Sunday Morning, April 26, 2020, AM

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Sunday Morning, April 26, 2020, AM "Unavoidably, Undeniable" (Part6) Jeremiah 44:1-30

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I wake up to find the power and comfort of God's hand in mine.
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Season by season I watch
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Him amazed In all of the mysteries of His perfect ways
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All I have need of His hand will provide
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He's always been faithful to me.
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I can't remember a trial or pain
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He did not recycle and bring to gain.
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I can't remember one single regret
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In serving God only and trusting
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His hand All I have need of His hand will provide
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He's always been faithful to me.
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Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my
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Father There is no shadow of turning with Thee Thou changest not, my compassions they fail not
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As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.
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Great is Thy faithfulness, great is
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Thy faithfulness Morning by morning new mercies
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I see All I have need of Thy hand hath provided Great is
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Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.
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This is my anthem, this is my song
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The theme of the stories I've heard for so long
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God has been faithful, He will be again
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His love, His compassion, it knows no end
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All I have need of His hand will provide
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He's always been faithful to me.
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He's always been faithful He's always been faithful to me.
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Let's pray together. Father, I thank you for that blessed reminder and song of your faithfulness and how we can trust you.
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I pray that that would be truly the theme of our hearts today as we give you praise, as we give you thanks for who you are and what you have done.
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Look at what God has done. It should be our constant refrain. Father, I pray that you would bless our time together in your word.
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I pray that you would strengthen your people, that you would feed your sheep, that you would give us wisdom and courage for the days ahead and that we would learn how better to praise your name and how to trust you and follow you.
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I pray for these graces, looking only to Christ, for His sake.
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Amen. I invite you to turn in your
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Bibles to Jeremiah 44 and I just want to mention a couple of things as we get started this morning.
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One is that we are planning to start meeting again this next
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Sunday, which is May 3rd. Now, there will be a letter sent out from the elders via email, and so be looking for that.
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And in this letter, we're going to outline several thoughts about encouraging you to make your decision according to your conviction and according to wisdom, and that when we gather together throughout this month of May, we have a few guidelines that we want to follow in order to bear with one another and to make sure that we are loving one another and accepting one another in Christ as we gather back together.
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With that in mind, be looking for that letter. We'll be sending it out a couple of times.
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In concert with that, I will begin a new series. I'm not leaving
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Jeremiah for long, but I do want to spend some time in Romans chapter 14, verse 1 through 15, verse 7.
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I think it would be beneficial to us to go through that section of Scripture and think about how it is that we accept one another and love one another in Christ, and I think that the applications will be extremely helpful for this time in which we now live.
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I want to say thank you to everyone part of our church, those of you who have been praying for one another and seeking to serve one another in practical ways.
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Thank you for those who are helping to keep us on track with TAG, Miss Lori and Haley and others.
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I know it's a blessing for us to be able to disciple our children at home. Thank you for everyone who has been giving to the church so that we continue to support our missionaries and support the ministries of the church.
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I just want to say thank you for sticking with it over these last many weeks, and thank you for giving careful thought to how we're going to start regathering in the month of May.
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We thank God for bringing us thus far. As we come to the last of the series on Jeremiah 44,
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I want to say I had no original intention to preach six sermons out of this chapter, but again and again
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I'm thankful for the Holy Spirit's leadership, because who but God would know how much we needed from this chapter, and who but God knows what we need for this time.
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It's a true comfort to think on Jesus' words when he's instructing his disciples about prayer that our
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Heavenly Father knows what we need before we even ask. It is comfort beyond measure that we know in our
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Creator's book are written all the days that were ordained for us when as yet there was not one of them.
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These are true comforts for the soul, a real anchor for the soul.
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As the gods and goddesses of our world tumble from their perches, as their priests and priestesses find them in pieces, the people of God, Christ's flock here at Sunnyside, must confess with unified voice,
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Behold, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Him only shall we serve.
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He is worthy of our service. He is worthy of our worship. He is worthy of our love.
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He is worthy of our fear, our reverence. I mentioned last week that when it comes to the matter of fear, the fear of death is called slavery in Hebrews 2.
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The fear of man is called a snare in Proverbs 29. But the fear of the
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Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom, Proverbs 1 and Proverbs 9. What that amounts to is this.
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As long as we fear the Lord, as long as we fear the Lord, we will be thinking and speaking and acting with knowledge and with wisdom.
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And it could not be otherwise. And it's important for us to remind ourselves of that.
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For this Jewish remnant to whom the Lord speaks through his prophet, they have not been fearing him.
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They have been fearing man, and they have been fearing death, which is why they are again in slavery, why they are ensnared down in Egypt.
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So, keeping that in mind, I would invite you, if you're able to, wherever you are, to stand with me as I read
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Jeremiah 44. And let's begin reading in verse 24 this morning, verse 24 through 30.
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Jeremiah chapter 44, and let's begin in verse 24. Then Jeremiah said to all the people, including all the women,
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Hear the word of the Lord, all Judah, who are in the land of Egypt. Thus says the
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Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, as follows. As for you and your wives, you have spoken with your mouths and fulfilled it with your hands, saying,
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We will certainly perform our vows that we have vowed to burn sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.
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Go ahead and confirm your vows and certainly perform your vows.
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Nevertheless, hear the word of the Lord, all Judah, who are living in the land of Egypt.
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Behold, I have sworn by my great name, says the Lord. Never shall my name be invoked again by the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying,
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As the Lord God lives. Behold, I am watching over them for harm and not for good.
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And all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt will meet their end by the sword and by famine until they are completely gone.
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Those who escape the sword will return out of the land of Egypt to the land of Judah.
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Few in number than all the remnant of Judah who have gone to the land of Egypt to reside there will know whose word will stand mine or theirs.
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This will be the sign to you, declares the Lord, that I am going to punish you in this place so that you may know that my words will surely stand against you for harm.
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Thus says the Lord. Behold, I am going to give over Pharaoh, Hophra, king of Egypt, to the hand of his enemies, to the hand of those who seek his life, just as I gave over Zedekiah, king of Judah, to the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who was his enemy and was seeking his life.
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This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. God sovereignly rules over all and is directly involved with each.
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This is true in regards to his word, his will, and his wrath. This is what we have been studying these past several weeks.
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God's word is inescapable in terms of its range. We can't get too far from it.
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We can't escape it. And he's not going to miss. God's word is inescapable in terms of its range and his aim.
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Secondly, God's will is inevitable. And what does this mean? Well, we must not explain away
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God's wrath as if it wasn't his will or it wasn't his doing. God's will is inevitable.
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We must not revoice our wickedness and call it something other than what God has declared it.
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And ultimately, we cannot work around God's will. We cannot, by changing the definitions of sin or revising history and pretending like certain things don't actually happen, this doesn't actually allow us to get around God's will.
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We can't get around it just by changing definitions or trying to change the record of history.
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And the third thing we've noticed from Jeremiah 4 -4 is that God's wrath is indisputable, meaning we really cannot bring any kind of accusation against God's wrath and somehow say it's incomplete or unfair or badly timed or however we may approach that.
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We cannot cast shade upon God's wrath by using excuses for sin.
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The three popular excuses for sin that have been available since the beginning of time, since the fall, are these.
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Everyone's doing it, I like doing it, and they told me I could do it. And these are the ways in which people excuse their sin.
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And there's no hope in doing that as we consider the fact that God has a perfect view of our sin.
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He knows exactly what happened, and so He righteously indicts our sin.
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If we consider the failure of the husbands in terms of their headship, as idolatry was rampant among their households, specifically their wives were practicing idolatry and they were not doing anything about it.
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We also consider the state of reprobation among these people. How far gone are they?
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And we've thought about the worship that these people are offering as they are worshiping this false, especially this false goddess, the
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Queen of Heaven. And now we come to the fourth consideration in our text as to why
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God's wrath is indisputable, specifically in how He's indicting sin.
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Why is He so upset about their idolatry? Why is He so against what they are doing in offering sacrifices to the
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Queen of Heaven? Why has this brought His wrath to bear on their lives, and why is it right that He do so?
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Because of the way in which their idolatry obfuscates the truth, the way in which their worship obfuscates the reality of God's salvation and creation.
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We see this in verses 19 and 21. In the defense that the women give for worshiping false idols, they say in verse 19,
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Ann said to the women, when we are burning sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and we're pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings for her?
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And then verse 21, God says, As for the smoking sacrifices that you burned in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your forefathers, your kings and your princes, and the people of the land, did not the
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Lord remember them, and did not all this come into His mind? What are they doing?
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They're offering sacrifices. They're worshiping.
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They're pouring out drink offerings. Now, this is the language that we would find in other parts of the
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Scripture. In fact, God would be commanding His people to do these things, but in worshiping Him rather than some false
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God. And He is against the confusion that this kind of idolatry brings.
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Idolatry always brings this kind of confusion. Great evil comes by idolatry.
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How is that? Idolatry muddies creation's clear water.
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Idolatry encases salvation's harbor with thick fog.
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The women are talking about burning sacrifices and pouring out drink offerings, but sacrifices and offerings were created by God.
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They were instituted by God, not the Queen of Heaven. She doesn't actually even exist.
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God, remember, covered Adam and Eve's naked shame through a sacrifice, through the skins of animals that died in their place, so that their guilt, their shame could be covered.
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And He did that in compassion, even as He drove them from the garden. And in this critical moment,
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He taught them the meaning of worship. He taught them the point of their offerings. And we see that they instructed their sons,
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Cain and Abel, in giving offerings and sacrifices to God. From the beginning,
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God established substitutionary death, vicarious atonement at the very heart of His prescribed worship.
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Over time, through sin and corruption, man turned the clarifying worship of God into the obfuscating worship of idols.
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Sociologists have noted that throughout history, there seems to be a common thread amongst all the worship of all the different peoples around the globe.
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Well, that makes a lot of sense, since we all trace our origins back to Adam and Eve, back to the original monotheism of worshiping the one true
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God, and the way that He instructed us was common to all of humanity. And over time, because of the corruption of sin, these forms, although they have some common denominator, become corrupted in a variety of ways.
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Idolatry always does that. Now, consider these Jews who have fled from the land of Canaan down into Egypt.
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They have been very blessed to receive God's special revelation. They have received the law.
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They have received many of the writings. They have received many of the prophets. So they have the special revelation of God.
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They are very blessed. They have been made in the image of God to offer praise to Him. But they make cakes in the image of their goddess and set those on fire in her honor.
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They have been called into the covenant life with God, full of sacrifices and offerings and feasts.
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But their smoke rises to another. They pour out drink offerings to an idol.
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And the question is, why do they obligate themselves in this way? Why are they so committed to the
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Queen of Heaven? What are they saying? Well, they claim it's the Queen of Heaven who gives them what they need.
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And they said that in verses 17 and 18 of this chapter. They said, when we were offering sacrifices to her, good things happened.
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We had all that we needed. But when we stopped offering sacrifices to her, we didn't have what we needed.
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So they believed that worshipping the Queen of Heaven was the way in which they received blessings.
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But that's the way that idolatry works. It was not true that they received their blessings from the
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Queen of Heaven. They received their blessings from God. They received harvests from God.
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They received good birth rates among their livestock from God. Their families grew because of God, because of His grace, because of His providence.
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But the idolatry, you see, obfuscated that, hid that from them.
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Listen to how God describes idolatrous Israel in Hosea 2 in verse 5.
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He has addressed Israel as His bride. That's a very fitting metaphor for their covenant relationship.
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God has, in the Old Testament and the New Testament, speaks of His people as His bride.
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But now He interprets the idolatry of Israel as whoredom.
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And He judges her and her children, Hosea 2, 5. For their mother has played the harlot.
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She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, now listen, this is the idolatry.
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I will go after my lovers. That means that's the idolatry, that's the idols in this imagery.
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I will go after my lovers. Who did what? What does she believe about her lovers, her idols?
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Who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.
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You see? That's the pull of the idol. As long as I worship this idol, as long as I'm dedicated to this idol,
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I get the things that I want and I get the things that I need. The blessings come from worshiping the idol.
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Now God, in His mercy, promises to frustrate her adulteries and confront her with the truth.
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And so in verse 8 of Hosea 2, He says, For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil, and lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for bail.
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You see, God said, look what I did. I gave them all of this abundance.
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I gave them all of this produce. I even gave them silver and gold. Blessing upon blessing upon blessing. And instead of this people being thankful to God, clarifying who it was who gave them all this abundance, and then stewarding these things for the magnification of God's name upon the earth, the spread of His fame among the nations.
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What did they do? They used it. They weren't thankful to God. They interpreted the abundance as coming from idols, and they used the silver and gold to build more idols.
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Idolatry obfuscates the truth of God's provision and God's salvation. That's what the devil did in the garden, didn't he?
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He blurred the lines. He conflated the categories. He obfuscated who
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Adam and Eve really were, who God was, and what it meant to be made in God's image, and be in relationship with Him.
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The truth is, these Jews are made in the image of God. They're made in the image of the one true
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God. He has appointed for them a seed by whose person and work they may be saved.
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He specially covenanted with their forefathers and with them in order to make all of these truths all the more clearer.
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But idolatry hides the truths of creation and salvation so that people do not know who
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God is, people do not know who they are, and they do not know what it means to be saved.
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If you meet someone who does not know who God is, who doesn't really know who they are, and they do not know what it means to be in relationship with God, you have encountered an idolater.
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They may not say that, they may not even realize that, but the fact is we're made in God's image, and what hides the truths of our lives is idolatry.
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And that is why idolatry must be judged. That is why idols are repeatedly mocked by the prophets, why idols are continually judged by God in very drastic ways.
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We can think from the Old Testament, Dagon having his head cut off and his hands cut off and toppled over onto the floor where the priest can find him in the morning, all the way up to the way that the
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Jews idolized the temple, and Christ brings judgment upon the temple and destroys it in A .D.
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70. But idolatry must be judged. Jesus pronounced several woes of judgment against the religious leaders of His day.
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Why? Because they obfuscated the doctrine of salvation. Matthew 23 and verse 13,
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He says, Woe to you! Now, this is in a series of woes, and if you hear a woe in the
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Scripture, if you come across that three -letter word, w -o -e, woe, what is that? Well, you know what a tornado siren is, you probably heard one yesterday.
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Woes are the warning sirens which tell you of the impending wrath of God. When you hear a woe in Scripture, that's a tornado siren of a sort, saying the wrath of God is shortly coming.
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So this is Jesus giving a woe. It's meant to be paid attention to. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people, for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.
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They said that they had the way of salvation, but they really didn't. Neither they nor their followers were going to enter the heaven based on their false gospel.
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They took several similar terms. They took up scriptural language.
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They used the Scripture, and they were the most religious, pious, educated, most well -thought -of spiritual leaders in their land.
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And Jesus told them woe, because they were befuddling the people. They were obfuscating the truth of salvation.
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Consider these Jews, this remnant that is down in Egypt. It is a remarkable route which they have taken.
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Remember that they had been delivered up out of idolatrous Egypt by God's idol -targeting tin plagues, and now they're going to be destroyed in Egypt by God's idol -targeting judgment.
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And where once these children of Israel swept into the land of Canaan, destroying the idolatrous peoples, now they are the idolatrous people who have been swept out from the land.
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This was in direct fulfillment of the warning that God gave in Deuteronomy 8, verses 16 -20, when
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God was preparing the people to go in and take the land. He warned them not to forsake
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Him, specifically not to forsake the spiritual discipline of thanksgiving, of giving honor to God for what they owned, what was entrusted to them, so that they would always be worshipers of God rather than the idols.
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In verse 16 of Deuteronomy 8, He says,
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In the wilderness He fed you manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you, and that He might test you to do good for you in the end.
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Otherwise you may say in your heart, My power and the strength of My hand made
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Me this wealth. But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is
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He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which
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He swore to your fathers as it is this day. Now, here's the critical point in verse 19.
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It shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God.
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That doesn't mean forget His name, forget information about Him. That means stop actively thanking
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Him, stop actively worshiping Him. Take Him for granted. To kind of space out and not really truly worship
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Him. It shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them.
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I testify against you today that you will surely perish, like the nations that the
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Lord makes to perish before you, so you shall perish, because you would not listen to the voice of the
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Lord your God. So as we think about the rightness of God's wrath against idolatry, which hides and obfuscates the truth that He is our
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Creator, He is our Provider, He is our Savior. What is our response to that? There is a blessed clarity that comes into our lives when we engage in the spiritual discipline of thanksgiving.
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We know the short little verse, in everything give thanks, in everything give thanks.
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And perhaps sometimes we think of that being a little insensitive to the various circumstances in which we may find ourselves.
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Do I really have to give thanks for cancer? Do I really need to give thanks for a car that won't work?
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Do I really need to give thanks for coronavirus? Do I really need to give thanks for these things?
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But what does that mean? In everything means at all times, no matter the situation, so it's a discipline, in everything give thanks.
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And it's not simply about having a warm feeling about everything, but it's about ascribing worth to God, giving thanks to God for being our
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Provider, our Creator. By giving thanks to God in everything, we clarify to our neighbors and to our own souls the truths of creation and salvation.
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By constantly thanking God, we're saying, He is the one who has given us this.
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He is the one who has provided this. He is the one who has arranged this. He is the one. He is the one.
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And that kind of lifestyle brings clarity to everything else in our lives, and delivers us from the fog of idolatry.
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So, we see that God is the one who sovereignly rules over all, and He's directly involved with each.
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His wrath is indisputable. Now, we've talked about the fact there's no excuses that can stand.
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God's indictments of sin are precise and irrefutable. But also, there's a third reason why the wrath of God is indisputable.
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Why no word can be brought against it. And we see this in verses 26 through 30.
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What does God do in His wrath? What does
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He do in His wrath? I'm going to read verses 26 through 30 again.
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Nevertheless, hear the word of the Lord, all Judah who are living in the land of Egypt. Behold, I have sworn by my great name, says the
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Lord. Never shall my name be invoked again by the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying,
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As the Lord God lives. Behold, I am watching over them for harm and not for good.
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And all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt will meet their end by the sword and by famine until they are completely gone.
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Those who escape the sword will return out of the land of Egypt to the land of Judah, few in number.
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Then all the remnant of Judah who have gone to the land of Egypt to reside there will know whose word will stand mine or theirs.
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This will be the sign to you, declares the Lord, that I am going to punish you in this place so that you may know that my words will surely stand against you for harm.
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Thus says the Lord. Behold, I am going to give over Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt, to the hand of his enemies, to the hand of those who seek his life, just as I gave over Zedekiah, king of Judah, to the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who was his enemy and was seeking his life.
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What does God do in his wrath? He unworks sin.
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He takes the tangle of sin. He takes the knotted, invasive roots of sin.
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And he takes it all apart and he removes it. That's what he does in his wrath.
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His wrath not only punishes sin, it overcomes sin. It not only brings his holy justice to bear upon the sin, but it brings an end to the sin.
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Don't we want that? Do we not look for the demise of darkness?
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Are we not eager for the unraveling, the coming apart, the unworking of sin?
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This is what God does in his wrath. What does he do in his wrath? Well, God says in the text, he promises two things.
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He promises to watch over them, to watch over the Jews, this Jewish remnant that is under his wrath, whom he has promised to judge.
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He promises to watch over them and he promises to pay them a visit. I'm going to watch over you and I'm going to pay you a visit.
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He watches over them, verse 27. Behold, I am watching over them.
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In the Hebrew, it's shechad al, shechad al. God assumes the posture of a shepherd, right?
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That's what you do as a shepherd, you watch over your flock, you watch over your people.
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He's watching, he's overseeing his flock. That is normally a position which indicates good, which indicates blessing.
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Now, of course, they have denied that God has been watching over them, haven't they? They've denied that he's been watching over them and providing for them.
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But he insists, oh, I'm watching over you. But now he states, I'm going to watch over the flock for harm, he says.
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King James says, I'm watching over them for evil, which is the Hebrew word ra 'ah. It means calamitous misery, troublesome sorrow.
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God says, I'm going to be keeping an eye on things. I'm going to see to it that matters turn out poorly.
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He's good at this. Think of the Tower of Babel. Think of all the plans of various kings for their conquests.
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God says, I'm going to watch over things and I'm going to make sure that it fails. Yes, he says,
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I'm going to make it disastrous for the Jews who remain in Egypt. And he does so, except for the few that escape like Jeremiah and Baruch, or maybe a few that heeded the words of Jeremiah and left before the judgment came in repentance.
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Everyone who has made their plans to stay down in Egypt and make that their stay, they're all going to be judged and killed by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence.
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So he watches over. That's the first thing he does in his wrath. And the second thing is he pays a visit. Verse 29, this will be the sign to you, declares the
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Lord that I'm going to punish you in this place. Now, the word punish there, the
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Hebrew, is the word meaning to visit. And so he says, as I watch against the
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Jews, I will also visit against the Jews. And in the text, it's there for symmetry.
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It's there for rhyme. It's there to catch our attention. You see, to watch over is shechadol, to pay a visit is pechadol, shechad, pechad.
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And so this is rhyming together, and he wants these words to ring in their minds.
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So I'm going to watch over you, and I'm going to pay you a visit. Very often in the
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Old Testament, this word pechad is used for God's judgment. I'm going to pay you a visit. It's not a happy visit.
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God arrives in their land. He enters into the gates of their cities. He comes knocking on the doors of their houses, but it's judgment.
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God will overthrow Pharaoh just as he did Zedekiah, he promises. Egypt will be just like Judah. God will exalt his instrument of judgment,
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Nebuchadnezzar. He explains all of that in verse 30. And so God will utterly overthrow the land so that all the
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Jews who came and remained there planning to hide out from the destruction, they're going to meet destruction head on. And only a very small number will escape.
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Think about God's visiting. Even as God visited Adam and Eve and the serpent in the garden with a curse, as God visited the earth with a catastrophe, the global flood, as God visited
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Babel with confusion, so God visited mankind with Christ.
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But that visit in his first advent does not judge the sinners, but the judgment fell upon the
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Savior in our place and for our sake. And what is the purpose of God's visits in judgment?
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What is his purpose in his visit in Christ? What is the goal of his wrath?
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The unworking of sin. 1 John chapter 3 verse 5 says,
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You know that he, meaning Christ, you know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.
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Verse 8 says, The one who practices sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.
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You hear it? It's the unworking of sin. It's the unworking of sin.
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Followers of Christ are all about fighting sin, destroying sin, unworking sin, certainly not excusing sin or identifying themselves by sin.
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You see, God is working in this way, working this way in his wrath to unwork sin.
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There was a great deal of sin, was there not, going on in Judah and Jerusalem, but what happened after God's wrath came sweeping through?
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Well, there was no more sin going on, was there? Sure, there were jackals and there were buzzards feasting on rotting corpses, but there was no continuing sin there, was there?
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The earth was filled with violence in the days of Noah, so God filled up the earth with water, and after 40 days and 40 nights of rain and gushing geysers, there was a whole lot less sin going on, wasn't there?
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It's important to remember that God's wrath is punitive. It is a legal matter.
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Justice is being done. And in concert with the punishment of sin comes the necessary ending of sin.
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As we see here in Jeremiah 44, God expressly states why he is executing his furious wrath, first, for the sake of his name, secondly, for the surety of his word.
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He says why he's going to judge them. First, for the sake of his name, secondly, for the surety of his word.
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For the sake of his name. This is verse 26. Nevertheless, hear the word of the
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Lord, all Judah who are living in the land of Egypt. Behold, I have sworn by my great name, says the Lord, never shall my name be invoked again by the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, as the
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Lord God lives. So we see how God swears by his great name to silence the naming of his name by the
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Jews in Egypt. Why is he doing that? What's going on here? Because they're not naming his name in any real reverent way.
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Remember, they're committed to the Queen of Heaven. They're still using his name. They're still using all that religious, spiritual -sounding language, but they're not really worshiping him.
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They have thoroughly mixed the worship of the one true God, or the naming of the one true
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God, with their worship of the Queen of Heaven, as if there was no conflict whatsoever. This is always the ploy of Satan to get us to mix the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, with some foreign object, some other kind of philosophy, some other kind of worship, and then mix it together.
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The Jews here are like those Narnians in C .S. Lewis' Last Battle, who worship
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Tashlan, the grotesque conflation of the demon figure Tash and the Christ figure of Aslan.
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These Jews are like the Masonic cult and their secret name for deity Jabulon, the blasphemous synthesis of Jehovah, Baal, and Osiris.
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See, they're still naming the name of the Lord while in Egypt, but they have rejected his word.
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But they're still using his name in the place from which they rebel. They adore the Queen of Heaven and worship her freely, yet walk around and say things like, well, as the
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Lord lives. Not only have they broken the first and second commandments, but they break the third commandment as well.
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They bear the name of the Lord God in vain. They carry about the name of the
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Lord God in vain as empty nonsuch. They claim the Queen of Heaven has given them their good years, their best blessings, and they intend to persist in that, all the while maintaining verbal loyalty and affiliation with the
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Lord God. Now, how does the Lord God feel about his name? How does he feel about his name?
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Isaiah 48, 11, For my own sake, even for my own sake, I will do it.
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For how can my name be profaned, and I will not give my glory to another?
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God, in his wrath, deals with the pollution to his name. He unworks that sin.
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He says, when I'm done with my wrath, no one will be left in Egypt profaning my name. Not only is the wrath punitive, but it also brings an end to the sin.
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It will stop. And the second reason why he acts in his wrath is not only for the sake of his name, but also for the surety of his word.
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In verses 28 and 29, he explains there that his wrath will come in such a way that the rebellious remnant of Judah and Egypt will know that their word has failed and God's word has succeeded.
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Remember, they said to Jeremiah, We're not going to listen to your word. Here's our word.
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We don't believe you, but here's what we're going to do. Now, God says in verse 28, at the end of verse 28,
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Then all the remnant of Judah, who have gone into the land of Egypt to reside there, will know whose word will stand, mine or theirs.
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You see. And at the end of verse 29, he says, that you may know that my words, he says,
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I'm going to bring this wrath, why? Verse 29, so that you may know that my words will surely stand against you for harm.
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The word for stand in Hebrew is kum. All right. And so he says, you know, that's the word is going to be established.
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It's going to stick around. It's ordained. It's not going to fail. In fact, God says he doesn't say surely stand.
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He says kum kum. He just repeats the word twice. That's how you underline something and put it in bold in Hebrew.
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You just repeat the term twice. So what is God saying? He says, I'm bringing my wrath upon you, and I'm going to prove my words true.
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And by the end of it, everyone's going to know that my words are sure, sure. My words will stand, stand.
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My words remain, remain. And that is made clear by God's wrath. You see what he accomplishes in his wrath?
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He does it for the sake of his name and for the surety of his word. And the words of those false teachers, the words of those who have rebelled against God, fail, fail.
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And God accomplishes that through his wrath. And so his wrath is indisputable. How can we say a word against it?
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Look at all the good that God accomplishes in his wrath.
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So he does it for his own name. He does it for his own word. He does it for his own glory. He does it because he has promised to do it.
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And if we think about where the name of God and the word of God and the glory of God and the promises of God all coalesce, we know where they coalesce.
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They come together in the person and work of Jesus Christ. You see, when we think about the satisfaction of God in his justice being done, it's also in his righteousness being accomplished.
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Punitive actions are not enough. They're required, but they're not enough.
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Restorative actions are not isolated. These together capture the vision.
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God does not simply remove the old creation. He makes all things new.
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The seed, Jesus Christ, in his suffering God's wrath, what does he do? He crushes the serpent's head.
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His work unworks sin. So God's wrath upon Christ is indisputable.
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Christ suffers, dies, is buried, and he rises from the grave and reigns forever to destroy the works of the devil.
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The final word here is Christ. God's wrath is indisputable. A couple of passages that I think would be worth further reading.
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Psalm 110, the whole chapter, the whole psalm is worth reading about how God greatly exalts
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Christ, how all of God's promises will come to pass in Christ, but notice how they do in the execution of the wrath of God upon his enemies.
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And the same is true in Habakkuk 2 in verses 12 -14.
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I'll read that passage for us as we close. Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed.
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Woe, warning siren, wrath is coming. Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed and founds a town with violence.
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Anybody trying to build an empire based on sin will fail. Verse 13, is it not indeed from the
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Lord of hosts that people toil for fire and the nations grow weary for nothing? It's from God that the efforts of man for the name of man fail.
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God is the one who keeps tripping up all of these worldwide global man glorifying endeavors.
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God is the one who keeps tripping them all up. Why? Because he's doing that in his wrath to do what?
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He has a different purpose for the world. And what is that? Verse 14. For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the
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Lord as the waters cover the sea. You see, for the sake of his name, for the sake of his word, that's why he acts in his wrath.
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We can give him the praise for that. God's glory, God's glory in Christ is unavoidably undeniable.
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Let's close in prayer. Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you for the richness of it.
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I thank you for reminding us of who you are in your perfections and in your power.
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And I pray that you would help us to trust you in all things. And we pray for these graces, looking only to Jesus Christ.
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In his name we pray. Amen. We're going to sing our benediction, and it's 18 in your hymns, modern and ancient.
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May the peace of God, our Heavenly Father, and the grace of Christ, the risen
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Son, and the fellowship of God the
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Spirit keep your hearts and minds within his love.
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And to him be praise for his glorious reign, from the depths of earth to the heights of heaven, to declare the name of the
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Lamb once slain, Christ eternal, the
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King of kings. May there be peace.
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Christ eternal, the King of kings.
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Amen. May the love of the