Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet. Jeremiah began ministering as a prophet of God in the 13th year of King Josiah. King Josiah was one of the best kings in Israel. King Josiah was wanting to serve God, wanted to follow God's word. And unlike his predecessors, unlike his father and those before him, his heart was perfect towards the Lord in the sense that he was focused upon doing God's will. And there was great revival in the land. And yet, even in the midst of God's blessing, God needed a prophet. Because it seems like when things are going well, when things are going fine, and everything in life is dandy, and we have plenty, it's so easy to take our eyes off the Lord. It's so easy to get focused upon the things that we can handle and enjoy down here. And so whenever God spoke to a man and God said, thus saith the Lord, go ahead and tell them. And he always warns us in advance about things. This is not going to be a pleasant message. This is not going to be one of those that tickles our ear. This is not going to be one of those that we say, wow, I want that tape. You know, I want that CD. This is one of those messages that Jeremiah did not want to preach. He was known as the weeping prophet because when God revealed something to him, he said, oh no, but he knew it was true because God said it. And with great compassion, he shared it. Jonah was kind of glad that Nineveh was going to get hammered by God. And whenever God saw the repentance and he delayed his judgment, he got upset because it was all about him and not about God. Not about God reaching out to people. Jeremiah was not that way. Jeremiah was, oh, dear God, please give him a chance to repent. Oh, people, please come back to God. And that's our message here today. Jeremiah chapter 8 and verse 20, one verse. The Bible says, read it aloud with me, please, the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. Three simple points that are given scripturally right here in this passage. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, I ask you now that you would meet with us. I thank you for your sweet presence that we have sensed in our spirit. We have not seen you, but through your people. We have not heard you, but in our praise lifted to you. We have not felt you, but by the confirmation of your Holy Spirit. But Lord, I do pray that you would speak to our hearts. I ask this in Jesus' precious name. Amen. The Old Testament gives pictures of New Testament truth. One man said it this way, the Old Testament gives Jesus concealed, the New Testament gives Jesus revealed. And so we go back, you can see pictures and types of Jesus Christ throughout the Old Testament. And we find in the book of Genesis how that Noah was told by God, I'm gonna destroy this planet. The population of earth is gonna be brought down to zip. And only those who get on this ark that you're going to build. And for hundreds of years, he preached that the judgment of God is coming. He was a preacher of righteousness and he built this ark and they mocked him. They said, what in the world are you doing? They had never seen rain before. How is God gonna do something that you say he's going to do, but he has never done it before? You are crazy. He's building it on land, this great big ark. Some of you have seen the replica of the ark in Kentucky. How many of y'all have seen that? They tried their best to manage the construction of that exactly to the same dimensions and all that kind of thing. It's amazing. I haven't got to see it visually myself, I've seen pictures of some things that they think are the Ark up on Mount Ararat up there in Turkey. I've seen pictures of that. And it's amazing how that they will not let people go up and examine. And as excited as archaeologists are about finding history and the digs and all that kind of thing, you would think that that'd be number one on their list. They're ignoring that and putting it aside because if they determined that that is, in fact, Noah's Ark up on top of a mountain, then that means that there was a worldwide flood. They'd prove it scientifically, could not be denied, and that God is real. Jesus Christ is pictured as that Ark. And as the judgment fell, the judgment fell on everyone who was not in the ark. And once again, the judgment of God is going to fall, and the judgment will fall on everyone who is not in Christ. Jesus said, I am the door. By me, if any man come in, that he is our salvation. The Bible tells us in the book of Genesis, that whenever God told Noah and his family to get in the ark and no one else would follow, no one else would believe, just eight people, the Bible says that God shut the door. The title of the message this morning is, When God Shuts the Door. The Bible says here in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 8 and verse 20, that the harvest is past. Now, there are many harvests mentioned in the Old Testament, barley harvest, firstfruits harvest, and many, many harvests throughout the harvesting season. The harvest is past. So is this thought of the harvest. Let me point your attention to New Testament pictures, New Testament illustrations of this. The harvest of the soul winner. The harvest of the soul winner. One day the harvest of the soul winner will be passed. There's, let's see, Rosalie Rehnquist right back there. Rosalie, God bless your heart. Good to see you. And she wants to be here every single service. Faithful missionary, New Tribes Mission, just faithful missionary for many, many, many years. She told me, she said, you know, I can't be here all the time. and I cannot go door-to-door like I used to. She said, but I can pray, and I am praying. She said, give me a church directory. I want to pray by name and by face. I don't have a directory. I want to pray, and that's something I can do. But guess what? Her days of knocking on doors door-to-door, her body will not allow her to do that. She did it for many, many years. There'll come a day. when the harvest of the soul winner will be over. There'll be a day when God will call us home. There'll be a day when the curse of sin that we all bear is gonna have its way in our body and we are going to die if Jesus doesn't come back first. And the harvest of the soul winner will be passed. There'll come a day, the harvest truly is plenteous by the way, the labors are few. But you know, little is much. You know that song, little is much, when God is in it? Labor not for wealth or fame, there's a crown, and you can win it if you go in Jesus' name. The harvest of the soul winner, the harvest of the Savior, the harvest of the Savior. Do you know that no one comes to salvation except God draws him to Jesus Christ? No man cometh unto me except the Father draw him. Jesus said that. The harvest of the Savior. There'll come a day when that harvest is complete. The harvest is past. The harvest of the saints. The harvest of the saints. I think of this. First Corinthians chapter 15. The Bible talks about the Lord coming back. Behold, I show you a mystery. We should not all sleep. but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, and the dead in Christ shall rise first, and we shall all be changed. Let me ask you something. What if that trumpet were to blow today? Now, that was just liel. That was just liel. But one day, the trump of God shall sound. And the Bible says that everyone who is in Jesus Christ, everyone who has been born again, everyone who has their sins under the blood of Jesus, everyone who has taken the Word of God at its promise, it says, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. What's your trust in to take you to heaven? Jesus plus anything. No, no, no, no. Jesus only. Jesus only. Not Jesus plus our good works, not Jesus plus our church membership, not Jesus plus baptism, or whatever the case may be. It's Jesus only. And that trumpet's gonna blow, and just like that happened, and someone said, what was that? Before you could get the word what out, all the Christians would be gone. All the believers would be vanished. Oh, well, preacher, I know then that I'd get saved. I'd realize it's all real. Sorry. I'm one of those old-time believers in the Word of God that when the Bible says that God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, who believe not the truth, If someone heard the way of salvation, understood that Jesus is the only way of going to heaven, and he was the only payment for our sin, and the person said, no, no, not today, no, no, I'll do it later, no, no, whenever I get older, whenever I have time, and whenever it works out in my schedule, then I'll get saved, and I'll get saved not in front of a bunch of people at church, no, I don't wanna do that, I'm too embarrassed. Jesus hung suspended between heaven and earth, embarrassed, stripped naked, hanging there for your sins and for mine. He was not ashamed of us. And yet there'll be people who say, I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. What people might think of me. God said, your chance will be done. God will shut the door. Oh, I don't believe that God would do that. Go back to Genesis and find out what happened when the rain started and the people were pounding on the ark. Let us in. Let us in. They had hundreds of years of the preaching of God's truth. Believe on me. I'll forgive your sin. Come into the ark. It's the only way of salvation. And they mocked at him. He said, no. Then God sealed their decision. God shut the door. The harvest is past, he said. He's talking to God's people, Israel. The harvest is past. Now, notice he didn't say the harvest was past. Now, of course, it's past, but it uses the present tense verb is. The harvest is past. Have you ever had someone giving you directions and they tell you, too late, this is the exit. Okay? GPS is terrible about that sometimes. I'm driving along, it said, turn right. I'm going right past it, turn right. Well, thanks a lot, you know. Guess what? The turn is passed. I just missed it. The harvest is past. You just missed it. You just missed it. And he goes on to talk about the summer. The summer is ended. The summer is ended. Now, this summer is inclusive. Summer is a season. Summer is half the year for Florida. Summer is all year round to a lot of folks. You know, we have folks that come down here and snowbird and they say, well, it's 12 months of summer down here. You got hot summer and cool summer, but you got summer year round. Summer is ended. You see, you had many harvests. We'll have revival meetings, and we'll have evangelists come in, and we'll have emphasis on giving the gospel, and all that kind of thing, and there'll be people being saved, and teenagers being saved, and moms and dads being saved, and all that kind of thing, and we see harvest after harvest after harvest. But there's coming a time when all of the harvests, the season is ended. Said the summer Is ended and by the way, it's not was ended. It's is ended. You just missed it. He's telling israel God is telling israel through jeremiah That the season of plenty. Oh, hey, I remember when we had a garden in louisville, kentucky And I didn't too much care for that i'd never had a garden in my life We never grew up on a farm. How many grew up on farms? Let me see your hands. Okay, good, good, good. I always heard about it, you know, and things, but I never took part in that until we moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and we had a pretty big backyard, and my dad said, let's plant a garden. It sounded real exciting, honestly. I thought that this be kind of neat. We planted green beans, we planted tomatoes, planted cucumbers, planted corn. I'm not sure, that's all that I remember that we planted that year. And so going out there, he barred a rototiller from the guy next door and turned the ground up and all that. And then we had a plow, we had a plow. It was one of these with a wheel on it. And you took it and you pushed it. That was our plow, okay? And so we got the furrows in there and we planted the seeds and all that kind of thing. And I thought, this is great. I hadn't really had to do much of anything in that thing. Then it came to weeding. And then it came to all the nurturing and all the everything. And then I'd see little things start to grow. And then I'd come back the next day and they'd be gone, except just a little stub of something. Some rabbits or deer or something had a big feast. And so we tried to get some things to protect it and all that kind of thing. Every once in a while, we'd look out there and that corn, That corn be growing up and get a stock of corn there and that silk be turning brown and it'd be ripe, it'd be time. We'd go out there and get those ears of corn off of that. And we shucked that corn and we put it in and had fresh corn and fresh half runner green beans, am I making you hungry? And fresh tomatoes. And I mean, it was marvelous. It was great. But summer was ended. And although we wanted more corn and I wanted some more green beans and wanted some more fresh vegetables, it wouldn't grow because the season's over. The day of plenty, the day of rejoicing, it was over. The summer has ended. Season of plenty was done. Season of production was done. Genesis chapter 6 and verse 3, God himself said this. He said, My spirit shall not always strive with man. Did you get that? He said, My spirit shall not always strive with... God's a God of love, preacher. Yes, He is. But holy is He. And there comes a day when God shuts the door. The door is open today. God shut the door on Israel. If God will do that to His chosen people, He'll do it to anybody. I call your attention to the children of Israel as they left out of Egypt. As they left out of Egypt and they crossed the Red Sea. And by the way, Egypt is always a picture in the New Testament, always a picture of the world, okay? And then as they crossed the Red Sea, that's a picture, it's a type of salvation, crossing to God's side. And as they put their trust in the Lord, Then God gave them the commandments, God gave them the law, and then God showed them the promised land. He said, this is where I promised you to be. The promised land is not heaven. Hey, the promised land is always a picture in the New Testament of the spiritual victory, the victorious Christian life that God wants for each and every one of us. He wants to give us a little bit of his kingdom within our heart. That's the promised land. Crossing over Jordan many times in songs, that's a picture in songs of death. That's not a picture in the Bible of death. That's a picture of the dedicated Christian life. And you can check it out and it's a figure of that. And when they said to God, no, we are not able to have your victory. The giants are too strong. The cities are too walled. We have no weaponry. We have no armies. We cannot do it." And so God, in His anger, because they would not believe Him, He just said, all right, you want what you want. I want the best for you. You'll just have to wander. And they wandered for how many years? Forty years. in the wilderness, wandering around, wandering around. Now notice something. They were still God's people as they wandered around. God still provided for them. Isn't God's grace amazing? Even in disobedience, he still loves. He provided for them. He protected them. He led them. He didn't turn his back on them. But they didn't have God's best and the whole generation died out except for two men, Joshua and Caleb. Joshua and Caleb were the only two men on record, the only two men in the word of God who said, God can do this, we can't, but God can. And so God saw them through it. And they went into the promised land and led them and God gave great victory. And the tabernacle ended up in a place called Shiloh. The presence of God, the place that they worshiped ended up in a place called Shiloh. And for 300 years, they had God's direction, His blessing there in that land of victory, in the promised land, and they took their eyes off of the Lord, and they embraced abomination and sin as God's people, and God warned them, and God chastised them. And that covenant of God, that place in Shiloh, that tabernacle, the presence of God, That was taken away. It was stolen away, and for months it was gone. And we find that even today, that place called Shiloh, God said, I will bring devastation and destruction to that, because you turned away from me. In that place of victory, in that place of blessing, you turned away from me. And even today, Shiloh is just a place of devastation. Over and over we can find that God reaches a point that God shuts the door. God says enough is enough. I don't know where that line is. If you're unsaved, I do not know where that line is in your life. I do know that it is in everyone's life when we draw our last breath, when our heart beats for the last time. But it could be It could be that while we walk this planet, while we breathe God's air, it could be that God will shut the door on someone and say, okay, you've chosen this, then I will seal it in your heart. We find in Jeremiah chapter seven and Jeremiah chapter eight, and read it sometime as you can. I won't take time here today, but God told Jeremiah, don't pray for these people because I will not answer your prayer. That's strange. That's strange. Folks, while we draw breath and while we have a heartbeat within our chest, there just might be that amazing grace of God that God would say, yes, there's still time, come on. What Tom was telling me yesterday. how that whenever he played football with a guy, this guy got born again, he was saved, he got the real deal. And he began telling, he was roommates with him, and he began telling Tom about this over and over and over, and he finally said, hey, hey, hey, listen. He said, you and our friends, we're roommates, I don't wanna hear it, okay? I'm glad this is for you, and I'm glad that you've got peace and all that kind of stuff, It's not for me, I don't wanna hear about it. And so he stopped, he stopped. They lost track of each other. About 30 years went by, 30, 35 years, something like that. And 11 years ago, Tom trusted Christ as his savior and was gloriously saved. Born again, the family of God. God laid upon his heart to call this guy to see, he didn't know if he was even living or whatever, where he was, he hadn't kept up with him. He tracked him down, he called him up. And he said, I just want you to know, I got saved last week. He said that from across the country, if there was no telephone, he'd have heard him yell. He'd have heard him shout, well, glory, amen, praise the Lord, that's great. He told him, he said this, he said, I want you to know for these many years, I have prayed for you every day. Every day. That's the grace of God. The door most likely is still open. Most likely, since you have air in your lungs, Since you have a heartbeat in your chest, most likely, due to the character and nature of Almighty God, most likely His grace is still extended. To the children of Israel, God was saying to Jeremiah, you tell them, thus saith the Lord, the harvest is past. You missed it. The summer has ended. It's over. And we are not saved. Now, we, I call your attention to this thought. It's plural. We are not saved. Jesus said, broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat, but straight is the gate, and narrow is the way that leads them to life, and few there be to find it. There'll be more people at your workplace that do not know Jesus Christ as their Savior than are born-again Christians. There could be more people in your family that are unsaved than are Christians. It could be that way. It does not make it right. Heaven's not a democracy. Heaven is a theocracy. That means God's in charge. He is sovereign. He is king of kings. He is Lord of lords. And whether you're 14 years old or 94 years old, it makes no difference. We're all sinners. We all deserve to go to devil's hell. That is why, since there is no other way for us to get to heaven, Jesus himself came. If there is any other way, don't you think God would have provided it? I mean, any other way. Think about it. To see the son of righteousness whipped and beaten and mocked and shamed and brought to the edge of his life And then he released his life. He released his spirit. Nobody killed my Savior. He laid his life down. Wouldn't you think there'd be, if there was some other way, why would God put his only begotten son through that? There is no other way. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. I was sitting in Cleveland, Ohio at a youth rally. At this youth rally, toward the end of the meeting, I noticed, I was sitting over here, and I noticed some people came in the back door, just caught it out of the corner of my eye. I was in eighth grade. And they went and they came down about four rows, and they got this girl that was in our youth group out of the church service. They motioned, pointed for her, and the youth pastor, he asked her to come out. The evangelist was preaching, and it was a full house of teenagers, many churches that were attending there that night. She slipped out. I was curious. He had a very somber look on his face. So I kept kind of peeking out of the corner of my eye. We had windows in the doors, kind of like we have back here, and you could see a little bit through those windows. And I saw, as they were talking with her, standing there about 10 feet back from the door, And I saw her go like this. I thought, oh, no, what has happened? She was in 10th grade. At the end of the service, after the invitation, the youth pastor came to the platform. He said, I have some very sad news to tell you. He gave the teenager's name. He was a senior in our youth group. He said he and his brother and his dad were on a hunting trip this evening. They were walking through the woods. He said that they were climbing through a fence, and somehow, someway, the shotgun that he had, that he was carrying, when he set it down to get through the fence, the shotgun went off, fired right into his chest. He probably didn't even know what happened. He went on to eternity that quickly. When that took place, when that was said, I heard somebody take their elbow, and it was his best friend sitting in the back row, hit that pew as hard as he could. You could hear weeping all over the place. God had shut the door. It was over. The harvest has passed. The summer has ended. And we hope to be saved. No, it's not what it says. And we might be saved. No, it says, and we are not saved. We're not saved. You see, you either is or you isn't. OK. These things are written unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life." Do you know that you're saved? Do you know that your faith and trust is in Jesus Christ? And there'll come a day, if you're a Christian, if you're a born-again believer, there'll come a day that you can't hand out another gospel tract, that you can't give another witness. Maybe because you'll be thrown in jail. Maybe because you are paralyzed with a stroke. I don't know, but the harvest will be passed for all of us one day. It behooves us to be active in the harvest. Little is much when God is in it, and God can do great things with our little that we can do. Let's bow our heads together, please. If you are sitting here, this morning, and if you would say, preacher, I don't know that heaven's my home, then you are in danger of God shutting the door. If that trumpet were to be God's trumpet that blew, and you're playing the religious church game, my friend, I have done everything I could do to be as straightforward, kind, but truthful with you today. Heaven can be yours, but heaven can be lost. If you don't know Jesus Christ as your Savior, you have no chance of going to heaven. Today is the day of salvation. Now is the accepted time, the Bible says. Don't wait till tomorrow. Don't wait till Wednesday. Don't wait till some other Sunday. You come to Jesus today, right now. The door is still open. You say, well, what do I do, preacher? Why don't you decide right now that you're not going to be ashamed of Jesus Christ. Right now you're going to come to Him. Would you let me lead you in a prayer to Him? Would you do that? You'd say, God is speaking to my heart, preacher. He's speaking to my heart. I don't know that heaven's my home. I hope to go to heaven, but I don't have it nailed down. I don't want God to shut the door. Yes, I'll pray that prayer. If you'll lead me and help me, I'll do that. I'll, by faith, ask Jesus to save me. Would you slip your hand up with no one looking? I'll do that, preacher. I'll do that. You help me. You lead me. I'll do that this morning. I'm looking today. I'm looking. I'm not ashamed. I'll do that today. I'll not embarrass you, but I'll help you. Would you be one to say, yes, preacher, I'll do that. I'll do that. I see no hands. I see no hands. Guess what? Jeremiah saw no hands either. Jeremiah didn't get a response from God's people, and the judgment fell. Thus saith the Lord. May you bring us to a place of obedience, a place of being fully right with you. That's called revival. I beg of you, God, that we would have a broken heart for those that do not know you in their forgiveness of sin through Jesus Christ. I ask you, dear Lord, that you would do the work that only you can do. Holy Spirit, We've magnified Jesus Christ. We've lifted Him up. And I pray that it will not be the case amongst your people like it was amongst the Jews. They had time for everything else, but no time for you. Oh, please, God, move in our midst. May there be Christians here begging for revival in their heart and in their life. Please, God, even families that would gather together. I ask you, God, that you would do your will in your way, we ask in Jesus' name.