Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 22, 2020 | Stand Strong - Out Of Control, And Hating It

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March 22, 2020 | Stand Strong - Out Of Control, And Hating It · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us this morning.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's such an interesting day.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you're uh not a regular attender of Topeka Bible Church or a regular sermon watcher, we're in a series that's called the uh Jeremiah series, called the Jeremiah Challenge.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh maybe Sam, you can help so that I can get this thing working up here.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: There we go.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we just passed over a whole lot of them.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: So let's try this.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we're taking uh during this series, it's a series in the book of Jeremiah.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're taking a Jeremiah Challenge, and we're gonna finish it in wow, Easter's just three weeks away.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Can you believe it?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh we're gonna finish uh Jeremiah before that.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this week, read with us here at chapters 45, 46, 47, 48, and if you have a chance, look at the devotionals that we've put on a lot, we'll put we're putting online so you can follow along with us.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: So um this morning, my title is Out of Control and Hating It because and it does seem to me that that in this in this incredible time with this virus, that besides prayer, humor is um a good way to react.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And those of you who have a Lutheran or an Episcopalian background who are used to celebrating Lint will uh maybe sympathize with me when I say, you know, in some ways, uh Lent comes at a good time, doesn't it?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have a grandson that asked me what I was giving up for Lint.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the nice thing is you don't have to come up with anything extra for Lint this year, right?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: You've given up going out to eat, you've given up watching sports on television, you've given up betting on March Madness and going to the casino, you've even given up touching your face.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what to do with my hands now that I can't touch my face.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, did you see Garrison Keeler's funny article about the coronavirus?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: He pokes fun at his wife, saying, My dear wife has turned the temperature of our dishwasher up to where it melts plastic.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So our mixing bowls have become platters.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Our bed sheets have been boiled so much that a our king-size sheet now only fits a narrow cot.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: My jeans are two sizes smaller, so I'm wearing PJs, and our only intimacy is an occasional elbow bump.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, with school canceled, for the end of the year, for the rest of the year, mommies are at their wit's end trying to keep children busy.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Even the library and the zoo are now closed, no leaving home unless you have to, and there is a chance that we may, uh, wherever you live, you may join Kansas City, for example, in a complete quarantine before long.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is an opportunity, isn't it, to spend quality time with your loved ones.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: But even when spending quality time with your family and friends, we can't stop thinking about disease and the uncertainty of life.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us in my family got together in our living room a few days ago.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: There were less than 10 of us, I promise.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we were moaning about the reality of life as we face it, the reality that the world that we know it has gone up in smoke.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: We hate not knowing the future.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: We hate not having any control at all.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: We hate being helpless in the face of world crisis and national danger.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And after they left and I went back to the book of Jeremiah, I was amazed once again, as those of you have been who are taking the Jeremiah challenge, and how relevant this book is to the world that we are living in at this very moment.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: For Jeremiah the prophet also lived in a world under attack and a nation in danger.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah also saw the world as he knew it, slipping away.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah also felt helpless at his inability to control things.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah hated it too, which is why our message today is entitled, Out of Control and Hating It.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: It comes if you have a Bible and want to follow along from Jeremiah 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, and 44.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all of those.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk to you, I want to share with you four ways that we feel helpless, that Jeremiah felt helpless, four ways in which you and I feel frustratingly out of control today, and we find that Jeremiah felt exactly the same, frustratingly out of control.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one of those ways is that you and I feel helpless with people.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: We have no control over people's reactions or beliefs.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the things they tweet us or email us, we disagree with, we wish we could change, or some of their reactions we wish we could change.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you, that's exactly how Jeremiah felt.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah felt this way, helpless with people, as he saw everyone around him responding with fear, not faith, to the invasion of Babylon, ignoring, even defying God.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let me explain to you.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you turn to Jeremiah 39, verses 1 and 2, we read that in the ninth year of King Zedekiah, he was the last king of Judah, ruled for 11 years, just a puppet king, a total passive aggressive marshmallow.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: In the ninth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, in the tenth month, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, the mightiest country in the world, advanced against Jerusalem with his entire army and laid siege to it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Christian standard Bible.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So he's laying siege to Jerusalem.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's the siege is going to last 18 months.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: He came from the east.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's where Babylon is.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh some people, that's where Abraham came from.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's where the Tigris and Euphrates are in this map.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can see that it's off to the east.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And because of the Arabian desert, you couldn't come straight from the east to Jerusalem, which is why Jeremiah predicted the disaster would come from the north.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So Babylon, with this mightiest army in the world, went west to Damascus, Syria, conquered it, and then went south into Jerusalem.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the years that this happened were 605 to 587, 586 BC.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then they surrounded Jerusalem and put on a siege.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And at this time, Jeremiah is still warning the king, Zedekiah, and warning the people that God says repent, obey, turn, stop worshiping idols, start treating the poor well.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he felt so frustrated because even though he told them just 10 verses before this, he told the king, if you'll just turn, God will stop this whole thing.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: But Jeremiah saw everyone around him, from the king down to everyone else, responding with fear rather than faith, and ignoring and even defying God.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: We read these words in a parallel passage.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: They kept ridiculing God's messengers, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Guess who was the main prophet they scoffed at?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah, even tried to kill him during this time, until the Lord's wrath was so stirred up that there was no remedy.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, how frustrating.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we read that during by the ninth day of the fourth month, that's the day that the city fell, after 18 months, the famine was so severe in the city that the people of the land had no food.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's an interesting archaeological evidence of this terrible famine, this terrible hunger that you can see today in Jerusalem.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: The name of the house is Ahil's house.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: We know that because his name was found on a jar, and I take my tours right by this place.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can see that this is a, this is a this is right on the wall of Jerusalem.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: This right here happens to be the most famous archaeological remains in all of Israel.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of the city of David, King David.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: But this house was built.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fine house.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: It had pillars, it had a flat roof.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can see the outside stairway going up to this flat roof, had pillars, it was four rooms.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Ahil's house reveals to us, it was on the wall.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: It eventually got burned.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: It got totally trashed and burned by the Babylonians who were where you are, in the Kidron Valley and the Mount of Olives.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: This side, the east side, got burned, the west side remained.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: But what's fascinating is the proof of the famine.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: We know this is a very fine house because it had something that archaeologists rarely find, something that's very special.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is, it had a real toilet.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: It had a carved stone toilet in the corner, still sitting there, that went down six feet to a cesspit.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as the archaeologist, this is shortly after I led my first tour to Israel, as the archaeologist Doug and the biologists and botanists and so forth analyzed what they found in that cesspit.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: What they found was that the Ahiel and his family were starving.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: They were surviving on weeds, wild plants, and raw flesh because they had no wood left to cook their meat.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: What a horrible situation.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine people all around you are falling and they are starving.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you're Jeremiah, and you're so frustrated because you know that if the people will just turn back to God, if the king will turn back to God, they'll be saved.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, they're beating you up, they're throwing you into a prison.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And one lesson that we learned from this, not this morning's main lesson, is that if you defy God to judge, eventually he will.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's cool to defy until you die.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, that's a lesson for those who are defying God.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Our lesson is the lesson of feeling helpless around people that we wish in our coronavirus situation would turn to God.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: We have no control over their reactions, no control over their beliefs.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly how Jeremiah felt as he saw everyone around him responding with fear, not faith, ignoring, even defying God.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: What lesson, you ask, can we learn from that negative idea?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is that right now God is closer to you and to me than ever.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: He let some of his favorite servants, illustration Jeremiah, live helpless to change people.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's frustrating right now for you, friends.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know it is.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Frustrating for me.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: We would love to see a revival happen.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to see people turning back to God.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to see people exercising wisdom.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's frustrating when we can't change people, but listen, some of God's favorite servants, like Jeremiah, felt exactly the same way.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Lesson number two of the four is that we right now feel helpless in the crisis.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: We have no control over the events happening around us, over the edicts that come from governors and presidents and so forth, over the spread of the virus.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how Jeremiah felt.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: As his world crumbled and people around him died.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: We see that in verse 2.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is a critical verse in the Old Testament because this is a key event in world history that happens to be recorded repeatedly in the Bible.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: The fall of Jerusalem was a crucial and critical event in world history.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: As of this moment, Israel would be kicked out of the land and would not be backed as a real nation for 2,500 years until 1948.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: What we read is this in the fourth month of Zedekiah's 11th year, that's his last year, in other words, 18 months after the siege began, on the ninth day of the month of Av, that's the month, the city was broken into.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can just imagine the darts and arrows have been flying over the wall, the ones tinged with pitch that are on fire already.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: They've been burning the city lately, just before the battering ram takes its last run at the wall, and then you hear the scream that the wall has been breached, and here come the soldiers, and it is the claps and the fall that your false prophets and your priests and your leaders told you would never happen because God loved the city and he would never let it fall.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now the worst of all possible things is happening, and you know if if you're in the city and you're not Jeremiah, you know you're in trouble.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because Jeremiah's been telling you for a year and a half that if you would lay down your arms and go out to Babylon, then God would allow you to be judged without dying for 70 years, and then you could come back.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And now you know that you're in trouble, that you're probably gonna die.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: This day, by the way, in Hebrew is called Tisha Baav.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's the ninth Tisha means ninth and ninth of Av.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we call it the Jewish 9-11.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is the day that the walls fell.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason this is the saddest day every year on the Jewish calendar is that by some coincidence in God's plan, he has chosen this day over and over again as the day when he will allow his chosen people to suffer.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was on exactly this day that 670 years later, or 650 years later, the city of Jerusalem fell to Rome.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was on this day that in 135 AD, thousands upon thousands of Jews were slaughtered as the city fell again.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is the day in which down through the years, down through the centuries, time and again, persecutors of the Jews on this very day have done horrible things.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, I mentioned 911.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what's really interesting is that in Gematria, that is in Jewish and Hebrew, Jewish numerology, if you take Tishab Av, the 9th of Av, this date, and you add up the numbers associated with the letters, it comes to 911.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: 911.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Which is interesting, isn't it?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Linking America to Israel.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that two temples of Israel fell on this day and two towers, the twin towers, fell in New York City.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's not inspired, just thought you might like to know that.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a conspiracy, it's just a happenstance of history.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: But on this day, what a day, uh, two things.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah must have felt a little bit ambivalent, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because on the one hand, this day confirmed all of Jeremiah's 40-year prophecies.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: It proved that his critics were wrong.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: It proved that he had been speaking God's word.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: On this day, every promise that God had made through Jeremiah, every warning that God had made through his prophet, came true to the last detail.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah had, remember, prophesied that disaster would come from the north, and disaster came from the north.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah had prophesied that a nation with strange, strange-sounding language, the nation of Babylon, would attack.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the Babylonians with their very strange-sounding language was the nation that attacked.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah had prophesied that a mighty nation, this mighty nation that would come against Israel, would tear down, I quote, tear down many nations and kingdoms on its way.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Babylon tore down many nations and kingdoms on its way.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: He prophesied that they would lay waste to the whole land of Israel, and the whole land of Israel was laid waste.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: He prophesied there would be famine in the land, and there was famine in the land.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: He prophesied that Jeremiah would be surrounded and besieged, and Jeremiah was surrounded and besieged.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: He promised that death would enter the city.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: That was his prophecy, and death, of course, entered the city in famine.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: He prophesied that the city would be burned, and Jeremiah and Jerusalem was reduced to ashes.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: He prophesied that the people would be carried off to exile, and they were carried off to exile.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And here's an interesting one.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: He prophesied to King Zedekiah that he would be carried off to Babylon, but he would not see Babylon.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened is that King Zedekiah was taken to Babylon, but before he got there, his eyes were put out, so he never saw it.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah's listeners, both people and leaders, had scoffed at his message and tried to kill him for saying it.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: But since his message was God's word, it came true, every last detail.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I say that Jeremiah must have had mixed feelings on this day.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: He must have felt the validation of his life and ministry.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: But on the other hand, Jeremiah tells us that this was the worst day of his entire life.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Watching his beloved city and the holy temple of the Lord burned down.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: He said, If only my head were a pool of water and my eyes a waterfall of tears, I would weep day and night for all my people who have been slaughtered.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we feel helpless in this crisis.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: We have no control over the events happening around us, but that's exactly how Jeremiah felt as his world crumbled and the people around him died.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: What lesson do we take away from this negative lesson?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is the lesson is that God is closer to us than ever.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: He let some of his favorite servants live helpless in crisis.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing we feel of the four is that we feel helpless with leaders.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have no control right over the leaders in charge of us.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine, for example, that you're a Christian in China, right?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you've noticed over the last year, especially over, excuse me, over the last few months, that China's communist leaders are far more interested in shutting down every single church, every single evangelical church in the entire country than controlling this virus.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: We have headlines from, you know, the Yale University Review, Washington Post, don't blame China for the coronavirus, blame the Chinese Communist Party.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly right.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: When will the Chinese government be held accountable for the spread of coronavirus?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's McLean's magazine.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: China's leaders obsessed with secrecy.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: China pushing a conspiracy theory accuses the U.S.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Army of bringing the coronavirus to Wuhan.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is, can you imagine being a believer and being an intelligent person living in a land controlled by Chinese communist leaders whose main concern, even expressed by themselves, is the maintenance of the communist government rather than truth and the help and lives of their own people?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of leaders are those?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or then we look at Iran.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Iran falls third behind Italy and China and the number of deaths and the spread.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we read headlines such as coronavirus shatters trust in Iran's leaders after cases surge.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is about leadership.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And in America, there are huge arguments about leadership.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: The leadership of our governor, the leadership of our president, leaders in our town, in our state, and in our country.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how you feel about the leaders, but one thing's for sure we have no control over them and we'll feel helpless with them.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: No control over the leaders in charge of us.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how Jeremiah felt, as he saw so many bad leaders, starting with the kings, of course, and then evil did away with the one good leader.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is quite a story in chapters 41, 40, 41, and 42.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: So after the fall of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar and his chief commander, Nebuzzaradan, who was in Control of the exile and everything else, they heard it, heard about Jeremiah and the nice things he had said about submitting to Babylon, and so they set him free.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: He briefly, it was in a mistake, got captured again, but when they finally set him completely free, they gave him a choice between two options.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: They said, you can either stay here in the land underneath the protection of the new governor we're appointing, whose name is Gedaliah, whom you know, or you can come with us to Babylon.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: We promise you'll live in ease during the last years of your life and we'll take care of you.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Jeremiah decided to stay for two reasons.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, his mission wasn't complete.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: He had a mission to the people of God.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: He had a mission to give them God's word, to talk to them about now restoration, of how God was going to restore the land.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so he stayed for that reason.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: He also stayed because he was personal friends, his family was, with his godly new leader.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Nebuchadnezzar had appointed the very best possible leader whose name was Gedaliah, whose family back to his grandfather had been supporters of Jeremiah.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So Jeremiah decided to stay, and he went to the governor of Gedaliah, and he stayed with him.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is up in Mizpah since Jerusalem was burnt.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then all the Jews, seeing what a great new leader they had, returned from all of these other countries where they'd been banished or where they'd run to hide, Moab and Ammon and Edom and other lands.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: And they returned, it says, they came back to the land of Judah to get Eliah, and they harvested a great amount of wine and summer fruit, and God's starting to bless.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And in my opinion, these were the happiest days, the happiest months of Jeremiah's entire life.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: As he watched as his friend effectively led the country, and prosperity was starting to happen.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: But something awful then happened.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: A sociopath named Ishmael and his ten men with royal blood.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he was mad initially that he hadn't been appointed governor, but for whatever reason, he came to Mizpah to Gedaliah.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: They ate a meal together.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: They had known each other ever since childhood.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, in an appalling breach of Oriental hospitality, you don't eat together and then uh and then do this.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Ishmael and the ten men got up and struck down Gedaliah with a sword.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: He killed the one the king of Babylon had appointed in the land.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, lest you make excuses for Ishmael, it turned out that he was a mass murderer at heart, a serial killer, because having gotten the taste of blood.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: Two days later, he sees 80 pilgrims coming down from the north, their clothes torn, their beards shaven, weeping in repentance to God, and he walks out to them, Ishmael does, pretending, weeping himself, oh, let's repent together, come on in and I'll feed you.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And what he does, he gets them in and he kills all of them, except for 10 who promised him a lot of money.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he strikes down all the Judeans.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, this is before that, but he strikes down all the Judeans who were with Gedalih at Mizpah, as well as the Babylonian, the Chaldean soldiers who were there.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And two days later he slaughtered 70 pilgrims and cast their bodies into a cistern.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then he took captive everyone who was there, including Jeremiah and his friend Baruch, and started heading them east to go over to Emmon across the Jordan River.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, uh Johannon, another guy, John, we could call him, who'd warned Gedaliah, but he hadn't listened, warned him about the sociopath, came and he defeated him.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the issue: you and I feel helpless with our leaders.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: We have no control over the leaders in charge of us, and that's how Jeremiah felt as he saw all of these bad leaders.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then evil did away with the one good leader God had given them, his personal friend Gedaliah.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that makes you feel, I mean, you go, wow, how in the world could that happen to Jeremiah?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's happening to us, and the lesson is you know what?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: In this time and season when maybe our leaders aren't so good or we can't trust them, we can trust God to be closer to us than ever because he clearly let some of his favorite servants live helpless before bad leaders.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, we feel helpless with God.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: We have no control over what God decides that he's gonna do with us.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how Jeremiah felt.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because God let him be taken to the last place he ever wanted to go.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that last place that he ever wanted to go was the land of Egypt, the land from which, 800 years before, his people had been rescued, the land of slavery, the land of a thousand idols, the land of the pyramids, the land of the sphinx, that land that always held this sort of magnetic, you know, this addiction for the Jewish people.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: First time I went to Israel decades ago, I found to my surprise up north in Israel a man who was selling something he had just found, a little wooden idol that had come up from the land of Egypt.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: The very kinds of idols, ushabti, they're called, that are buried with King Tut, dozens of them.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he let me purchase that for I was a poor student, so I only had to pay him$35 for it.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's worth a lot more than that.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it's just that shows what archaeologists now agree is this insane addiction with Egypt, down through the centuries by God's people, and God had to constantly say to them, stop talking about Egypt, stop wanting to go back to Egypt.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Johannon, who's the new leader after having defeated Ishmael, says, I want us all to take us all to Egypt.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm scared.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm afraid Babylon's gonna want to kill us because uh, you know, Ishmael killed their people, their leaders.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna come in here and not listen to us, they're gonna kill us.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Fear, not faith.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah, ask God if it's okay.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is Jeremiah 42.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Ask God if it's okay for us to go to Egypt or if we should stay here in the land.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever he says, we promise we'll do.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever God says, wherever he sends, we'll go.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Ha! Right.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah, after 10 days, said, God's given me the word.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: God says, Stay here and I'll protect you.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: By no means go back to Egypt, the land of slavery and idols from where I rescued you.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: And Jeremiah looks out of the sight of his eye and he says, Come on, guys, you know God's told us never to go back there.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is insane.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you know the reply, unfortunately, by Johannin and the other leaders was, you're a liar.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: We don't believe you.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: We don't think God said that.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to go to Egypt anyway, and we're taking you with us.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they go down to Egypt.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Horrible.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in Jeremiah 44, down in Egypt, as Jeremiah watches how they have changed in the last year, he says, you know what, you let the world of Egypt squeeze you into its mold.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're worshiping the Queen of Heaven, a starte, Ishtar.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard of this God, this goddess.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: God will judge you like he did Jerusalem.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the Jews in Egypt, in defiance, in 44, 15 through 19, say, we're not going to listen to you anymore.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this passage ends with Jeremiah in very emotional terms in Hebrew saying, well, just go ahead then, but judgment is coming.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Wow! Can you believe this?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: But it sounds so much like our lives.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: We feel helpless with God.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: God, why do you have us?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: This world is crazy.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: We can't even go to church, we can't do anything that we want to do, we can't meet with people, we can't talk with people, we're quarantined, we're helped, we have no control over what you're doing with us.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly how Jeremiah felt as God let him be taken to the last place he wanted to be and let him die there.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: When I think about this, uh, when I think about how we feel helpless and how we feel out of control, I can't help thinking of a spit of land that I walked on a few years ago out in Oregon.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: In central Oregon on the coast, uh, near the town of Tillamook, which is famous for the cheese that uh delicious cheese that you can buy in the stores.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's a spit of land that stretches about two miles out into the Pacific Ocean.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: On the right hand side of this, as you're looking north, there is uh sometimes called the Tillamook Bay.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty much fresh water.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Presently it happens to be a very famous bird sanctuary because of the mix of fresh and salt water.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so you can stand here, and there are a lot of bird watchers taking pictures of this huge area and all of the in this shallow water, all of the birds.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I I went with my brother and I walked this spit of land before I fully knew what it was, before I knew that once upon a time, 100 years ago, this was the Atlantic city of the West Coast.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: This was bigger and better than anything in San Francisco or Los Angeles.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, this place right here.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: I walked this and I was looking at it, and it seemed to me that there was absolutely nothing there.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then I began reading about this in uh in a booklet there in uh Tillamook.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: This was a place that uh uh a man named Potter, Mr.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Potter of Kansas City, went out to this area in 1906, 1907.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: He and his son got this vision that they would buy this and that they would turn it into the greatest resort area in the entire Pacific Northwest.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so they bought it and they platted it and they began to sell property on it, they built a major hotel on it, and so forth.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about 1910, 1911, 1912 was the grand opening.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see that it was beautiful.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: They built roads, 600 houses, 2,000 people lived here, and uh had this had this major fancy hotel.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: But most of all, it had besides the bowling alley and the Texaco station and all of these other things, it had the finest swimming pool or natatorium anywhere in the western United States.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was this so you could swim either in the salt water right out the door, uh walk out the door, or you could swim in this giant pool where you could have canoe races.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh water went from one foot down to about 12 feet, and this became famous, of course, all over America, and it was a place that people came and they built their fine houses.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And imagine if you're one of the people then who had spent their life savings and invested in this, okay?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so you bought a house here, and you're going to spend the last 20 or 30 years of your life in Bay Ocean, Oregon, the resort center of the west coast of the United States of America.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: But there are complaints that are coming in.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: They ferry people out from the city of Portland if they don't want to drive, and they come out in ships, and the Pacific Ocean, as you know, is pretty rough there in Oregon.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, Can you make this any any better?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk, tame the ocean, tame the waters?
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Potter and the other leaders there said, Well, yes, we're gonna do that.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so they just get loads and loads and loads of rocks, and they start dumping them in the ocean, and they built this jetty way out into the ocean so that as the ships come by, it'll be placid water, and then they can just coast in and people won't be seasick.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, wow.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like Jim Croce saying, you you can't uh tug on Superman's cape, and you, you know, you can't pull the Lone Ranger's mask off, and you don't mess around with Jim or the ocean, because those ocean currents, of course, ran up against that jetty, had nowhere else to go, and then they went right in toward the land, and they began sucking the sand off the land.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: And after they gradually sucked all the sand off, then they began undermining the uh the dirt.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then one by one, Bay Ocean became the Oregon town that fell into the sea.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why there's nothing there today.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Potter committed suicide, very much like King Zedekiah.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: My point is imagine you're that person, one of those people, and you are helpless, you have no control over the decisions that anyone else makes.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine that's your home, your life, your joy, your future.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's all you have.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then helpless you watch as people and events and leaders, and even God, the maker of the ocean, destroy it.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, how do you respond to that?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: How do you respond to the loss of everything you know?
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: How did Jeremiah respond to the loss of life as he knew it?
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: How do you respond right now during this virus thing?
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the lesson to take away this morning is that God is closer to us than ever.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: He lets some of his favorite servants, servants like Jeremiah, servants like you, live helpless in the face of people and events and leaders, and even God himself.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe the reason he does that part of the reason is so that you and I will long for the day when we'll have great leaders, when his kingdom will come and his rule will be done on earth, so that we'll fully trust him.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And just in case that's true, I'm gonna ask you right now where you are to recite the Lord's Prayer with me, which asks for God's will and God's rule to be done.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: The kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Deliver us from evil.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Deliver us from evil.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's a song that expresses the prayer of our hearts.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: You may want to look this song up, but the words go like this.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm tired, I'm worn, my heart is heavy.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah could have sung this song.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm tired, my I'm worn, my heart is heavy from the work it takes to keep on breathing.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: My soul feels crushed by the weight of this world, and I know that you can give me rest.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I cry out with all that I have left.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let me see redemption win.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know the struggle ends that you can mend a heart that's frail and torn.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know a song can rise from the ashes of a broken life, and all that's dead inside can be reborn.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm warned.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, friend.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: God has never been closer to you.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: He let some of his favorite servants go through times just like this.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father, we are so grateful that yours is the kingdom and yours is the power and yours is the glory, and one day you will be bringing those to earth.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, let your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: We look forward to the day when viruses and plagues and war and death will all be done, and we will with joy and happiness and perfect health worship you on earth.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you for your promise to come down on earth and to and to bring righteousness and truth and peace to earth and good health, and to bring your son Jesus Christ to be our leader, in whose name we pray.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.