Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 8, 2020 | Stand Strong - Nothing's Too Hard For Him

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March 8, 2020 | Stand Strong - Nothing's Too Hard For Him · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: So Mariah Peters' song Stand Strong is our theme as we go through the book of Peter.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Half of you know that.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's really encouraging.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: So wow.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I see some second service people here.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Good job.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: You made it.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is why we're glad we have three services.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: This helps out those of us who forgot.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: So by uh great coincidence, um this morning, we are doing a Jeremiah challenge still.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we're doing that till Easter.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope you're reading through the book of Jeremiah with us, doing these four devotionals uh that I write each week.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we're reading this until Easter Sunday.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: That this week we'll be reading chapters 37, 38, 39, 40.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Those of you that are reading it, how many of you are reading Jeremiah?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you'll notice we're now in the good stuff.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, first 25 chapters, first half of Jeremiah is all judgment and it's tough sledding, pretty much.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: But now we are in the book of comfort, it's called chapters 30, 31, 32, and 33.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we're in stories, and it's kind of cool for a while.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, it's gonna get back bad again.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: But so for right now, we're having a really good time, and this morning's sermon is entitled Nothing's Too Hard for God.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Say it with me.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing's too hard for God.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a statement made a number of times in Scripture, but it's used not once, but twice in this chapter, which makes it the central chapter in the Bible for this theme, which is, of course, just so lucky, you know, that we'd hit this theme as we're all freaking out in the world about coronavirus.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So here are the updates, by the way, from this morning, 6 a.m.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: 107,490 cases around the world.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and by the way, of course, we know multiples.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just the confirmed cases because, of course, uh, if you're under 30, you know, you can have coronavirus and nobody ever knows hardly.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Almost nobody's died who's under 50.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so so we know there's loads of other people who've probably had it, you know, in our country and elsewhere.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so anyway, so but that's how many confirmed cases, deaths around the world, 3,652, recovered, people who've recovered 60,000.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, most of these cases, four out of five, come from China.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a list of the top one, two, three, four, five, eleven countries who've who've experienced that.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And again, this is news from this morning.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: It gets updated uh constantly.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can find this website.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: China has 80,000 of the 100 and some thousand cases.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: The last 24 hours, 50 new cases, total deaths, 3,000, new deaths just in the last day in China, 27, total recovered 57,000.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what's startling for a million, for every million people, the largest country in the world, 1.4 billion people, 56 out of every million, which you compare it to America, only one uh out of every uh by the way, this is probably because uh President Trump did something that was highly criticized, and that is at the end of January, just 10 days after China finally admitted about the coronavirus, uh, he closed off the no more flights to America from China.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he got blasted for that.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: But it's that's probably why we only have one case out of every million.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you got South Korea and Iran, where it's just busting loose right now.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: New cases 270 just yesterday in South Korea, 743 in Iran, 49 new deaths.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is Saturday in the last 24 hours in Iran.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Then you move down Italy, France, Germany.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a cruise ship right here, Spain, Japan.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Number 10 is the U.S., 447 cases as of 6 a.m.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: this morning, 12 new cases in the last 24 hours, 19 total deaths.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the reason I tell you that, and I could share with you some positives and why you shouldn't worry about it, but basically I need to speak spiritually about this before I move on to a sermon which really relates to this quite well.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I would like to share with you three sort of pastoral lessons.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, the panic especially comes from the fact that we are a proud world today.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: We believe we can control the world.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: We believe we have power over life and over death.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have forgotten what Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician Christian, said hundreds of years ago when he said we forget that man is a frail reed.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Even a slight breeze can blow him over and kill him.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we'd say, yeah, just a cough today can do that.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: But we need to remember that it's pride that thinks we have some sort of control in our world, and we need to remember our lives can go at any time, and we must trust God.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: We thought we were in control of the world and life and death.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Second, don't panic, please, like those who have no hope.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I know there are Christians that you and I know, I know some personally, who are utterly panicked.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad for them that we finally have a case in Kansas in the last 24 hours.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, maybe that, you know, encourages them.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: But but there are people that are absolutely freaking out, and the stores are having to tell them, we don't want to see you again.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: We've already sold you all of our masks and so forth.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, when times are at their worst, believers are at our best.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way it has always been.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way it should be and is now.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, this morning I asked a couple in our church named the Lockards, whose daughter Paige has gone over to the Netherlands, and I ask, is that a problem, coronavirus?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: You hear about that.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, they have cases in their city.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, Let me tell you a story from this last week.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: They mentioned they were gonna go visit some friends, some people they've been dealing with who are sick, and they don't know whether it's coronavirus or something else.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we said, Oh, excuse me.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Daughter, son-in-law, grandchild, why would you go and do that?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, Because we trust the Lord and we want to help them out.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Christians do.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: We're getting stories out of China that the underground church, the Christians are actually going and seeking out coronavirus case people and ministering to them, because that's what Christians do.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of a pastoral word about coronavirus, and it really does relate nicely, as you'll see, to our title this morning in our chapter, which is Nothing's Too Hard for God.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: This story this morning comes from Jeremiah 32.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, you may want to turn to it partly because I'm using the Christian Standard Bible, probably not the one you're using, but this is a recent version, and it's a story about a word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah about buying a piece of property.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the 10th year, we read, of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: That helps us to date this precisely.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: That means this is sometime from March 588 BC down to April of 587 BC.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that this is just a year and a half before Jerusalem will finally fall and be burned in 586 BC.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we are in the final bitter days of the life of the southern kingdom of Israel called Judah.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Later it would be called Judea when Jesus lived there.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we now know I'll be taking a group over there into July, and we will walk right over where Nebuchadnezzar had his siege mounds, where the terraced houses from Jerusalem were outside the walls, and the Jerusalemites, in order to keep the Babylonians out as long as possible, trashed, broke down their own houses and threw their own dead bodies.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Since they couldn't go out and bury them, they put their dead bodies in there.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And the analysis that archaeologists have been able to do of the scat and other stuff in those houses, which you can see today, the broken down houses from 588 BC, shows that the people of Jerusalem in those days were starving, they were eating grass, and they were even eating, they were cannibalizing the dead children that were lying around in the streets.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's how desperate this situation was.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And during that time, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, when the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, it says the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can picture 150,000 or 200,000 troops of the mightiest army in the world, and they're camped up on the Mount of Olives, looking down on Jerusalem.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're camped all around the city.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the prophet Jeremiah at this time is imprisoned in the guards' courtyard in the palace of the king of Judah.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was imprisoned in this sort of minimum security place.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: He had been in a maximum security hole where he was about to die.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he got brought up because he was about to die.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he's now in the guard's courtyard in the palace of the king.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: But he's under lock and kill.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he can't get out from there because they don't want him opening his mouth.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because when he opens his mouth in public in the temple, he sounds unpatriotic.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: He sounds like a traitor.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's telling everybody just give in to the Babylonians.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Save your lives.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Go into exile.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is God's doing.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: God's fighting against you.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's a holy war.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: God's been waiting for 800 years.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: He's finally gotten a belly full of your sin.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: So give up.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: He'll restore you later, but give up now.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so the king says, I don't want my people hearing this.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want them being unpatriotic.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, King Zedekiah had imprisoned him and said to Jeremiah, Why are you prophesying as you do?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: You keep saying, This is what the Lord says.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I'm about to hand the city over to Babylon's king, and he will capture it.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And King Zedekiah won't escape from the Chaldeans.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Chaldeans and Babylonians, by the way, are the same thing.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, he will certainly be handed over to Babylon's king, Nebuchadnezzar.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: He will take Zedekiah to Babylon, and you can fight the Chaldeans all you want, you keep saying.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Zedekiah is saying, King Zedekiah said this to Jeremiah before he threw him in prison and said, You're telling people you can fight the Chaldeans, but you're not going to succeed.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: What good is that?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they threw him into jail, all right?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, while he's in jail, we we move back to verse one.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord comes to him.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: A strange word.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord has asked him to do some pretty wacko things in the past.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Word of the Lord came to him one time and told him, Why don't you put on a yoke?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not why don't you, but I'm commanding you to put on a yoke and walk around for the next few years with a yoke.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when people say, Why do you have it on?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: tell them that's you need to submit to the yoke of Babylon.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you got this weird situation where Jeremiah's having to walk sideways down the streets of Jerusalem so he doesn't wipe people out, you know, going back and forth.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what a crazy situation.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's that other time where God told them to buy a pair of underwear, boxers, not briefs, and to wear them for a year until they were just super yucky, and then to go up a couple miles north of Jerusalem and to bury them under a rock in a place that had the same name as where the exiles were in far off Babylon.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so he put them under a rock for a year, and then God said, Go dig it up.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, he dug it up, and they were falling apart, and there were vermin all over them and so forth.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, That's what's going to happen to you, Jerusalemites, unless you do what I say.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: But this is one of the weirdest things God tells them to do.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: God tells him to buy a piece of property.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: It goes like this: watch, or behold, or look, the Lord says.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Hanamel, the son of your uncle Shalom, that makes him his cousin, is coming to you to say, Buy my field in Anathoth, Jeremiah's hometown, buy my field in Anathoth for yourself, for you own the right of redemption to buy it.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right of redemption is a phrase because you remember, maybe, that God, the people in the land, are inextricable in the Old Testament.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't sell your land to a non-family member.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: They had to be part of your extended family, because God said that land has to stay in families.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, who knows?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hannibal and the rest of them, they're all starving to death and they're hungry and they want some money because food is just out the costs so much.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so they go, Jeremiah's got a few coins.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go to town and sell him the land.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And probably his buddies go, yeah, right, he's gonna buy it.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's gonna look through this scam because the Babylonians own all the land now.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: They've eaten all the cattle, they've burned everything down.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing's left is Jerusalem.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why would he buy land that you no longer really own?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hanumel says, Watch, I'm a good talker.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: So he goes to Jerusalem and the Lord warns him and says, he's gonna come to you and offer you this crazy thing.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: He may offer you, you know, a good deal, right?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: But you're not gonna feel like buying it.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's buying things now.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: But he's gonna say, buy my field for yourself, for you own the right of redemption to buy it.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord told him, by the way, I want you to buy it because I've got a message here about the future and the fact that this land's gonna be worth something down the line.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, as the Lord had said, my cousin Hanamel came and he urged me, please buy my field in Anathoth for your own, for you own the right of redemption.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then I knew that, yeah, this is the word of the Lord.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a picture of Anathoth, uh, actually an etching from middle 1800s, and and so perhaps it looked more like it than it does today, where it's pretty flat, but I know you can't see very well, but as you can tell, this is not prime real estate.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: You are not gonna, you're not gonna grow a bumper crop of corn on this land.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: So somewhere here is a little plot of ground that Hanumel is selling to Jeremiah.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I bought the field in Anathoth from my cousin Hanumel.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And by this the same Anathoth, his hometown where they tried to kill him.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now they want his money.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: They tried to kill him before, they don't like him, but they're gonna sell him the property.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: You ever had that happen?
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, your relatives who hate you try to sell you something.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I weighed out the silver to him.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: 17 shekels.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Those are not coins, that's a weight, that's an amount of weight.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And 17 shekels is half a pound almost, seven ounces.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: 17 shekels of silver, and that would be uh that would be about 75 dimes.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Not today's dimes, there's no silver in today's dimes, but like remember mercury dimes?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody else collect old coins?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, yeah.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so but anyway, it'd be about 75 mercury dimes in weight, worth about a hundred and a little over a hundred dollars today.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Don't know, I have no idea what it was worth back then, but back then it was junk silver because coins didn't start until 600.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, they're starting right now, a thousand miles away in Persia.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Persia is now inventing coins because it's been such a hassle, as you can imagine, to take these little bits of silver and junk silver and stuff and weigh it, and and you know, with people cheating on the scales all the time.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: So coins are now being invented, but the earliest coins that you're gonna find if you buy old coins like I do are gonna be 600 BC.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: So right now he's just weighing out coins or weighing out silver.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I recorded it on a scroll, sealed it.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, we find we found about 50 seals right from this same part of Jerusalem, one with the name of his scribe Baruch on it, and so forth.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Haven't found Jeremiah's seal yet.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: We called in witnesses, because you have to have a number of people sign the contract back then, and weighed out the silver on the scales.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I took the purchase agreement, the sealed copy with its terms and conditions.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: They sealed one, and like here, if you have an argument with your next door neighbor about who owns the tree, where's the line drawn, you have to go downtown and check it out, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's sort of the sealed copy.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: But also there was an open copy you could keep with you, right?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like a marriage license or whatever.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So he has these two copies of the contract, and I gave it to Baruch.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've found his seal, son of Nariah, that's his buddy.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I did this in the sight of my cousin H.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Hanumel, the witnesses who'd signed it, and all the Judeans sitting in the guard's courtyard who are holding their sides and laughing at how stupid I am to buy this property.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's why this is public.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's laughing at how stupid he is to be buying depressed property, which Hanumel doesn't even really own because the Babylonians own it.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: But God told him to.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: And as part of this sort of drama, I charged Baruch in their sight.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is what the Lord of Armies, Yahweh Tzabaot, Yahweh Tzabaot, the God of Israel, says take these scrolls, the purchase agreement with the sealed copy and this open copy, and put them in an earthen storage jar so they'll last a long time.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And boy, in that dry air do they last a long time.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Dead Sea scrolls, 2,000 years old, right?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we know, in fact, we found real estate, not we, but archaeologists found exact real estate documents like this down in Egypt.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're called the Elephantine papyri, and they found them in these sealed clay jars, and they're like 3,000 years old.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, they last a long time.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I think we're gonna find this.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: If archaeologists don't find this contract with Jeremiah's signature on it, which they probably won't, but I think that when Jesus comes back to the earth, when God comes back, because this is such a proof of his promise, I think he's gonna go to any of us who happen to be, you know, on a tour to Jerusalem at that time, he's gonna go, hey, let me show you something.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna go out hiking, you know, to the old city, and he's gonna dig because he knows exactly where it is, and he's gonna pull up this clay jar and break it.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he's go, hey, here's the contract.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah owns that land.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Jerry, go get it.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's gonna be, I think it's gonna be cool.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: So just my thought, from my lips to your ears, God.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So um, for this is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, says.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Key verse of the chapter houses, fields, and vineyards will again be bought in this land.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: This whole land has been so torn apart, and we're about to go into exile, and half of us have died, and you're telling us you're gonna revive all this?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is what does Jeremiah do?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first he obeyed God.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: He bought the land, though it didn't seem smart, right?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he and he went through the whole thing, but you know, he's got questions inside, you know, coronavirus type questions or whatever.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what does he do?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I prayed to the Lord, oh Lord God, and so forth.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Notice, I mean I'm convicted by that.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: He he went to God in prayer.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: When the Babylonians are surrounding the city where his life is worth a plugged nickel, and he's spending some of his last coin to buy some ridiculous, stupid property, he takes it to the Lord in prayer.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is in the news this last week.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many of you are familiar with the fact we have something called prayer shaming.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer shaming today is a pretty big deal that when kids get shot in a school or whatever else, and the governor or the president or somebody else says, We're praying for the family.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Something that every president has said in America for hundreds of years, but all of a sudden, the people who don't believe in God and the people who don't like the president or whatever, they prayer shame.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: They say, That's stupid.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you praying?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need prayer, we need to take guns out of everybody's hands or something else.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this last week, I don't know if you know, but Mike Pence is in charge of the coronavirus task force.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: And every single morning he gets the task force together, and they start the day with prayer.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And here's a picture of it, of course, that went viral this last week.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Mike Pence mocked for praying with the coronavirus task force.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all denominations.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can see there's a girl there with the Ash Wednesday Ash on her.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, we have a number of different groups there.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Mike is a Protestant, is Catholic, Episcopal, and so forth, but they're praying.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: But it was shocking to me as I read through hundreds of responses to this news article, tweets.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Here's one from a professor at Columbia University, Dr.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Rasmussen, writes, I have yet to attend a scientific meeting that begins with a Christian prayer.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here's another one.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: It is disturbing and heartbreaking to know that the man in charge of protecting our nation from the coronavirus would resort to something as useless as prayer.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Nicholas Miller writes, um, this is absolutely ridiculous.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's the 21st century, not the 13th century.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps they should just stick pins in coronavirus dolls or do some bloodletting.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you have prayer shaming today, but I think you would agree.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, this is what's funny, this is pretty much designated as a prayer room, and every president since the White House has been redone like this, and up to and including Obama, has has prayed in this room.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is a this is where they do pray, but all of a sudden, all of a sudden, it's a bad thing.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: But but I'm sharing with you that I was reminded of this as I read about Jeremiah, who has a problem with what's going on, a coronavirus level problem, right, of life and death, and takes it to the Lord in prayer.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what he prays he's a good spiritual guy, he's a good TBC, or he's a good Presbyterian, he's a good Baptist, and so he doesn't immediately start by going, Lord, this may No sense at all.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why should I buy this?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, he starts really religious.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, he goes, Oh, oh Lord God, you yourself made the heavens and earth by your great power and with your outstretched arm.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is too difficult for you.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: What a great start.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sovereignty of God, nothing's too difficult for you.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: You are in charge.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, you're the man.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's gonna wait till the end.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if you have got a problem with the Lord, it's great.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Start off theological and thumbs up, okay?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Bring the wine in later at the end.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's what he does.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he he drops this amazing verse.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing word right here, difficult.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Translates.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's the word pala in Hebrew, and it's translated a number of ways in the Old Testament.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's translated amazing, remarkable, wonderful, like uh Isaiah 9.6, they should call him wonderful counselor, which means unbelievable, or can't figure him out, or he's beyond our incomprehensible counselor.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is too incomprehensibly, wonderfully difficult for you, right?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: We have a song that comes directly, about 30-year-old song that we sometimes sing here that comes right out of Jeremiah 32, 17.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, Lord God, thou hast made the heavens.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Remember this?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the earth by thy great power.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know the song?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, Lord God, thou hast made the heavens and the earth by thine outstretched.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is too difficult for thee.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not if you've heard that.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not asking you to sing it with me.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is too difficult for thee.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Great and mighty God, great in counsel and mighty indeed.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing's too difficult for thee.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful song based upon a wonderful concept that appears throughout the Bible.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: It appears for the first time in Genesis 18.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: When God Himself, in the person I think of Jesus, comes and stands outside the tent of Abraham and Sarah and tells 90-year-old Sarah that she's gonna have a baby, and she laughs.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And God's response is really?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is anything too hard for the Lord?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Too difficult, too impossible for the Lord?
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's the beginning.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: The last time it occurs in the Old Testament is in Zechariah 8.6, and it has to do with the second coming, which seems impossible to many people today.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: When people find out that you believe that Jesus is returning after 2,000 years, don't you sort of see that they go, like, yeah, right, uh-huh.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Keep telling yourself that.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in Zechariah, God says, I'm going to return, I promise.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the streets of Jerusalem will be filled with boys and girls playing.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And all of this may seem impossible, too difficult to you, but is it impossible?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Too hard for me.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: The concept is brought over in the New Testament.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: The angel appears to the Virgin Mary and says, You're gonna stay a virgin, but you're gonna have the Messiah as a baby.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Mary unbelievably goes, Let it be done to me according to your words, submissively.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the angel probably knows that down deep in her gut she's going, really?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so the angel of the Lord says, Because with God nothing shall be impossible.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ explains that it's really hard for God to bring some people to himself, to save them.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not easy, especially if they've got money, he says, because then they're self-sufficient, and it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than to bring those people to salvation.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, wow, it's like impossible, isn't it?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And looking at them, Jesus said, with man it's impossible, but not with God, because all things are possible with God.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a great thing?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's what Jeremiah starts his prayer by saying, Lord, I know I know you can handle anything.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then he explains why nothing's too hard for God.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And first one is because he's creator.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: You yourself made the heavens and earth by your great power, an outstretched arm.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you could make Orion's belt, you know, and if you could create the Grand Canyon, you can do anything.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing's too hard for you.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And second, he says, I know you can do it because not only are you creator, but you're the savior.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're the faithful one.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: You show faithful love to thousands, because you are the Lord of armies, great in counsel, because he's faithful.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when you save people and they wander away from you, somehow you stay faithful to them.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, you can do impossible things.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: And third, he says your eyes are on all the ways of the children of men in order to reward each person according to his ways and result of his actions.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, you can do anything because for heaven's sake you are all seeing and just.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Your eyes can pierce through the roof of this church building and watch and see who has a heart of worship this morning, can pierce through the roof of a home and watch the ethical or unethical behavior there through the ceiling of a business place and see how people are acting there and whether they're stealing or whatever else, because you can see anything and everything, and you're gonna reward people because you're absolutely just.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, he says, because you're the God of history, you performed signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, and still do today, both in Israel and among all mankind.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Still do today.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Signs and wonders in Israel and among all mankind.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: You brought your people Israel out of Egypt, you gave them this land.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, I know you can do anything, the impossible, because you're the God of history.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, you've been so faithful to us.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Notice those things all have to do with the past, though.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah's going, you know, you are amazing.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's about to get into his whine, his complaint about the present and the future.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's got problems, but he's saying you've been so faithful to us in the past.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he's been faithful, by the way.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Let me stop for three minutes and talk about Topeka Bible Church.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a present and a future, and we don't know what's going to happen in those.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we have concerns, we have issues, we have, you know, there's a coronavirus in our present and so forth.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: So what's happening?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: We need to stop, like Jeremiah did, and say, the Lord is great.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And about uh, well, actually seven days ago, 14 days ago, we played a video at our annual meeting that we came up with just amazed about what God did for us the last 12 months.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want to show that to you because it illustrates how God can do things that seem impossible, and he's done that for us in the last 12 months.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Watch this video right now.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Say praise the Lord.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we're just amazed at what God does here, and that's but that's the past.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we have concerns about the present and about the future, right?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: You do individually, about certain relationships, maybe a marriage, maybe your children.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Questions about health, whether it's coronavirus or you know, many of us in this room right now, I'm waiting for a test to come back to find out what a certain spot is.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Half of you have had stuff like that happen.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: You have to trust the Lord for that, right?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or you have uh issues with your income or with a job or something else.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you know Lord's been faithful to you in the past, but like Jeremiah, you go, having said this, Lord, having said thank you, I'm confused about today.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm concerned about tomorrow.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so he finishes his prayer.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah does finally slip in what he's been trying to get to.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Okay, God, Israel didn't obey you or live according to your instructions, so you brought all of this disaster.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Look, just in case you haven't noticed, God, siege ramps have come against the city here to capture it.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: What you spoke has happened.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Look, you can see it, God.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then he goes, uh, but you yet you, Lord God, have said to me, Purchase the field, even though the city's been handed over to the Chaldeans.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've gotten a little confused, Lord.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: What are you doing here?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm concerned about what's going on.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that's his prayer.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: God, up till now it all makes sense.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: But this latest thing, it makes no sense.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: And some of you I know feel that way right now about the position that God has you in.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: This sermon's for you.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And now the Lord responds in the next rest of the chapter by saying, Look, I'm the Lord, the God over every creature.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, you're not.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is anything too difficult for me?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah, remember what you said like five minutes ago?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know you were thinking of the past, but is anything too difficult for me in the present and in the future?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love the way the old King James said it.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Behold, I'm the Lord, the God of all flesh.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything too hard for me?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then God says in the last 15 verses of the chapter, Jeremiah, let me explain what the impossible thing is that I'm about to do.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, I'm gonna judge my people for their sin.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've told you to stop praying for them.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: The judgment's been waiting 800 years.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, then I'm gonna restore them forever.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: One, two.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: So on the first eight verses, he says, I'm gonna judge them for their sin.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to show you one line out of this that's just heartbreaking.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm about to hand the city over to the Babylonians, Chaldeans.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: They will come and set the city on fire because of all the evil the Israelites have done, because they have turned their backs to me and not their faces.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Did you ever have a talk with a teenager, with a 12-year-old, 14-year-old, 16-year-old, and as you were talking with your teenager, they just were so disgusted with you and what you were saying that they just refused to look at you and turned their back to you.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Little hint.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: If that's happening these days, don't do, don't grab hold of their shoulders and manually turn them around.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Personal experience, it doesn't work.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what God's saying is, you know, by the way, you know the you know the blessing that Jews still use today, the most common blessing I use it at most wedding standing here.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: I go, Lord bless you and keep you.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Number six, twenty four, twenty six.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And God's going, you know what?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I constantly shined on you, I looked toward you, my face looked toward you, and you know what you did?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't take it.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't take my blessing, you wouldn't take my advice.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: You turned your back to me.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so finally, I'm gonna have to judge you for your sin.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's coming.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to submit to it.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: In the last uh nine verses, but after that, after that, I'll restore you forever.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'll certainly gather them from all the lands for I've banished them in my anger, he says.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, notice this, it's not just Babylon.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, this is a prediction of what we see happening right now.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's the beginning of the return to the land has started.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Israel's coming from all over the world, lately from Europe, because of the anti-Semitic attacks in Europe.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Israel is starting to return, has been returning to the land of Israel, right?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I will certainly gather them where I've banished them in my anger, and I'll return them to this place and make them live in safety.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Promise number one, I'm gonna bring them back.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Promise number two, I'll grant them safety.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Israel has never lived in that land in safety since he said this.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: 600 BC, they weren't safe.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Babylon was about to burn it down.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: When Jesus was there, they weren't safe.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: The Romans were killing them.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Pilate slaughtered hundreds.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're not safe today.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Israel is surrounded by 21 nations who have sworn their destruction.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: But one day coming, one day in the future, when Christ reigns from Jerusalem, they will finally live in safety.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's promise number two.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Number three promise they will be my people, and I'll be their God.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give them integrity of heart and action, so they'll fear me always.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'll make a permanent covenant with them, the spiritual covenant.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'll never turn away from doing good to them.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Promise number three is what we preached on last week.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a shortened summary of the new covenant from Jeremiah 31.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Those four verses, remember the most famous verses?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: The new covenant where God says, I promise my people, Israel and Judah, that I will eventually, I'm so tired of waiting for them to come to me.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to put a new heart in them.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to want to obey me.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: All Israel will be saved, and they'll all obey me.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we find in the New Testament that those of us who are not Jews, Gentiles, who trusted in Jesus Christ, because this new covenant was spilled by Jesus, was enacted by Jesus' blood on the cross, that if you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, then you inherit the promises of the new covenant, the spiritual promises of the new covenant, before the physical promises ever come true.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know some people believe that they say, you know, God, you know, tried this experiment with Israel and it didn't work out, and so he's thrown them in a trash can and replaced them with the church, and Israel has no future, and God says, Wow, I gave it my best shot, but it but it just, you know, they just wouldn't let me stay true to them.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, everything in this passage tells us, and in in the book of Jeremiah, it tells us God says, No, this is a covenant I'm making with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, but I am allowing anyone who trusts my son to inherit these wonderful spiritual promises of a new heart.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, let's look at those three promises from last week.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: A transformed heart.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: God will change your heart.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, an intimate relationship, the same words that he uses in chapter 32, I'll be their God and they'll be my people.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And forever forgiveness, your sins, never ever held against you.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Never the ability of your sins to send you to hell.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the promises that you receive once you trust Christ.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, back to chapter 32.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'll restore them forever and I'll delight in them.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that great?
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take delight in them to do with all my the only time God says this in the whole Bible, with all my heart and mind, I'll delight in them and faithfully plant them.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been?
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was at the LA airport, and there was a well-known actor that I'd just been watching in a movie.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went over and got and I couldn't believe he was there.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I walked up, want to shake his hand, but you know, I don't blame.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not no coronavirus, or we had a bump, maybe bumped, I could have offered him my elbow.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, I mean, no, but he didn't want to shake my hand.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: And some of you have done that.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: You've been you've met actors or actresses or famous musicians or governors or presidents, and and if you were a cute little baby, you know, you'd probably be in good shape, but you know, um, you know, it just doesn't work.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: But God says, if you come, I promise, you come to Jerusalem one day, which you will, because I'll be reigning from Jerusalem, you come into my presence, I'm gonna know your name, I'm gonna delight in you, I'm gonna be thrilled you're there.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: I will take delight in you.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Those are amazing promises that we have.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: So let me give you today's takeaways, and then we'll close with a song.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Three takeaways from today.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, your impossible thing, whether it's a relationship or whether it's a financial thing or whether it's even health.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, are you taking it to the Lord in prayer?
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Are you do it?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: I know some things seem so impossible, you don't want to even test God with him, you don't want to take the addiction problem back to him.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do it.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to him about it.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, Jeremiah put his money where his mouth was.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: He invested in the future.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he took his money, and I mean it made no sense.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: But God had said there's a future in that land, houses will be sold again there.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to do that.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he put his money where his mouth was, and I asked myself, do I put my money where my mouth is?
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do I really believe, do I really believe that this world, this earth is temporary, and that the future world is permanent?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: That I should not lay up treasure on earth where moth and rust corrupt and where I may only live for another five years, that I should lay up treasure in heaven.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do I really believe that, or am I spending all of my time, all of my energy, all of my money in getting a bigger car or a bigger house, or a bigger vacation, better vacation, or whatever?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Am I putting my mouth where my money is when it comes to what I really believe about the future?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, nothing's too hard for God.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, friends, will I choose to believe that this year with that thing that feels impossible?
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: Will I trust God with that?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let me leave you with this line.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: If God could part the Red Sea from Moses, close the mouth of the lions for Daniel, put a baby in the arms of Sarah, make the sun stand still for Joshua, open the prison for Peter, raise Lazarus from the dead, and bring Israel back to her homeland, then he can certainly do the impossible for you.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing's too hard for God.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Eugene Clark was born in a long time ago.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's dead now.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: He was born in 1925, actually.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Grew up, went to Wheaton College, where I went, and then he went to Moody Bible Institute.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: Moody was well better known for music, and he was a super gifted musician, so much so that when he graduated from Moody, he immediately was hired by an organization, a radio broadcasting organization out of Lincoln, Nebraska, called Back to the Bible Broadcast.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you perhaps have heard of Back to the Bible Broadcast Theodore up, and they hired him to run their whole music program.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because he could play every kind of instrument, he could play organ, he could play piano, he could play guitar, and so forth.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he arranged their music, he did all their music.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: The problem that started happening for Eugene Clark is that he had two big problems.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: He never could see well, he began losing his eyesight about age 30.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he also had a form of arthritis that wasn't just this minor form, it was this major form.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so at age 35, he actually had to leave the office of Back to the Bible.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: They kept him on salary and used him, but he was blind and arthritic and was bedridden.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: So he moved home and using a dictophone, though he was blind and arthritic, he dictated songs and he dictated musical stuff.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, eventually wrote 200 songs.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: One of those songs, by the way, was heard and picked up by none other than Billy Graham and George Beverly Shea, and because they sang it all over the world in their crusades, that song became famous.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it should have become famous because of the person who wrote it who was blind and arthritic and couldn't basically get out of bed.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: And yet he wrote these words.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is impossible when you put your trust in God.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is impossible when you're trusting in his word.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hearken to the voice of God to thee.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything too hard for me?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: So put your trust in God alone and rest upon his word.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: For everything.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everything.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is possible with God.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, so many of these dear folks have got issues like Jeremiah did.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Issues with the present, issues with the future, concerns.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: We bring our panic to you.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: We pray we trust you and we thank you that you reply that nothing is impossible for you.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: We want to see it, Lord, this year.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.