Jeremiah 2: The Context | Wednesday Night Service

I love the word of God. I'm obsessed with it.

It's beautiful and limiting at the same time. It's beautiful in that has set a stable course for our lives.

And I would say it's limiting because I really can't process anything if I can't find where it fits in a word. Just can't do it. So I hear something and I'm like, nah, it's not in the word. Moving right along. Can't do it.

Can't do it. Maybe that's a blessing. Let me pray before I start. Father, I thank you for the opportunity to minister your word. And I thank you for each and every person who is in here tonight.

I know that you have plans and purposes for them, and I know that the words I speak, they're just words unless you breathe on them. And so I do ask you for that, that you take words and you make them life to us. Father, I'm honored to stand before this group of people and I ask you, Holy Spirit, to help me communicate what I believe is on your heart. For tonight, your word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our paths. And its truths we will hide in our hearts that we might not sin against you.

Sanctify us with your word, Lord God, your word is truth. In Jesus name, amen. And amen. Well, tonight we're going to continue in the book of Jeremiah, just a tiny little book in the Old Testament. Jeremiah is a book of a collection of Jeremiah's prophecies and the events surrounding those prophecies that occurred in Judah during the last 40 years of its existence.

And beyond that, about four more years after they were exiled into Babylon. It's a significant, significant book of the Bible in. In my eyes, because it really is God's last word to the nation of Israel before they were wiped off the map. So there's a significance to those words for sure. And indeed, there, although the people of Israel would migrate back, they would not be a nation again for another 2,500 years.

God never forgot about them. He never forgot about his promise, and he never forgot about his commitment to the nations. But that's kind of a whole other story. You know, we're not going to approach it verse by verse in any sequential way. Our approach is going to be topical.

And honestly, I don't know if I might even be done tonight. We'll see Pastor Stephanie, what you have in mind. And oh, let there be light.

I thought not only can't I hear, I can't see. And I praise the Lord, if you want to take on reading through the book yourself, you should be aware that the chapters in Jeremiah are not organized in any kind of chronological way. And if you try to read them that way, well, I'll just say for the Western mind, it's a little. You won't know what's, what's going on. I would recommend that if you want to read through the book that you get a commentary.

And I mean, you can buy a book, a commentary, or many of the free apps have commentaries on them. I highly recommend that you do that for the book of Jeremiah and that perhaps just focus on chapter by chapter and see what you can glean what is the message of that chapter. The last time we were together, I offered an opinion that God, what God called Jeremiah to do and the historical context in which he called him to do that had everything to do with our individual callings today and our historical context right now. That God's word to his people then is God's word to his people now. Because God still speaks through what he has spoken.

His word is as fresh as it is, as it ever was. We talked about what God called Jeremiah to do. That he was called to be a prophet to his nation, Judah, and to the other nations. That he was a particular person born at a particular time with a particular God given assignment. And we have that in common with Jeremiah, each and every one of us, in that each one of us is a particular time, a particular person who has been born at a particular time with a particular God given assignment.

And since Jesus expects to find us involved in that assignment when he returns, it's in our best interests to go after it and find out what that is. You don't want to drag your feet in in service to the Lord.

Of all the things I thought I'd have trouble with today, turning the page wasn't one of them. Okay, talk among yourself.

I think we bought cheap copy paper. Ta da. I will tell you though, if you will faithfully read your Bible, pray and be involved in church, you will find where you belong. Because what happens is you will mature. And what happens to a tree when it matures, its fruit comes out.

So I could tell you right now, if I saw an apple tree or a pear tree, I would have no idea which one it was until the fruit came out. And then I would say, ah, that's an apple. So as we mature in the things of God, what God has put inside of you will come to maturity and become fruit. And everyone will know what you've been called to do because you'll be just one big tree of hanging godly fruit. Right.

So it's not that hard to find out. Go after it. Tonight we are going to unpack the historical context of the book of Jeremiah. Never. There's never been a topic that creates more excitement in the body of Christ than history.

I'm telling you, I just get letters. But I'm telling you, you hang in, you're not going to be sorry. But before we get into the text, I feel like I'm in my mojo now. All right. All right.

Took me a while to get there, but Janet has arrived. Let me kick off with a story about three newly graduated high school girls. Yes. And you know one of them. So two friends and I, we just graduated from high school and we dec. We wanted to take a trip, a beach trip to Wildwood, New Jersey.

Sufficient to say that city's appropriately named. How I was permitted to go on this is a little bit of a mystery to me because my mom and dad kept a pretty tight leash on me. Short leash. So I think it may have involved a screaming match between my mother and I. I want to think perhaps, but nevertheless, I was on my way with my friends to Wildwood, New Jersey. I don't even recall how we got there, whose car we took, but we had this bright idea.

We're going to drive all night so we can get there in the morning and we'd have all day on the beach. Well, I assured them I was a night owl and I would take the first night shift.

I fell asleep at the wheel, and I woke up to my friends screaming my name. This is just a side journey. And so then we switched drivers. Okay. So then everybody was really awake after that.

I was heading for that part in the middle Kellett. They all screamed. I was like, oh, sorry, my bad. So we get down to Wildwood, we're on the beach, and teenagers do what teenagers do. They start networking.

And so we got invited to a party. I got invited to a party. This was all very new to me. So it's all at this house where all these kids were staying. So my friends and I would go to this party, and I'm feeling like a big girl.

And I mean, they were drinking beer, which didn't bother me. I didn't do that. And I don't think I did it there. But drinking beer was legal in Ohio then, and so that didn't bother me. And the music was playing and.

Yeah, come on. It was. I was free, baby. So I'm milling around and we're talking and I go over toward. I go over in the kitchen and I see people around a kitchen table and a plastic bag and white papers.

Now, I had never seen that substance in real life, but I had seen it in a movie, in health class and on Dragnet.

So I knew what we had there. Back then, it was called grass. Mary Jane Sigaweed.

Fear descended on me because drinking beer was not illegal. That was illegal. And I did not grow up. Let me put it this way. It was after we were all grown that my parents got born again.

When I was growing up, I would say we dabbled in going to church, but we weren't taught biblical principles. But my parents were God fearing. Yeah, like the Lucan God fearers. Right? They taught us right from wrong.

They taught us to respect and be fearful of authority when we needed to and all that kind of thing. So that was very much in me. So I see that going on. I'm like, I am. I do not want to be here.

I do not want to be here. So I go over to my friends and I said, we need to go, because you know what's going on in there. Well, tell me about my friends. They didn't want to have anything to do with that. We weren't, let's say, drug use then was relegated to a type.

It didn't cross. It didn't cover all socioeconomic situations like it does now. And we just didn't do that. But they weren't terrified the way I was. I said, I do not want to be here.

I want to go home. They said, we don't want to go home. I said, fine. I said, I'm going to go sit outside. They were like, fine, go sit outside.

So I went outside the house and I sat on the steps for a little bit and I thought, you know, this is not as far away as I want to be from what's going on there. Because if the po po come, I do not want to be anywhere near this house. So I get up, I cross the street, I. I go down three houses and I just sit cross legged in the sidewalk picking up grass. Stupid party, you know, all by myself. I felt sad, I felt mad, and I felt alone.

But what kept me there was I knew I was safe from being associated with what was going on in that house. Well, what, you may ask, does that silly little story have to do with the book of Jeremiah and with its context? Well, that's what I'm here to tell you.

The people in Judah like the people in that house yeah, they were. They were breaking the law. They were breaking God's law. And God sent Jeremiah to warn them to repent or they would be punished. But you know what?

No one believed him. His own people, his friends, they didn't believe him. He went from being just kind of people being dismissive toward him to people mocking him. Then he would spend a night in stocks. He would be thrown in a cistern.

A cistern is a hole in the ground that they dug and then they lined it with, like, plaster so that it could collect rainwater. Is usually pretty nasty. Yeah, he spent some time in there. He was imprisoned and finally dragged off to Egypt against his will, where tradition says he was stoned to death by his own people. At times he sulked, he complained, he got angry.

But he continued to submit himself to God's will. And God's will was to spare that generation from the coming disaster.

God wanted to be reconciled to his wayward people. He didn't want to see them destroyed, he want to see them saved. And he sent Jeremiah to tell them. And in order for Jeremiah to be faithful, he had to stand alone as a prophet and he had to stand alone as a man. It's a price to pay.

You know, the Apostle Paul wrote in Second Corinthians, chapter 5, that each one of us are called to the ministry of reconciliation. Right? And what is that? That is reconciling God to man. Since we have been reconciled to God, we have peace with God through Jesus.

No matter what your unique bent and calling is, everyone has this same calling and has the ministry of reconciling people, bringing them to Jesus so that they can be reconciled to God. And when you reconcile somebody to God, it is a rescue mission.

In a very literal way, because the alternative is dark.

So I have a question for all of us tonight as we make our way through the text.

How far are we willing to go and how much are we willing to. To lose? To rescue the generation into which we have been born? And if you're still alive, this is your generation.

Here's my concern.

God's people in America, maybe even including us, are living, maybe living with a false sense of security, the same false sense of security that blinded the people of Judah in Jeremiah's time. And that. That security is that we've always been okay, so we'll always be okay.

Things will always be as they are.

And that's not so. It is not so. This age is going to come to an end. I know this is. Hey, I'm just going to go Where I go this age is going to come to an end.

And when it does, it'll either be good news or bad news, depending on what side of the ledger you're on.

What I'm hopeful about, though, and why I think the Lord impressed this book on my heart and this theme on my heart is that the same window of opportunity that God gave, gave the people of Judah to change is a window of opportunity that's open to us now.

A window of opportunity to help us and help us help others make ourselves right with God.

Okay. I have to tell you and Michael will probably attest to this. This has been extremely difficult message for me to put together, not because of its content, but because there were so many biblical moving parts that I understood in here, but I had a very hard time putting them together in a cohesive whole. You know what I'm talking about? That's not overwhelming.

And it's. And I'm going to do the best that I can, but I think it's going to be okay. But it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay, Janet. Okay.

All right. Now open your bibles to Jeremiah 1 or your devices, because we're in the 22nd century. Are we the 21st century? Well, we're not 1950, so that's all I know. Again, as I said, we are going to unpack the historical context of the book of Jeremiah.

And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, you will not be able to absorb the message of Jeremiah without knowing the historical context in this book and the prophetic books in particular. And let me dispel a notion that some folks have about interacting with the Bible. So some folks think that they're like these two separate tracks to reading the Bible. And one track is that you read the Bible for personal inspiration, and that's one track. And the other track is that you read the Bible for education.

And can I tell you that offer to you that those aren't two separate tracks that they must indeed inform one another. Because to the extent that you can be inspired by the Word of God is in proportion to how much of the Word of God you have inside of you. The Word of God is the material the Holy Spirit uses to inspire you in like manner. The extent that you can be inspired by the Word of God as you study it is in proportion to the extent you engage with the Holy Spirit and let him inspire your understanding. Otherwise, you just have understanding that will be limited and fruitless.

So tonight, even though we're giving you like some information. I think if you will lean into it, I promise you the Holy Spirit will give you fuel that he will use to stoke your personal fire. I know that he will. So here's so funny. So this is the second time I taught on Jeremiah.

We're still not going to get out of the first three verses. Ta da ta. Talk about belaboring so much. Jeremiah 1. The words of Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah, son of Ammon, king of Judah, in the 13th year of his reign.

It came also in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the 11th year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month. The time span of those three years is 40. The three verses is 40 years and again another four years that Jeremiah sent messages to the captives in Babylon. There were actually two more kings who served in that time frame, but their reigns only lasted a couple of months, so they were really of no consequence. What is important for us to know is that there were three different kings and Jeremiah's prophecies contained three.

There were three different kings and Jeremiah's prophecycies contained three different themes. Three kings, three themes. The three kings were Josiah and in a word, good Jehoiakim, in a word, bad Zedekiah, weak. Those are the three kings. And the three themes of his prophecy were this.

First and these are sequential.

Repent from your wicked ways and God will spare you the smackdown that the Babylonians are going to come in and give you. That was it. I'll give you an example of it. Jeremiah 26, verses 1 through 3.

This message came to Jeremiah from the Lord early in the reign of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, king of Judah. This is what the Lord says. Stand in the courtyard in front of the temple of the Lord and make an announcement to the people who come here to worship from all over Judah. So let me give you an understanding of this. It would be like if one of you stood out there by the fountain at the refuge on a Sunday and you were yelling this at everybody.

That's what that was like. He was at the temple courtyard. Give them my entire message, including every word. He's so sweet, the Lord. Perhaps they will listen and turn from their evil ways.

Then I will change my mind about the disaster I am ready to pour out on them because of their Sins. And this was the theme, the first theme of Jeremiah's prophecies for a little over 20 years. And you know what? They didn't repent.

The people of Judah had a false sense of security due to their history of God delivering them, which Jeremiah calls out, don't rely on that, don't rely on that. And there were other prophets speaking a different message and telling them they were going to be fine. As a result, the window of opportunity to repent and change the course of events, it closed.

Theme one, the second theme, that even though the window of opportunity to repent had closed, the Lord is still offering them mercy. And Jeremiah's message changes too.

Surrender to the Babylonians, don't give them any trouble, and it will go better for you.

Jeremiah 27, verses 12 through 14.

Then I repeated this same message to King Zedekiah of Judah. If you want to live, submit to the yoke of the king of Babylon and his people. Why do you insist on dying, you and your people? Why should you choose war, famine and disease, which the Lord will bring against every nation that refuses to submit to Babylon's king? Do not listen to the false prophets who keep telling you, quote, the king of Babylon will not conquer you.

They are liars. So you have Babylon, which has begun its siege. So they're at the door of Jerusalem and you have prophets of Yahweh. Now these aren't the prophets of BAAL or BAAL if you want to show you know how to say fancy schmancy words, who are telling them to surrender. These are other prophets of Yahweh who are telling them, you should not surrender.

The Lord will deliver us. Yeah, listen, I hope you know that not everybody who says they are a prophet is a prophet. You know that, right? Oh, you're getting your prophetic messages from TikTok. I just don't know.

I know some people forming their theology from a guy on TikTok.

That's all I'm going to say about that. So first, Jeremiah told them repentance, they didn't repent. Second, he told them to submit. They didn't submit. As a result of that, when the Babylonians finally broke through the wall at Jerusalem, the slaughter was great.

Many, many, many people died and the city and the temple was destroyed. God wanted to spare them that they couldn't hear.

And his third theme, it was to the Jews who were gone and exiled in Babylon. And his messages, his prophecies were of comfort and hope, of restoration. And we all know, like Jeremiah 29:11, do we not For I know the plans I have for you. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.

God's mercy weaves through the entire book, always wanting to restore. Now, tonight, I want to drill in a bit into the reign of the first king, the first king who is Jeremiah, because I think we are right here, right now.

Jeremiah was the king under which Josiah was the king under which Jeremiah began his prophetic ministry. They could have been around the same age.

And to properly put Josiah in his historical context, I am tempted to go back 300 years and take you through at least we got. At least start with the first year of the reign of King Rehoboam, who was the son of Solomon, because that was the time that there was a unified Israel. I had maps and everything. Did I not have maps and everything? Then the Lord said, what are you doing, girl?

Maps. I love me some geography and that is a lot to take in, 300 years worth of stuff. So I have mercy and I am hoping going to give you 55 years before Jeremiah, because I think that will be sufficient. And the 55 years before Jeremiah was the reign of King Manasseh of Judah. And you must at least know this.

And I know when I see some of your faces, I know you're very conversant in the Bible and know this, but there may be some people who do not know this, that, that Israel was at one time a unified country because of its. Because they didn't. The Lord said, you have not obeyed my ways. And Solomon did not set a great example. He divided the kingdom into two different kingdoms, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom.

The northern kingdom was called Israel, and it was the ten tribes. The southern kingdom was called Judah, and it was the two remaining tribes, Benjamin and Judah. He let them have their own place because of the promise he made to David. So at the time that I'm going to tell you about Manasseh, King of Judah, there is no Israel, there is no northern territory, there's no northern kingdom. The Assyrians have come.

And Israel likewise was warned. You had Elijah, you had Elisha, you had Amos, you had Hosea. Any number of prophets who sent them the same warning said, you better change your ways or trouble's coming from the north. And indeed, trouble did come from the north in the form of the Assyrian army who invaded Israel, capped it, destroyed it, captured the people, and scattered them all over the Assyrian empire. And there's a.

There's a thought that keeps coming in my mind that I want to say it came back again. Okay. I love when that train pulls back in the station. When you read the book of Jeremiah and he mentions Israel, he is talking about the northern kingdom. You must know that.

And when he talks, when he mentions Judah, it's just the southern kingdom, which is the only part that remains right now. 300 years of history in a minute. All right. King Manasseh of Judah. How many of you ever heard of King Manasseh of Judah?

Was he good or bad? Bad. Super bad. Right? He was the most wicked king in either Israel or Judah.

And Israel has some bad kings, let me tell you. It's like his lust to do evil. It couldn't be satisfied. Let me read you a bit about Manny. Mind if I call you Manny?

Manasseh, 2 Kings 21:1. Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem 55 years. His mother was Hept. That reminds me of a Gilligan's Island. Harold.

Hepzibah. What an odd thing to come to my mind. Okay. His mother was Hepzibah. He did evil what was evil.

He does evil what was in the Lord's sight. Following the detestable practices of the pagan nations that the Lord had driven from the land ahead of the Israelites, he built pagan shrines. His father Hezekiah. How does such a bad guy come from such a good king? It's very interesting that these kings, many of them mentioned who their mom was.

That'd be an interesting study.

He built pagan shrines his father Hezekiah had destroyed. He constructed altars for BAAL and set up a share of poles. Asherah poles, you say potato. Just as King Ahab of Israel had done, he also bowed before all the powers of the heavens and worshiped them. Now let me talk to you.

Put into terms some uncomfortable things that are uncomfortable to say, but nevertheless must be said. He installed cult prostitute shrines all over the country. And he encouraged pagan worship that involved community getting to know one another. And this is particularly tragic. The unfortunate children who were conceived as a result of those sex cults and their rights were often the same children who were offered on the altar as living sacrifices to Molech and the other gods.

It was a masquerading of sin as something noble. I'm glad that doesn't happen today. Verse 4. He built pagan altars in the temple of the Lord. The place where the Lord has said my name will remain in Jerusalem forever.

He built these altars for all of the powers of the heavens in both courtyards of the Lord's Temple. Manasseh also sacrificed his own son in the fire.

He practiced sorcery and divination, and he consulted with mediums and psychics. He did much that was evil in the Lord's sight, arousing his anger. I'm going to skip to verse 10. Then the Lord said, through his servants, the prophets, King Manasseh of Judah has done many detestable things. He is even more wicked than the Amorites who lived in this land before Israel.

He has caused the people of Judah to sin with his idol. So this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says. I will bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of those who hear about it will tingle with horror. Verse 16. Manasseh also murdered many innocent people until Jerusalem was filled from one end to the other with innocent blood.

This was in addition to the sin that he caused the people of Judah to commit, leading them to do evil in the Lord's sight. You know, my brothers and sisters, the. The shedding of innocent blood is deeper ramifications than just being a criminal act.

It actually corrupts and defiles the earth, the actual land on which we live. Numbers 35, 33 the Lord is explaining to him about a system of justice as they're going to take possession of the promised land. Numbers 35:33 and he said, if someone murders someone, you shall not pollute the land. You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land. And no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it.

Likewise in Psalm 106, 34 the Psalmist writes this talking about the they did not destroy the peoples as the Lord commanded, but they mixed with the nations and learned to do as they did. They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons. They poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan. And the land was polluted with blood.

You know, I want you to consider when God destroyed the earth at the time of Noah, do you remember the reason why? It was filled with violets, just filled with blood. You know, we were at the most recent prayer walk down at La Trobe, and I'm always stunned by the.

I don't know if stuns the word, but taken aback by the. The number. At least 60 million babies have been aborted in the United States. And I, you know, I'm, you know, I don't apologize for being serious about this, but see, I. I don't. I don't know.

I don't know if we can escape judgment for that. I gotta be honest with you. That's a lot of. That's a lot of innocent blood. And if.

If the earth itself starts to convulse under our feet, my uneducated meteorological opinion is it will be more due to that than a carbon footprint. You must know that there's the Earth Bible. The Bible says the earth itself groans to be redeemed. That there is a connection. I'm not.

We're like all one thing, the earth and the chair and. But there's something about how the people on the earth live on the earth that's connected. And may God have mercy. When Manasseh died, his son succeeded him to the throne. But he only served for a couple months, so he's inconsequential.

And let me have a word for any of you who may be sitting in here. And your past is so horrid that you kind of keep your distance from God and keep your distance from God's people. There was no one more evil in every way than King Manasseh. And here's a lesser known fact about him. It's not recorded in Second Kings, but it is recorded in Second Chronicles.

It's a book you don't read because it has all the genealogies and looks boring, but it's in there.

God had a Assyrian commander come in, grabbed Manasseh, put a ring in his nose and shackles on him, and he dragged him to Babylon and he subjected him to some hard times. And it's funny how hard times have a. They have a tendency to make us repent. You ever repent in a hard time? Well, you know what?

Manasseh repented. He humbled himself before the Lord. And you know what the Bible said? The Lord was touched by his repentance and he actually restored him and brought him back into Judah. And Manasseh began to undo everything that he had done.

But it was too little, too late, because corruption had already become embedded in the hearts of the people. You're never too far for the grace of God to bring you back. Never. If he can forgive that guy, I guarantee you he can forgive you.

So Manasseh dies, his son, couple months gone. And now we're finally at the first king that we talked about in Jeremiah, and that is Josiah. Josiah is Manasseh's grandson. Josiah is the polar opposite of his grandfather. Well, he becomes king when he's eight.

So he has to be potty trained and stuff before he knows how to do stuff. Eat by himself out of the high train. But by the time he hits his adulthood, I mean, he hits the ground running and he enacts sweeping reforms in Judah. And I mean so many. It's like a couple chapters of worth.

I'm just going to bullet point the highlights for you. What he did. Well, the first thing he did, he had the temple repaired. From the time of King Ahaz, they had hacked up that temple and defiled it in all kind of ways. So he said, you guys take the money from the treasury to the temple guys, and I want you to get the workers and I want you to repair it.

While they are repairing the temple, they find the Book of the Law. Okay, Was it the whole first five books or just Deuteronomy? I don't know. This seems to be a debate. Nevertheless, he knew there was a Bible.

He never knew there was a Bible. How did I know there was a Bible? So they find it. He has the Book of the Law read to him. When the Book of the Law is read to him, he tears his clothes, which his Old Testament takhvort felt really bad about, and he started to cry.

And he called all of the people of Judah to the temple. And he stood there and he read them the Book of the Law and he had them renew their pledge to it. He removed from the temple all the articles used to worship BAAL and Asherah and the starry hosts and had them burnt. He got rid of the pagan priest who had been appointed by past kings. He tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes who were living.

Yes siree, Bob. Right in the church. He destroyed all the high places in Judah that had been used to burn incense to the pagan gods. He destroyed the sacrificial area in the valley of Hinnom where the people used to sacrifice their sons and daughters to Molech. That's a place that, when you in the New Testament, they refer to it as Gehenna or hell.

It was constantly, constantly burning. He reinstituted the celebration of Passover. And my brothers and sisters, that's just a half of it. And to coin a phrase, he drained the swamp.

Judah was swampy, and he drained it at the same time. The Lord raised up Josiah as king. He raised up Jeremiah as prophet. And one would think, what should be Jeremiah's message? Yay, Yay.

We're having a good day. Follow Josiah and there's going to be hope, and we're going to be super great. No, it should have been the beginning of a happily ever after story. But instead, Josiah's message to them was that God's judgment was going to be poured out on them if they didn't repent. Those two things don't go together unless you understand that God saw beyond the people's compliance with Josiah's reforms and looked into their houses and homes.

He saw what they were doing when they were not at the temple and it wasn't godly. Their actions and their hearts were still corrupted. Now, as a church, we are familiar with the terms revival and reformation. There's this distinction between revival. Reformation revival is a spiritual awakening in the individuals of a society.

In the strictest context, it happens among the people of God. Historically, revival begins in the church and it leads to evangelism, but it starts in the house of God. Revival changes individuals in a society, and there are many here who experience that at Brownsville or maybe there was another revival you were part of. Reformation, however, is a change in the institutions of a society. In the family, in government, in education, in the economy.

We're most familiar with the Protestant Reformation. What was it? It was a change in the institution of the Catholic Church. The most powerful combination is when revival of the individuals in a society expands to a reformation of the institutions of the society. That is, the people reflect the person of Jesus and the institutions reflect the values of Jesus.

Revival without reformation and reformation without revival will be short lived. Josiah. King Josiah was a Reformation beast. He reformed the institutions of the monarchy and the church. He brought them back into compliance with God's word.

But his aggressive and positive reformation of the institutions of Judah did not translate into revival of the hearts of the people of Judah.

The reforms only lasted as long as his reign lasted. When Josiah died, so did the godly fervor for reform. And because the next King, Jehoiakim was wicked, the Reformation died. Now, to my human eye, which is flawed and limited and imho, in my humble opinion, I'm hipin happen it with Tex lingo.

There are three points of correlation I see between the era of Josiah and where we are right now as God's people living in America. I feel a little bit out on a limb on this, but, you know, when you get old, you kind of don't care. You just go there. I'm gonna go, what are you gonna do to me? All right, number one, I have a lot of numbers today.

That's usually not me. I feel like I'm styling. All right, we have a government leadership right now in the highest levels who are on. They're on full on Reformation mode. All right.

They are reforming the institutions of our society. The government, education, the military, the economy. Where do we get the, you know, drain the swamp imagery? Yes. And I will say there is an argument that can be made that the reforms that they are making are more reformed, reflective, reflected, more a reflection of biblical values.

Number one, there's a reformation going on. Number two, just like the Jews living in Judah at the time of Josiah, we Christians, and indeed most Americans, have a false sense of security because of our past successes. The Jews living in Judah had confidence in their wall and their history of God's deliverance. Most recently, when the. After the Assyrian army gobbled up Israel, they headed right for Judah.

And what did the Lord do? He miraculously delivered them from the Assyrian army. And their thought was, between the Lord and the wall, nothing can help, nothing can harm us. Likewise, we have been so blessed and protected. You know, there was a day that we just had natural boundaries in the form of the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean.

Right. They kind of kept us safe. I don't know. Today, with a different kind of technological warfare is if that's as an effective deterrent to being invaded. Nevertheless, when we have been involved in war and conflict, when have we not emerge the victor?

We assume that what was will always be. And when people think that they can live in what was in the past, they get careless about how they live.

It's number two. And number three, there are many Christians in America who claim the label of Christian, but whose lifestyle no way reflects the teachings of Jesus, the people of God. I am so happy to be here. I couldn't say that if we weren't how we were, if our leadership wasn't. I'm going to give you some examples.

So let's begin with just, and I won't linger here, just the growing list of ministers who are being called to account for ungodly behavior. Full stop. Recently, Mary, you know what I'm talking about. There's a church in Texas, Christian Church, part of a mainline Christian denomination. They had a special service.

I saw the video. The man looked normal enough. He was in clerical garb. And he said, I'd like to invite our guests, our family, to join us in the front. As the camera panned out, you saw that there was another person of leadership in clerical garb who was a woman sporting a beard.

The group of people who came up, who were his guests, and in fact, family included men dressed as women, a man dressed as a dog on A leash and walking on all fours and just other assorted oddities. At one point, one of the guys standing here was next to the guy that was dressed like a dog and he started to scratch his ear.

And then the pastor of this church said, and I quote, I don't know about you, but sometimes as a church, I think we forget how queer we are.

So I said, this can. No way. Well, I found the church and I went to their website. That's their jam. And also on that website, they were full on, talking about Lenten season, Easter and the cross.

Okay, let me tell you, friend of ours in Ohio, beautiful Christian Windman, She's a licensed clinical therapist. She was seeing clients in the local denominational church. It wasn't her home church, but a major denomination was letting her use the building. Well, the pastor and the wife of that church got divorced because, come to find out, the wife decided she was a lesbian. So the wife actually became the pastor of the church and then married her girlfriend.

I'm not done. The lesbian pastor comes to our friends and tells her that she is going to be referring children to her and she wants our friend to help them with their gender transition.

So then our friend said, you know, I won't do that. And she said, well, I guess we have to go our separate, separate ways. Closer to home, my husband was at a meeting of a local US Congressperson. This congressperson professes Christianity and was stating with no equivocation how important it was for North Carolinians to preserve the right for abortion because it is a fundamental health care right. And that's okay for her, I suppose.

But sitting in the front seat were two local pastors there who are supporters of hers and not to mention many Christian families who have become broken apart because of the choice of one of the partners to embrace. You know, my brothers and sisters, you gotta know at some point there is going to be great chaos on the earth. I mean, the wills of the world are already to start, are already wobbly. And when you have this going on in the church, it's bad. That's not a personal prophetic statement.

That's a public biblical statement.

We cannot stop what God has decreed. But what we can do is forestall it in our gener. Do you know, when Josiah found the book of the law, he sent the priest to Huldah. She was a prophetess there. And this is what God said to tell him, because you have torn your clothes and wept before me, I have heard you, declares the Lord.

Therefore, behold, I will gather you to your Fathers and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace. And your eyes shall not see all the disaster I will bring on this place. My brothers and sisters, we need to make good use of the window of opportunity and not squander it. And it's like the opportunity to do what? The opportunity to use our individual gifts and callings to pull more people into God's grace so they will not experience God's wrath.

That is a serious thing, you know. Let's go back to me, the 18 year old on the, on the sidewalk. I sat there. I only sat there for a short time because few minutes my friends came out and they said, okay, come on, let's go. We found out the next day that that house had.

The police had pounced on that house and all those people had been dragged down to the police station. Because I was willing to separate myself from that. Not only did I spare me, but I spared them. Which is only fair because they spared me from killing us all when I fell asleep at the will. So we were kind of.

Let me ask you again, I had to rush through. But the spirit of God will do what he needs to do. I'm an on time finisher. How far are you willing to go and how much are you willing to lose to rescue the generation into which you've been born?

What cross are you willing to bear? What price are you willing to pay? Jesus told his disciples, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me. He likewise advised them to count the cost. He never said to come into it blindly, said, you better realize what you're getting into.

And can I suggest that you can never fully commit to Jesus and the work he has for you until you've made peace with what that cost means for you?

It will cost something, be different for each of us, but it will cost something. And I beg you that it's time to go before the Lord, have him speak to you about what that cost will be and make an informed commitment to him.

Because there's nothing you will give up on this earth that can compare to the riches in glory in Christ Jesus. And I'm not talking about material wealth. I'm talking about souls transformed lives.