Well, for those who are visiting, I have been preaching through the book of Lamentations systematically, and we are starting the last chapter of Lamentations today. So turn, if you will, to our passage today, and let's read Lamentations chapter five, verses one through 18. And pray. seek that the Lord will give us an understanding of this, as we would be able to read this and understand it as witnesses once again, and understand that this also, as we read this, that this is a prayer. This last chapter is a prayer. And so I think it helps to keep this understanding in mind, this prayer of the people to the Lord. Verse 1, Remember, O Lord, what has fallen us. Look and see our disgrace. Our inheritance has turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners. We have become orphans, fatherless. Our mothers are like widows. We must pay for the water we drink. The wood we get must be bought. Our pursuers are at our necks. We are weary. We are given no rest. We have given the hand to Egypt and to Syria to get bread enough. Our fathers sinned and are no more, and we bear their iniquities. Slaves rule over us. There is none to deliver us from their hand. We get our bread at the peril of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness. Our skin is hot as an oven with the burning heat of famine. Women are raped in Zion. Young women in the towns of Judah. Princes are hung up by their hands. No respect is shown to the elders. Young men are compelled to grind at the mill, and boys stagger under loads of wood. The old men have left the city gate, the young men their music. The joy of our hearts has ceased. Our dancing has turned to mourning. The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned. For this our heart has become sick. For these things our eyes have grown dim. For Mount Zion, which lies desolate, jackals prowl over it. Hear the prayer of the people in their lament. Like we have witnessed in the prior chapters 1 through 4, chapter 5 laments the judgment that God has afflicted upon Jerusalem. But there are some things, some differences in chapter 5 versus the other chapters that are worth noting. For example, compared to the prior chapters, just looking at chapter 5, it visually looks different. It still has 22 verses in it. like most of the chapters, but that acrostic feature, it's been dropped from the beginning of each verse. There's no beginning of verse with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet, all 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Also, each verse now only has one line. And so the reader gets a sense, as you're reading through the book, let's say in one sitting, for example, the reader gets a sense of a closing here, a wrapping up of the whole lament. Some commentators describe it, this chapter five, in this lament of the book limping to an end. It's limping to an end. Also, this final chapter functions differently from the rest. It's not just the collection of Jerusalem's sufferings listed line by line, beginning the chapter by crying out, how? As in, how has this come upon us? It doesn't start this way, this chapter. It begins with the collective prayer of the people of Jerusalem, as I had mentioned. They're asking God to remember as they pray to Him. It's precisely what they must be doing in the face of their suffering, praying to God, turning to God. And the entire chapter remains as a prayer of Jerusalem. I've mentioned this before, preaching through this book. Nowhere in this book, not even at the end, do we see a clear sign of repentance of the people. Now this is early in their, you know, exile. Okay? This is early in it. Their sin, it is acknowledged a number of times in the book. They declare to God their desire to be restored as they were the days before. We don't see a clear declaration of them being made into a humble and thankful people who desire nothing more than to rightly worship the Lord and enjoy him. They're not there yet. Not collectively, anyways. So, worship is a central theme of this book. God's desire to see the people become true worshipers, God still seeks true worshipers. He makes, amen, true worshipers. He desired to see them made into true worshipers. And we see here the lengths that he went through to bring them there. And, of course, Jerusalem suffering the consequences of wrong worship. Centuries of it. Centuries of selfishness, of grumbling, of spiritual adultery and immorality of all kinds. These things had turned the most blessed people on the planet into childish gluttons of pleasure and made them unthankful and made them insatiable. They couldn't get enough of what they desired wickedly, turning them into idolaters seeking a God made in their own image. You know, how could this happen to a people so uniquely favored by God? In 1 John, in one of his epistles, 1 John 2, verse 16, we read the following. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. Now, if you had the privilege of being in Sunday school this morning, Aaron touched on this when he talked on free will and the confession on the state of sin that we're in. So, of course, you cannot escape the issue of sin when you're reading Lamentations. It's in front of you so graphically. And this desire that John's writing about, desires of the flesh, you know, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, pride of life, these are evil desires. There's a technical term for this, concupiscence. And we've mentioned it before, this basic fallen, this tendency for fallen humanity toward desiring sin. We are drawn to it as sinners. And this functions both as that loss of original righteousness that we're all born in, following our father Adam, but it's also an active cause of sin. We are drawn to these things in our evil desires. Our Lord and Savior, born of the flesh, He never had these evil desires. We do, being from Adam. The devil uses these evil desires. The world uses them. Honestly, we don't need help from the world or the devil. Our own flesh is actively raging against the spirit. But the devil uses these evil desires in us as tools in his temptations. He used these tools against Eve in tempting her to take from the fruit of the forbidden tree. In Genesis 3, verse six, we read, so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. And from there we inherited this folly. The devil foolishly used these tools again in trying to tempt the Lord Jesus into worshiping him, yet unsuccessfully, as Christ did what the first Adam could not do. Satan used them against ancient Israel, our focus here. And consequently, as we read in our text today in verses 16 through 17, let's just look at that real quick. It says, the crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned. For this, our heart has become sick. For these things, our eyes, have grown dim. Well, what do they mean? What does it mean here, for this and for these things? What's being pointed to here? The heart of ancient Israel, of Jerusalem, it had become sick. The text says, for this our heart has become sick. Well, sick in what ways? How? The phrases for this and for these things, they point back to the prior verses listing out their sorrows. All these sorrows have caused us to become sickened in our hearts, considering the losses that they have suffered in their subjection and their humiliation, culminating in a crown falling from their head. A crown of pride. And also the acknowledgement of their sin is that as well. Their heart has become sick because of their sin. Was their heart, and this is an important question, was their heart sickened by worldly sorrow versus a godly sorrow? Was this the way in which their heart was sick? Well, in reflecting on their fallen crown, this crown of pride from, you know, is it an issue that has to deal with that pride, that worldliness that they've lost? I believe it was. I believe that's what it is, that they're mostly sorrowful over, from a worldly perspective, the loss of these things, these sorrows. And at least this time in their judgment, from their early days of their exile, it's primarily a worldly sorrow that lacks true repentance. And I'm gonna have more to say on that as I continue. The world, the devil, he tries to use these same lusts, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, as temptations, tempting our evil desires. not only to entrap poor sinners, but also to afflict the church today in order to steal glory for himself, to steal our joy in the Lord. Now, as we are witnesses today, of the suffering of the ancient people of Jerusalem, which, if you recall, that's one of the purposes of this book, is that there are witnesses of their suffering, and to understand why. But as we act as witnesses of the ancient people of Jerusalem reading this book, we do well to understand how the heart can be sickened. by these desires in order to avoid great loss and sorrow, sorrow over sin, and hopefully a godly sorrow if need be, to avoid such discipline, such correction. And I want us to see how the three groupings that John the Apostle provided in 1 John 2, how they can help us see how Israel has sinned, ultimately bringing in judgment. So, using verse 17 of our text today as a focal point in understanding this, I have the following outline. First, heart sickness from pursuing the lust of the flesh, Number two, heart sickness from pursuing the lust of the eyes. And thirdly, heart sickness from pursuing the pride of life. Let's examine what we have here in the text under these categories. Using these ancient tools of the world, these tools that the devil uses to understand how the heart can become so sick in these ways. So point number one, heart sickness from pursuing the lust of the flesh. Let's look at Israel's pursuit of it. And when I say Israel, I also mean Jerusalem. But we're looking back over centuries of time here. So let's look at verses six and nine in our text to understand how they pursued the lust of the flesh. The people, they acknowledged their need for food. in this chapter. They acknowledge their need for food and just about the lengths that they're willing to go to get it by reaching out to their enemies, to Egypt and to Assyria, for this aid. And their general condition of great want and need is understood here. You know, we can see that in verse nine. And it's even made even more painful in the fact that they know that they have been exiled from what was a rich and bountiful land. And now they're having to buy water. Slaves rule over them. So their pain and sorrow is only heightened because of what they lost in the promised land, if you will. If only they would have kept covenant. If only they would have kept covenant, but I don't believe they were there yet in understanding this completely, right? Well, earlier also in chapter four, verse five of this book, we read that those who once feasted on delicacies perish in the streets. You know, through context alone, we can be assured that this feasting that they once enjoyed, it wasn't a godly feasting, but instead was an idolatrous craving. And the pursuit of these cravings left them totally unprepared for God's judgment. They had soft hands, so to speak. They weren't ready for the harshness coming upon them. And it spared no one from the elderly to the very, very young. Yet another way we see how they pursued the lust of the flesh, we can see in chapter 1, verses 8 and 9 of Lamentations, where we read, Those nations that she cohorted with now despise her, for they have seen her nakedness. She herself groans and turns her face away. Her uncleanness was in her skirts. She took no thought for her future, therefore her fall is terrible. She has no comforter. Oh Lord, behold my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed, she says. Jerusalem's fleshly lust evident in her sexual transgressions and her abased morality was, they had become, it had become a spiritual cesspool. So in judgment, we see these things being manifested in the fact that she became filthy, unclean, and naked. Now, we see God's justice evidencing itself in a kind of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth outcome. She made herself filthy internally and with these nations, and therefore she would become, in reality, filthy. From their early days in the wilderness wanderings, they complained, they grumbled against the Lord, because they craved the food of their former enslavement, showing how the power of sin, how it can blind its victims from reality, to prefer their captors over their Savior. And yet even more, King Solomon, was overcome by lusts of the flesh and his accumulation of wives and concubines. 700 wives, in fact, 300 concubines. It's staggering, but it is a picture of Israel's sickened heart. God's judgment was just. He warned them. Something we've talked about, something that's been covered. There were warnings given that this would happen. In the fifth and tenth commandments, these commandments, the fifth and tenth commandments, clearly denounce fleshly lust, the commands against adultery and covetousness. In both Deuteronomy and Leviticus, God warned them of the judgment that he would visit upon them if they disobeyed these things. Beloved, because God is a just God and disciplines His people, this should give us great caution as witnesses. So this is how Israel pursued, just a microcosm, really, how they pursued the lust of the flesh. How does the Christian pursue this? God forbid. How do Christians fall into this sin? The lust of the flesh. The world usually tempts us by appealing to normal bodily appetites. Encouraging a means of satisfaction in ways that are not God's ways. A perversion, therefore. In this world, we are surrounded by countless enticements that target evil desires that may still plague a believer. Once you become a believer, once you are saved and justified before Lord, reconciled to Him, it's not like all those sins you struggled with just leave you. Sometimes, graciously, Lord does in some of those things, but you still struggle, but at least it's a struggle. Sexual immorality represents perhaps the most obvious manifestation of this struggle, the lust of the flesh. Paul writes about this struggle for the believer in Galatians chapter five. He writes, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh, for these things are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. Speaking specifically of the believer, this is not a condition of the unbeliever. who can do nothing but sin. Scripture calls Christians to abstain from sexual immorality and to possess their bodies in sanctification and possess them in honor, not in lustful passion. The accessibility of pornography through digital devices has intensified this particular struggle for today's believers in ways that previous generations never had to face. Pornography isn't anything new, but its ubiquitousness, if you will, that's new. Perhaps in ancient days in Rome when you even saw it on murals and about all over the place, but still not to the extent that we're exposed to today. Beyond sexual sin, drunkenness and gluttony constitute works of the flesh that pampering one's self encourages as indulgence in food and drink. These things, when there is a level of indulgence, inflames the body for their wantonness and lust, sin, begetting sin. These vices, they're normalized in our culture. There's a popular series appearing on Netflix, and they just came out with a new series that has intensified its efforts season after season of normalizing homosexuality. And this is nothing new. It's a common tactic today in the entertainment industry to slowly put in front of viewers homosexual relationships so that eventually The population becomes less and less provoked by it. Their spirit is, their conscience, if you will, is even less irritated by it. Yes, unbelievers possess a conscience. Some have seared it quite horribly, and some have not. You can find very moral unbelievers out there. But that's what happens at this boiling of the frog, right? Become more accepting of it. We must be aware of these strategies, and as parents, guide our children. They're gonna face these things. Give them wisdom. Protect them. But even more broadly, the lust of the flesh encompasses not merely sexual immorality, but all sinful cravings by which believers are tempted, including anger. and patience, and various forms of self-gratification, a number of them, prioritizing bodily comfort over spiritual discipline. These evil desires start out as a worship problem. This is foundational. They start out as a worship problem. Israel had a worship problem. The world and the devil are keen to divert a Christian's worship away from the only one deserving of our worship, the one true God, the Lord God. And when believers indulge in self-gratification to the exclusion of others' needs, to the exclusion of being satisfied in Christ, they are essentially worshiping at the altar of self. determining to make themselves the God of their lives. It may not be so apparent. You may not ever say those words, but those are the actions that one who does these things does. Take food for an example. The close and constant proximity that we are to food. If gluttony is a problem, this demands a close walk with the Lord each day. in order that our affections are in Christ, not the world, and can therefore resist the devil in his day. God planned, and we know history, we have the New Testament, we have the post-exile books, right? God's plan to redeem Israel involved the judgment laid upon them with the sacking of Jerusalem. in these 70 years of exile. He took it all from them. He took everything from them. So that in time they would become seekers of God. And beloved, although you still can struggle with the lust of the flesh, you have been redeemed by the atoning sacrifice of Christ. If you belong to the world, There would be no struggle with this sin, because you could do nothing else but sin. You would not desire to do that which you could not do. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, strength. But being in Christ as you are, beloved, being in him, you battle with such evil desires. And it is a struggle, it is a war, as Paul describes. A war that will end someday. if you remain in him, and he is able to keep you. The Lord will not despise a broken heart. He will not despise a broken and contrite heart. He tells us this in his word. This sincerity, sincerity is key in our religion. It brings us healing from him, from past and present sins. Instead of lusting against the flesh, we must follow Paul's command in Romans 13, verse 14, and make no provision for it. Point number two. Heart sickness from pursuing the lust of the eyes. How did Israel do this? How did Israel pursue the lust of the eyes? Probably the clearest commandment we have from God to forsake the lust of the eyes is found in the 10th commandment. You shall not cover your neighbor's house. You shall not cover your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's. And that's not just the guy next door. With this, it is our internal desires that are targeted, including our thoughts. Even our thoughts betray us when our evil desires are awakened. We are accountable to God for these things. And the 10th commandment provokes sinfulness as the ceaseless mental activity of an envious spirit reminds us that sin is born in the craving, in the craving thought before it proceeds to its destructive action. As James, the apostle, tells us, each person is tempted when he's lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Christ said in his Sermon on the Mount, everyone who looks on or at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So you see, church, that sin begins with the evil desire. For before a man even looks at a woman with lustful intent, in other words, before he entertains sinful thoughts about her, he is already sinned in this, pursuing this evil desire, committing adultery with her in his heart. One of the ways this evil desire, the lust of the eyes, is provoked, I believe, is by the fact that our God, the one true God, is invisible. Many Christians say they want a strong faith, but with such a strong faith comes more and more of living and abiding by the unseen. The desire to see with our eyes, that is, of course, understandable. We want to behold things, we want to see. It's natural for us. God gave us eyes to see and behold. One of the greatest promises of heaven is no longer having to live by faith, but by sight. We'll be able to behold our king face to face. We're not there yet. Ever since Eve desired that fruit on the forbidden tree, seeing how it can make one wise, as the devil was schooling her on this, mankind's provision of sight has been perverted. Israel, how did they do this? Israel, they wanted a king. They wanted a king besides the Lord God, who is invisible, who rescued them from Egypt. They wanted a king like the other nations around them. Israel wanted a God, also, that they could see and touch. So they served the gods of the nations around them. They were warned of these things, that it would become a trap to them, as they cohorted with the nations around them. And as we read in verse 17 of our text, for these things our eyes have grown dim. Their sorrow had dimmed their eyes with tears. but their eyes had grown dim also because of their spiritual blindness. They attempted to appease their God who redeemed them from slavery in Egypt by putting on a show. They lacked true faith. Their worship of the Lord was fake. As soon as their faith was tested, they revealed that they did not know him. We can see that just reading in Lamentations. using their insatiable eyes, eyes that cannot be appeased. They're always wanting and craving more. These insatiable eyes, Israel lusted after what others had, as if God had not given them already that which is good. And so their hearts became sick and their eyes grew dim. That is how Israel pursued Again, just a picture of the lust of the eyes. How about the Christian today? How do Christians today fall into this same pattern of sin? Well, much like the Jews did. The lust of the eyes, it's more subtle than the flesh, because the mind's being lured. It's a gradual shift, as one commentator put it, from contentment to craving, from observation to obsession. Perhaps you can understand this in your own past and struggles. Living in this day and age, the marketing industry, the marketing industry, it's learned to exploit this weakness in man, and our consumer-driven society revels in it. We are bombarded with messages telling us that we lack sufficiency, and we require more and more. Consider how advertisement today tends to focus on the aesthetic more than the technical. And it drives me nuts sometimes. Just watch an ad, for example, by Apple on a new iPhone or watch. And I'm not just trying to pick on Apple here, right? Or a Nike commercial, right? When was the last time you have been given the facts about the insole? and it's shock absorption features, or the type of rubber used on the soul. That's interesting, that's gonna help me better. But they don't do that, they don't. They understand mankind in this way. Our sinful nature, the lust of our eyes wants to bypass our mind's capacity to reason. We see it, we gotta have it, and you're just, your brain turns off. Our eyes are a gateway to the mind, making the lust of the eyes extend to even intellectual pursuits that are contrary to the Bible. Mind-altering in those ways, including worldly thinking patterns that are contrary to maintaining God's ways as central. No longer are you seeing God's ways as your central means, but you're being diverted to one side of the road or to the next. In Matthew chapter six, Jesus says this. He says, the eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness. It is a serious thing to be beholden in this, blinded spiritually. The heart, sickens after these things. It is made ill. And it's a result also of a worship problem. It's also a worshiping problem. The Christian may not be satisfied with the Lord and his provision. He stops thanking him and starts grumbling for what he does not have, for what his neighbor has. He becomes so busy trying to convince himself that what he desires, it's a good thing to pursue. That he doesn't look to what God has already declared as good. Why is that? Because his worship's become self-directed. His eyes are looking down and not up, so to speak. And what he has permitted his eyes to behold, they haunt him now. Despite Israel's gross demonstration of the lust of the eyes and the sickened heart that followed, they were restored back to the land of their fathers. And the prophets foretold of the coming Messiah who would fully restore those who believed. It was through the prophet Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, where God said, but for you who fear my name, the Son of Righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. We sing about it today in Hark the Herald Angels Sing. The Son of Righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. The Messiah would come. For those of you who have believed upon the Lord, Christ has saved you from the eternal consequences of your unfaithful eye. Slowly but most surely, he is sanctifying you to see with his eyes. Praise God for that. Beloved, take care for what you allow your eyes to behold. And don't be passive in this either. Don't be passive and allow yourself to be deceived. Confess your sin and be forgiven and be healed. Be grateful for what you have been mercifully given. Be a thankful man or woman or child. And I know it's hard at times when faith is tested, but he promises to sanctify you in this. My last point. heart sickness from pursuing the pride of life. How did Israel do this? Israel, they were warned about this as well, right? The Decalogue addressed the pride of life through multiple commandments that restrained self-exaltation and demanded proper reverence towards God's authority. The first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me, fundamentally opposed the pride of life by establishing that no human being could elevate themselves to divine status or claim ultimate authority. Not even for themselves, this directly confronted the core temptation of pride, the desire to be God. The third commandment against taking God's name in vain extended this principle by prohibiting the misuse of God's name for personal gain or self-promotion. Those who invoked God's name falsely were essentially claiming divine authorization for their own purposes. A form of spiritual pride usurping God's prerogative. Usurping. The Sabbath command, the fourth, also carried implications for pride. How did it do this? It did it by mandating rest from labor. It reminded Israel that their accomplishments, and it reminds us today, as we are still beholden to this, that their accomplishments and productivity did not originate from their own strength or cleverness, but depended on God's provision and God's blessing. God blesses our undertakings in order that we may become not proud, not haughty, but humble and dependent on Him. Depending on Him glorifies Him. And the Sabbath enforced this principle through cessation from work. depending on him. Now, Israel's repeated violations of these commandments, particularly their tendency towards self-reliance and idolatry, it demonstrated how easily they abandoned proper submission to God's authority in favor of self-promotion. We see this, for example, in the Northern Kingdom's jealousy of Jerusalem because it had become the center of worship. You know, Shiloh was desecrated and lost. So now, in Jerusalem, the tribes were called to come. Ephraim of the northern kingdom. Ephraim pursued a self-indulgent life. Hosea, the book of Hosea, focuses a lot on that. Becoming prosperous and pampering themselves. Breeding self-reliance and selfishness. The consequences of these examples of the pride of life, it robbed them of their homes, their land, and the freedom to worship God openly. They were no longer exalted but greatly humbled, becoming a byword to the neighboring nations. Slaves ruled over them. How did Christians fall into this sin today? How do they exhibit a sinful pride of life? One clear example given in Scripture is when James admonishes his readers about possessing a heart of partiality, a divided heart. In James 2, he describes a scenario where we see that wealthy person in flying clothing come in and he's given a place of honor, and then a poor Christian in shabby clothing comes in and is told to stand or sit on the ground. Why else? Would sin provoke a Christian to show that type of partiality in exalting someone unrighteously if it's not to benefit from it in some way? How can I, this rich person, like me or get in their good graces? Because I don't care about the poor person. There's different degrees of this that we battle with. Christians encounter this temptation through multiple avenues, appealing to our desire for status, for recognition, self-elevation, anything that exalts us above our humble station as sinners saved by grace alone. Trying to impress others with our job or our career, how important we are, even by good things. we can do this with sinful intention. These are decisions that are being made based on casting an exalted image of ourselves, and we sacrifice honesty, and we sacrifice integrity when we do this. We sacrifice these things just for some piece of notoriety, or some sense of importance. And again, That is the message of the world around us. Just be yourself. Just do it. That message of self-esteem that's overplayed, misunderstood, and crammed down our children's throats in so many different ways. This pride of life tends to motivate the other two lusts we've talked about already. For example, through the desire to elevate others' perception of you, you covet their worship of you in some sense. You covet their material possessions and their achievements that you don't have, so you want them to think of you as some exalted, important person. And it engages the lust of eyes as well. You feel that you deserve an inordinate amount of certain pleasures more than other people do. Engaging the lust of the flesh. This process of growing more worldly, it's a gradual descent. In Israel, we know from their acts, recording in the Old Testament, they had times of success and failure, up and down, up and down. But even when the good kings ruled, we read, the hearts of the people were fickle, and they grew over time spiritually lazy under periods of prosperity. They were easily revealed as false worshipers when the Lord tested them and took them away. The book of Judges is just a great example of that, but it continued throughout the centuries. The first two verses of the book of Lamentations, the first two verses of this book condemns Israel's fickleness, Jerusalem's fickleness, as it describes how their former lovers, those pagan nations where Jerusalem had sought aid, now deal treacherously with her, and she has no one to comfort her. A pride of life sickened her heart to desire glory among the nations more than ascribing glory to the Lord. So like with the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, Jerusalem's sinful pride of life was corrected by the Lord through harsh yet just judgment that he rendered her, including their exile. So over the subsequent 70 years they spent in Babylon, they would learn to long for a right relationship with the Lord. They needed that time. The Lord does the same thing with believers today. When our desire to exalt ourselves and seek first our own glory, when that overruns us, the Lord promises to bring His correction. This is primarily accomplished through the preaching ministry of the church. A gospel Christ-centered preaching ministry rebukes and admonishes sinful patterns of the local church. This is one reason why the preaching ministry is a primary means of grace of the church. But then it becomes the individual believer's responsibility to hear these things and to do them, not just to walk away. The effectiveness of the preaching doesn't hang on the eloquence of the man preaching, but it's on the power of the gospel that's being communicated. So what does the gospel do? It exposes our sin. and our need for reconciliation and answers our need with the once for all sacrifice of Christ and its power to sanctify the believer to value the glory of God over the glory of man. Well, beloved, I'm gonna end with this. We have been given the opportunity to be witnesses of the judgment of God's chosen people. A terrible suffering that they endured for the consequence of their sin. So to ignore this warning is to despise the word of God. To think that you have nothing to be concerned with, here regarding yourself, and that you can just quote the mantra, love Jesus and love people, you're deluding yourself and not respecting the pervasiveness of the temptations that surround you. These temptations that seek to ruin your faith. So be on guard, Christian. We must take up our cross every day. We must deny ourselves our evil passions and the desires that we have by being sincere about our faith in the Lord. Hearts that are sickened by worldly passions, they're hardened to the grace that Christ offers us. They're hardened, and it's a hardened conscience as well. And we can combat that by being thankful. Thankful for our great salvation. The same thing with our eyes. If they've grown dim, they can become more clear as the spirit of God and his word illuminates his word for us. So thank the Lord our God who promises to bring us home and delivers from these things. And let's learn from what Jerusalem suffered