Sunday Morning, August 4, 2019 AM Part 2

To know your truth and to speak your truth. I thank you for the songs that we've sung together, the emphasis upon your grace, the salvation that you bring to us in Christ and in Christ alone. Thank you for the prayers that were offered, directing us to you, to your glory, your glory that will fill the earth.

Lord, how much we have to look forward to, how much we owe you in this time now. Father, I pray that you would continue to grant us the grace we need to glorify you, that we may see your son, Jesus Christ, clearly and see him in the truth here in your word.

Father, we need you, and we're not here because we do these things well, we're here because we need you. We're here for your provision, a most necessary kind of food. I pray that you would provide, that you would provide abundantly, that as you feed us from your word, that you would do your work in our hearts, that we would become the amen on earth of your will, which is in heaven.

We pray these things for the sake of Jesus Christ, the one with whom you are well pleased, amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Jeremiah 31. Jeremiah chapter 31. I will be reading for us in a moment, verses 15 through 26.

We are in the middle of, or at the beginning of a kind of a story as we look at this passage. It's a five-step story. The first one is what we looked at last week. Sin is a wasteland. Sin is a wasteland.

Second part of the story is this. Grief is a compass. Hope is a signpost. Grace is a parade. And Christ is in Zion. And these five points, I think, help us lay hold of the truths that are in this text, Jeremiah 31, one through 26.

Last week, we talked about sin as a wasteland. We certainly see examples in scripture of whole nations, cities, cultures, towns, personal lives. There's certainly many examples in scriptures where we can see how sin makes a wasteland of their life.

We can see that in our own experience, but we do not understand the heinousness of sin, the disaster of sin. We do not understand it the way we ought to until we look at Jesus Christ upon the cross. It is there that we know the full cost of our sin.

If we would know what sin is without having to confront the disaster and the tragedy of sin ourselves personally in an everlasting hell, then we must look at Jesus Christ upon the cross. And see there the cost of sin.

To see there and to know there that sin indeed is a wasteland, that it is devastating, and that it is separating. And it is important that we keep that in mind as the background to the story that we're reading in Jeremiah 31.

Now, this is a passage Jeremiah is writing as part of a book that God commissioned him to write. It is the 10th year of Zedekiah. He's got one year left. Jerusalem is already under the oppression of Babylonian armies.

The siege has begun. Food is running out. Jeremiah is barely hanging on by the good graces of a few officials who have moved him from a pit into a room, a guarded room inside the palace. He gets a little bread and a little water.

He's hanging on with the rest of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. It is the last year. And God says, write a book. And he writes this book to be sent to his fellow Jews who are already in exile, who were taken 10 years earlier to Babylon, and there they live.

And Jeremiah has been writing to them, telling them the will of the Lord, how they are to build houses, live in them, plant gardens, eat from them, to get married, have children, make sure that they get married and that they have children to pray for the peace of Babylon because in the prosperity of that city and empire, they too would know prosperity.

And the whole idea is that they had not diminished, but they must increase because there was hope. They were gonna go home. God was gonna bring them back to their city. They were going to rebuild. They would worship God again in Jerusalem.

And in addition to those specific instructions comes this book, an overview of what God is all about. Why is it that God has judged his people in this way? Why is it that he has given them hope of a return?

What is the big picture of what God is up to? And we're looking at that here in Jeremiah chapters 30, 31 and following. I invite you to stand with me. I'm going to read for you the words of our Lord, the words of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

These are his words, the spirit of Christ through the prophet Jeremiah, beginning in verse 15. Thus says the Lord, a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children.

She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more. Thus says the Lord, restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded declares the Lord and they will return from the land of the enemy.

There is hope for your future declares the Lord and your children will return to their own territory. I have surely heard Ephraim grieving. You have chastised me and I was chastised like an untrained calf.

Bring me back that I may be restored for you are the Lord my God. For after I turned back, I repented. And after I was instructed, I smoked on my thigh. I was ashamed and also humiliated because I bore the reproach of my youth.

Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a delightful child? Indeed, as often as I have spoken against him, I certainly still remember him. Therefore, my heart yearns for him. I will surely have mercy on him declares the Lord.

Set up for yourself roadmarks, place for yourself guideposts, direct your mind to the highway, the way by which you went. Return, oh, virgin of Israel, return to these your cities. How long will you go here and there, oh, faithless daughter?

For the Lord has created a new thing in the earth. A woman will encompass a man. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. Once again, they will speak this word in the land of Judah and in its cities when I restore their fortunes, the Lord bless you, oh, abode of righteousness, oh, holy hill.

Judah and all its cities will dwell together in it. The farmer and they that go about with flocks for I satisfy the weary ones and refresh everyone who languishes. At this, I awoke and looked and my sleep was pleasant to me.

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Jeremiah is writing a hope-filled word, but he's doing so from a grief-filled city. They have seen many of their loved ones die. They have seen the glory of their nation reduced to a last bastion holding out against all odds.

They have begun to feel the terrors of a full-blown siege. Panic sets in about food. He's writing this information. He's writing this sefer, this book, and sending it to a people who are also in grief.

When the exiles arrived in Babylon, it says that they sat down by the river and wept. And they hung up their harps upon the trees and refused to play anymore. He's writing from the context of grief to a people who are in grief.

And he's writing about those who will be returning to the land by God's good grace, but they will come in their great grief. Not only that, he's writing about those who are grieving for those who will return in grief.

There's grief everywhere in this passage. And it's a passage of hope. There's something about the way that they're grieving. There's something about the way that they're mourning and lamenting that is lacking.

There's a way to grieve. There's a way to lament. There's a way to mourn that is godly, that is good. But it needs to be about the right things in the right way and in the right direction. There's a lot of grief in our culture today.

There's a lot of grief about the things going on. There's grief in the pews about the way the world is and the significant sense of the things that we've lost. There's great grief out there in the world about the way things are, the way that things need to be.

Everyone seems to be grieving and lamenting and howling in pain and misery. I saw that one time. I was teaching a worldview class to some homeschooling students back in Tennessee at our homeschool co-op.

And I wanted them to see an example of a pantheistic worldview. And so there was a group of mourners out in the forest in California. And they were mourning the cutting down of trees. And they were talking about the fact that every time a tree is cut down, the murder that takes place in the forest.

And there was a man beating a drum to help them move through their time of grief. And then a young woman began to howl and screech at the top of her lungs at the cutting down of the old growth forest.

And she was wailing and she was gnashing her teeth. Fairly much the same thing happened in different parts of the country when our president was elected two years ago or three years ago. And there's all sorts of examples you can watch of people literally wailing and howling, rocking back and forth, sobbing and gnashing their teeth.

And I think, where does that grief end? Where is that grief going? There is a kind of grief that is being imposed upon us in the way of the world today. Joshua Harris is grieving in his apostasy, having denied Christ.

And he is grieving in how that he has spoken in the way that he has spoken in previous times against the LGBTQ community or led people astray in his false teaching, he says. Matt Hall is the provost of Boyce College, anticipated to be the future president of Southern Seminary.

And he's grieving over the fact of his whiteness that he is unchangeably going to be a racist and a white supremacist because of the system in which he lives. And it's never going to change. Nate Collins last year at Revoice during his conference session, it was titled A Kind of Lament, was lamenting that the church did not lament the way that they were treating sexual minorities and said that gay people were prophets to teach the church how to properly lament their abuse of sexual minorities.

There's a lot of lament, a lot of grief that is being imposed upon the church by people in the name of Christ. But I wonder about that grief. I wonder if it's things that we ought to be grieved about.

Is this kind of grief actually being informed by the word of God? Should we grieve things that God does not grieve over? Should we grieve about things that God is not grieved over? Who's informing our grief?

Are we not made in the image of God? Should we grieve about things that God is not grieved over? I'm concerned that grief, which is something that God calls good, is being subverted to inappropriate contexts.

In the scriptures, grief is something that is a compass. Grief is a compass. When we come to a point of grief, when we are greatly grieved and greatly disturbed within, what we know, if we don't know anything else, what we know is I don't like it here, I wanna go someplace else.

But if we do not read the compass correctly, we may end up grieving in a way in which there is no hope. I wanna see the grief going on here in our passage in Jeremiah 31. And the title of the sermon is the point of low return.

You've heard of the point of no return. We're not talking about that point. We're talking about the point of low return, which is the point of repentance. The point of repentance. And the first thing we have to recognize is that sin is a wasteland.

It makes a wasteland of our lives. It makes a wasteland of the world in which we live. And we need to recognize sin for what it is. And it is good to grieve over sin that God calls sin. And it is good to grieve that in our lives and in the world around us.

Now grief is a compass. It is meant to return us to God. Now look at verse nine, if you will, at the beginning part of the chapter, the part we did not read, we read last week. Look at verses seven through nine.

For thus says the Lord, sing aloud with gladness for Jacob and shout among the chief of the nations. Proclaim, give praise and say, oh Lord, save your people, the remnant of Israel. Behold, I am bringing them from the north country and I will gather them from the remote parts of the earth.

Among them, the blind and the lame, the woman with child and she who is in labor with child together. A great company, they will return here. Now listen, with weeping, they will come. With weeping, they will come.

And by supplication, I will lead them. I will make them walk by streams of water on a straight path in which they will not stumble. For I am a father to Israel and Ephraim is my firstborn. We're going to later hear from Ephraim.

And what Ephraim says, why he's so broken and why it is that he's weeping. You'd think that in the storyline, those who had been cast out of their land 140 years prior would be come back rejoicing, glad to come home, glad to get back to their roots, glad that God was sovereignly reigning over history to bring them back to their land in a surprising way.

He'd think they'd be coming back in cartwheels. But look at their condition. Their condition is stressed as those, their company was full of those who were, what, they're weak. They're suffering, the blind and the lame.

And the picture of those women with child, that they are needy, that they are weak, it's difficult. Can you imagine, can you imagine any more needy caravan than this? They were moved anywhere from 400 to 800 miles away from Ephraim, from Samaria, from their own land.

And think of an 800 mile journey on foot in a great multitude of the lame, the blind and women with children. With weeping they come. So they don't come back with their heads held high, they don't come back on their own terms, they don't come back proud of being a part of the great parade back, they come weeping.

They are broken, they are grieving, but they're headed in the right direction. Because it says when they get back, the cry from the hills of Ephraim is, let's go to Zion, to the Lord our God. They're heading back, their orientation is correct, their heading is sure, they're coming back to God.

Now notice, with weeping they will come, but this is not a weeping that is devoid of hope. This is not a grieving without hope. They're headed in the right direction. Now notice, with weeping they will come and by supplication I will lead them.

So God will lead them, God will provide for them by the streams of water, they're always gonna have water for their journey, one of the most important aspects of traveling in that day was making sure you had a consistent supply of water.

And he says I'm gonna lead them by streams of water, they're gonna come back and always have all the water that they need. And he says straight path, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was straight as an arrow kind of path, but that it was level, that it was level, or that it was flat, not full of holes and dangers.

So God's saying I'm gonna bring them back, I'm gonna lead them, and I'm gonna supply their every need so we know the success of the journey. They're going to succeed because God is the one who's bringing them, but notice how he brings them.

He brings them weeping and he says by supplication I will lead them, supplication. What is supplication? Supplication is coming to God and saying God I need, God I don't have, God I need. A beautiful point of supplication is Jehoshaphat facing the armies, the combined armies of the enemy and saying Lord we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.

That's kind of a supplication, God I need, I am unable, I don't have. And this is the proper confession of those who have recognized that sin has made a wasteland of their lives. They are led by supplication, meaning that in their weeping, in their grieving, in their recognition of what sin has done to them, how they have participated in that sin, they come back, but their every step is by supplication.

God I need, God I need, God I need. Do you think God gets tired of that? Parents get tired of that. Parents get tired of that. Grandparents too, but not as quick and they can always send them home. But we can get tired of that, hey I need this, hey I need this, hey I need this.

If you have a neighbor who's especially needy, you get kind of tired of them always needing something from you. Somebody at work who can't seem to get it together, they always need you to do something for them.

We get tired of someone coming to us time and time again saying I need. But does God get tired of that? No he doesn't. He doesn't get tired of that, he gets glory out of that. Because every time we wake up to the fact that we are as needy as we really are, and we go to God and say I need, and we come to him weeping and broken and helpless, and we come to God and say I need, he's glorified as heavenly father.

And he, watch me provide. See God's gonna, God gets all the glory for this procession because the ones coming back aren't the strong and the well equipped, they're the blind and the lame. It's not the strong man in the special forces military who can do it, it's women laboring with children.

See God gets all the glory out of that kind of return when they're grieving and being led by supplication. The point of low return for thinking rightly about repentance, we know this, the lowly return with grief, with grief.

Nobody comes back to God devoid of grief. The grief was a compass to direct through every step back to the land, meaning back to the Lord, back to the light. To the lost return, it's not just the lowly that return with grief, it's the lost, those who were lost, and we see this in verses 15 through 17.

Thus says the Lord, a voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children because they are no more.

Thus says the Lord, restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears for your work will be rewarded, declares the Lord, and they will return from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the Lord, and your children will return to their own territory.

Well, this is a mention of a picture that is deeply rooted in the history of Israel. Rachel's weeping for her children and she's weeping from Ramah. I mean, who's Rachel, where's Ramah, and what does this have to do with repentance?

What does this have to do with us and grief? Rachel, according to the story we have in Genesis, Rachel historically was Jacob's second wife. Abraham begot Isaac and Isaac begot Esau and Jacob. And Jacob, after leveraging the birthright from Esau, stealing the blessing from Esau, Jacob had to flee and he flew to his uncle Laban, where there he fell in love with his cousin Rachel, as they did in those days.

Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Rachel's oldest sister, Leah, and then he also married Rachel too. And although Leah had many children, Rachel did not. And it was very difficult for Rachel to have any children at all.

But when she did, this little one was a very special boy to her and to Jacob. And she gave birth to Joseph. Joseph was the firstborn of Rachel. So Rachel was his favorite wife out of the eventual four that he had.

Rachel was his favorite wife, and then she gave birth to her firstborn son, so Joseph became his favorite son. Which did not go over very well with the rest of Joseph's brothers. And Joseph's brothers assaulted him and sold him to slavers, telling their father, Jacob, that his favorite son was dead.

Old Israel, Jacob's name is Israel, he swore to mourn Joseph to the day that he also died. And Joseph, meanwhile, had his ups and downs in Egypt, but eventually he became the second most powerful man in all of Egypt at the right hand of Potiphar.

Not Potiphar, but Pharaoh. So then he married in this exalted position, and he had two sons, and their names were Manasseh and Ephraim. Later on, when Jacob discovered that Joseph was alive, he stopped mourning.

He stopped grieving. He wiped the tears from his eyes because the only reason why he would be comforted was because Joseph was indeed still alive. And so he goes down, meets Joseph, and he blesses Joseph's sons, but he favors Ephraim over his older brother, Manasseh.

And he shows his favor to Joseph in that, rather than there being a tribe of Joseph, like a tribe of Reuben, a tribe of Simeon, and a tribe of Levi, Jacob accorded to Rachel's favorite son, Joseph, a double portion.

Rachel's son, Joseph, became two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, and Ephraim was the favorite son of his favorite son, which is why Ephraim gets thrown around a lot in the Bible as the name of the northern kingdom, because he was the favorite son of the favorite son of Israel.

The northern kingdom, Ephraim, was called that also due to its first king, who was an Ephraimite, and the first capital was in Ephraim. Later on, the city Samaria became the capital of the northern kingdom, and that was in the tribal lands of Manasseh, the children of Rachel.

Ephraim and Manasseh, Rachel's children. Rachel's children. The tribal people from her son, Joseph. Well, Assyria in 722 BC brutalized Israel. Rachel's children of Ephraim and Manasseh were skinned alive, tortured, maimed, killed, and the ones who survived were taken far, far away into exile, and that is why Rachel unceasingly has been lamenting with bitter weeping.

In the Hebrew, nehi beki, nehi beki. This is why she is weeping. She bitterly weeps, and as Jacob refused to be comforted about Joseph, so Rachel refuses to be comforted about Ephraim and Manasseh. That's why she's weeping.

Now, why is it from Ramah? Here's the symbol of it. Rachel incessantly weeps for her lost children from Ramah. Why there? Because Rachel died on the way south from Bethel on the way towards Bethlehem.

You can read about this in Genesis 35, 16 through 19. I might as well go ahead and read that. Genesis 35, verses 16 through 19. Then they journeyed from Bethel, and when there was still some distance to go to Ephrath, which is the old word for Bethlehem, Rachel began to give birth, and she suffered severe labor.

So she's giving birth to her second-born son. When she was in severe labor, the midwife said to her, "'Do not fear, for now you have another son.'. And it came about as her soul was departing, for she died, that she named him Ben-Oni, which means son of my sorrow, son of my sorrow.

But his father called him Benjamin, which means son of my right hand. So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath, that is Bethlehem. Jacob set up a pillar over her grave, that is the pillar of Rachel's grave to this day.

So, Ramah is on the ancient road south of Bethel on the way to Bethlehem. This is likely the place where Rachel died, where the pillar was set up. Additionally, Ramah was given to the tribe of Benjamin, who was also Rachel's children.

She gave birth to Joseph and to Benjamin, three tribes, Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin. And Ramah was given to Benjamin, who was still around at this time. And so the idea is that Rachel, through her children Benjamin, from Ramah, is still weeping and lamenting the loss of Ephraim and Manasseh.

So that's the historical context behind the picture. Rachel, from her grave, is still weeping and lamenting the loss of Ephraim and Manasseh 140 years after they were taken away. That's grief. That's sorrow.

That is deep lamentation. And then the Lord says, stop. Stop weeping. Why would she stop weeping? The only reason she has to stop weeping for coming out of her grief was the same reason that Jacob had.

Joseph is not utterly lost after all. Like their ancestor Joseph, the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh were assaulted and sent away into captivity, presumed lost forever. But then God says, stop weeping.

They're not utterly lost. There's still hope for your future. And so was it right that she grieve? Yes. But do not grieve as those without hope. There is hope for the future. And the Lord even states that this return will happen as a reward for her work.

It says, verse 16, restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears for your work will be rewarded, declares the Lord, and they will return from the land of the enemy. Is there somebody that you weep for, to somebody that you grieve for, who's far, far away from God?

Suffering, suffering in the consequences of their own idolatry and rebellion against God. Is there somebody that you weep for, that you grieve for? Do not grieve as those who have no hope. Keep on praying for this, not that their problems will disappear, not that somehow they will finally see that you were right, but pray for their return to God.

Pray that they will come back to the one who made them, the one for whom they are to live. Rachel's weeping from the heights of Ramah became a come home beacon. Grief is this compass that is supposed to lead us back to God.

Also the light returns through grief, verses 18 and 19. We've heard from Rachel, now we hear from Ephraim. I have surely heard Ephraim grieving. You have chastised me and I was chastised, like an untrained calf.

Bring me back that I may be restored, for you are the Lord my God. For after I turned back, I repented. And after I was instructed, I smote on my thigh. I was ashamed and also humiliated because I bore the reproach of my youth.

So the picture in the text is Rachel is weeping from Ramah and Ephraim is weeping in exile. And she's grieving because her children are not And Ephraim is grieving because of all the horrible things that have happened due to his sin.

There is here a kind of a waking up, a kind of owning up of responsibility. Ephraim confesses here that he has been a wild, stubborn, untrained calf that nobody could do anything with. But through the process of God's chastisement, through great trouble, Ephraim here confesses that he has learned his folly and there is a desire to return to God.

Grief has enlightened him to his guilt. I remember I was talking to a man named Michael Johnson. He was fresh out of prison in Houston, or actually he was in Dallas. 25 year prison sentence for assaulting a police officer.

And he was a brother in Christ and full of the word and we had a good time of fellowship. But I asked him, I said, how do you know when somebody in the prison really is changed? It's not just a foxhole conversion.

I might as well act good while I'm here. He said, well, he said, the main difference is this. When they stop blaming everybody else and take responsibility. He said, you know they're a real believer when they say, I made bad choices.

I hung around bad people. I put myself here and they turned to Christ. Genuinely having confessed their sins and grieved over what they have done. You know, this moment of clarity also comes to somebody in Jesus' story, the prodigal son.

He went to his father, demanded his inheritance early, basically saying, I wish you were dead, father, so I could have my money. His father went ahead and gave him the money and the son left and wasted all his money in awful kinds of living.

And then a famine hit the land and things got hard. And then he found himself feeding pigs. And this is a Jewish young boy. A Jewish young boy feeding what's probably Gentile food to pigs. So this is the worst possible situation you could ever be in.

And he's looking, he's eyeing at the food that the pigs are slobbering all over, thinking that looks pretty good. And that's when you know he hit rock bottom. And at that moment, here's a grace from God.

And it says in Luke 15 that he came to himself. The grief became a compass that led him back home. He said, I will get up. I will go to my father. I will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

Make me as one of your hired men. The grief shed light on the truth of his wasteland of sin and his grief was a compass that led him back home. And we see this here with Ephraim. Notice how Ephraim prays.

I surely have heard Ephraim grieving. You have chastised me and I was chastised like an untrained calf. Bring me back that I may be restored. It's the same Hebrew word twice. It's the Hebrew word that shows up more often than any other word in this passage.

Shuv, turn, turn, turn. That's the theme of the whole 26 verses is that they would turn, that they would resurrect. They would recognize the wasteland of sin and that they would turn and come back to God.

So Ephraim cries out, turn me that I may be turned. Repent me that I may be repented. Restore me that I may be restored. The old Geneva Bible says, convert thou me and I shall be converted. Friend, that's the way to pray.

That's the way to pray. Because when you recognize that your best efforts have succeeded in making your life a wasteland of sin and that you have nothing to offer to God and it's just God or there's no hope at all, you're in the right place to say this.

Repent me that I may be repented. Turn me that I may be turned. Restore me that I may be restored. Convert me and I will be converted. The proof of the prayer is in verse 19. He says, for after I turned back, I repented.

Surely after that I was turned. Surely after that I converted. I truly repented. That is a prayer of salvation. Oh God, this is who I am as a sinner. I've got nothing. Turn me back. Jesus Christ came preaching.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The time is fulfilled. Repent, repent and believe the gospel. And that's when you see the light of God piercing the soul. And he has this grievous, grievous, grievous shame.

See the light comes, the light shines on his condition. He says, save me. He says, restore me. But the light of the affliction, the light of the grief that God shines upon him reveals the weight of what he has done.

He said, after I was instructed, after I was shown the truth of the situation, I smote on my thigh. I was ashamed and also humiliated because I bore the reproach of my youth. See, once the light comes, once the light comes, the nature of sin is only all the more exposed for what it truly is.

So many people keep running from God because as Jesus says, this is the condemnation that the light has come into the world and men loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.

So they hated the light and fled from the light for fear that their deeds would be exposed. And people keep running away from God and running away from Christ because the light of God shows them what a mess that they have made.

And yet how essential is this grief? How essential is this shame? What a loathing for sin is essential. What a wave of regret washes over the converted man just now born again that he looks at his youth with disgust.

How could he have been so stupid and wasted so much of his life? But this grief, this grief sanctified, justified without condemnation serves as a compass too. Who wants to go back to the waste and the destruction which so dominated the former life?

If you've tasted the bitter poison of sin, if God has truly repented you that you be repented and you want, then don't go back, don't go back. 2 Corinthians 7, 9 through 11, I think is a helpful elaboration on what we read out of Proverbs this morning.

This is a timely word for our world. Proverbs 26, verse 28. You heard this this morning. A lying tongue hates those it crushes and a flattering mouth works ruin. A lying tongue hates those it crushes and a flattering mouth works ruin.

Whoever you lie to, you're at war with. A lying tongue hates those it crushes and a flattering mouth works ruin. We have so much flattery today, so much flattery. So that no matter what a person does or no matter what a person believes, that everybody is called to this great task of flattery telling them, oh you just be you.

You just be you and that's great. The billboards have long dotted our countryside along the highways. The bumper stickers have long plagued our highways. Why do we have a culture that says you just be you, whatever it is, we'll accept you, not only accept you, but celebrate you.

You're awesome just the way you are. Why does our culture say that? Because upstream the church said it first. God loves you just the way you are. How many times have you seen a billboard or a bumper sticker that said that?

Do you know what that means? Don't repent. God's infatuated with you. He can't get enough of you. He's all about you, just the way you are. As if there's nothing wrong, no problems, rejoice in your wasteland.

That is not the message of the Scriptures. Yes, God is love. He loves you in spite of the way that you are and he loves you in a way that he seeks to change you into the way his Son is. This grievous shame is so essential.

2nd Corinthians 7 9 through 11, Paul writes to this church, he says, I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful. He says, I wrote you an earlier letter that made you sorrowful. He says, I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful.

He's like, I'm not happy when you grieve, but here's how why he's rejoicing, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance. For you were made sorrowful according to God, according to the will of God, a godly sorrow, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.

Now listen, for the sorrow that is according to the will of God, the sorrow that is according to God, the godly sorrow produces a repentance without regret. Same word in the Greek, a repentance without repentance.

It is not a repentance from which you repent. It is not a turning from which you turn. The godly sorrow produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation. Now notice, but the sorrow of the world produces death.

There is a worldly sorrow that is filling up our churches. There's a worldly sorrow that is filling up our culture. We're being told to lament and be sad about all these incredibly heinous things, we're told, but there is no hope because there is no repentance because there is no promised change.

It's a great burden to me that so many of you through the media, through your friends, are being told, here's how you're a sinner, here's how you have failed, here's how you're a problem in this world today because of the things that you believe in the way that you are, and at the same time being told there's no hope for any kind of change.

Whether it's the folks at Revoice saying that people who are homosexual have no hope of change and they just need to be gay Christians for the rest of their life, or people saying that, well, because we live in a society full of structural racism, if you're white, you're a racist and a white supremacist and there's nothing you can do about it, it'll never change, or somebody saying that because you're a man, you're automatically sinful because you live in a masculine patriarchal society, or somebody telling you that because you're wealthy, the degree that you're wealthy is the degree to which you are guilty, and these messages are blasted from every source of higher education, blasted from every single source of media in our land today, and what is it being told us?