some angry, bitter preacher. That's the world in which we live. We live in a world of tepid religiosity, stale spirituality. Churches are filled and pews are full of people who have never, ever met a person that they thought God might judge.

They have never, ever met a person they thought God might judge. Even though the Bible tells us we live in a world filled with people who need salvation. In fact, we live in a world today where people in churches have never, ever thought that perhaps maybe they might have to face a wrathful, vengeful God.

We live in a world where no matter what a person believes, no matter how a person lives, when they die, they are always said to be in a better place. Because after all, God would never, ever, ever send anyone to hell.

And then when we read vast portions of the Bible, we get challenged by someone. They say, hey, just read your Bible through a year. Never done it. Here's your first time. At least, I mean, before you die, you should read the Bible through, right?

Here's a program. You could read through it in three years. It wouldn't be as difficult. Just five minutes a day instead of 15 minutes a day. Just five minutes a day, read your Bible, and you'll be done with it in three years.

And that's when you read vast portions of the Bible. They make absolutely no sense. What is going on here?

What about all this judgment and death and destruction.

And God's angry? What is this? Makes little sense to us. The God of the Bible, set alongside the God in which we are helping to create in the world around us. God, time and again in the Scriptures, proves the reality of His everlasting judgment through His many temporal earthly judgments.

So the Scriptures point time and again to things such as the universal flood. Remember Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, the exile of the people of Israel to Babylon. Jesus even pointed to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

All these things as examples,.

Illustrations, proofs,.

That God is a God who is holy and He judges sin. That we ought to take great stock of the earthly temporal judgments of God and receive them as a warning and as a message that God is a God who judges and He will judge everlastingly.

But if we deny God His holy divine right to judge, then we grow sympathetic to the claims that we hear on TV and look at on the internet and hear from our enlightened friends that what went on in the Old Testament was not judgment but genocide.

And so, throwing in our lot with the God of this world, rather than amending the righteousness of the holy God, we begin to accuse Him of heinous crimes. What a profane and blasphemous world in which we live.

The question, will God judge? It's rhetorical in Jeremiah 9 .9. It's an actual consideration today and it's still rhetorical today. It's just in the wrong way. Will God judge sinners? And people think that's a rhetorical question.

No, of course He won't. When in the Bible it's a rhetorical question and it's yes, of course He will. I bring this up because I want you to know it's okay if you find Jeremiah weird and overbearing. You're not coming to the Bible from an entirely biblical worldview.

We're always being inundated with the spirit of the age and very often we find certain things in the Bible just undigestible. We don't want to hear it. We're reaching for the headphones. Oh, put something else on.

Block out the noise. Because the Bible says things that we don't like and reveals to us a God that we're not always comfortable with. But the question after will God judge and since the answer really is yes from the Bible then the second question is this,.

Will we listen?

Will we listen to the sounds? Look at verse 10. For the mountains I will take up a weeping and a wailing and for the pastures of the wilderness a dirge. Have you ever sung a good dirge lately? We don't do that, do we?

For the mountains I will take up a weeping and a wailing and for the pastures of the wilderness a dirge because they are laid waste so that no one passes through and the loathing of the cattle is not heard.

But the birds of the sky and the beasts have fled, they are gone. I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals.

I will make the cities of Judah a desolation.

Jeremiah is the prophet of God, is elevated to this position of seeing the destruction as already done. It's as if he's looking back in the past and seeing what has yet to come in the future and he looks at the fields and he looks at the mountains, he looks at the large swaths of destruction in the Levant as the Babylonian armies have already torched Judah and we hear a sound.

What do we hear? We hear Jeremiah weeping and wailing. This is not a comfortable sound. He's, the Hebrew says he's bitterly weeping, he's sobbing in a way he doesn't care if anyone hears. It's not something you wanna listen to.

Bitterly weeping, sobbing. I've done that more this last year than in any other year. Some of you could probably say the same. I found myself on the anniversary of my mother's death covered in dust, insulation and sweat, crawling through my attic running cable badly and backwards and having to fix it and I end up falling through a rock onto a couple of beams.

I could have spit, cussed, thrown something, I was so fed up but on that day without my mother I just sobbed. I'm a grown man, I just sobbed. So what else am I gonna do? Felt like one of the worst days of my life.

Jeremiah weeps and sobs because he sees very clearly in his vision one of the worst days in all of Israel's history and what else is he gonna do? He just weeps and his sobbing transposes into a dirge, a funeral song, a sorrowful song and he sings of the end and he mourns for mountains and the pastures.

He envisions the mountains stripped of the trees. He looks at the pastures, they're burned black and the sounds that should be there aren't there.

He's listening.

There's no more cattle in the fields, no more lowing of the cows in the morning dew. There's no more trees so there's no more birds chittering in the trees. He can't hear it. He's listening for the animals that went crunching through the forest.

He can't hear. Silence is deafening. It's the sound of judgment when all life is vacated, the whole land laid waste and he stops looking at the mountains and the fields and he looks at the city, Jerusalem and Jerusalem is just a heap of stones, just a pile of stones as dead as bones like corpses on a field of war.

Then finally Jeremiah hears a sound. He hears the echoing cackle of the jackals,.

The wild dogs,.

The only thing left living in the open tombs of Jerusalem and they're just there to feed on the dead. Those are the sounds. Those are awful sounds. Those are terrible sounds. Nobody wants to listen to that noise.

So we reach for the headphones. We don't want to hear it but these sounds must be heard.

Why?

Because they affirm that God indeed is a God who judges and Jeremiah is preaching and he's preaching and he's preaching and he's trying to tell the people.

What is coming.

They need to be warned. They need to know and they need to understand. That's the third question in the text. Will we understand? Verse 12 says, Who is the wise man that may understand this? And who is he whom the mouth of the Lord has spoken that he may declare it?

Why is the land ruined, laid waste like a desert, so that no one passes through? The Lord said, Because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, nor walked according to it, but have walked after the stubbornness of their heart and after the bales, as their fathers taught them.

Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will feed them,.

This people,.

With wormwood,.

And give them poisoned water to drink. I will scatter them among the nations, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword after them until I have annihilated them. Do we really understand why God judges?

Jeremiah is asking that. Who is the wise man? Anybody left in the land who knows why, why the land is going to be devastated, why it will become a wasteland. Is there anyone who can answer that question?

And he has justification for asking that question. Back in Jeremiah 8, 8 and 9, we learn that the scribes, the wisest of all the land, who have in their possession the scriptures, ironically and profanely, have used the scriptures to deny the scriptures through false interpretation.

So the wisest of all the land are saying things like, Peace, peace. And they heal the brokenness of God's people in a superficial way. And they're saying, No, it'll be all right. No, it's going to be fine.

God doesn't judge.

And so who's the wise man? Who's left? Who's the man of understanding? Who will interpret why it is that the land is devastated? Jeremiah understood because God has spoken to him. God had commissioned him to preach this sobering message, which addresses every level of who we are as human beings in the image of God and describes a symphony of God's judgment.

Notice, first of all, the idolatrousness of the people in this judgment will take away everything that the people have worshipped. The people have worshipped the temple itself, declaring the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, saying, God will never destroy us.

God will never judge us. We have the temple. And they worship the temple. They worship stones. They also worship the stars. And they worship the fertility goddess and the fertility God. They worshipped all these things, but then God took away all their lands.

He took away all their crops, took away their vineyards, took away their animals and everything they used to worship the false gods. They did not, to the glory of God, steward the creation responsibly, profaning the image of God.

They subjected themselves to stones and stars and blocks of wood. God's judgment, therefore, is to destroy the idols that they worshipped. Secondly, notice the brokenness of this people. Not only did they not steward the creation responsibly, they did not love each other rightly.

They have a cycle of brokenness in that the false gods taught the sons how to worship the bales. And in worshipping the bales, you betray your marriage vows. You deny your marriage vows to go commit sexual immorality.

In the worship of false gods, you engage in deception and you lie to one another. And there's a brokenness among the people, a generational brokenness. They did not, to the glory of God, love each other rightly, profaning the image of God.

They betrayed one another in constant deceit, so God breaks the cycle. In judgment, God takes them away to lands, scatters them to lands that they and their fathers had never known. In Canaan, they knelt before Baal, asking for some cool sip of milk, some sweet drop of honey.

But in Babylon, God puts them in the dust and fills their gasping mouths with a bitter wormwood brew, teaching them the horrid realities of sin and what happens. Maybe, just maybe the pig slop will jar them out of their stupor.

So God's judgment is in some ways a rescue, divine intervention. In other ways, God's judgment is personal. Vengeance, holy retribution against those who should have been his children but had made themselves his enemies.

Finally, notice the lawlessness of the people. Jeremiah speaks in this proleptic fashion as if he's already on the other side of the destruction. He says, where's the wise man? Who can tell us why the land is completely ruined?

Anybody have a clue? Answers. But the Lord replies in verse 13. He gives the answer. And the truth is, all the idolatrousness and all of the brokenness of the land was because of the lawlessness of the people.

That God had given them his law. He had spoken to them clearly. Here's his voice. And they rejected it. They rejected his law. They rejected the scriptures. They rejected his voice. Now, you look in there in verse 16.

Look in verse 16. Now what was it?

What was it that they followed?

It's not verse 16. Verse 14. Go and look in verse 14. They didn't follow God's voice. They didn't follow scriptures. Look in verse 14.

What did they follow?

What does it say? The stubbornness of their own hearts.

Right?

Rather than, and that led them to the bales. And it led them into all sorts of sin. So they were given God's voice with a privileged people. That God would send to them Moses and all the prophets with the scriptures.

That they would hear the very voice of God in the written word of God. And yet they decided to reject that and to follow the stubbornness of their own hearts. Do you know what that's like? Can you identify that?

Do you know what it's like to follow the stubbornness of your own heart? It's when on reflection you realize my heart is like this. My heart inclines this way. My heart is full of desires for this. And my heart leads this way.

So I must follow my heart. I must follow my heart. You know, the theme of every Disney movie. I have to follow my heart. My heart is this way. It leans this way. I must follow my heart. That's the following of the stubbornness of one's own heart.

In contrast, here's repentance. Here's repentance. This is what Jeremiah is preaching and calling for. Repentance is, this will begin with a heart. It begins with God's voice in the scriptures. And we discover in the scriptures, God is this way.

God inclines this way.

God leads this way.

Therefore, I must follow God. You see, the two are absolute polar contrast here in Jeremiah 9. The tragic thing, and it's ironic, but the tragic thing about putting on the headphones is that if you don't want to listen to God's word, God's word doesn't stop speaking.

And putting on the headphones, because you don't like what God's word says, doesn't mean that God's word stops coming true. When I put the headphones on, on July 4th evening, the fireworks don't stop.

They keep on going off. They keep on exploding. And God's word still comes true. And God, according to his word. Now we go to verse 16. This is what it was in my head. Verse 16. I will scatter them among the nations whom neither they nor their fathers have known.

I will send a sword after them till I have annihilated them. Now, Jeremiah is under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit pointing back to Leviticus. He's pointing back to something that God had already said.

And I know Leviticus gets you excited, but hold your horses. Leviticus 26 .33. But hold your horses. Let's go back a little bit more. In Leviticus 26, it begins very positively and God's saying all the blessings that he wants to pour out on them because he wants them to follow him and know his blessings and his goodness.

And then he comes to verse 14 and he says, but if you disobey, if you do not obey me and carry out all these commandments, if instead you reject my statutes and if your soul abhors my ordinances so as not to carry out all my commandments and to so break my covenant, insert long list of bad things that will happen to you.

Pick it up in verse 18. If also after these things, you do not obey me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. Insert a long list of worse stuff that happens. Move along to verse 23. And if by these things you are not turned to me, but act with hostility against me, then I will act with hostility against you.

And I, even I will strike you seven times for your sins. Long list of even worse stuff. You hear the patience of God. Verse 27. Yet, if in spite of all of this, you do not obey me, but act with hostility against me, then I will act with wrathful hostility against you.

And I will punish you seven times for your sins. Long list of the absolute worst stuff that could ever happen to you. Culminating in verse 33, which says, you, however, I will scatter among the nations and will draw out a sword after you as your land becomes desolate and your cities become waste.

And Jeremiah is saying the exact same thing in verse 16 of chapter nine. He is saying, you have exhausted every ounce of the most long suffering God. And you have now come to the final ultimate judgment, which is exile and destruction.

It's now coming. Who is the wise man who can tell me why the land is desolate? Why the people are all gone? Because God is a man, God is a God of his word. You may be a people of exquisite lies, but God is a God of impeccable truth and he will keep his promises.

And what he says in his word, he will do. We understand. When we read scriptures like this, do we understand why God judges? Isaiah 48, 11 says, for my own sake, for my own sake, I will act. For how can my name be profaned and my glory I will not give to another.

Do we know why God does anything that he does? Do we know what God's motivation is? When we think about our creator, he made us, he made you and I in his own image, according to his own likeness. He made us to love him supremely, love each other rightly, steward the creation responsibly.

We were made to so mediate God's goodness that we manifest his glory. This is who we are, created in the image of God. And when we live for ourselves, when we betray one another, when we commit our lives to idols, we betray our uniform.

We go back on what God has made us to do. We betray our maker, spit on the hand that fashioned us and end up calling the light darkness. And so God is just when he judges. Final question, will we escape?

Verses 25 and 26 conclude, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord that I will punish all who are circumcised and yet uncircumcised.

Egypt and Judah and Edom.

And all the sons of Ammon and Moab and all those inhabiting the desert who clipped the hair on their temples for all the nations are uncircumcised and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised of heart.

So what does God say? He says the circumcised and the uncircumcised, the religious and the pagan alike.

Are going to be judged. Why?

Because the hearts are not circumcised. This is Old Testament language. What he's saying is in their hearts, they're not really set apart unto me as my people. They don't have the set apart, sanctified living heart that loves me and follows after me and is part of my people.

They're not really truly of me. This is very important. This is very important for us to see that when we ask the questions,.

Will God judge?

Yes, he will. Will we listen to the sounds that affirm this in scripture? We should. Will we understand why God judges? Because he is glorious and he is holy and he is good and he made us and so he owns us and he has the right to call us to live in certain ways.

The final question is will we escape? And it's to our benefit to read those two verses and to come to the conclusion that neither the religious nor the pagan will be saved, will escape. It is not those who have been brought up in a religious background with a Christian heritage that have come to church very often who have been even baptized and been a part of all things church.

They are no more safe than the pagan who has never darkened the door of a church. None of us have arrived today and gained merit in heaven. God is not impressed with you showing up today. He is only impressed with his son, Jesus Christ.

He is only impressed with his son, Jesus Christ who has lived and died for us and for our salvation. A perfect righteous son who is the wise man who understands why the son of God was so devastated upon the cross that he was forsaken of God, that he was judged by God.

The father's symphony of judgment crashes into the son who for us and for our salvation lays down his life and satisfies God's ultimate commitment to righteousness and faithfulness and holiness and grace and justice and goodness and love all in one cataclysmic, wrath-filled, mercy-filled dark watch in the middle of the day.

Do you believe that God judges sin? Do you believe that God is a vengeful God? I hope that you do. What other reason was there for Jesus Christ to live in the way that he lived and die in the way that he died on the cross for you and for your salvation?

Do you believe that God, you better believe that God is a God who judges and you better believe that the only way to escape that is to turn to his son, Jesus Christ whom we ought to boast as the fulfillment of God's commitment to love and kindness and to faithfulness to righteousness and justice.

What are we gonna say to one another? What are we gonna say to one another? Are we gonna continue to say to one another that we've never met a person whom we thought God would judge? Are we gonna continue to say to one another that God won't judge people, that God won't send people to hell?

Are we gonna continue to say to one another and reinforce the current version of God in our current society? What are we gonna say to one another? I pray that we will speak to one another in compassionate Jeremiah-like tones, even mournful tones, compassionate tones and fear the Lord and fear the Lord.

Jeremiah can't find a wise or understanding man in his day because there's no fear of the Lord. We must fear the Lord and turn to Christ. Christ saves us from idolatry. Christ saves us from brokenness.

Christ saves us from lawlessness. Christ saves us from wailing songs of sorrow. Christ leads us out from under the symphony of God's judgment and he leads us into the harmony of true worship and that forever in the life of God.

Let's close in prayer and a hymn.

Heavenly Father,.

I pray that you have done your work by your Holy Spirit for the sake of your son, that you have taken your word, your warnings, your scriptures,.

Your law,.

The pictures that we have of Christ and you have worked it all into our hearts. We pray, Father, that our efforts today of listening and paying attention and considering the text that has not gone to waste, that it has not been lost, that you would continue to use it for our good and for your glory.

We pray all these things for the sake of Christ.