Transcript for:
Jeremiah 24
Found the transcript but need the audio? View Episode
From Brammerton, it's Monday night live. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that we can meet here at Rob and Vicky's. And, Lord, we're so excited about worshiping you, fellowshipping, having a meal together, studying your word, Jeremiah 24. And, Lord, just we commit this night in your hands. We ask that you bless, that you pour your holy spirit upon us, Lord, and speak to our hearts. Give us ears to hear. In Jesus' name, pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Praise the lord. He's good. Is he not? Let's get that one. You thanks with a grateful heart. Give thanks to the holy one. Give thanks because he's given Jesus Christ Alright. Thanks, Rob. So we are in Jeremiah chapter 24 tonight. For those of you that are joining us on Facebook, those of you that don't know, Vicky started a podcast. It's called be not deceived. See the sign there? And, we conduct it from here. And yesterday was our first inaugural day, and today we did a couple more episodes on the rapture. So if you'd like to go check it out, you can go to be not deceived at YouTube. Right? Yep. You too. Be not deceived at YouTube. So our first episode's on there, and check that out. So, yep, might as well go there before they terminate us because I've been known to be terminated. Alright. Do you hear that? There it is. There it There it is. She's already checking it out. She can't believe it. It was Robbie that had her alarm going off on her phone at twelve noon the last couple Sundays. Do you guys hear that? Not not this last time. Been having all those phone calls in the morning when we are our couple hours. Before we get out. Prank calls. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's pray again. Father, thank you for the sweet time of worshiping. And as we look to Jeremiah 24, help us to learn from Israel's mistakes, Lord, that which they've how severely you had to discipline them and all. And, Lord, we're thankful that your covenant with them, Lord, is an unconditional promises that you are gonna fulfill your promises under them, that you're gonna correct them, you're gonna refine them, you're gonna purify them as they go through the tribulation period. And, lord, we thank you for your hand upon our lives that, whom the lord loves, he chastens, and he scourges every son or daughter. The only ones that don't receive chastening are are the ones that aren't your children, lord. You don't spank other people's kids. So, Lord, we thank you for correction in our life. We thank you that you keep us from hurting ourselves and destroying ourselves, Lord. We lift up the nation of Israel. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Lord excuse me. We lift up that the rockets that are fired and all the skirmish, all the war that's broke out, Lord, we pray that it'd be diffused and and not escalate, not grow in severity. Lord, we pray that corrections may be made and and whatever needs to be done that it would be stopped. Lord, we lift up the nation of Iran also, who's behind much of some of it. And, Lord, we just pray for them. We pray for the Christians that are there, Lord. Fastest growing church in the world. We wonder what's it like to be a Christian in Iran. And, we just pray for them, your hedge of protection about them. Pray for the Israeli and the Palestinians, all the different Arabs and nations there, Lord. It's a powder keg. And God, we pray they'd come to a saving knowledge of you that none of them would die and go to hell, Lord, that you would save to the uttermost. Cause the gospel to go forth, their eyes to be open, their ears to be able to hear, their hearts to receive. Thank you for saving us, Lord. Bless this time in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Alrighty. Jeremiah 24. So the Lord showed me, Jeremiah the prophet, the Lord showed me and behold, two baskets of figs were set before the temple of the lord after Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, king, excuse me, Jehoiakim, king of Judah and the princes of Judah with the craftsmen, the smiths from Jerusalem, and had brought them to Babylon. So Nebuchadnezzar made a few different in May, he totally annihilated Jerusalem and and brought it all down. This particular siege that Jeremiah is speaking of here, there was a point in time where they subdued, the nation of Israel, and he's gonna take some of them back to Babylon. Others, he's gonna leave there. He's going to take the spoil, the treasure also. So there with his time earlier where king Hezekiah made a huge mistake when the Babylonian ambassadors came to visit him. He led him into the treasury area and showed him all the things that king David and Solomon had amassed over the years, you know, all of the all the treasures. And we remember when we're in Daniel chapter five that the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, Belteshazzar, that he was partying one night in Daniel five with the with the implements, with the cups and the saucers and drinking and having a big party with the very things that Nebuchadnezzar here is gonna take back to Babylon. The other thing that Nebuchadnezzar took back to Babylon is some of the princes, some of the craftsmen, some of the most noble people that the nation produced. Do you have any ideas of who some of these people are? Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego. Yes. And And Daniel. There's four that we know. So they were taken back to Babylon, and there's good figs, there's bad figs. The good figs are representative of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Daniel. The ones that are gonna be taken to Babylon are gonna fare much better than the ones that remain and then get completely wiped out because of their rebellion. They're gonna rebel against when Zedekiah becomes king after Jehoiachin here, he's gonna reign for eleven years, and he's going to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar. So although there are conquered people, they like when the Romans conquered the Jews and Jesus is there, you know, the the Jews are always wanting Jesus to overtake the Romans. So to hear, there's many people that don't wanna believe that there's subjugated under Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonians, but it was God's design to discipline his people because they they kept following their idolatry. Jeremiah is gonna be a preacher there for about forty one years, and they just won't listen. They won't listen. They won't listen. They're persisting in their ungodliness, and their idolatry, and they're worshiping a Baal. The very center of Baal worship is Babylon. So the Lord's going to use the Babylonians to subdue them, and then he's gonna bring, you know in the time of Ezekiel, there's over 10,000 people that are exiled, you know, in Babylon. Now if you're in Babylon, and they're the biggest, baddest, strongest country, you know, on the planet at that time, you don't have to worry about, you know, being destroyed by an invading force, if you will. But if you're if you're in Jerusalem and you wanna be in rebellion against king Nebuchadnezzar and you think that you can skirt over to Egypt, you're mistaken because Nebuchadnezzar will go there and he'll he'll wipe out the pharaoh there, and there's no place to hide from God's judgment. So the good figs are representative of the people that are gonna be in exile. The bad figs, the ones that are going to be judged and who are gonna suffer further. In Isaiah fifty seven one, you remember that verse how it talks about the Lord delivers the righteous, takes the righteous home to heaven so that they don't have to see the evil to come. You remember that verse? So what that means is there's a whole lot of people that are blessed right now because they're in heaven. Believers are being taken to heaven, and we we have never seen the type of horror that's coming upon this planet that's that's on the brink, on the very edge. And when war breaks out, and famine, and pestilence, and all these things that that are gonna lead up to the tribulation period, a whole lot of us are gonna wish we were dead. We're gonna wish we were in heaven. Right? So I'm listening to the pastors and everybody talk about the rapture and how soon the rapture is. I wanna be raptured. Definitely, I wanna be I want them to come tonight. Right? I don't want my grandkids to suffer. I don't wanna have to go through a communist takeover of America and for America to be taken down. I've never experienced or even I I can't conceive of anything like that, you know, because in my lifetime, I've enjoyed unprecedented prosperity that Christians in China, you know, have not experienced. Christians in Iran are not experiencing, and all over the world where communism took over, people suffered, and that was that's and are continuing to suffer, and that's that's not the tribulation period that the Bible describes. Jesus described the tribulation period as the time the world's never seen or ever see again as far as its cataclysmic events that are gonna take place. So I definitely don't wanna be in the tribulation period. I'm a believer, and I promise I'm gonna be raptured ahead of time. But after World War two, we had an enormous season and and generational, you know, prosperity that we as Americans enjoy with the de facto global currency, the greatest military in the world, and and also a form of of economic growth called capitalism. And capitalism is biblical. That's where people work, and when they work, they get rewarded and they buy houses and they grow. But what happened with World War two is in Europe especially, they began to toy with the idea of socialism. Socialism, the post Christian era in Europe, much of it can be attributed to people taking their eyes off of God. When you're a capitalist, your eyes are on God because you got work and you got work to earn and and and provide. Socialism, which is, you know, which is to the nth degree when they say you're gonna get an universal basic income and, you know, you're gonna live in a small smart city and you're just gonna be beholden to the government and their cameras and all that, that's a tyranny, and it's a tyranny that the people take their eyes off of God. They're looking to the government to provide from the wound of the tomb. So it it lends itself toward the principalities and the powers that control these little governments. So you lose your individuality. You lose your small little businesses when COVID hits and they lock everybody down. They want a centralization to get everybody centralized. So they wanna bring back they wanna bring back Genesis ten eleven of Babylon, Babel, the Tower Of Babel, where everybody was trying to come together, you know, in this oneness against God. So what the Lord did is he confused the languages and he made what's called nation states where people had borders. Imagine that a border. A border that keeps you safe. Right? And rather than being, you know, an invasion of military age people that can turn on you. So your government's there, we're gonna see on Sunday, Romans 13, to preserve the good. If they if they refuse to preserve the good, then you're gonna reach a place of anarchy and chaos and probably the demise of America. So after World War two, America enjoyed incredible prosperity and the church was strong and Europe was waning spiritually. When you're waning spiritually, Jesus said, church, you are the salt of what? Yeah. And what does salt? When he's using that imagery, here we're looking at the imagery of figs, a good bag of figs and a rotten bag of figs. There's a bag of figs there that has expired. It's shelf life. It's, you know, Kathy buys food, and it says eat this by August 10, you know. And you go you go there and you look at it, and it's October, and it's still there, August 10. Wow, that's expired, you know. I wonder if it's still good, you know. If it's organic, it dies, it corrupts in about three, four days. If it's inorganic, you know, I've seen stuff where they show pictures of Big Macs that are still looking like Big Macs, you know, and they're 20 years old, and they won't they won't corrupt. They won't go away. So when the Lord's talking about being the salt of the earth, the light of the world, what's he mean by salt? He's preserving element. A preserving influence. Right? So we as the church, we restrain evil in second Thessalonians two. So Jeremiah, he's he's going it alone. He doesn't have a nice little Bible study like this, a nice church service, and a bunch of churches everywhere of like minded people who are following after the Lord. It's a time of apostasy. It's a time where people have fallen away from the Lord. And we in America, I would attribute our apostasy falling away from the Lord. Jesus Jesus diagnosed it for us when he looked at the Laodicean church. He said, you know, you guys say you guys are saying we're rich and increased with goods and in need of nothing. While we're riches increase, don't set your heart on it. So Jesus spoke of the parable of the soil and and the sower sowing. One of the types of seed that that grows, that the that the seed falls upon is the weedy soil. And the weedy soil, he interpreted as being the cares of the this life and the deceitfulness of riches. Not the richest problem, the deceitfulness of riches. So as riches increase and we've had this prosperity in America, we can go to church and we can say, you know, I don't have to change. God's pleased with me. Look how wealthy I am. Look how much money I got in the stock market. Everything must be good because look how much God's blessing me, you know. So if the nation of Israel is disobedient to God, he can just cause a famine. He can cause the agriculture, if it's an agrarian society, he can cause the early and the latter rain to not rain to get these capitalists attention. But if they don't if they can blow God off and just get a universal basic income, could they just print the money, you know, then we don't need to listen to God. I get a check every two weeks. I don't I don't need to be obedient to God. There's no cause and effect here. It's you know, the end justifies the means. I must be in good standing with God. So these false deities, people would have a form of worship where they would worship the sun. They'd worship the moon. They'd worship, you know, part of nature. And part of that worshiping of nature is with the hope of, I'll have good crops this year. You know, I'll get to early in the latter rain, you know. And so every now and then, the Lord would would need to get the attention of his people especially. And if need be, he'll use a foreign army. In the time of the judges, the lord would bring in a foreign army to spank them, and then they'd cry out to God again. And they cry out to God, and he would give them a deliverer, a judge, and that judge would go against the Midianites or the Philistines or the Amorites, and they would defeat their enemy, and then there'd be a a revival. There'd be a spiritual revival that everybody would rally around and begin to worship God again for forty years, one generation. By the end of that forty years, they'd forgotten God. They enjoyed the prosperity. And then they'd go back into bondage, and in bondage, they'd cry out to God. And then that crying out to God, he'd send them another deliver. So he'd send them a, you know, a Samson. Samson, come and whoop on the Philistines, or Jephthah, or, you know, Gideon. Deborah was another one. And and then they they, again, they would enjoy because spiritually, they were aligned with God. They would enjoy a period of time where where God blessed them again. And so a shelf life of a nation, if a nation if the salt has lost its savor, if it can't stave off the putrification, the corruption, then what did Jesus say would happen? Trodden in the foot of man. It's good for nothing but to be trodden in the foot of man. So the church loses its power. The salt has lost its tang. So Kathy, she's a butter connoisseur, and she's also spices and all that. And she knows the difference of spices and butter and things that still have the right flavors. You know, you don't just put salt on there that doesn't salt your food. You know? It it I better when we salted it, better it better be able to do what it what it's you want it to do. If it reaches a certain shelf life, I don't know how salt is, but I know butter. Butter goes bad. Milk goes bad. A lot of these things go bad, and I've drank some of it, And so so you get rid of it, you know, and it it's good for nothing but but to be thrown out, let's say. Mhmm. So the church, when it's strong, when our eyes are upon the Lord, he fights for us. During COVID, I kept exhorting people to trust the Lord that he'll fight for us. Keep him first, he's essential, and he'll fight for us. But if you are moved in the direction deceived with fear and you succumb and give into the fearmongers and the lies and all that, in essence, you're going into bondage. You're gonna lose the freedom and the liberty, and you're gonna give up your your freedom for security, for supposed security that they're lying to you. You can be six feet apart, you'll be secure, you'll be safe, but you're really being lied to. So we continue to walk by faith, trust the Lord, and he'll he'll fight for us. David said the battle belongs to the Lord when he's fighting the giants, you know, fighting Goliath and all. And the nation of Israel is very, very prosperous, and in that prosperity is when they're turning their back upon God, and God's gonna try and get their attention because the most important aspect of their lives is to be in sync with God, to make sure that they're believers, to make sure that they're going to heaven, make sure it doesn't Jesus said, what's it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what would a man give in exchange for his life? So in this case here, the Lord loves the nation of Israel. He loves them so much. He's sent prophets. He sent Ezekiel. He sent Isaiah. He sent Jeremiah. He sent in his prophets to warn the nation to speak out. You and I are being sent by the Lord to warn the nation, to warn people, to speak out, to let them know prophetically what the picture looks like, and don't put their trust in man. Vain is the help of man. The fear of man is a snare. We want to bring people back to where they fear the Lord, and they begin to come back to square one of Matthew six of seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. All these other things would be added unto you, but if if the world continues to turn its back upon God, and then the devil is putting forth a savior that they call the Antichrist, and this Antichrist system promises to take care of you from the womb to the tomb as long as you comply, Unfortunately, if they don't read ahead if they don't read ahead prophetically, then they're deceived and they don't realize that it's this utopian desire is gonna last less than seven years for most of them. Right? It's gonna be over. So, unfortunately, we're they're gonna face the demise of their their their whole delusion that they succumb to. And you and I, if we point them to Jesus, they'll not only live forever, but they'll get to rule and reign with him for a thousand years that the bible calls the millennium. The curse is gonna be reversed, and the Lord's gonna provide everything you need. So again, the devil's a counterfeit. The devil's a counterfeit in that he's trying to take the place of God that, hey, if you follow the devil, the devil will give you everything you want. You just can't believe in Jesus Christ. You can't be a Christian. And so we in the church today, the Lord saves by few, not by many, we can still have a great impact if we use the word impact. We can still look at our occupy until he comes where we where we are about our father's business in that it's one person at a time, and that one person at a time that needs to hear the gospel. If it's true in Kitsap County, people are melting down mentally. If there's a lot of mental illness, to speak, anxiety, and all these other things happening, the churches are trying to be therapeutic and all. What a great opportunity for you and I to bring forth hope. The hope that's ours, that's found only in Jesus Christ. A great, tremendous opportunity to introduce people to the, you know, the prince of peace, the great physician, and and and there are gonna be people that reach the end of their devices, realize they're they've been deceived, and begin to look up, begin to look for answers, and hopefully we can be there to help them with that. So it says, the Lord showed me, and behold, two baskets of figs were set before the temple of the Lord. So God used an object lesson for him. After Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon had carried away captives, Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, so he's gonna be carried away in exile. And the princes of Judah with the craftsman and smiths from Jerusalem and had brought them to Babylon. So Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Daniel, and they're gonna have some incredible gifts and abilities like Joseph, when Joseph was taken to Egypt. Joseph's one that can interpret dreams. So God's favor is gonna be upon Daniel. God's favor is gonna be upon Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and they're going to rise above the wise men and everybody there in Babylon. Right? They're gonna stand out. God's gonna cause them to stand out. They're going to be tested, and that testing's always coming down to, will you trust me or will you deny me? Will you trust God in the heat of the battle or are you gonna deny him? You know? And and we know the story. We know that Daniel, they made a new law, so you couldn't pray because they couldn't find anything on Daniel. So they made a new law that meets in the Persians in Daniel chapter six that you're not allowed to pray. They knew that Daniel had a habit, a discipline of praying at least three times a day facing Jerusalem, and he'd open up his windows and he'd pray much like you see Muslims praying today. Get on their prayer their prayer rug and all that, and they face Mecca. And he didn't keep the windows shut, praying secret. No. No. He prayed openly, publicly, like he always had. And then they they came to the king, and even the king couldn't remove that edict, couldn't remove that law. Even the king didn't have the authority to change that law. So Daniel, I love you, man. And Darius, the king, and Cyrus, you know, hey, we love you, but this command this mandate, you know, this mandate from the Medes and the Persians, it's binding, and so you're gonna have to go into the lion's den. You know the story that the lion's mouths were shut by God, and Daniel, greatly beloved of God, the king's staying up all night fasting and praying for him, and all loves him so much. And the next morning, the people that perpetrated this whole crime, kinda like Haman, when Haman tried to destroy the Jews with, you know, Queen Esther and all, his whole family, his whole house, he wound up hanging from the gallows that he made for Mordecai. And so, the mouths of the lions were shut, but the mouths of the lions opened up to take on those enemies and crushed their bones before they hit the ground. And then you know the story of Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, how they defied the king. There it was it was nonnegotiable. You cross the line, oh king, and we serve a different king, the king of kings and lord of lords. And and they they passed the test, they glorified God in that refusal to be compromised in their faith, refusal to be compromised. And so that's what you would call, you know, integrity, character, faith in God. And so when we talk about corruption, we're talking about a corruption of morals, a corruption of character, corruption in the sense of the hearts of men's you know, the wickedness. When God looked in Genesis six at man's heart, you know, he saw that it was only evil continually, and and a repented God that he made man. And it says that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and the Lord prepared the the ark, and he made Noah a preacher of righteousness for a hundred and twenty years. And again, how many people got in the boat? How many people got in the boat to avoid the judgment of the great flood? Just Noah and his family, eight people, but at least those eight people went in there. So we don't need to be concerned about the numbers. God will do deal with the numbers. We wanna be concerned with the quality, not giftedness, not how gifted a man or a woman is, not how much money they make. It's quality. It's character. It's Christ like character. And I told Kathy and I told Vicky today that what's been on my heart the last few days or longer than that is I truly believe that if we'll continue to trust the Lord, our little little bible study group and church, and the most important thing, because I've I've seen the flip side of this, the ugliness that can happen, but if we will simply continue to love God and love one another, I believe we'll see God do some great things in our lives and things that we've never seen before in our Christian experience. And if we do the opposite, if we bite and devour, and gossip, and slander, and quit loving one another, we're not gonna see God move and work by the power of his holy spirit like we want him to work. We need God to move and work. We need God supernaturally to do things for us because we're reaching a time where the things that we have been depending upon, our government and our military and our assets, our monies, all those things are gonna be in jeopardy, and we're gonna need to really walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. We're gonna need to really move where, like, you know, if you get sick and you can't go to the doctor, I need one of you to come up to me and say, hey, silver and gold have I none, but the name of Jesus Christ stand up and walk. You know? We need the gifts of the spirit to be operational in the church again in the time that we're heading into. Now, know if we're raptured, hey, that's fine too. I've said this tongue in cheek a few times that if they're gonna start lobbing nukes, the globalists, to soften the underbelly of the population to get their globalism, I hope they hit banger. I hope banger's the first one they launch because I'll be in heaven with my grandkids. Right? I'll be right there. Right? And I don't want no fallout and a slow death by radiation. I want us all to be safe. And so that's what's happening here is he's saying the good figs the good figs are the ones that are gonna be in exile. You would think the good figs would be the one that get to stay in America. Well, America's a target. Right? Mhmm. The the good figs are the ones that can escape to there's no place to hide in this world anymore. There's no place to go. Where am I am I I'm gonna go to Panama? I'm gonna go to Mexico? Where am I gonna go? You know? Soon as I know you're an American with some money, guess what? You're done. You're toast. So there is no place to run and hide except to Jesus. He's the only one. In Isaiah fifty seven one, he says the righteous perish so they don't have to see the evil to come in a time of judgment. And you think of people that have already, you know, gone home to be with the Lord. They they don't have to see the gross wickedness of Biden and our you know, they've never in their lifetime saw such criminality in their whole life long. It's it's shocking what's happening, and you you just we use the term, they're rolling over in their graves. You know? So it's heaven is not a bad thing. Dying is not a bad thing. Not not that we're calling for suicide or kill ourselves, but sometimes the Lord says, you know what? I'm gonna take you home. You know what, Moses? I'm gonna take you home, and you don't have to be with these murmurers anymore. And and that's a good thing. We see him on the Mount Of Transfiguration. So I I would love to hang out more and more and be with our kids and grandkids and all that, but if it if things break down like we're seeing here, complete breakdown and the Chinese come in, begin to subjugate everybody and rape the women and take the children and all that. You know what? I'd I'd much rather go home to be with Jesus. You know what I mean? I don't wanna have to watch that sort of a breakdown of society. Now there's those here that are so obstinate. Zedekiah is gonna be allowed to stay in Jerusalem and reign for eleven years, but he's gonna be in rebellion to king Nebuchadnezzar, and he's gonna run over to Egypt, and he's gonna take Jeremiah with him. They're gonna actually kill Jeremiah in Egypt, And Nebuchadnezzar is gonna come on up and he's gonna whoop on the Egyptians. These guys can't escape. In fact, here you I've told you about Zedekiah. Before he even gets out of the city when he flees, the Chaldeans catch him, bring him back, and like 20 some of his sons are killed right before his eyes, and the last thing Nebbe's generals do is pluck his eyes out. So the last thing he sees is his kids. Now had he cooperated with king Nebuchadnezzar, he could have been subservient to Babylon and continue to provide the oversight in Jerusalem where people could, you know, live in peace, so to speak. But much like when Jesus came, the Jews didn't like being subservient to the Romans, and they were always trying to figure out a way that somebody would come, that their Messiah would come and deliver them from the Romans. And and that's even what the disciples thought. They thought that Jesus come and deliver them from the Romans. They didn't see the part of the equation of the story that Messiah would be rejected, that he'd be cut off, that he'd be crucified, that he had a greater purpose in coming, and that was just to deliver us from sin and death and hell, you know, the power of the devil. And then later when he comes back, he's going to set up his kingdom and rule and reign for a thousand years. So he says one basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe. And those of us that like fruit, you want those first ripe ones, the ones that can hang on the tree and not be plucked when they're green, and then they have no flavor. But if you have your own grove of fruit, you can leave it on there just at the right time, that it has all that nourishment and everything, and when you bite into it you say, yeah, this is a real one, this is really good. Becoming increasingly harder and harder to find strawberries, even apples sometimes, fruit that tastes the way it's supposed to taste, and has the good flavors and stuff. I ate an apple earlier today, and man, it tastes so good, but then it kind of affected my throat a little bit. So when that happens, I'm like, is this a GMO? The day I lied to us, Kathy only buys organic. If what's that? It was organic. I know. But what I'm saying is or maybe I didn't wash it enough, and it has some insecticide on it, you know? And so it's getting harder and harder to to experience the flavor that God puts in it. So when they're talking about first ripe figs, Kathy's been buying some figs lately from Trader Joe's, and they're super, super healthy for you, and they taste really, really good. And so not in this culture, in this place, you know, figs are a big part of they grow there in Israel. Alright. And so he says, and the other basket had very bad figs, which could not be eaten. They were so bad. And so if the salt is lots of savor, it's good for nothing but to be trodden in the foot of men, Jesus said in Matthew five verse 13. But the intention is that Israel be a light unto the Gentiles, a light unto the nations. And now Israel is committing sin that even the Gentiles don't commit. You know? Manasseh offered one of his own sons as a burnt offering and all, and so these guys are are way beyond their shelf life. It's time to it's time to put them down. And and so, unfortunately, they didn't give to God their best. God wants our best, and he doesn't want rotten figs, rotten fruit, nor does he want hypocritical plastic fruit. Jesus said, you'll know them by their fruit, and so fruit, fruit of the spirit is love. Without love, we're nothing. So it doesn't matter if I give my body to be burned, it doesn't matter if you can preach or teach or sing or give or whatever it is you do. If you don't have love, you're nothing. And so love is the measuring, and Jesus exemplified what love is, God is love, and it's not a false love that that is tolerance or a license to sin, and then call it love if somebody judges what you're doing. We're we're to judge right and wrong behavior, and right behavior is consistent with the word of God. Wrong behavior is inconsistent with the word of God. It's pretty simple. Murder is still wrong, and so by me pointing that out, hey, you know, it's it's wrong for you to murder that guy. Well, hey, you're a hater, man. You're a bigot. Where's the love, man? And and that's that's the attitude people have today with violating God's law. And all the law all all the law is summarized with love. One word, love. Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, all your mind, your soul, all your strength, love your neighbor as yourself, and these two hang all the law and the prophets. All 613 precepts in the Old Testament law, the Mosaic law, are fulfilled in love. And and that's that's where we ask the Lord to help us. Help me to love. If you don't love, these guys weren't loving. They were they were falling away from the Lord and preying upon each other and and the immorality. I think of the pedophilia and the effort of our government and those in power to try and legalize pedophilia, the the mutilation. I've seen a couple pictures of young girls where their breasts have been cut off of them, and they're just little kids. They're just little girls, and they got this big scar across their chest, and how horrific that is. And then you read stories about six months later, a year later, two years later, how mentally incapacitated they are. It really haunts them. And then not just the surgeries, but the hormones. You begin to hormone change, change a girl into a boy, and a boy into a girl, and go through that whole process. We see grown men doing that. Know, there's a teacher at Brownsville Elementary, a music teacher that's gone from, you know, being an ugly man to an even uglier woman, you know? And it's it's really an affront to women, you know? God didn't make women to be that ugly. And Yeah. You know, if you're gonna if you're gonna change to be from a man to woman, at least be a knockout, at least be a babe, you know? So it's it's tragic. And, you know, you're at the end. You're at the very end when you see adults preying upon the most innocent in society, the elderly, you know, the poor, you know, and especially the children. So then said the Lord unto me, what seeth thou, Jeremiah? And I said, figs, the good figs, very good, and the bad figs, very bad, that cannot be eaten. They were so bad. So, you know, they've got maggots on them. They got flies all over them. They're just so corrupted, so bad that there's really nothing you can do with them. So what's it good for? Says they're evil. Just they're evil. Just throw them out. Right? You gotta get rid of them. And how can you restore? How can you resurrect rotten figs? You know? You know? For people, fortunately, God can change us from within. Right? God can take these rotten figs that are indicative or analogous to wicked people, evil people. God can take the most wicked among us and save us and change us from the inside. Right? We sing amazing grace. Right? Do you know the story of John Newton who wrote that that slave song? Do you know how wicked he was as a slave trader? You guys don't know that? You sing this song all the time. Right? I watched the movie. You watched the movie. Yeah. He's he's he's a very, very wicked man enslaving people from Africa, you know, to Great Britain and all, and it began to haunt him, and he he got saved. And I I watched a documentary about the the rhythm of the song. The part of it had to do with what the slaves were singing, the rhythm of the kind of the songs they were singing, and then he put words to it. And God transformed and changed him, and he became a minister. He became a pastor there in England, and mightily, you know, used of God. And so where sin does abound, grace does much more abound, but unfortunately, these guys, their punishment is they're gonna be left in Jerusalem. One one of the things that children of Israel did, they made a huge mistake, lots of mistakes, but something I'm I'm aware of, and that is we can persist in our rebellion against God, and we can fight him and fight him and fight him and demand our own way and insist upon our own way over the course of a lifetime. And there's a very sad day where the Lord says, alright. Not my will, but your will be done. You guys wanna stay here, but I'm out of here. You see, I don't wanna be anywhere where the Lord's not. Right? And I don't want the Lord to give me quail, to give me meat, my rib eyes, at the expense of my fellowship with him. If I grow tired of the bread of life, if I go tired of Jesus, I'm so tired of manna. Oh, he gets manna every day. I'm so tired of Jesus. I want the new things. I want the savory foods, the salty foods. I want the spicy foods of Egypt again. Egypt's a type of the world. I want to go back in the world and I want to have fun partying, and drinking, and drugging, and doing all the stuff in the world because this is boring. This being a Christian, being a Jesus person is really boring. Right? And so you you I want a bigger house. I want more houses, more cars, more everything, and you're just pushing, pushing, pushing against the Lord. You're not pursuing him for who he is. You're just there for the happy meals in John six. You're just there for the bread and the fishes. Right? So the Lord knows that about you, and he's saying, I'm gonna deny you these things because I want you to discover the true riches. I want you to fall in love with me, and but you persist. You won't. So, unfortunately, what the Lord did is he called caused quail, flocks and flocks of quail to come in, and the guys were taking their sticks and they're hitting homers of quail, and they're eating it, and it says, as it's in their mouth, the Lord put leanness in their heart. Imagine winning like that that what's that show we used to watch when we were kids? Twilight Zone. So you're the Twilight Zone dude, and you've gotta work like every moment of every day, but all you wanna do is read books, read books, read books. And all of a sudden, it's the end of the world, and you're the only guy left. And you got all these books stacked up. Finally, you get to read. You got the time to read. Your glasses fall down, and they break, and you can't find them. You know? You got all that you thought you had to have, but now you're blind. Now you can't see. You can't enjoy it. You know? You're persistent. You know? And and that's that's what can happen. You remember that one? Yeah. Yeah. And I'll never forget that. So be careful what you demand. Be careful what you demand of God. The way to win with God is to lose. Lose the fight. Die to self. Take your cross up. Deny yourself and follow him. And he'll cause your life to be fruitful. Remember what he says in Matthew 12? Except a corn of wheat fall in the ground and dies. So you take a seed you're planting this next spring, and you take that seed and you put it into the ground, it's gotta die to regenerate and bear fruit. Right? But if you leave that seed alone, except the fallen ground and die, it abides alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. So too with us. If we are crucified with Christ, if we will die to self, Jesus said, if any man come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. If we will do that, then what happens is you'll discover the power of the resurrection in your life. You'll discover the Lord filling you with the fruit of the spirit, which is his love, gifting you and helping you to live the victorious life of a Christian. Doesn't mean your bank account's gonna get bigger, it could, but it means your quality of life is gonna be the life of the spirit, the abundant life of the spirit. There's a whole lot of globalists, whole lot of trillionaires and billionaires and people who live in abject spiritual poverty. Right? Miserable people. Don't have what you and I have, which is a relationship with Jesus Christ. So the best way to win with God is to lose. Jacob was a heel catcher. Jacob was a conniver. Jacob was in the flesh trying to, you know, work his life out with all of his conniving and everything. There came a night where he's gonna meet his brother Esau the next day, and he's trying to get a good night's sleep because, oh, man, I don't wanna meet Esau because I stole the birthright from him. I stole the blessing from him. Now I've got this wife and kids and stuff, and oh, man, what's gonna happen in the morning? And that night, the Lord came to Jacob, and the Lord began to wrestle with Jacob. And they wrestled all night long. Right? And it says that the Lord touched the sinew of Jacob's hip and caused the hip bone, the hip joint to separate. Anybody ever separated shoulder, ligament, or whatever? Excruciating pain. And it says in Hosea that the way that Jacob prevailed was by losing. And when he lost, God says, I'm gonna change your name now. No longer are you going to be heel catcher, conniver. I'm gonna change your name to Israel, which means governed of God, prince of God. And so that's where we need to be. We need to come to that place where we're broken, and when we're broken before the Lord, then it's no longer us living, but Christ living through us. And he promises that your life will bear fruit. He says in John 15, abide in me and I in you as the branch can't bear fruit on its own. But if you abide in me, my life's gonna flow through you, and your life's gonna be fruitful. So these people are trying to do it on their own, and their life is corrupted, and their lives are unfruitful. Their families are unfruitful. This everything is is just corrupt, and and so we don't wanna do that. We wanna even if the Lord were to take us into exile somewhere, my life can be meaningful and filled with purpose if I'm Daniel, and I'm yielded to God, I'm in his will, in the courts of these kings. You know, I'm gonna get to meet Nebuchadnezzar. May not wanna meet Nebuchadnezzar, but then later, I'm gonna get to meet Cyrus, and I'm gonna be able to show Cyrus within the scripture in Isaiah where God named him, surnamed him a hundred and ninety years before he's even born. By being obedient to God and willing to go into exile and to trust the Lord through all that, I'm able to enter into things I never could have conceived of if I'm Joseph or Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, or Daniel. It may seem, you know, unfair. And within your heart, you may be yearning for the day that the seventy years would expire, and that you could go back as one of the exiles, you know, back to Jerusalem and start over with with Nehemiah, and Ezra the priest, and Zerubbabel, all. Daniel's getting pretty old by then. Gotta be close to a 100 years old, but you can you can leave home. You can leave Ur of the Chaldeans if you're if you're Abraham, if you're Abram, and you can trust God as you leave with Sarah, and you can trust God that that he's gonna do a great thing in your life. It may take some time, but God's got all the time in the world. Right? And you can leave when you're 75, and you could you could see God do the pinnacle of what he what he told you he was gonna do seventy five or twenty five years earlier, and God will do the impossible. Is anything too hard for God? But if you persist in your own way and you say, no. I'm not going. I'm staying here, you know, with my pagan father, idolatrous father, Tara. You're gonna miss out on the miraculous. You're gonna miss out on being a sojourner and watching God do great things in and through you. So be a man, a woman of faith like those that have gone before us by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. Alright. So the figs, the good figs, very good and bad, very, very bad, and cannot be eaten. They are so bad. Again, the word of the Lord came unto me saying, thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, like these good figs, so will I acknowledge those who are carried away captive of Judah whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans. Notice it says, for their what? Good. For their good. We don't understand all the time. Right? We know, Lord, why are you doing this? Why did I just lose this job? Why are you moving me and my family? What what are you doing, Lord? And you don't get it, but you walk by faith. Right? Why why have my kids walked away? What what happened, Lord? And you go through some real hard times trying to glean an understanding of how it fits and how it works and and all that, and and the Lord's saying, I'm gonna purify you. I'm gonna purify your kids through this. I'm gonna prepare your family for heaven. That's what I'm doing, Rick. I'm getting you ready for heaven. I'm getting you ready for the millennium when you're gonna serve me for a thousand years. Your job description, your function in the millennium is gonna be based upon your faithfulness to me now. So, Rick, learn to be faithful in the little things. Learn to be faithful. Be a man of integrity in the season of small things, you know. And don't be ambitious and try to promote yourself. You know, humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and he'll lift you up, you know. God resists the proud. He gives grace to the humble. And and so God's able to abase a Nebuchadnezzar. He's able to bring him down, bring him low. But for you and I, as we follow the Lord, we're gonna see him do some great things. So let's look at Titus two. Let's turn to Titus two eleven. Is purifying. Now you've heard of Titus two thirteen. Right? That's that's in your memory bank. Right? That's that's there called the blessed hope. But watch what's happening in that hope. Watch what that hope produces in you, the hope of the rapture, the hope of the Lord, his return. Those that don't have this hope of the rapture, the hope of the Lord coming for us, they settle in in the world, and in many cases, they're they're unfit. They're not ready. They're not ready for when the Lord comes. So watch this. He says verse 11. Titus two verse 11. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. Do you believe that? Mhmm. The gospel has appeared. Jesus is not hiding somewhere in a corner. We have we don't have him in a corner, a tomb somewhere, you know, and it's public knowledge. Every Christmas, every Easter, public knowledge that God sent his only begotten son, Jesus of Nazareth. Right? The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, universal availability. Jesus is available to anyone. Whosoever will, let him come. Right? The call goes out to whosoever will. The vast majority of people have heard the gospel and they've refused it. And not just refused the gospel, but rejected him over and over and over and over again, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust because of who Jesus is, so he's a chip off the old block, he told Philip, have I been such a long time with you, Philip? He that has seen me has seen the father. If you wanna know who God is, if you wanna know his character, if you wanna know what he's like, get to know Jesus. Amen. Jesus is God. Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age. So we're gonna deny evil, we're gonna do good, and man, it's dark out there, and the Lord wants us to be the light of the world, a city set on a hill. Looking for that blessed hope. We don't put our hope in this world. No. Our citizenship is in heaven. Right? Looking for that blessed. That word blessed means all happy. It's not doom and gloom. Prophecy is not doom and gloom. Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our savior Jesus Christ. That's the rapture. That's the hope of the rapture. He's coming for us. The world is corrupting. The world is getting worse and worse. My children are in jeopardy. My children are at risk. This place is so corrupt. We're living in Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot's two daughters. You know? He offered his two daughters to those clowns. You know? And they they were killing themselves to get to the door, to get at two men they hadn't known yet sexually. Right? These were angels who were looking like men. And and it says that the angels, after Lot offered his virgin daughters, the angels were indignant about that, and and they were still after the man. And so then the angels smote the guys with blindness. Now if you got smitten with blindness, do you think God would have your attention? No. Do you think you need to have your attention? Alright, God. You got my attention. I don't think I'm going the right way. But it says that these guys weary themselves as they're groping toward the door in their blindness. Their lust, their their their just corrupt lust for evil was such that it didn't matter if they were blind. They had to have what they had to have, and they weren't gonna stop until they got it. And what do you do with a society like that? What do you do with the people like that that are so corrupted at that point? What's God to do? Abraham says, it's unjust. You're a just god. It'd be unjust for you to kill the righteous with the wicked. Right? It'd be unjust for you to do that. So if there's 50 righteous in that town, would you would you not destroy them? Well, if there's 50 righteous, I won't destroy them. If there's 45, if there's if there's 30 if there's 35, thirty, twenty five, 20. One more time. One more time. If there's 10 righteous, alright, if there's 10, I won't destroy it. Right? If there's 10, just 10 righteous. And what that illustrates to you and I is that before God pours out his wrath upon this corrupt world we're in, he's gonna rapture us. Amen. He's gonna take us out before he pours out his wrath Amen. Fire and brimstone upon this planet. Right? Because we're not subject unto his wrath. He's not gonna destroy the righteous with the wicked. Right? Praise the Lord. So who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify. So we're corrupt. I can't do much about my corruption. I can't make myself whole. I can't make myself good. But by faith and trust in him, he's going to purify me. He's going to change me and transform me from glory to glory in the image of Christ, and purify unto himself a people of his own, zealous of good works. These things speak and exhort. Now notice notice Titus' job as a pastor. Watch this. You teach these things and you exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise you. I mean, bring it. It's not about being liked. If there's disobedient, corrupt people what did Paul say to the church of Corinth when a man took his father's wife and was sexually active with his father's wife in first Corinthians five? He said, hey, this isn't funny. This isn't love. This isn't loving to condone that. A little leaven leavens the lump. You're gonna have to nip in the bud. You're gonna have to cut that out. You're gonna have to cause them to either come to that place of confession, confession, repentance, and stop doing it, or remove them from the church. Church discipline. When's the last time you've seen that happen? I don't wanna do it. I don't want that job. Kathy have to do it. Kathy. Not my job, man. So it's it's if you love them, faithful are the wounds of a friend, the kiss of an enemy or deceitful. We teach the bible because we love people. We don't want them to have a false sense of security and go to hell. You know? We want them to come to repentance, to change. Now turn to first John now. First John chapter three. The doctrine of the rapture, and I wanna make it clear, it's not the theory of the rapture. This is not a theory. The rapture, the catching away of the church before the tribulation period is a fact, A fact that's provable over and over again, scripture after scripture. A guy came to me once and said, give me one scripture to prove the pre trib rapture. I can do better than that. Yeah. How much time you got? But they wanted to narrow the argument to a a little trick. Give me one give me one verse. One verse. You know? Freaked me out. Alright. Chapter three. First John chapter three. Behold what manner of love the father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God. Man, I'm so glad God saved me. I told somebody today the most precious thing that I possess is my faith. The faith that I have in God that he gave me, it's a gift from God. You take away my faith in God, I'm nothing. I've lost everything. Right? My faith is precious. I don't want my faith to go away, you know. I wanted to increase and grow and and honor the Lord. So behold what manner of love the father has bestowed upon us that we should be called the children of God. Jesus looked at the religious leaders in John eight and said that their father was the devil. Those were Jews. Those were religious leaders. And he told them point blank, your father's the devil and he was a liar and a murderer from the beginning and you're just like him. In contrast, rather than a universal salvation that everyone is the children of God, no. He differentiates. There are children of God, and then there's those who are not children of God. One of two camps. A child of God is one that's born again. Right? It's not the external heritage of being a Jew that makes you, you know, saved, but in Isaac shall thy seed be called, has to be mixed with faith. It's those that come to Jesus Christ, the the true Israel of God, the true believer. Children of God, therefore, the world knows us not because it knew him not. You have a difficult time communicating with this world, people in the world, people, difficult time getting through to them, they don't know you because they don't know him. And we're trying to communicate to them our Jesus, and they don't have the capacity yet, but conversion's a miracle. So we still stay with the gospel. Same message. And we pray that the holy spirit open their eyes, turning them from darkness to light. Right? The power of Satan who's holding them captive against their will. So when I got saved, you know, the Lord is basically setting me free from the clutches of the wicked one with my mind, you know, immersed in the things of the world. He says, beloved, now are we the children of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be. So I'm looking at a glass darkly. I'm I'm being changed from glory to glory, but one day when I see Jesus face to face, I'll know even as I am known. But presently, this work of sanctification is transforming, changing me from glory to glory. I'm becoming more and more like Christ as the Holy Spirit is transforming and changing me from within. He's transforming by the renewing of my mind. I don't think the same way anymore. I'm learning biblical values, biblical principles, biblical priorities rather than the priorities and principles and teaching of the world. So the world knows us not because it knew him. Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, when's he gonna appear? We're gonna be like him. The rapture. Mhmm. Dead in Christ arise first, and we shall live and remain shall be caught up together with him, and so shall I ever be with the Lord. Right? So we're gonna be like him when he appears, for we shall see him as he is. Now watch this. Talk about corruption. The hope, the blessed hope of the Lord coming for me is a purifying hope. It says, in every man that has this hope, what hope? The hope of being like Jesus. The hope of his return. The hope of him delivering me from me. He's gonna save me from me and my corrupt heart. And then purifies himself even as he is pure. So it's a it's a wonderful, wonderful teaching to be watching for the soon return of the Lord at any moment he could come. I don't want to be found when he comes doing what? Being involved in what? I don't wanna backslide and live from afar. I wanna be drawn ever closer and closer and closer to the Lord and stay in that place of protection, safety. And and so as I'm watching for him, it doesn't hurt that I got saved in 1980 and he hasn't come yet. It doesn't mean I reject the doctrine of the rapture, the pretribulation rapture because he hasn't come yet. Why would I be angry about that? Why would I give up on the doctrine of the rapture? It's a beautiful, wonderful hope. And that hope is changing me, transforming me by having that hope. In Luke 12, those that forget, those that don't watch, that aren't ready, you know, they're they're going back into acting like heathens. Right? And he says he says, you know, some are gonna receive few stripes and some many stripes because knowledge brings responsibility in Luke 12. Right? But for those that are faithful, it says that he's gonna gird himself in Luke 12, which means he's gonna take his outer garment, he's gonna take the sash and put it on, and he's gonna serve us at the marriage supper of the lamb. You believe that? We're gonna we're gonna be watching Jesus serve his bride because he's so elated, he's so in love, he's so ready. For I will verse six, for I will notice the I's, the I statements. We see the I statements in verse five. I acknowledge, I have now he says verse six, I will set mine eyes upon them for good. Since God is for us, who can be against us? God's thoughts concerning us are numbered more than all the grains of sand, all the stars of heaven. Right? Now, though his thoughts concerning Rick are not, oh, that wretched Rick. You have to qualify his thoughts. His good thoughts concerning me are numbered more than all the grains of sand. His good thoughts. For I'll set mine eyes upon him for good. So if I if I'm going through adversity, I need to remember Romans eight twenty eight. Right? All things some things or all things? All things? All things working together for Good. Good. For qualified for who? Qualified. Not for everybody. For who? Them that believe. Those who love God and are called according to my purpose. Purpose. Right? His purpose. There you go. So all things are working together for good. All the adversity for Joseph, all the stuff that Job went through, all the stuff that Moses and all these other guys went through, God's working it all together for good. And for me, the good would be, Lord, I want you to be glorified. I don't want to bring reproach to your name. When David sinned with Bathsheba, when he sinned with Bathsheba, God loved David. He's a man after God's own heart. But when David sinned with Bathsheba, I believe that's just the most heartbreaking thing in the world is to displease him. When Joseph was approached by Potiphar's wife, he said, how could I do this great evil against God? He was living by a standard that was just far greater than the law. It was love. He's in love with God. And for David, David, like any of us, can veer off course, and in a time of prosperity can forget all the lessons, all that God was teaching. And the most tragic statement that I hear when Nathan the prophet confronts David is, David, you've given great occasion for the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme God's name. He's still forgiven. He's still saved. He's still powerful with psalms and fighting and didn't lose his gifting. But in his relationship like Samson, he didn't value his relationship with God. He put it on cruise control, Samson, it says, when the Philistines are upon you hey, Samson, baby. The Philistines are upon you, Delilah said, and he couldn't break the ropes. And they came on him and grabbed hold of him. And there's a very tragic verse there. It says, and Samson knew not that the Holy Spirit had departed. Mhmm. Samson was as weak as any other man. All of that privilege, all of that preparing him and grooming him and making him a Nazirite, you know, he wasn't to mess around with the fruit of the vine. He wasn't mess around with corrupted animals, dead animals, And he wasn't to cut his hair. It was a symbol of his relationship with God, separated from the norm, separated from everybody else. Right? Everybody else can do it. They can party, drink the wine, not you, Samson. And so Samson began to party. Nothing happened. He still had the power. Samson made a riddle up about a honey being in the mouth of the eater in a a dead lion. Right? Messing around with a corrupt body. Still didn't lose his lose his power and still was pretty witty, pretty pretty wise. Right? But when he met Delilah, he met his match like many a man. Right? And she crying, crying, crying day by day. Right? And he underestimated. He didn't value his walk with the Lord and his relationship with God. He finally told her, if you cut my hair, I'll be as weak as any other man, and it wasn't the hair. It was the relationship with God that makes you strong. And so how tragic it is when we don't value the unique relationship that each of us has with the Lord, that each of us appreciate our calling, placing, where God has us, where God wants to use our lives, where God wants to empower us and be used of him. We don't need to worry about what the other guy's doing. Just do what God has called us to do. He's he's making it all work together for good, and I'll bring them again to this land, and I'll build them and not pull them down. And that's what the word edify means. The word edify means to be to build up. What's condemnation mean? Tear down. Tear down. You don't want a pastor. You don't want a priest. You don't want a husband or a wife or somebody in your life, a mentor that's there to beat you down, belittle you, berate you, condemn you, knock you down. God has put us here that we're to build one another up. I hate that Biden and them have that build back better. They're stealing from God. But we want to edify, to edify the body of Christ. So when we get into first Corinthians, and we're looking at chapter twelve, thirteen, and 14, we're gonna see that a person that speaks in tongues, person that prophesies, person that helps, all the different gifting, all of us have gifts. All those gifts are to be used to edify the body of Christ, to build up the body. That's what they're there for. They're not there to be seen of men. Hey, look at me, that sort of thing. In chapter 13, he takes us a sandwich between chapter twelve and fourteen of the gifts describing the gifts of the spirit, the charismata, and chapter 13 shows the fruit of the spirit, which is love, that without love, you're nothing. So all those gifts, that character, all that gifting, you use that to edify and to glorify the Lord, and you do it in love. Without love, it's for naught. Doesn't mean a thing. Doesn't glorify God. So something for us to ask the Lord for to empower us. So I'll build them and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up, and I will give them heart to know me. I love that God's given me a heart to know him. Amen. That God's working within. Christianity is an inward work. Jesus said, except your righteousness exceeds out of the scribes and pharisees, you'll know why has entered the kingdom of God. The disciples are looking at each other like, those guys are experts at keeping the law. Who, you know, who can be saved? And Jesus is pointing out that it's internal, guys. Their fruit is plastic fruit. It's fake fruit. It's not real. They Jesus said, you guys are like whitewashed tombs. You clean the outside up to look good from the outside, but inwardly, you're full of corruption. You're full of dead men's bones. Jesus see through me. Call them out on it, and they're lording over people. And so Jesus illustrated that self righteousness that keeps them away from knowing God. He's and he illustrated a Pharisee and the publican. Remember? The story of the Pharisee and the publican? The Pharisee went in the temple and prayed with himself. I thank thee, oh, God, that that I'm, you know, not an extortioner, you know, that I'm a not a sinner like this guy over here. I don't exploit people and all, and that I tithe and give out of everything I have, you know, and I fast several times a week and all. And and then the publican, the tax collector, wouldn't so much as even lift up his eyes unto heaven, but smote his breast and said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Jesus said, that man went away justified. The man that recognized his depravity, and he's crying out to God for forgiveness. Everyone that exalts himself, Jesus went on to say, is gonna be abased, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted. And so it's the inward. It's the heart. God's gonna put his word within their heart in Jeremiah thirty one thirty one. God's gonna write his law within their heart. The psalmist David says, thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. We know right and wrong because we read God's word, and his word is is written in our heart, and the holy spirit brings the word to remembrance. Right? They're gonna have a heart to know me. I can't work that in people. I can't give them a heart to know God. I can only do my part and try and present Christ. They gotta have ears to hear. They gotta heart to want to learn, to want to be a disciple, to want to follow him. That I am the Lord, and they shall be my people, and I will be their God for they shall return unto me with their whole heart. So don't come to me half hearted, come to me with your whole heart. Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto me. You know, you're gonna find me, you're gonna know me when you search for me with all your heart. Who would want a half hearted love affair? You you want you want your spouse's heart? The whole heart, not divided? I don't wanna share her with somebody. Mhmm. I want her whole heart. Like the bad figs, per se. Like the bad figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so bad. Surely, thus saith the Lord, so will I give Zedekiah, the king of Judah, and his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem that remain in this land and those who dwell in the land of Egypt. So God's gonna give them up. God's gonna give them over. They're the ones who get to stay in Jerusalem. They're the bad fakes. The good fakes get to be delivered from the destruction that's coming because Nebuchadnezzar's coming back in May. He's gonna destroy everything. He's gonna wipe the whole place out. And you can't even escape his wrath if you run to Egypt. And I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt to be a reproach and a proverb and a taunt and a curse in all places to which I shall drive them. They're gonna be driven out. And so they're past the shelf life. They're past the expiration date. And I will send the sword and the famine and the pestilence among them till they be consumed from off the land that I gave unto them and to their fathers. So they're ripened ripened for judgment. God always gives space for repentance. He always gives us time to consider our ways, to consider what we're doing, and he'll send prophets. He'll send people. He'll send his holy spirit to convict our heart, he'll give us a message, he'll give us a flower, a bird, a grandson, granddaughter. I remember when I was angry at God when I was raising Jessica and Brittany, they were just little, and I went up to school the Bible college, and I had eight weeks just wonderful studying the Bible and learning and all that. And then I had to I had to get back to work. I couldn't continue. I had to I had bills to pay, and my guys had run my business into the ground, and I was so frustrated. Was so angry at God. I got stuck in the snow, and I couldn't get my van out, and I'm a city boy, I don't know how to do that, and I had a job on Monday, and I needed to pay some bills, and I couldn't get it. The lady let me reschedule. It wasn't the end of the world. And but I was furious. I was digging my van out all night long, and I was I was purple from so cold, and I couldn't get it out every just spun the wheel and hit hit the, you know, the side. And so I got down the mountain, and I lived in my shop for a couple months, and then I got Kathy and the girls down from the house we were leasing up there. We moved into her mom's house and all, and I was just so incredibly angry at God, and I'm not going to church. I'm not going. And Jessica comes up to me the second week, and she says, daddy, are we gonna go to church? Oh, man. My heart melted. So I went back to church. You know? I tried. I tried to just hold that anger and hold that against God. Hold it. You know? But I couldn't hold on to it. I couldn't I couldn't do it. I had to I had to repent. I had to give in. I had to allow God to break me. And and he, you know, he blessed my family, blessed my daughters, blessed my wife and I. We we didn't hold on to that rebellion and all that was in my heart. And so some people won't do that. Some people will hold that grudge against God, be angry at God, and you try to share the gospel with them, and they're super, super angry about something that happened in their life. My mom's one of my mom's husbands, he was incredibly angry at God because the love of his life, his first wife, died of brain tumor, and he was never gonna let it go, and he drank himself to death. So tormented, so angry at God because God allowed that, and you gotta let it go. You gotta let it go. You gotta you gotta recognize God loves you, and the proof of that is he sent his son to the cross to die for you. And God God can take all that the enemy means for evil in the life of Joseph and turn it around for good. Right? And so we we just don't know. We just we just don't have all the answers to all the questions and all the things up ahead, so we walk by faith, day by day by faith. And I look back on my life and I think, wow. I didn't need to finish school. I went back to school four years later, school of ministry then, and I finished that school, got to go for two years. But same sort of thing happened. The Lord reduced us and brought us to the place where, alright, now we're gonna take a step of faith and go out to, you know, Oregon, and then wound up here in Washington. Been here twenty eight years, but he was faithful. He was faithful. Every step of the way, he was faithful. He didn't do it the way I wanted to do it. I wanted to not only sell my business, but sell the house and come up here with lots of money, you know? And he's always made me the one that has to walk day by day by faith, and my faith has grown because of that, and and Cathy's faith. And and our walking relationship with the Lord has grown also, and that's the most important thing. Are you growing in the Lord? Are all the adversities and all the things that's happening, does it make you better or is it making you bitter? Are you becoming more like Christ, or is that bitterness creating a corruption within your heart and that's gonna wind up hurting you and hurting your girls, hurting your family, hurting your wife? You gotta let it go. You gotta you gotta let it go. You gotta lay it at the feet of the cross and cry out to God, God, not my will, but your will be done. Gotta surrender afresh. Every single day, you gotta surrender afresh. Be tragic if you ever won that fight with God. Amen. That would be a tragedy where he says, okay. Not my will, but your will be done. So alrighty. That was a small chapter, I tell you. Let's pray. Father, thank you, Lord, for this walk of faith. None of us have it figured out. Thank you that it's just that, a walk of faith. We walk day by day, moment by moment, trusting in you, Lord. And we pray evermore, Lord, that you'd increase our faith and help us to bear much fruit for your kingdom and glory. Pray that people would observe and watch and watch how we're growing more and more in love with you each and every day as the world is perishing, as the things of the world are growing strangely dim. Lord, help us fix our eyes upon Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and is seated down at the right hand of the father. Lord, we love you. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. Amen. Amen. And somebody was really calling Somebody did look at that. Six of them. Did somebody
About This Podcast
Calvary Chapel Bremerton - Home Bible Study
Listen to Rick Beaudry, Pastor of Calvary Chapel Bremerton, lead our home Bible Study session in worship and teaching the Word of God. Be edified and built up in your faith with solid Bible teaching. New episodes released on Tuesdays in the Pacific Standard Timezone.
