Sunday Morning, October 27 2019 AM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Father, I thank you for bringing us together today. I pray that you would help us to truly celebrate you and to rejoice in your goodness, to give you the glory.

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I pray that you would strengthen our faith in you and you would not allow us to leave this place unchanged or unchallenged.

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And that what you have to say through your word would be your will that is done in our hearts. That you would conform us to the image of your son,

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Jesus Christ, who is our only hope. It is in his name that we pray, amen.

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Well, happy Reformation Sunday, hence all the medieval stone about.

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I'm looking forward to Wednesday night, looking forward to our time together as we celebrate something very well worth celebrating.

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Thank you, Dwight, for reminding us what a treasure it is to actually be able to hold one of these without being killed.

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What a privilege we have. The blood of many of our spiritual ancestors has been shed.

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Many of them were imprisoned, many of them lost their families, lost their homes and their jobs, had to be on the run, all for the sake of making sure that the word of God was translated into the common tongues that all

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Christians would be able to read it for ourselves. So what a great thing to be reminded of today.

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Thank you, Brother Dwight. What a privilege it is to be here where we can sing hymns together.

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The fact that we actually sing hymns, that you get to sing hymns, that's something that came about through the

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Reformation. Next week, we'll be observing the Lord's Supper. The fact that you can actually take the

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Lord's Supper in participation with the local church, that's something that was fought hard for for the, during the

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Reformation. The fact that you can go to your knees in prayer to God directly and know that there's one mediator between God and man, the man,

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Christ Jesus, and know that your sins are forgiven only by the merits of Christ. What a blessing that we have that clear gospel understanding because of the

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Reformation. So plenty to celebrate, plenty to celebrate. So happy Reformation Sunday.

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We, historians pick October 31st, All Saints' Eve, for the day to celebrate the

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Reformation because it was on the eve of All Saints' Day, 1517, that Martin Luther nailed up his 95 theses on the chapel door in Wittenberg where all such announcements were placed.

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His protest, 95 different protests against the Roman Catholic practice of selling indulgences which amounted to, buy this piece of paper, we'll fund our big buildings and you will feel like you got forgiven.

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So come Wednesday night and you'll learn more about that. Now I want you to imagine a time when the genuine worship of God had become a relic of the past.

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I want you to imagine a people who are more familiar with superstition and fantasy than the

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Bible. I want you to imagine a place where clear gospel preaching is scarcely heard and to imagine a culture in which religion and spirituality is big on business and little on holiness.

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Are you having to tax your imagination too hard? No, it's not too hard to imagine a time and a place and a culture and a people like that because we're not so vastly different.

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We are not so experientially distant from the spiritual rubble of Europe in the early 1500s.

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Now they were much, much worse. European Christianity was an absolute mess, worse than American Christianity, but we're doing everything we can to make sure history repeats itself.

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Whether we sit over coffee and discuss the latest awful news report from our community or the latest scandal in the church at large, we have a certain kind of feeling which ranges from, it's about the same, it's the same sentiment, but it's a range of that sentiment.

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We know things aren't right. We know there's some need to get things straight, but this feeling ranges from growing concern to I've already stalked my bunker.

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We know things aren't well. We know things aren't well.

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We know the foundations of Western civilization under attack, the foundations of its mother, the church, are under attack, the very notions of God making us in his image, the fact that family is a good thing to celebrate, the idea of gender, whether it be roles or realities, the idea of taking responsibility for oneself, the idea that there's an absolute right and wrong, an absolute true and false, all these things, all these things which are inherent to the church and is essential for the building blocks of Western civilization are under attack.

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It's clear that the foundations are being destroyed. And that's a phrase from Psalm 11.

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It's a phrase. If the foundations are destroyed, can you finish it?

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What can the righteous do? The foundations are destroyed. What can the righteous do?

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Well, this is not a unique time in our day. This is not a unique situation. It's not as if God's people haven't faced things like this before.

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Threats and dangers ebb and flow like the tide. New problems ever wash upon our shores.

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We find ourselves in similar crises, not the same perhaps details, but similar crises as our spiritual ancestors, perhaps like Luther.

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And also what about John the Baptist? And what about Jeremiah? As we'll see in Jeremiah 33 this morning.

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And what about King David? It was David who wrote Psalm 11. And listen to this

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Psalm. Psalm 11 verses one through seven. In the Lord, I take refuge.

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How can you say to my soul, flee as a bird to your mountain? For behold, the wicked bend the bow.

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They make ready their arrow upon the string to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart. Here's the verse.

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If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

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The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven.

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His eyes behold. His eyelids test the sons of men. The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked and the one who loves violence, his soul hates.

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Upon the wicked, he will rain snares. Fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup.

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For the Lord is righteous. He loves righteousness. The upright will behold his face.

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If the foundations are destroyed, what will the righteous do? This is the situation in Jeremiah 33.

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Jeremiah is imprisoned in the palace guard for preaching the word of God and the

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Babylonians have the city surrounded. They have their siege ramps brought near to the wall. They're about to spill over the wall and take

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Jerusalem. The foundations are about to be destroyed.

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The physical foundations are about to be wiped bare. The city's about to fall.

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This is what's going on in Jeremiah and Jeremiah is understandably upset. He's concerned, he's anxious, he's fearful and so he's praying and then

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God gives him an answer and the answer is pretty much the same that what we read about in Psalm 11.

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That if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? We can take refuge in the

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Lord. If you please stand with me, I'm gonna read our text for this morning. Jeremiah 33 verses one through 13.

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This is the word of the Lord. Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the second time while he was still confined in the court of the guard saying, "'Thus says the

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Lord who made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it, the Lord is his name.

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Call to me and I will answer you and I will tell you great and mighty things. Which you do not know.

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For thus says the Lord God of Israel concerning the houses of this city, concerning the houses of the kings of Judah, which are broken down to make a defense against the siege ramps and against the sword while they are coming to fight with the

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Chaldeans and to fill them with the corpses of men whom I have slain in my anger and in my wrath and I have hidden my face from this city because of all their wickedness.

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Behold, I will bring it to health and healing and I will heal them and I will reveal to them an abundance of peace and truth.

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I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel and we'll rebuild them as they were at first.

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I will cleanse them from all their iniquity by which they have sinned against me and I will pardon all their iniquities by which they have sinned against me and by which they have transgressed against me.

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It will be to me a name of joy, praise and glory before all the nations of the earth which will hear of all the good that I do for them and they will fear and tremble because of all the good and all the peace that I make for it.

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Thus says the Lord, yet again, there will be heard in this place of which you say, it is a waste without man, without beast, that is in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate without man, without inhabitant, without beast.

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You will hear the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voice of those who say, give thanks to the

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Lord of hosts for the Lord is good and his loving kindness is everlasting and of those who bring a thank offering into the house of the

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Lord for I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were at first, says the Lord. Now says the

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Lord of hosts, there will again be in this place which is waste without man or beast and in all its cities, a habitation of shepherds who rest their flocks in the cities of the hill country, in the cities of the lowland, in the cities of the

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Negev and the land of Benjamin, in the environs of Jerusalem and in the cities of Judah, the flocks will again pass under the hands of the one who numbers them, says the

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Lord. This is the word of the Lord and you may be seated. When I read this passage,

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I thought of Psalm 11 and it's a Psalm that I preached here about five years ago, I'm not gonna go back through that. But it seems to me that every year on Reformation Sunday, being a good

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Protestant, I ought to protest. I ought to protest something, that's what Protestant means, means to be a protestant, to protest something.

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And as long as we're Protestant, we might as well protest whatever it is that is ailing the church. And this refrain from Psalm 11, if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

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That seems to me one of our greatest repeated fears as the church.

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And this is what I protest, this is what I protest today. What is ailing our church?

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What is ailing many churches? What is ailing American Christianity?

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I protest hopeless, helpless holiness.

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I protest hopeless, helpless holiness.

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True holiness is never helpless when it comes to sin. True holiness is never hopeless when it comes to the rising tide of wickedness.

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True holiness does not bulk at cracked foundations, but it will build upon the choice cornerstone.

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We have one foundation, Jesus Christ. This foundation cannot be destroyed.

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And it is a set of this cornerstone. They will either be broken across it or they will be crushed under it.

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Holiness, true holiness is never helpless. It is never hopeless.

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If the foundations are destroyed, if the foundations of Western civilization and if the foundations of the

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American evangelical church are destroyed, take refuge in the Lord. While the wicked bend their bows.

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The wicked bend their bows. Well, the wicked have been bending their bows a long time. Jeremiah faces opponents from without and from within.

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Jeremiah has enemies right around him and then outside the city. He's got enemies everywhere he looks.

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You may imagine that a man be harried by the conflicts at his work, but if his home is a peaceful haven, he may endure long and succeed against external opposition.

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But how much worse when he, after battling temptation, navigating myriad difficulties, engaging with opponents, he comes home to chaos, conflict, and enmity.

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How can you fight a two war front? Jeremiah has a two war front.

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A two front war, perhaps. Jeremiah knows the enemies are without and the enemies are within the city.

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The wicked surround the city. The Babylonians are wicked. They surround the city. And then there are the Jews in the city and they are wicked as well.

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They fill the city. And Jeremiah may be wondering to himself, what can the righteous do?

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When the wicked bend their bows from every side. There are enemies, both foreign and domestic, when it comes to Jeremiah's situation.

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The enemies, the foreign enemies are the Chaldeans, the Babylonians. They have built their siege ramps. They have advanced to the walls of Jerusalem.

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This city has, because of the Babylonians, they have been weakened in this siege. The Babylonians have, by their siege, caused

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Jerusalem to suffer famine and disease. And they will soon die beneath the sword.

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What's gonna happen to this city? What has already happened to the land? All the cities will be deserted throughout

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Judah. Jerusalem will be desolate. The gates will be torn apart. The doors splintered and burned.

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The walls made but faint outlines. Broken stones scattered and lonely.

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The homes that are left are but empty boxes. No roofs built only half high. Only ready -made sheepfolds for the wandering shepherd.

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And any curious wanderer passing through the great city of Jerusalem and the towns of Judea would be haunted by their previous grandeur.

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The obvious signs of a great civilization. And consider the horrifying strength and venom that came about to make an end of such a people.

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The scattered stones are but a city -wide graveyard, though very few bodies would be found beneath them.

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What remains of the dead are bits and pieces of bone picked clean by the ravens and passed over by the jackals.

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The foundations will be thus destroyed by enemies foreign.

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But why? Because of the enemies domestic. Because of the enemies within.

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God sent the Babylonians as his instrument of judgment precisely because of the wicked

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Jews inside Jerusalem. He says in Jeremiah 25, verse seven, you have not listened to me, declares the

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Lord, in order that you might provoke me to anger with the work of your hands to your own harm.

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Therefore, that says the Lord of hosts, because you have not obeyed my words. Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, declares the

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Lord. And I will send to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these nations round about.

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And I will utterly destroy them and make them a horror and a hissing and everlasting desolation.

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Why do the Babylonians surround Jerusalem? Why have they brought famine? Why have they fostered disease?

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Why will they slaughter the people of Jerusalem with the sword? Because this is the judgment of God on the wicked people living inside Jerusalem, the enemy's domestic, who do not like that kind of preaching.

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This is all Jeremiah has been saying for decades, and that can get a little old. When all you say from day to day is preaching about how wicked and sinful everybody is and how

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Babylon is gonna come and destroy you folks. Well, that can kind of grate on the sensibilities.

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And so they have imprisoned Jeremiah, thus proving the point. And he is no longer allowed to preach in public.

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He's no longer allowed to communicate with the people. This people of Israel have so provoked

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God to anger, we see in our text that he has hid his face from them.

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He even longer hears their intercession because they're not just praying to him. They're also praying to all the other gods that they worship.

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They have long perverted the worship of God with pagan influences. They claim righteous works in their unrighteous living.

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They claim holiness in their unholiness. They claim health in their sickness. They claim riches in their poverty.

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They claim sight in their blindness. They claim life in their death. And why do they do this? Because they are in rebellion.

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They are in rebellion. There is a difference you see between rebellion and disobedience.

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There is disobedience, which is of course not doing what God says to do. But then there's rebellion.

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Then there's rebellion. And what does God say about rebellion?

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It is as the sin of witchcraft. This is said, remember when

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King Saul was instructed by Samuel the prophet to take the armies of Israel and to go kill the entire nation of the

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Amalekites because they were slated for judgment. They had been slated for judgment for hundreds of years. It was now time for them to be destroyed.

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And Saul went forth and he did not do what God told him to do. And they took much spoil and he even kept

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Agag, the King of the Amalekites alive. And when Samuel confronted him about his disobedience,

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Saul did not say, you're right, I'm wrong. I have disobeyed.

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The instructions were clear. We did not follow the instructions as the leader. I take responsibility.

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I disobeyed. That's not what he said. He begins to describe his disobedience as what?

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Something good. Well, we've kept the animals for sacrifice. He begins to call evil good.

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When you begin to relabel acts of disobedience as justifiable, right and good, this is rebellion.

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And this is as the sin of witchcraft because witchcraft is the practice of trying to turn one thing into another thing by the use of words.

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Witchcraft is rampant today. Look at this male person.

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We're going to call that female. And this female, we're going to call male. And what was an abomination, we're gonna call celebration.

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And all over our culture today, witchcraft is being practiced. And it's the same thing as rebellion.

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And this is what's happening in Jerusalem. They have begun to call what they do good, the evil they call good, and the good they call evil.

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That's witchcraft, that's rebellion. And this is a condition that we recognize in our modern evangelical church.

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Now, various sections of the present church on earth suffer daily for Christ. Many are being tortured, not accepting their release.

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They're looking forward to the resurrection. Others experience mocking, scourging, chains, imprisonment, terrible forms of execution.

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So others go about in rags, homeless, until their faith becomes sight. When absent from the body, they will be present with the

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Lord. Still others around the world suffer no immediate danger and follow Christ faithfully, doing

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God's work, by God's power, in God's way. And the small incremental progress of Christ's kingdom brings blessings upon their families and their communities and their churches.

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But there are segments of Christ's church in rebellion to Him. Something worth protesting, though that's not exactly what

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I'm protesting today. But we do know that there are aspects of Christ's church in rebellion to Him today.

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There's the common flying of glory kites and the ever shifting winds of the world's philosophies and churches end up teaching doctrines of demons and dabble in witchcraft.

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They sanctify homosexuality as holy. They anoint women for preaching and interpret and re -translate the

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Bible with Marxist hermeneutics. And this is just the Southern Baptists. And we could spend a long time listing the ales of the evangelical church and be moaning it and wailing it.

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It would not be Christian to deceptively label the problems with euphemisms and feel better about ourselves because we've changed the words.

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We're back right back where we started. And no one would ever accuse Jeremiah of sugarcoating his situation.

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But if all we ever do is wring our hands, how is this different from twiddling our thumbs?

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And this is exactly what the master has told his servants not to do with what he is entrusted to them, right?

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We're not supposed to say, what can you do? And bury the talent in the field and wring our hands and twiddle our thumbs till the day comes.

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What kind of servant does Christ want? What does he want us to be about?

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His work, his will and his way according to his power and to keep moving.

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What did he tell the exiles in Babylon? Do not decrease, be fruitful, multiply, right?

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Be about his work and his way, but only according to his power. What can the righteous do?

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The foundations are destroyed. What can the righteous do? Well, we can take refuge in the

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Lord because we only have one savior. We have one sovereign, we have one sanctifier.

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Not only will every one of Christ's enemies be humbled and defeated as a footstool for his feet, but every last blemish, spot, stain and wrinkle, he's going to cleanse from his blood -bought bride.

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He's the good shepherd. He's going to slaughter every wolf that rises up, whether from the outside or from the inside.

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Our woes, though they are real, must not be without worship.

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Our concerns, though they are justifiable, must not be without confidence.

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Our holiness, which necessarily means some degree of distinction and separation, when our holiness is in Christ, it is never helpless and it is never hopeless.

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If the foundations are destroyed, well, rebuild on the cornerstone. This is not the first time it's happened.

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So take refuge in the Lord. Things are bad, Jeremiah knows it. There's nothing he can do in his now to change the immediate future.

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I mean, the Babylonians are going to come in and it's going to happen. Nothing he can do about it. The foundations are destroyed.

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What can the righteous do? Well, notice the similarity between David's answer, take refuge in the

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Lord, and what God says to Jeremiah in verses two and three of our text, Jeremiah 33, two through three.

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Thus says the Lord, thus says the Lord who made the earth. The Lord who formed it to establish it.

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The Lord is his name. Call to me and I will answer you.

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Call to me and I will answer you. What a promise. I will tell you great and mighty things which you do not know.

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And why? Well, why call to God? Why is that the solution to the foundations being destroyed?

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Shouldn't we get out there, you know, with some spackle or something? We've got a problem here.

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Let's mix up some concrete. Let's get busy and work on them foundations.

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Why is the answer call to me? Why is it that we're supposed to focus upon God? Because he's the one who made the whole earth.

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He's the one who created us. He's the one who's given us life. He formed it and established it. He's going to tell us great and mighty things in his word, things that we would not otherwise know.

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So we've got to depend upon God for the answer. The grace bestowed genius of the reformation was that it was by the scripture alone.

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And it was by faith alone, through grace alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

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And unless you have all five alone so that it's all of God and not of us, there is no post -Tenebrous lux.

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There is no light after darkness. As long as this depended upon us and we're trying to figure out our strategies and our ways by our methods and our power and our wisdom, we never get out of the darkness.

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Because it's only God who can forgive and we need forgiveness. And it's only God who can restore and we need restoration.

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It's only God who can forgive. Look at verses five through eight. Look at the problem that the people really face.

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Look how God describes it. Verse four says that the people are busy actually destroying their own houses to help strengthen the wall against the

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Chaldeans. They're busy destroying the city before the Chaldeans ever get in there. Because they're trying to defend the...

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Does this sound... This is some sort of sick parable of how sometimes

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Christians respond to the threats from without. We begin destroying the things within to try to defend against the things without.

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But verse five, while they are coming to fight the Chaldeans and to fill them with the corpses of men whom

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I have slain in my anger and in my wrath. Why is he slaying them in anger and wrath?

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Why is he hidden his face from the city? Because of their wickedness. Because of their wickedness.

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What's their problem? Verse eight lists their iniquity, their sins and their transgressions.

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What's the problem with Judah? What's the problem with those living in... Because of their wickedness, their evil doing, their wicked deeds, their disastrous misery in which they live because of their sin.

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What's their problem? Their problem is their iniquity. It's their guilt. It's their blame. It is...

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They deserve punishment for their iniquity. What's their problem? It's their sin.

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They've missed God entirely. They've gone totally wrong. They are in the state of bewildering loss.

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What's their problem? They keep transgressing. They are in rebellion. That's the problem they have.

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And that's why with all of this going on that God in his absolute most fair way is bringing judgment.

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It's just absolutely fair. Fair's fair. In the light of all that wickedness, iniquity and sin and transgression, he brings judgment.

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Fair's fair. That's the fairest thing he could do. The most just and equitable thing he could do was bring this kind of judgment upon this kind of people in his anger and his wrath.

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And since this is the case, since it's their wickedness, iniquity, sin and transgression is against God, and since God has been provoked to anger and to his wrath, and that he's coming against them, who is it, who's the only one who can solve that?

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It's God. It's God who is offended. It's God who's been provoked to anger. It is God and God alone who can forgive.

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Isaiah 43 verses 24 and 25. He says, you have bought me not sweet cane with money, nor have you filled me with the fat of your sacrifices.

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Rather, you have burdened me with your sins. You have wearied me with your iniquities. I, even

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I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

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Look, this is the condition of every single one of us. Fair is fair. Fair is from God's point of view, which is the one that is absolutely true and right.

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If we total up all of your and my personal wickedness, iniquity, sin and transgression, fair is fair.

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What do I deserve? I deserve the unmitigated wrath and anger of God. And so, what's the answer?

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It's to turn to God, because he's the only one who can forgive. And why would he forgive? Because I ask really nice?

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For his own sake. For his own sake, he will forgive. For his own name, he will forgive. For the sake of his son,

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Jesus Christ, he forgives. He not only forgives and pardons and releases us from our guilt so that it never comes up again, but he also cleanses us from sin to purge us, to purify us, to pronounce us clean.

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If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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He is faithful to forgive us and to cleanse us. Faithful to what? The finished work of Jesus Christ upon the cross.

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He's just to forgive. How about fair is fair? How could he be just in forgiving us? Because of the finished work of Jesus Christ upon the cross having suffered in our place and for our sake.

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So take refuge in the Lord that the foundations are destroyed is because of sin.

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That's why the foundations are destroyed, because of sin. And we need forgiveness, forgiveness.

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Call to God and he will answer. Call to God for forgiveness and he will answer with Christ.

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Only God can forgive and only God can restore. Notice how he restores the whole of the covenant promises that he has given to them.

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He makes sure that he gathers his people. He makes sure that they will love him supremely under his rule and he gives them back their place.

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All three ingredients of the covenant are here. God's people in God's place, blessed under his rule. Notice that they return, verses seven and nine.

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I will restore the fortunes of Judah. Another translation, I will return the captives.

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I will return the captives of Judah and the captives of Israel. And we'll rebuild them as they were at first.

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Verse nine says, it will be to me a name of joy, praise and glory before all the nations of the earth, which will hear of all the good that I do for them.

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And they will fear and tremble because of all the good and all the peace that I make for it. See, it's only God who can turn it all around.

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The vision of destruction that I listed for you earlier, what will Jerusalem look like when the Babylonians are done with it?

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Who could ever bring that place back to the way it should be? Who could ever bring that land back and restore that place to that people and bring

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God's people back from exile? Only God can do that. Why call to the Lord? Why take refuge in the

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Lord when the foundations are destroyed? Because it's only God who can restore. Only God can revive the true worship.

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Verses 10 and 11. Thus says the Lord, yet again, they will be heard in this place of which you say, it is a waste without man and without beast, that is in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man, without inhabitant, without beast, the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, the voice of the bride, the voice of those who say to give thanks to the

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Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his loving kindness is everlasting. And of those who bring a thank offering into the house of the

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Lord, for I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were at first, says the

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Lord. Joy, gladness, hope, thanksgiving, all of it brought back.

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All of that had gone out of the land. That wasn't there anymore. Not even in Jeremiah's day, the true worship of God had departed long before the

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Babylonians permanently silenced the residents of Jerusalem. This was the most crucial need for the people of Judah, to return to a true worship of the true

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God. Every single last one of their problems stemmed from the failure to worship

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God properly. Every single last one of our problems as those who are made in the image of God, every single one last one of our problems as those made in the image of God stems from our not worshiping

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God properly. This is our most crucial need.

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And God says, I'm gonna bring them back and they're gonna have a proper spirit among them.

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They're gonna have a proper heart among them. And this folds right in with all the new covenant promises was we already looked at when he gives them a new heart, when they are united as one and they worship and they praise

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God with regenerate hearts, born again hearts. You know, it became something of a cheap trope, but I have noticed that it finally went silent.

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I don't know if it's more sad that it had become such a cheap thing to say or that it finally stopped being said so much.

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So I hardly ever hear it anymore. But you know, the calls for revival, where did they go?

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Prayer drives for revival. Where did it, what happened?

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I suspect it stopped selling well. The books, the songs, the crusades, the bumper stickers for revival.

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Where did that all go? It was certainly a thing. But that's not really the question.

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The question isn't, you know, what happened to the calls for revival? The question is, where are the hot hearts for God? Where are the confessing tears?

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Where's the sensitive repentance in the Holy Spirit? Where are the bold outspoken students?

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Where are the active, courageous, godly men? The pride of our power is broken down.

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Our sky is like iron and our earth like bronze. Can we afford to stop praying for rain?

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The foundations are destroyed. What can the righteous do? Take refuge in the Lord, call to him and he will answer.

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And we must call to him from a humble, humbled posture. God will redo it.

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God will return his people. God will revive true worship. God will rebuild his place. We see that in verses 12 and 13.

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He promises a restoration to the entire land. Life will be lived here again. Everything had been destroyed.

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It was a wasteland. It was the closest thing they had to a nuclear disaster. And God brought it all back.

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So that's why we take refuge in God. That's why we turn to him. Look, it's not a sinful thing for us to make an account of what has been lost.

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And if we go back to the heavenly minded hope -filled pilgrims to the time where we are today, we know that a lot of things have been lost.

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It's not a sinful thing to think about what a precious stewardship remains for us to steward.

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But our holiness is not adorned nor aided by hopelessness or by helplessness.

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The answer is to take refuge in God. And that is not to retreat into a monastery. What does it mean?

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How do we do this? How do we take refuge in God? The first thing that pops from Psalms and Jeremiah is prayer, prayer.

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And we scoff at prayer, not publicly, but we will scorn prayer in our hearts as, yeah, that's not much.

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It's not much. What is that? How does that help? Other than maybe it's a cathartic release if I'm upset.

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But listen, the grace bestowed genius of the

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Reformation and every single coming back to God is that it's on the basis of God alone.

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It's His power. It's His plan. It's His word. It's His grace.

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And at the end of it, everybody's shaking their heads and going, it was God. And that's the way

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He does things. God continuously does the impossible through the unlikely so that He gets all the glory.

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So how do we take refuge in God? Prayer. By prayerfully attending to the scripture, find your forgiveness, your pardon, your cleansing, your standing in Christ.

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Look, there's not going to be a restoration of the foundations if we walk around whipped by our own guilt into doing this good thing and that good thing and the next good thing without end.

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That is not going to restore the foundations. We must take refuge in Christ.

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Find your full forgiveness. Your God doesn't have the least bit of reservation when

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He looks at you and accepts you as His own, standing in Christ, justified in Christ.

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Through prayer. You have to pray for that understanding. It's the reality if you're in Christ, but you have to pray for that understanding.

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Pray for that sense. The farther you get away from that, the more susceptible you are to false teaching.

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Also through prayer, in accordance with the scripture, plead for God's supernatural grace.

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Plead for God's supernatural grace. Ask God to intervene. Ask God to do what only

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God can do in the hearts of those who must repent. In your own heart, for we must repent.

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The foundations are destroyed. What can the righteous do? Well, we can also repent specifically of boasting in the flesh.

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Too much in latter generations has been a million more in 54.

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How many more members can we get for our denominations? How many more members can we get in our churches? How much more can we do?

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Look at all of the things we can do. We're gonna flex. Repent of boasting in the flesh and repent of hopeless, helpless holiness.

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I get it. Now, some of you are closer to heaven than me and it doesn't have to do with height and I begrudge you none of your growing joy and desire to be absent from the body and present with the

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Lord. I begrudge you none of that. I rejoice with you. I rejoice with you.

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But all of our lives, but as a mere breath, all of our lives are as short as a man's breath.

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It's just not much time for any of us. So I don't begrudge that at all, but we have lots of things to be concerned about.

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We have lots of things to protest, lots of things not going right, but we cannot respond.

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We must not respond with hopeless noises or helpless plans.

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We have to respond as those who are building upon the only foundation upon which we can build and that is the foundation of Jesus Christ.

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And as our master, he has called us to be good stewards and we don't go bury what we have in the backyard and say, what can you do?

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We take what God has given us, whatever it is. If I stand here as a pastor and as a father, as a husband, as a disciple, as a disciple maker,

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I can list all the different things that I am. That's my stewardship. What am I doing with it? And if I am faithful with the small things that God puts right in front of me to do, then that's taking refuge in the

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Lord. Simple obedience, that's taking refuge in the Lord. And that's saying, God, Jesus, you've got this.

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You're the ruler of the kings of the earth. You're on the throne. The Lord is on his throne. I don't have to fix it from the top down.

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I'm called to faithfully obey what God has told me and then not despise the small things, not to despise a little pinch of leaven in the yeast, not to despise the tiny little seed that will grow to be the biggest tree, not to despise the small things, but to take refuge in the

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Lord and follow what he has called me to do. That's what the righteous do. Keep doing what our master says, keep moving one step forward to Jesus and forget about the storm that rages on either side of us.

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If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? Well, if the

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American church largely apostatizes, if second temple Judaism is utterly corrupt, if wicked Jerusalem is overrun by Babylonians, if Saul won't relinquish the throne to David, if there's no king in Israel and every man does what is right in his own eyes, if the spies bring back a faithless report, if the whole earth gets flooded, if all humanity gets exiled from God, if the foundations are destroyed, what can we do?

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Take refuge in God, repent to God, return to God because he's the only one who can forgive us of our sins and he's the only one who can restore all that has been lost and he does so on an unshakable foundation with an everlasting cornerstone.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this word. I thank you that you speak of such promises and such hope to Jeremiah who was in a very bad way.

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And Father, I know that we're nowhere near the difficulties that Jeremiah saw and we're nowhere near the difficulties

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Martin Luther saw. In fact, we are greatly blessed even today because of the faithfulness of both those men and many others.

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And Lord, we know there's many problems all about. Father, give us strength, give us courage, help us to trust in you, help us to always take refuge in you, in prayer and in simple obedience.