Sunday Morning, March 17, 2019 AM

Prayer for Courage and Faithfulness in Preaching

Father, we thank you for the truths of your word, the promises, the promises of Christ. You said, in this world, we will have trouble, but Christ has overcome the world. Greater is he who is within us, he who is in the world.

Father, you have given us many, many promises by which to thank you that you do not save the righteous any more than a doctor would heal the healthy. You sent your son to save sinners, as such we are.

But you do not leave us as you find us, but you renew us in your image, conforming us to your son, Jesus Christ. We pray that today you would have your will accomplished in our hearts through the Holy Spirit's work as the word is preached.

Father, we ask that we would be the amen on earth of your will in heaven. Teach us, Father, the joy of fearing you rather than fearing man. And I pray that you would give us this joyful courage here this morning as we look at your word.

We pray these things for Christ's sake, amen. Last week, we began to look at a passage in Jeremiah 26, verses one through 11. Title of the sermon is, Shooting Straight May Get You Shot. As was the case with Jeremiah and John the Baptist, Christ.

This particular story in Jeremiah 26 happens at the beginning of the reign of the King Jehoiakim 20 or so years, 30 or so years before the great judgments fell. I'd say 20 years before Jerusalem was destroyed.

Two decades before Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon, Jeremiah comes preaching in the temple court saying Jerusalem will be destroyed and the temple will be destroyed because of the lack of repentance evident in the people of Judah.

Last week, we looked at verses one through seven particularly, and we talked about the keys to shooting straight. This morning, we will pay attention to verses seven through 11 and talk about the secrets to getting shot.

And I expect it to be fully edifying to us. If you will please stand with me, we are going to read the text. Herein is the word from our King to us. So we honor him as we read. This is the word of the Lord.

In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, King of Judah, this word came from the Lord saying, thus says the Lord, stand in the court of the Lord's house and speak to all the cities of Judah who have come to worship in the Lord's house.

All the words that I have commanded you to speak to them do not omit a word. Perhaps they will listen and everyone will turn from their evil way that I may repent of the calamity which I am planning to do to them because of the evil of their deeds.

And you will say to them, thus says the Lord, if you will not listen to me to walk in my law, which I have set before you to listen to the words of my servants, the prophets whom I have been sending to you again and again but you have not listened, then I will make this house like Shiloh and the city I will make a curse to all the nations of the earth.

The priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the Lord. When Jeremiah finished speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him saying, you must die.

Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord saying, this house will be like Shiloh and this city will be desolate without inhabitants. And all the people gathered about Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.

When the officials of Judah heard these things, they came up from the King's house into the house of the Lord and sat in the entrance of the new gate of the Lord's house. Then the priests and the prophets spoke to the officials and to all the people saying, a death sentence for this man, for he has prophesied against this city as you have heard in your hearing.

This is the word of the Lord, you may be seated. We noted last week how wrong it would be for a fire department to institute the policy, no search and rescue inside burning structures due to the fact that it would be too hot.

And the risk of firefighters being burned is understandably higher when you go inside burning buildings and non-burning ones. And we noted that like firemen having to go into smoke-filled engulfed buildings to rescue those who are in danger.

So also Christians are called to snatch sinners from the fire as Jude says. That we would even hate the garment stained by sin but risk ourselves to put ourselves in risky situations in order to call sinners to repentance.

And repentance is absolutely essential, we talked about that last week that there were four keys to shooting straight, all of them have to do with repentance in one way or another. And that's risky because every call to repentance invites persecution.

We can never preach biblical repentance without risking costly persecution but risk-free preaching saves no one, not even the preacher who would preach it. And so we have to shoot straight recognizing that if we shoot straight, we may get shot, that's part of what we're called to do.

The four keys to shooting straight are these, authority, audience, accuracy, and aim. We need to shoot straight by claiming what authority, by clarifying what authority we have which is the word of God.

Thus says the Lord, look here in the text, look here to what God has said, here's the objective standard, you may have your experiences, I may have my experiences but here is the word of God, here's the truth.

Both of us are, all of us are accountable to God and his word. We also talked about the audience, the message is the same to all audiences. No matter what your experiences have been, no matter what your background is, no matter what you think makes you particularly unique compared to anybody else, it's the same message to everyone because God is the maker of us all and he sent Jesus Christ as the savior, there's only one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

The message is the same to all audiences. God's authority proves binding for all audiences. The third key was accuracy, that we need to be very careful what we say, that we're saying what God says. It's not up to us to remix the message but we need to say it as God has said it.

No omitting a word, no diminishing a word, no hiding a word, no apologizing for God. Well, you know that word's there but really if you think about it in this way or let's just pretend it wasn't there.

And then what is the aim? Why would we shoot straight? I mean, why not tell it slant? Why not beat around the bush? Why not warm up really slowly and be real careful until you know all the different pressure points and raw nerves?

Why would we shoot straight, citing the authority of God irrespective of the audience being more careful about what we say according to the word of God than necessarily what people may think about it.

What's the aim in that? The aim is repentance. We see that in verses one through seven. God sent Jeremiah to preach to the people so that they may repent, they may turn from their wicked ways. Here's a very brief example.

It was an encouraging example. I was talking with my dad yesterday and he talked about a young couple who wanted to join his church, but they weren't married yet. They were living together out of wedlock.

So they were committing adultery. And he says to them, you can't join our church until you make this right. So we're gonna get married next year, 2020 in March. He says, well, until that time, we really can't give you approval of being a member of our church.

Here's the word of God. Here's a marriage is a picture of Christ in the church and here's the gospel and so on and so forth. And they decided to repent and get married because they were given the objective standard of the word of God.

They said, oh, we should change. We should stop doing this and we should do this instead. That's the way it's supposed to work. That's the way it's supposed to work. And if you wanna see people repent of their sins and turn away from foolishness and turn away from lies and turn away from profanity and turn away from rebellion, if you wanna see people repent and come to Christ, then you have to shoot straight.

You have to preach every word to every man every time. Shoot straight. Now, when this happens, you are risking getting shot,.

But that's okay.

That is the common experience for followers of Christ. Someone once said that we live in a 5 5 window in the American Christian experience. 5 of the world's population, 5 in which the founders of our nation wanted freedom to worship Christ, to worship God according to the scriptures, be free from religious persecution.

Therefore, we're not going to have an established state church and we're going to follow the scriptures. And so that Christianity flourished in the history of the United States of America. But this is a window of 5 of the world's history and 5 of the world's population and it is not the norm for Christianity.

If you read Christian history, that is not the way it normally works. The way it normally works is that Christians are not the ones defining culture and leading out and directing the whole course of the nation.

There are times when Christianity explodes, but persecution is the norm. Persecution is the norm. It was the norm in scriptural times. Those who would follow God, those who would follow Christ would know persecution.

I believe our 5 5 window is closing. Our 5 5 experience is closing. And we need to think and grandparents for your grandchildren and parents for your children, you for your believing relatives and those who have not yet believed.

We need to begin to think in terms of our brothers and sisters in Christ and the broader Christian experience and take up the passages in the Bible that talk about how to live under fire and begin to apply them very carefully to our lives as part of our growth in Christ, as part of our normal Christian experience.

We may mourn for what is lost and that is a good thing to do, but we have to get our attention focused on what is coming, what is happening now and what is coming. And we're not going to be able to regain the 5 5 window and extend the abnormal Christian experience that we have been blessed with.

We need to put our attention to what it is like to live as followers of Christ under fire. And that's why this passage is so helpful. Notice in verses seven through 11 that Jeremiah is getting, he's under fire, he's being shot at.

You may remember that this story is the narrative, the summation of what Jeremiah has preached back in Jeremiah chapter seven and eight. And if you want to know who are gonna be upset with Jeremiah, you just have to read Jeremiah 8 verse one.

And this is the word of the Lord through Jeremiah. At that time declares the Lord, as Jeremiah is prophesying of the destruction of Jerusalem. They will bring up the bones of the kings of Judah and the bones of its princes and the bones of the priests and the bones of the prophets and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem from their graves.

And they will spread them out to the sun, the moon and to all the hosts of heaven, which they have loved and which they have served. They will not be gathered or buried, but they will be as dung in the face of the ground.

This is the temple sermon that Jeremiah preaches. We have the short version here in chapter 26, the full versions back there in verses chapter seven and eight. This is something that Jeremiah says while standing in the temple of the Lord.

And he points at three different groups. He preaches against the religious leaders. He preaches against the social, no, social leaders, the whole society. And he preaches against the civil leaders, those who were in charge, kings and princes and so on.

So he fires off at all three groups. This is the word of the Lord. He was told to say this. He was told to preach this, to bring to awareness the corruption throughout the entirety of the nation. And so he is under persecution from these three groups, religious persecution, social persecution and civil persecution.

Now notice the religious persecution that he is under. In our passage in chapter 26 in verses seven through nine and verse 11, three different times, he preaches against and is fired at by the priests and the prophets, the priests and the prophets, the priests and the prophets.

These represent the whole religious system in Judah. They don't like what he said. And what in particular did he say? Verse six has the offending word, Shiloh. Verse six, Jeremiah says, the Lord says, then I will make this house like Shiloh.

And that really upset, why would that upset them so much? Shiloh was a very important word. It was part of Jacob's prophecy over Judah and the coming tribe of Judah that one would come from Judah by the name of Shiloh, the one to whom it all belongs.

Therefore, in Joshua 18, the tribes of Israel gathered at a place they called Shiloh to divvy up all the land because it all belongs to Shiloh, but we're gonna call this place as we divvy up the land, Shiloh in honor of the one to whom it all belongs, but here is the inheritance to all the different tribes.

And at Shiloh, Judges 18 tells us was where they pitched the tabernacle. After all, in hopes of the one to come named Shiloh. You can see how important the name Shiloh is, but something significant happened there.

In first Samuel chapter three, we read that the Philistines are attacking and the carnal, sinful, rebellious sons of Eli go and take the Ark of the Covenant out of the tabernacle and bring it into battle like some kind of good luck charm trying to win against the Philistines and they are all, the army is slaughtered and the Ark of the Covenant is captured.

One of the darkest days in all of Israel's history, 30 ,000 men died and the Ark was stolen by the Philistines. And as a certain woman lay dying, giving birth to Eli's grandchild, she named him Ichabod, the glory has departed.

And so this moment in time, this destruction of the army of Israel, the carrying away of the Ark of the Covenant, this name Ichabod, the glory has departed became this awful moment in Israel's history upon which they looked back with great remorse.

And Jeremiah just said, the Lord is going to make this house like Shiloh. It's gonna happen again. There's gonna be massive destruction. The Ark of the Covenant will be taken away just like it was in Samuel's day.

So it is again, the priests are corrupt. So you can see why the religious leaders are upset that Jeremiah would say such inflammatory things. Surely there was a nicer way to say that. Surely he could have said something like, well, I've noticed we've been having some challenges lately.

I mean, where is his tact? But he shoots straight, exactly what God told him to say. You know who else did this? John the Baptist. John the Baptist did this. In Matthew 3, says, now in those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea saying, repent, just like Jeremiah, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew says, this was the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet when he said, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord, make his path straight. And how did John the Baptist prepare the way for Christ to come, but by this preaching repentance, by shooting straight and saying, this is not the way things are supposed to be.

You need to change and come into conformity with the word of God. And in verse 7 of Matthew 3, we see that John the Baptist shot straight with the religious leaders of Christ's day. When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, I'm so glad you came.

This is really gonna bump our numbers. He said to them, you brood of vipers, you pit of snakes, who warns you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance. That did not make John the Baptist very popular with the religious leaders.

But Jeremiah was simply preaching Christ's words. As we've looked at in 1 Peter 1, verse 11, it was the spirit of Christ. It was Christ through the Holy Spirit who spoke through the prophets. And Jeremiah is simply saying what the Lord told him to say.

And this is not the first time that he's said these things in Jeremiah 5, at the very end of the chapter, verses 30 and 31, an appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule on their own authority and my people love it so.

But what will you do at the end of it? Jeremiah preaching against the prophets and the priests. Verses 10 and 11 of Jeremiah 8. Therefore God says, I will give their wives to others, their fields to new owners, meaning there's going to be total destruction of the land.

Why?

Because from the least even to the greatest, everyone is greedy for gain. Greedy for gain, they want money. From the prophet even to the priest, everyone practices deceit. How do they do that? They heal the brokenness of the daughter of my people superficially saying, peace, peace, but there is no peace.

In other words, they say peace, in other words, shalom, shalom. Shalom looks like this. Look, this is how we're going to make shalom. This is how we're going to make peace and this is what it's going to look like.

And God says, that's not peace. You can put all these different things into place and say you have peace, but you are not right with me because you are idolatrous. So it's a superficial kind of healing, deceptive preaching.

And so Jeremiah had to say to the religious leaders, the big guns of his day, he had to say, what you're saying is wrong.

You are lying.

You are preaching false things.

You sound good.

You even use part of the scriptures, but you ignore the other parts and you are deceiving the people. And so that's what Jeremiah was called to do. That's not very appreciated. What's most appreciated is in religious circles, what's most appreciated is not just unity, but unanimity, unanimous words.

That everybody would say the same thing together seems to be the most important thing. King Ahab had that. He had 400 prophets on his payroll and surprisingly they all said the same thing to him at all times.

Dissenting voices were not appreciated like Micaiah. And in Jeremiah's day, the religious leaders said all the same thing, but Jeremiah had a dissenting voice. And we have, I think perhaps in our 5%, 5 experience been told, been taught that division is the unpardonable sin.

There is a kind of division that is sinful, such as the story of the church who couldn't get along because they didn't know if they should wear ties or not. And so they started two different denominations based on whether or not it was ungodly or godly to wear ties.

That's bad division.

But throughout the scriptures, we find that division is not the unpardonable sin. It happens to be the indispensable tool of truth. Not every division is, but you can't preach the truth without pointing out the lies.

And you can't say such and such is wrong without saying this is right. You have to have division, a separation in order for there to be truth. Jeremiah spoke Christ's words to the religious leaders that did not appreciate it.

And there was persecution. Notice the persecution was not just from the people. The persecution was not just a threat from the civil leaders, but the persecution was from the prophets and the priests.

The prophets and the priests along with the people put Jeremiah on trial in front of the civil leaders and they said, this man must die for his preaching. The religious leaders persecuted Jeremiah. So in getting our mind appropriately ready for persecution, we need to be ready for persecution from the church.

So I said two weeks ago when Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at the stake, they were burned at the stake because they preached the gospel and they were burned at the stake by churchmen. They were burned at the stake by praying people.

They were burned at the stake by those who went to church regularly because they preached the gospel. So if we're gonna have our mind straight on this, we have to get ready for persecution from the church that the big guns will begin to fire at those on the front lines.

And it's not gonna be the big guns that we're facing, it's the big guns that are on our flanks and behind us. And already we're being told that it would be wrong and a sin for any of us to counsel with someone who has been told that they have a sexual orientation that does not match their actual sex identity.

That they need to repent of their same sex attraction or their LGBTQ plus identity and repent from that and be faithful to what God made them as a man who should desire at all possibility to court the hand of a woman and pursue her.

That to tell someone who says I'm gay that the Bible says that's actually a sin, the desires for those things are actually sin and you should turn from that and see God's way about these things and that you can be healed from improper desires to say that is actually hate speech.

And that what Stephen Black does at First Stone Ministries whom we support, whom we've had here speaking to us, that what he does is wrong. And the house bill that was squelched thankfully that would strip him of his license should he follow the Bible and then fine him according to the cost of the overseeing board that may enforce him to pay for those things that that house bill was squelched, thank the Lord.

But the big guns at the Baptist seminaries say that what he does is wrong. The big guns are gonna fire from the church. Already we're being told that we are ignorant fools for being one issue voters. That because we refuse to vote and I hope that you do refuse to vote for a Democrat because abortion, killing of infants is in the Democratic Party platform as a sacred right.

They're never gonna get rid of it. That if you vote for them, that that's wrong. You shouldn't vote for baby killers. And because why? We obey God rather than man. And if there's a shot, if there's a chance that we can stop the murder of infants in our state, we ought to be on board and we shouldn't wring our hands.

And say, well, I don't know if it's constitutional.

Is it biblical? Vote according to the scriptures. And what I just did is condemned by the big guns and evangelicalism who say, I'm not supposed to tell you all or encourage you one way or another how to vote.

The big guns are saying that people are not as broad minded as those who are being so concerned about abortion. They're finding their range. Came the followers of God and the followers. That news reach church history.

We have to be aware of that.

Okay.

Church said, you know, condemning word, what we're reading of the scripture. This is what the word of God said. That's going to happen. And that's against the battle. He actually preached against the city would be destroyed.

I like that.

The city was full of law, but the people liked their Sabbath upheld injustice. They were unanimous in unanimous opposition against their city. How dare against their culture side, but he's, if you will surrender to the battle, this is part of and someone else to Jesus and John verses 16 through 19 to the, this generation out to other children say, we see why those two children over there.

And they say, he has a demon friend of tax collectors. Jesus says, we're not going to celebrate what you celebrate. Do you hear that? And Jesus says, we don't mourn what you mourn because our culture and our culture various forms and a risk social persecution, your persecution when you, when you, when you shoot straight, but you demands of follies, children, wisdom children do.

We're of a different family in demands. If we were culture, well world, you say who have LGBTQ plus are just as normal as we say to our own selves about repentance. And, and we need to recognize they are a sexual, my press of ways of the church.

And so welcome if we would capitulate song and we're supposed to dance to that too. In the slave of a thousand tyrants, all we have to do is serve. Isaiah 51, seven through eight reminds us, listen to me, you who know righteousness, a people in whose heart is, do you hear this?

Do not fear the reproach of man, nor we'll eat them like a garment and the grub will eat them like wool. But my righteousness, the third form of persecution and angry with Jeremiah and they want to put him on.

They have condemned him. They've expressed their hatred for him, but they do something to Jeremiah. So they want to put them on trial.

Thanks.

When the officials of Judah heard these things, they came up from the to the new gate of the Lord's house. Then the priest and the prophet spoke to the officials and side against the city as you have heard in your hearing.

But very often the government is likened to some kind of beast in the Bible. At the best, and it watches against the criminal, the intruder, anything done wrong. Designed the government to do just that.

At its worst, it's like a dog gone bad. Late as we were moving and we heard later that this dog had taken up with another pack because that's what you do with a dog gone bad. But this happens, but the officials are sitting in judgment at the gate, brought them to the government, brought Jeremiah to the government to be executed.

Leaders and the whole society has now pointed, okay, opposing religion and the culture at to whatever the false religion, the culture of the God and you have the beast, whoever the government office the expert.

I'm just speaking generalities in the New Testament and in church history. Jeremiah is a court the harlot in the name of Christ handing over true believers being eaten by the beast. 14, Herod beheaded prison because of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip for John, the words is not law brother and then marry her.

John and whatever God has entrusted to us to be able to participate in the process. Let's vote the Bible. Say everything we can to say to our, whether they are a city council member, official. That says the word of the Lord as it is in agreement with the word of God.

The opposition comes and it something wrong. This is something and someone gets upset. We feel like, oh, I've offended them. I've done something wrong. It's okay, quick to be convicted. It's okay to be quick to say, oh, I mean to you.

I understand, but if you shoot straight from the word of God because you desire to see soul, that's really what's supposed to happen. That's the norm. That's the norm. It's the norm throughout the scripture.

It is the norm throughout church history. Your, what you say, I didn't believe that our primary responsibility is to keep everybody happy. Speak the word of God and you have persecution. Remember this.

If you're a thing that could ever happen to you as already James has happened to you in Christ on the cross, you've already assist to his disciples. If any man wants to follow after me, let him take up his Christ unless you're crucified.

And remember, if we're, that's causing such a rush with, and it's not your job to cover for. It's not your job. Walk, just might get you stoned to death. Shooting straight, sing this little light of mine, preaching the cross by design.

The reminder in Jeremiah's life that life do does not end up in necessarily perfect health. And thank you for reminding us from Christian life to suffer, but that it's okay. And that we should have our attention upon you as to how he responded, love, oppose, fear.

Father, this is that we may hold to. And father, I pray that you would continue to help us pray these things for Christ's sake.

Amen.