All right, we're live, okay. Take your Bibles, open with me up this morning to Jeremiah chapter 36. So this morning, we're going to see that God gives a message to Jeremiah to give to his, Emmanuensis, his secretary Baruch, to go and to read to the people. In fact, what he's giving him is a summary of the first 23 years of ministry for Jeremiah. Now, thankfully for Jeremiah to write all of this down, for him to dictate it so that Baruch could write it down so that it could be read to the people. Thankfully, Jeremiah was a very repetitive preacher. He said the same things over and over and over again because God's word, of course, his message did not change. Now, as he prepares to do this, this is going to be read to the people, then to the officials, and then actually to the king of Judah himself. The people as a whole are going to be apathetic to the word. The officials are going to be scared by the word. They're going to be alarmed and afraid. And the king actually is going to be angry and adamant. He's going to cut the scroll up and throw it into the fire. He's gonna burn God's word. And the consequences of that include judgment, destruction, and the end of King Jehoiakim's line on the throne. There's always a hope in the message of Jeremiah, always a hope that the people will repent. And in fact, twice this morning in the chapter, God uses the word perhaps. The people will hear and will turn back. And that perhaps is a message of hope that God is telling them, if you will return to me, I will forgive you and I will bless you. But you have to return to me. You can't stay where you are as you are in your sin. In the first three verses, it happened that in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came to Jerebiah from Yahweh saying, take a scroll of a book and write on it all the words which I have spoken to you concerning Israel and concerning Judah and concerning all the nations from the day I first spoke to you from the days of Josiah even to this day. Perhaps the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I devised to bring on them in order that every man will turn from his evil way, then I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. Perhaps they will hear. Now, it always starts with a date, and we have the date, the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah. This is 605 BC. This is the year that the battle of Carchemish happened. Babylon was diverted from Judah, and Judah thought, yay, they're leaving. And they left, and they went, and they met Egypt that was on the way to fight them. They destroyed them in that battle, and then returned to Judah. On the way back to Judah, 50 miles south of Jerusalem in 604, in fact in December of 604 BC, they conquered the town of Ashkelon. That was one of the remaining fortified cities before Nebuchadnezzar was going to end up back at Judah's doorstep to begin again the siege on the city. It tells us these are 23 years of ministry for Jeremiah from the time he started up until this date. We know that covers chapter one through chapter 25. So Jeremiah is gonna receive a message from the Lord to reiterate what he had been preaching for 23 years and record it into these 25 chapters on a scroll. Now that as they measure scrolls would have been about 15 columns of text where a column is a full page. that this is the message that Yahweh had for the people from Jeremiah through his secretary Baruch. And he starts with perhaps. Perhaps the house of Judah will hear. Now, what they were going to hear is what God was planning to do in judgment if they did not repent. This is a model for us and it's the same model we see in the New Testament. People can't understand the good news until they've heard the bad news. When you tell people God loves you and you should be saved, they have no idea what that means. Be saved from what? Be saved to what? I heard a pretty popular preacher on TV this morning, just flipping around, watching news, catching a few things, thinking maybe there might be a sermon illustration somewhere in what's happening in the world. And I came across a preacher, and I know this preacher, and he's giving an invitation. And the invitation was that to be saved this morning, All you have to do is ask Jesus to save you. Just ask him in your heart to save you and you will be saved. And I'm thinking, no repentance. which means no sin to repent from. If you're not turning from your sin to God, you can't be saved. You have to first repent. That's the first word of the gospel. The first thing John the Baptist said when he stood up to preach, repent for the heaven of kingdom, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That means there's about to be an account you're going to have to give to the king of kings. What was the first thing Jesus preached? His first recorded sermon. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. You understand there are two sides to that coin, repent and believe. It's not accept Jesus. Do you know the Bible nowhere tells us to accept Jesus? It's not ask Jesus into your heart. I was told that as a child, you need to ask Jesus to come live in your heart. Nowhere in the scriptures, it says repent and believe. Believing that God has raised Jesus from the dead. Believing in the resurrected Christ. We repent and we believe. That is the means by which God saves us. In fact, if you want to talk about accepting Christ, the only acceptance we see in salvation is that God says, now we are accepted in the blood. In salvation, it's God who does the accepting. He accepts us in Christ as we cry out to him in repentance and faith. You understand that's not just a change of mind. It's a change of direction. I'm not going to go the way my life was going without Jesus. I'm going to turn to him and go with him from here on out. This is the gospel. And this is God telling his people, perhaps they're going to hear the evil that I'm going to do, the calamity, the judgment that's going to befall them. And maybe that will motivate them to turn to me and to cry out for salvation. Now, usually what we see throughout history is that the people of God take a long time before they cry out to him, don't they? They were enslaved by Egypt and it took hundreds of years before they started to cry out for God to deliver them. And then God called Moses because he said, I've heard my people calling. And he sent Moses to go and to lead them out to the promised land. The hope is that they will hear the bad news and that in hearing the bad news, they will understand the good news that he is their God and they are his people. And if they will but return to him, he says, I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. You see, the need was not for them to be rescued from the consequences of their sin. It was to be rescued from the judgment that was coming because of their sin, not just the battle with Babylon, but the wrath of God. It wasn't just a better life and that your enemies are going to go away and everything's going to be smooth sailing. If you got saved for an easy life, if you've had an easy life, you're not saved because the Christian life is impossible. Christ says, without me, you can do nothing. With him, all things are possible, but that's a life of dependence and faith and understanding. Suffering is part of his will. In being like Christ, we must suffer like Christ. We must join him in the fellowship of his sufferings and also in the power of his resurrection. This is a message of hope. Perhaps they will hear. And not just hear, but listen. and come back to me, that every man will turn from his evil way, that I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. Verses 4 through 10, Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Nariah, and Baruch wrote on a scroll at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of Yahweh which he had spoken to him. Usually when we teach inspiration of scripture, the inspiration of scripture for the most point is not dictated. God did not tell the disciples, the apostles, every word to write. The spirit of God moved them along, breathed through them, through their personality, their experience, their culture. That's why you have to understand context. Who is the letter written to? What's it written for? So we see the message that God is trying to get across through his word as it's given to the apostles. But here in this instance, God talks to Jeremiah and Jeremiah conveys those words to Baruch to write them down. When we say you can take the Bible and you can understand, we call it God's word because it's God's word just as if he were here speaking it out loud to us. That's what happened here. Whether audibly or in his spirit, God spoke to Jeremiah. He repeated the words to Baruch and he recorded that so that it might be read. Jeremiah commanded Baruch saying, I am confined. I cannot go into the house of Yahweh. He had been barred. He was not allowed to go into the temple because every time he went, we were told several times we've seen it. He was told to go stand at the gate of the temple when the people were coming in to worship and preach the truth to them. Now, to put that in context, that would be like going to the kingdom hall and standing outside and preaching the gospel as forcefully and compassionately as you could to the people who were going in. That's how foreign the people of God were in their worship to God. They were idols in the temple itself. And so Jeremiah confronts them at the point of their iniquity, at the gate to go in. They could not get into the temple without hearing him preaching the word of God. So finally, you've got to shut him up. They tried to kill him. It didn't work, so they just banned him. You can't come here anymore. And so he did the next best thing. He took the word God gave him, gave that word to Baruch by God's instruction and told Baruch, the next time they call a fast, meaning everybody's coming to the temple, go stand at the temple and read God's word. Read it to the people. Now, this is amazing because Jeremiah says, I can't go. He didn't give up. He sent somebody else. Here's the point, by the way, and let's look at it this way. If it does get to the point in society where they arrest me or James for preaching on the side of the road, preaching at the University of Texas, preaching wherever we're preaching, you understand you better be standing in line behind us. Because if they send one of us to start a jail ministry, we're gonna need help in there. We go and we preach till we're told we can't preach. And then we keep preaching. And when they put us somewhere else where they think they're going to contain us, we preach to the point that they have to change the guards every four hours because we've got a mission and a message to proclaim. So Jeremiah is sending Baruch. You go to the house of Yahweh. So you shall go and read from the scroll which you have written at my dictation, the words of Yahweh and the hearing of the people in the house of Yahweh on a fast day. And also you shall read them in the hearing of all the people of Judah who come from their cities. Perhaps their supplication will come before Yahweh and everyone will turn from his evil way. For great is the anger and the wrath that Yahweh has spoken against this people. Did you catch it right there at first seven? There it is again, perhaps. And hearing the word, may it be that they will hear and will obey, will repent and will return and will call out will bring a supplication before Yahweh for salvation. So Baruch, the son of Nariah, did according to all that Jeremiah the prophet commanded him, reading from the book of the words of Yahweh in the house of Yahweh. Now it happened in the fifth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month that all the people in Jerusalem and all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem called for a fast before Yahweh. Now, why did they call a fast? This is the date in 604 in December, where now Babylon had conquered Egypt, were coming back, had conquered Ashkelon and were within 50 miles of Jerusalem. The people knew the enemy was on the march. So what do they do? Well, anytime things go wrong, then all of a sudden you remember to pray. Call a fast. Let's gather in the temple. Let's plead with God to spare us and to save us. The very judgment he has ordained to come upon us if we don't repent. Then Baruch read from the book of the words of Jeremiah in the house of Yahweh in the chamber of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan, the scribe in the upper court at the entry of the new gate of the house of Yahweh in the hearing of all the people. As he goes and reads, he actually goes to a balcony on the second floor just above the new gate, the Benjamin Gate, so that everybody coming into the temple for this declared fast called by the king and the high priest, everyone will hear God's word being read by Baruch. There's no way to stop it. There's no way to not hear it. Wonderful, beautiful acoustics. Everybody coming from miles away can hear the proclamation of the Word of God. Verse 11 tells us, Then Micaiah, the son of Jemariah, the son of Shaphan, heard all the words of Yahweh from the book. And he went down to the king's house into the scribe's chamber. And behold, all the officials were sitting there. Elishamah, the scribe, and Deliah, the son of Shammaiah, and Elnathan, the son of Agbor, and Gemariah, the son of Shaphan, and Zedekiah, the son of Hananiah, and all the other officials. All of these people working around the temple trying to deal with the crowd coming in, coming to fast, coming to offer sacrifices. They all stop because they hear what Baruch is reading and they gather around him to listen. And one of them specifically, Micaiah the son of Gemariah, the son of Shaphan, hears the words and calls for Baruch to come and read it. to the officials in the temple. It's verse 13, Micaiah declared to them all the words that he had heard when Baruch read from the book in the hearing of the people. Now, let me give you some significance here. Micaiah would have been the equivalent in our day of the secretary of state. The king has called a fast and he is coordinating with everybody at the temple, the temple guards and everybody else, all the priests, to get everybody where they're supposed to go so that everybody can come in sackcloth and ashes. That's what's significant here. Can you imagine a procession of people already in sackcloth and ashes being told to repent? And as he hears the word, he then makes it so that Baruch can come and read it to all the rest of the officials. Here's the significance. Do you know who Micaiah is? It tells us the son of Gamariah, the son of Shaphan. Do you know who Shaphan is? I'm glad you asked. Second Kings chapter 22, Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of Yahweh. and Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan and he read it. Then Shaphan the scribe came to the king and responded to the king with a word and said, your servants have poured out the money that was found in the house and have given it into the hand of those who do the work, who have the oversight of the house of Yahweh. Moreover, Shaphan the scribe told the king saying, Hilkiah the high priest has given me a book and Shaphan read it in the presence of the king. Shaphan was the one who read God's word rediscovered in the cleaning of the temple to Josiah. The next verse, it happened that when the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes. Josiah brought about one of the greatest reformations in the history of Judah, because Shaphan took the book that was discovered, God's word, and read it to Josiah. And he was grieved over the sin of the people. Now, just as God works, here's his grandson. about to read this book to the officials and to King Jehoiakim. As he's coming to do that, the officials were told are alarmed by the word of the Lord. They read it. He says, behold, all the officers were there. Micaiah declared to them all the words that he had heard when Baruch read from the book in the hearing of the people. Then all the officials sent Jehuda, the son of Nethaniah, the son of Shemaliah, the son of Cushi, to Baruch saying, take in your hand the scroll from which you have read in the hearing of the people and come. So Baruch, the son of Neriah, took the scroll in his hand and went to them. And they said to him, sit down, please, and read it in our hearing. There is nothing better than being invited to preach the word of God to a room full of people. Nothing. That's awesome. I love it when people ask. Ask me a question. Please ask me a question. Because then I get to preach and tell you what God's word says. That's what I love. I love about John MacArthur. You know, he turned 86 years old on the 19th. Charles Spurgeon turned 191 in heaven. Charles Spurgeon and John MacArthur share the same birthday. Imagine that. Every time John MacArthur is asked, he answers with the scripture. And they ask, well, what's your opinion? He said, my opinion doesn't matter. I have an authority that I bow to that authority is the word of God. So I have to tell you what God says, because that's what matters. So Baruch now sits down with all of these officials and read this entire scroll in their hearing. And it happened that when they heard all the words, they turned in dread one to another and said to Baruch, we will surely declare all these words to the king. The people are scared about the wrath that is being prophesied and their immediate response is somebody has to tell Jehoiakim. Somebody needs to warn the king so that he can help us and tell us what to do. They asked Baruch saying, declare to us please, how did you write all these words? Was it at his dictation? They don't even mention Jeremiah by name. They knew who he was. They had heard him preaching for 23 years. They had done everything to shut him up. But when they finally sat down and listened, what changed? Babylon just conquered Escalon and is coming up the coast to Jerusalem. They're gonna be here in a matter of days. They've said they're gonna destroy us. The people are gathered to fast in sackcloth of ashes. And we're hearing the first 25 chapters of the prophecy of the book of Jeremiah, read to us as spoken by the Lord. Baruch said to them, he dictated all these words to me and I wrote them with ink on the book. Then the official said to Baruch, go hide yourself, you and Jeremiah, and do not let anyone know where you are. They are so alarmed by this, they know the king has to be told, but because it's coming from Jeremiah, they tell him, get out of here and hide. We're gonna go make sure that this gets read to the king, and it's probably best if he doesn't know it's coming from you. Go hide. You have to wonder, what do they know about Jehoiakim? Well, they know what they've known all the time. He's resistant to the word of God. Would seem that just as Shaphan was a godly man, so was his son and so was his grandson. And he cared enough for the kingdom, for the people, that he wanted the word of God to be read to the king. Verse 20, so they went to the king in the court, but they had deposited the scroll in the chamber of Elishamah the scribe, and they declared all the words in the hearing of the king. They left the scroll behind, but summarized it. Then the king sent Jehuda to get the scroll, and he took it out of the chamber of Elishamah the scribe, and Jehudi read it in the hearing of the king as well as in the hearing of all the officials who stood beside the king. Now the king was sitting in the winter house in the ninth month with a fire burning in the brazier before him. This is a big iron fire pot in the middle of the floor to keep the room warm where they are. And it happened that when Jehudi had read three or four columns, Remember, this total would have been 12 to 15 columns written. By the time he got through three or four of them, the king cut it with the scribe's knife. It's a little pen knife. What would happen is if you're writing on papyrus and you mess up, there is no eraser. So you actually have to use a small knife to cut out the mistake and patch in a new clean piece of papyrus. You can see this if you look up papyri online. You can see where they have patched it to correct where an error had been. We, who are old school, would just use whiteout after a sniff or two. You know, that's how we did it, right? But here, you can't just delete, delete, delete, retype. No, you gotta cut it out. Well, he takes that pen from the scribe, cuts those columns out piece by piece, and threw it into the fire that was in the brazier until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier. He shredded that scroll to pieces and burned it in front of all the officials. Yet the king and all his servants who heard all these words were not in dread, nor did they tear their garments. Here's the difference. When God's word was read to Josiah, he was grieved and repentant and tore his clothes. When it was read to Jehoiakim and his court, they didn't even care. These officials that had come were scared. Jehoiakim, you have to hear this. You have to know what's about to happen, what God is saying. Jehoiakim and those with him did not care. They burned it. It was nothing to them to do this. Verse 25, even though El Nathan and Deliah and Gemari interceded with the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them. And the king commanded Jeremiel, the king's son, Sariah, the son of Asriel, and Shalamiah, the son of Abdeel, to take Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet. But Yahweh hid them. The response was to burn the word and to try to arrest the messengers, to try to catch Baruch and Jeremiah. How fitting then that Micaiah told Baruch, go and hide. And it wasn't just that he and Jeremiah went and hid, it's that Yahweh hid them. They could not find where they were. Verse 27, then the word of Yahweh came to Jeremiah after the king had burned the scroll and the words which Baruch had written at the dictation of Jeremiah, saying, take again another scroll and write on it all the former words that were on the first scroll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah burned. And concerning Jehoiakim, king of Judah, you shall say, Thus says Yahweh, you have burned this scroll, saying, Why have you written on it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and make this land a ruin and will make man and beast to cease from it? Therefore, thus says Yahweh concerning Jehoiakim, king of Judah, he shall have no one to sit on the throne of David. and his dead body shall be cast out into the heat of the day and frost of the night. And I will also punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity. And I will bring on them and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and on the men of Judah all the evil that I have spoken about to them. But they did not listen. One commentator said something I appreciated in this. You can imagine the work this was. This had been 23 years of the preaching of Jeremiah. That's a lot of work. Now, to put that into an equivalent for today, there was a time that I had all of my sermons, audio and outlines, all saved on a computer. Years and years and years. To put this in perspective, I pastored this church now 28 years this year. And can you imagine if all of that preaching suddenly disappeared? Well, when a hard drive crashes, that's exactly what happens. And I made a new friend called Carbonite, I didn't know my material needed to be saved. It needed to be saved and backed up. It needed to be double saved. Well, can you imagine Jeremiah's work, his ministry, 23 years up until this point, finally all written down in one place, and the king cut it up in little bitty pieces and burned it. He was crushed, but immediately set up to write it again, to go back and start over. to remember what God had said, to rely on the Spirit to remind him. Now, what I appreciate is that we're told in verse 32, Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch, the son of Uriah, the scribe, and he wrote on it at the dictation of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim, king of Judah, had burned in the fire, and many similar words were added to them. Second time around, Jeremiah said, I'm gonna make sure nothing is left out, and he remembered everything that he had given him the first time and even added some to it, I would imagine, in response to what Jehoiakim did. to burn the word of God. What does God tell us about his word? He tells us, don't add to it. and don't take away from it. This was the foundation of Jesus's ministry confronting the Pharisees. You have added to and taken away from the word of God. You've heard that it was said, and he quoted their tradition, but I say to you, and he would reiterate what God had originally said. How easy is it to add to the word of God? You know, it's actually easier to take away from the word of God by ignoring what God says. And what does he tell us? If you add to it or take away from it, all the curses of this book are going to come upon you. He says the same thing that he does in Revelation. He says the same thing here in Jeremiah to Jehoiakim. Because you burned the word of God and rejected it, would not listen to it, I'm going to bring on them and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah all the evil that I have spoken about to them, but they did not listen. Basically, what God is saying is you think by cutting up and burning that scroll that you're going to be exempt from the judgment I've declared. but every word is going to come to pass because you have refused to listen and to hear. Now, we know that as he wrote it again, and as there was a message for Jehoiakim, the message was, your line is gonna end. Nobody from your line is gonna sit on the throne anymore. When he died, his son was taken to Babylon as a captive, as a slave, and never returned. And his brother, Jehoiakim's brother, they're both sons of Josiah, Zedekiah was appointed king by Nebuchadnezzar. This is not Jehoiakim's line anymore. That same line that had come down from David all the way to that point, and because of Jehoiakim's sin, it's shifted. It's still the line of David, but now it's under Zedekiah. Guess who comes out under Zedekiah? Joseph, Jesus' stepdad, by right, could have been the king in Jerusalem through his birthright. And his son, born of Mary, also from the line of David, is that king of kings to sit on that throne forever. Now we read in 2 Kings that Jehoiakim was buried. So people have called into question the account that your body is going to be thrown out when the phrase is specific. His dead body shall be cast out to the heat of the day and the frost of the night. He is going to be dishonored in death. But he was buried like all the kings were. So people say, well, wait, what happened? We know what happened. Josephus wrote the history for us. When Jerusalem fell in 586 BC, because Jehoiakim had led a rebellion against Nebuchadnezzar, it was ordered that his body was to be exhumed, dug out of the grave and thrown out on the ground in the square and left and nobody could rebury it. Just like God said. Then we get the second expanded edition, because any preacher that preaches the second sermon another time is gonna add to it. You know, it's funny, you hear some preachers preach and they can preach exactly the same sermon every time. I can't do that unless I write it down. Because in preaching, every time the Spirit is gonna move to a different point, to a different place, to meet the needs of the people here gathered by the Word. And it may be the same text, it might even be the same outline, but it's gonna be a different sermon. because there's gonna be a different need in the moment. Well, here the word didn't change. Jeremiah writes it down, he adds to it. Now, the question for us, we're only at 30 minutes, I owe y'all another sermon. The question is, we're done with the text, but how do we apply it? This was the most fun for me in this text. How do we treat God's word? Are we like Jehoiakim? Do we cut out what we don't like? You know that's what Thomas Jefferson did. Thomas Jefferson, as brilliant a founding father as he was, as a deist, didn't believe in miracles, didn't believe in the resurrection, and he would go through his copy of the scripture with a pen knife and cut out the verses he did not believe. And actually, they still have his Bible. I believe it's either at his memorial or at the Smithsonian, where you can actually see the pages and the verses and the sections of Scripture that he cut out because he just could not believe that that would be what God said and how God would work. You don't get much more arrogant than that, do you? But here's the challenge. We do that in the way that we live. We cut out parts of the Word. We ignore clear teaching of scripture. We disregard what God has said, and it's proven in the way that we live. There's four ways that we do this. Four ways that we burn or ignore God's word. First, we're overcome with doubt. We don't believe what God says. We can't believe the word. We don't want to believe the word. We doubt the word, whether that's just through a weakness or whether it is just unbelief. What does James tell us? James tells us in chapter one, verses five through eight, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith, doubting nothing, for the one who doubts is like a surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind, for that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man and stable in all his ways. If you approach God's word filled with doubt, you will not understand what God is saying. You won't. If you're being tossed to and fro outside of a conviction of the Spirit or a rebuke from someone else, you simply won't listen because you'll be consumed with your doubt. That's how doubt works, isn't it? It's always there nagging in the back of our mind. No, it can't be. No, surely it's not that. And here's what that usually sounds like. Is God leading me to do this? I don't know. Is that God's voice or is that my voice? Is that me doing what I want to do or is that what God wants to do? If you ever get to that point and you're not sure if it's God's voice or your voice, more than likely, it's yours. Repent, take every thought captive, and get in the word. It's in the word that we will be settled and given assurance. Don't doubt the word. To doubt God's word is to doubt God himself. This is his revelation of himself to us. To doubt what the Bible says is to doubt God, and that is as much as calling him a liar. The second way we do this, is we simply deny God's word. And this is what that sounds like. That can't mean that. That's not what that means. I know that's what that sounds like, but Paul lived so long ago, he didn't understand culture today and society today and traditions today. We deny. But by the way, what we see unfolding here is the same thing the servant did in the garden. Did God really say doubt? I don't know, did he? No, he didn't say, God's keeping something from you, denial. outright denying what God says. James chapter 3, we read about the tongue. No one can tame the tongue. It's a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it, we bless our Lord and Father, and with it, we curse men, we who have been made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a fountain pour forth from the same opening fresh and bitter water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, produce olives or a vine produce figs? nor can salt water produce fresh. Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good conduct and his works and the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not coming down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there is disorder in every evil practice, but the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruits, without doubting, without hypocrisy, and the fruit of righteousness is shown in peace, sown in peace by those who make peace. When we deny God's word, we will not come from a position of gentleness or wisdom. Have you ever met somebody with a pet doctrine? And I mean by a pet doctrine, what they say, it might've been John MacArthur who said this, he said that one person in your church who absolutely is burning in his bones to teach a class on eschatology is the last person who should teach on eschatology. We find something that we latch onto, it's a pet doctrine. We find all of these ways and we have the charts and we have the graphs and we can prove it all and we're gonna convince everybody. And by the way, if you don't believe exactly like I believe on that point, you're going to hell. Met anybody like that? When we make something other than the gospel an essential doctrine, We're denying God's word. We're denying the centrality of the gospel. And that, we're told, is earthly wisdom, natural wisdom, demonic wisdom. It produces jealousy and selfish ambition and disorder. and every evil practice. Here is another good thing to do. If you hear somebody preaching and teaching the Word of God, don't just listen to what they say. Look at how they live because the marks that qualify you for preaching God's Word are character qualities. It's not a doctrinal test. It's character. Why? Because sound doctrine produces right character. But take it a step further. Don't just look at the person preaching. Look at the people being preached to. What is the fruit being born in their lives sitting into that ministry? And there are some that sound okay, maybe a few questionable things, but then you see where the next level takes it. How are they applying it? And if it's evil, if it's egotistical, if it's bringing jealousy and strife, that's not sound doctrine. Somebody said you can believe sound doctrine, but not practice it. No, you can't. If you believe it, it shows in your behavior. If you claim to believe it and don't live like it, you don't really believe it. You've denied God's word. The third thing we do is the same thing that Eve did. She doubted God's word. She denied God's word. And then she and Adam disobeyed God's word. Three ways that we do this. First, we hear God's word and we don't do it. James 1.22, we become doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. This is so crucial. It is not enough to hear the truth. It's good to hear the truth. It's needed to hear the truth, but don't stop there. And let me tell you, there is a rash of a problem in the reformed world today. And it's that people have itching ears for the truth. They want to hear the truth preached so that they can tell the rest of the world, I am right and sound in my doctrine. These are people who would claim to believe the doctrines of grace and they're the most ungracious people on the planet. If sound doctrine doesn't drive you to humility, you haven't believed it. You're using it. Don't use doctrine to bludgeon people. Use doctrine yourself to be equipped. We learn so that we might do. It was a practice within Judaism that if you came to a command of scripture that you were not actively doing, you were to take the scroll and put it back on the shelf and not read anymore until you did what you had read. Because to read it and not do it was iniquity. It was sin. Now, the question is, if we come to a point in the scripture where we're told to do something and we're not doing it and we have to put the Bible on the shelf, how many of us would have a Bible on the shelf? I felt that. We have to hear it and we have to do it. Secondly, we disobey when we love in word only. When our Christian walk is all an outward show. when it's all done to impress others. James 2 says, what use is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warm to be filled, and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so, faith, if it has no works, is dead by itself. You don't just hear and do. Delphes, if I used to preach it this way, you have to be. You don't just hear and do, you have to be. Sounds familiar, right? The be attitudes. This is what you have to be. So it's not just a matter of doing because the cults can do all day long. You hear it, you do it, you become it. So saturated with the word of God that we sound like Jesus. And when you do that, People are going to hate you because they hate him. I promise. The third way we can hear and not do, we can love in word only. The third way we disobey God's word is to know what is right, but to not do it. James 4, 17, therefore, to one who knows to do the right thing and does not do it to him, it is sin. This is where we need to pray for boldness. God, give me boldness so that I might do what I know is right. Doing what is right, by the way, doing what is right for the right reason. You know, you can do the right thing for the wrong reason, and that's iniquity. We do what is right for the right reason, for the glory of God and obedience to him, out of love for him, we obey his word. The fourth thing that happens, the way that we burn anymore God's word, and this one may be the most prevalent, we just disregard it. We just think it doesn't matter. It's the word apathy. I thought I need to look that up because I know enough language to know that if you put an A in front of something, it means not. So what is the pathy or the pathetic, apathetic? Well, pathetic means to stir up your emotions, to generate an emotional response. Put an A in front of it. It means no emotion. It means I don't care. That happens all too often when we come to the word of God. We read it just because we're supposed to, but we just don't care enough to listen, to hear, to do, to obey. We're apathetic. James chapter five tells us, come now you rich, cry howling over your miseries which are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. You have stored up such treasure in the last days. Behold the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields. That which has been withheld by you cries out against you. And the outcries of those who did the harvesting have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You have lived luxuriously on the earth and lived in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter. You just didn't care what God said. Does that remind you of a letter to a church in Revelation? Revelation chapter three. to the angel of the church and lay out a sea of right. This is what the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God says, I know your deeds that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth because you say I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing. and you do not know that you are wretched and pitiable and poor and blind and naked. I advise you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and that the shame of your nakedness will not be manifested. And I say I have to anoint your eyes so that you may see those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, therefore be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him, will dine with him and he with me. He who overcomes, I will grant sit with me on my throne as I also overcame and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. A few final points here about apathy, about complacency, about being lukewarm. By the way, that verse, behold, I stand at the door and knock, that is not Jesus knocking on the door of your heart, hoping that you will open the door and let him in. That is Jesus being put out of his own church and knocking to be let back in lest he kick the door in and remove the candlestick. That's what he was about to do to Laodicea, to remove their lampstand. They would no longer be a church. If you know the history of the place of Laodicea, they would pipe in water from one side, from the south, that was cold water from a spring. And there were thermal springs from the north, and they would pipe that in, hoping that they could have hot and cold water. But by the time the water got there, it was just bleh. Have you ever wanted a cup of cold water on a hot day? and tasted it and it was lukewarm or had been sitting in the sun. Wasn't really hot, it was just tepid, just room temperature. Let me tell you, we call it iced tea for a reason. I ordered iced tea one time up north and they just brought me tea. No, iced tea. It has to be cold to quench my thirst, not lukewarm tea. Why is there no ice in the tea? And if you order hot tea, what happens if they bring you tea that's been sitting out for an hour? It's not hot tea anymore, it's soup. Send it back. Well, here's Laodicea, cold water coming, and it gets room temperature, hot water coming and it gets room temperature and it just makes you sick. All sorts of bacteria can grow in there and you throw it up if you drink it. That's the picture. That's the picture where you could be refreshing. You're just clammy and where you could be hot. Eh, you don't really care. He goes on and he tells them, you think you're rich, you think you become wealthy, they were the banking center of the region. They had a doctor practice, an eye practice there, literally, that made this eye salve that went all over the region to heal eye problems, proven to have antibiotic qualities with it. So they had everything. They had gold. They had the best clothing. They had the best medicine. And he says, don't you understand? You are blind. You are naked. You are poor. You are wretched. And you don't even know it. And Jesus says, that makes me sick. I want to vomit you out of my mouth. Now, there are times that we doubt. The cure to doubt is faith. Where does faith come from? Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. There are times that we deny. What do we need to do when we deny God's word? We need to repent and reassure ourselves what God's word actually says. When the devil says, did God really say? We go to the scripture and say, yeah, he does. Submit to God, resist the devil, and he'll flee from you. When we disobey, there's just a simple cure. Repent. And if you don't repent, pray that your brothers and sisters will come and rebuke you and reprove you with the word of God so that you will repent and be restored. And there's a whole process in Matthew 18 for if we sin against each other and don't deal with it biblically, if we disobey and wound one another, we're to take one another to the word before the church and say, let's make it right. Let's be reconciled. And then if we disregard God's word, if we're lukewarm and apathetic to it, the cure here is for Jesus to remind us, those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, therefore be zealous and repent because I'm standing at the door and knocking. It means you better answer the door when Jesus knocks this to a whole church body. You're in error and Christ is about to walk away. You'd better pay attention. How serious is it that we strive to not burn and ignore God's word? God's word is so much for us. It's by God's word that we were saved in the first place. The gospel is the power of God to salvation. It's God's word that he uses to sanctify us. Sanctify them by truth. Your word is truth. How do we renew our minds to overcome doubt and denial and disobedience? We do this by offering ourselves a living sacrifice and being renewed in the spirit of our mind. How do we do that? By being saturated. with the Word of God. Why? Because as we are saturated with this written Word, you understand it's not just words on a scroll that can be cut up and can be thrown away. The written Word is the revelation of the Living Word. It's Jesus Christ. We don't just come to a book, we come to a Savior. Believe Him, fight the denial, fight the doubt, fight the disobedience, and God save us from apathy. His word matters. It should be like to Jeremiah, a burning in our bones, because we find we're not just coming for doctrine, we're not just coming for knowledge, we're not just coming for application, we're coming because we want Jesus. We find Him in His word. Oh, that we would want Him more than anything else. Let's pray together. Father, we do thank you for your word this morning, for your self-revelation to show to us yourself, to reveal to us Christ, and even in this word then to serve as a mirror and to show us ourselves. What we see in that reflection tells us what we need. If it doesn't look like Jesus, we're not there yet. We need to keep going. to persevere, to press on, to be renewed, to be restored, to repent daily, to make this life of faith a daily habit of trusting Christ, not doubting Him, not denying Him, not disobeying Him, but wanting more and more and more of Him in our lives. Father, I pray that you would motivate us to search out those places where we burn or ignore your word in our hearts and in our minds. Convict us by your spirit or prove us through the word. Remind us of our desperate need for you. Without you, we can do nothing. But with your word, with the power that is there, the resurrection power of Christ, there is nothing that can stop us from overcoming. Christ has already won the victory. We ask, we beg, let us walk with him in it by faith. We pray these things in Jesus' name.