Turn with me to the Book of Hosea. We continue our study of Hosea. Follow along as I read our text, which is chapter 5, verses 8 through 15. Hosea, chapter 5, verses 8 through 15. Blow the ram's horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah. Cry aloud at Beth-Avon. Look behind you, O Benjamin. Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke. Among the tribes of Israel I have made known what is sure. The princes of Judah are like those who remove a landmark. I will pour out my wrath on them like water. Ephraim is opposed and broken in judgment because he willingly walked by human precept. Therefore, I will be to Ephraim like a moth and to the house of Judah like rottenness. When Ephraim saw his wickedness and Judah saw his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to King Jerob. Yet he cannot cure you nor heal you of your wound, for I will be like a lion to Ephraim and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear them and go away. I will take them away and no one shall rescue. I will return again to my place till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek my face. In their affliction, they will earnestly seek me." The title is Last Resort Religion, Part Two, Hope for Religionists. You'll remember in our last study, We appeal to religious people, whether they be in the church or outside of the church, or people who are religious and members of another religion. Today's study identifies a religious people who are in a very dangerous situation because God's severest punishment is looming over their heads and about to come crashing down on them. The nation of Israel, the 10 tribes to the north, are in the worst possible spiritual condition and situation. And I refer to a very large group of religious people in the nation of Israel who don't know God himself. Approximately three million Jews made up Israel in the area of Palestine. Most of them, the vast majority of them, did not know God himself. They are religious, but they have no heart for God. This is the message of Hosea as he sounds a loud wake-up call for religious people to finally turn from their ritualistic rote observance of religion to have a relationship with the very God of the Bible. This study could not be more timely and relevant for today's world and today's church. Because the situation that was taking place in Israel has such a stark and striking parallel to what's going on in the church today. Where they, so many of them, the vast majority of those who occupy our church pews, those who are churchgoers, profess to know God, but in works they deny him. They have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof. They are always learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. I call these people religionists. They have religion. And they're professional, they're very skillful, even approaching their religion in a scientific way. They're able to split hairs, they know all the rules and the ordinances. They're among the Marthas in the church. They're caught up with much serving but never sit at the feet of Christ and learn from him. My heart breaks as I minister to many of them, far and wide, all over the world. Our churches are filled with people who go through the motions, but their hearts are empty. I think they want to know God. I think they're jealous when they come into contact with true Christians who are filled with the love of God, the peace of God, which passes all understanding, the joy of the Lord. And they see this this sense of satisfaction that Christians have with Christ and Christ alone. But. They're caught up with their rituals and their traditions and their busyness and their activities, and they never sit at the feet of Christ himself and learn from him like Mary did. That is not to say that there are no weak people among Christians, among true Christians, or that there are no backsliders. or those who don't wrestle hard with sin and temptation frequently are all professional religionists and not Christians. No, a true Christian experiences all these things. I'm not describing true believers who may commit individual acts of sin while they wander from the Lord. But true believers never permanently live in sin. They always return to the Lord. They always repent of their sin as the Holy Spirit stirs them up, grants them fresh sorrow for sin and fresh repentance for sin and brings them back to the feet of Christ as it were with sorrow in their hearts that they ever left the Lord in the first place. Now I'm referring to a very large group of religious people who are very acquainted with the details and the rules and the rituals of their religion but don't know God himself. And Jesus described these kinds of people when he addressed the Pharisees in John chapter 5 verse 38 and following where he said, but you do not have his word abiding in you because whom he sent him you do not believe. You search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life and these are they which testify of me. But you are not willing to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive honor from men, but I know you that you do not have the love of God in you. Is there anything so sad as unrequited love between a person who professes to be saved and the Lord to go their whole lives without having this oneness with God himself? Whether it's Israel in the Old Testament or the Church in the New Testament, whenever the institution that represents God, Israel in the Old Testament, the Church in the New Testament, is overrun and comprised with mostly religious but unsaved people. The institution is in a very grave situation, a very dangerous situation, and the looming judgment of God is about to crash in, and God removed the lampstand, the life, the light, the truth, the love, from the hearts and minds of the people of God and give them over to their own ways of pursuing sin with reckless abandon, without a desire to rehabilitate, repent, and return to the Lord, God will finally give a people like this who insist to have and choose religion over God himself. And so in this regard, the parallel between Israel in the 8th century BC, which is the historical setting in which the book of Hosea was written, who had a 50-year ministry to the 10 tribes to the north, and today's church, like I said, is very striking and similar. There are so many parables to what is going on in today's church in 2016, especially the last 20, 30, and 40 years. to 8th century BC Israel, the religious situation, the spiritual conditions. There are so many parallels. Israel's situation in Hosea is alarmingly grave. They're experiencing severe judgment at the time this book was written. They're not about to experience judgment. They are experiencing it at that very time. And the judgment is very bitter and severe. They are about to be carried away into captivity by the Assyrian nation. They have been given over to the grossest forms of idolatry, spiritual adultery, and defiant, blatant hypocrisy. God just let them go on thinking that They could serve the devil and serve God, they could serve Baal and serve Jehovah and then die and go to heaven. He just gave them over to those delusions and deceptions of their own hearts. But you know, today's church is in a very similar situation. The spirituality and life of most churches today has gone out. I choose my words carefully. I couldn't say that ten years ago. I couldn't say it five or seven years ago, but now I could say it with conviction. Not all churches, thank God, but most churches. Across denominational lines and independent churches, and each individual church is judged and weighed on its own merits, of course. We cannot castigate all churches and put them all in the same category exhaustively, no. But generally speaking, the church is apostate today. It's in the worst possible situation, except if God should take out every lamb stand. The same situation that was going on in Israel. Many of our churches had their lamb stands extinguished a long time ago. Idolatry and adultery are commonplace in our churches today. What is going on behind the scenes and under the surface in conservative, orthodox, reformed, Baptist, and many other Bible believing churches. It's commonplace to have people live double lives who are church members. They say one thing and do one thing when they're among Christians and in church, but they're following the world. with reckless abandon on their own. They listen to the world's music, they watch R-rated, X-rated movies, they do all these things. And behind the scenes, that many of them are cohabitating with one another, and most of the pastors don't know what's going on, and many of them don't want to know what's going on, because if they want to know, or if they do find out what's going on, then their consciences would be bound to pursue that and find out the crux of the matter. But so many pastors are in their comfortable positions, and they don't want their salary, their income level, and their position challenged, so they just leave well enough alone, which is not well. Are you hearing what I'm saying? This should cause our hearts to be broken. When we see these things and hear about these things going on, and I realize some of you don't know what's going on in many churches today, it should cause tears to flow. It should cause the prayer meetings to be filled to capacity. It should cause us to beat on our breasts and pull at our hair as Ezra did when he reflected upon the reason why God brought the people into captivity in the first place after the people were brought back from captivity and as Jerusalem was being rebuilt and as a sacred assembly was called and virtually the entire nation was standing in the rain for 12 hours repenting and listening to the priests and the Levites expound the word of God. He was reflecting on why they experienced all this trouble to begin with. And it caused him and many of the faithful priests and the leaders to weep, and to have such deep conviction that they beat on their breasts and they pulled out their beards, as if to say, never again, or as if to say, how could this have happened to us? How could we have gotten to this place in our religious life? where our worship and our meetings and our festivals and our feast days and our sacred assemblies were an abomination to God. How can we say these things and talk about these things calmly? Because the very lives of our churches and our usefulness in the service of God is at stake. Once God puts out the lamb stand, then whatever we do is rejected by God because almost to a man, all have been following their own ways and doing what is right in their own eyes and have not been listening to the Lord for a long time, though he has sent loud wake up calls to the people. Compromise of the truth and covetousness are rampant. In our churches today, most pastors are just going through the motions today and are dead orthodox. In their approach to ministry. They rely heavily on liturgy and tradition without the Holy Spirit's blessing on their teaching, their ministrations, their counseling, their discipleship, their, their ministries. The needs of the sheep are scandalously neglected. And nobody's raising an eyebrow. Nobody's challenging the leadership of our churches on this matter. All at the expense of feeding themselves and fleecing the flock. We have been given the responsibility as local churches to be always in the process of self-reformation. The spirit of the prophets are subject to the prophets. And if any one of us has the life of God in us and we view these things, the Spirit of God, since we're anointed with the Spirit as 1 John 2 talks about, We have the discernment of the Spirit. We have the understanding of the Word of God as provided by the Holy Spirit. We have the conviction of the Holy Spirit. If we are walking in the Spirit, if we have clean hands and a pure heart and clear consciences, so that the Spirit's discernment and heartbreaking ministry is working at full operation, when we see all of these criminal, scandalous sins taking place in the church, we are going to have the burden of the Word of the Lord. We're going to have righteous indignation fall down upon us from heaven, and we're going to be at least grieved by what we see. Amen? The Bible foretells these times, and they are very scary times. You and I are living in a day that is very unique and unprecedented in various ways, which I don't have the time to describe. That all other generations of Christians have not known certain temptations and certain challenges that the New Testament church is experiencing in 2016, but the Bible foretells these times. We read in 2 Thessalonians 2, let no one deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first. And the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. There will be a level of blatancy and naked desire upon some to be worshipped. Of course, the man of sin is identified specifically here. But that day, with a capital D, means the day of the Lord, the second coming of Christ, 2 Thessalonians 2, 3, and 4. Later on in the chapter, beginning at verse 8 through 12, we read, and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all listen, unrighteous deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. For this reason God will send them strong delusion that they believe the lie that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." And we see the effect of this in the contemporary church where the majority of evangelical churches have not received the love of the truth and an accurate understanding of even the essential doctrines of the truth, the various doctrines connected with the atonement, the personality and character and perfections and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Very few can even quote two or three Bible verses. They go to church to be entertained. It's all about felt needs. They don't have the love of the truth, so many of them. Not all of them, thank God, but most. And we could see also the effects of God giving many of them over to strong delusion, so that when outrageous teachings come forth from the pulpits of these churches like health, wealth, and prosperity, which are so clearly and identifiably unscriptural and even blasphemous and horrendous to the highest possible level, where they will call gain godliness, The masses buy into this false teaching without the blink of an eye. Of course, it caters to the flesh. If they're not in the spirit or have an accurate understanding of the basic doctrines of the faith, they will all be sucked in. And we're hearing a big sucking sound today coming from many churches as so many are falling away and apostatizing, both in terms of renouncing sound doctrine and also the lifestyle of holiness, holiness. Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron." We're seeing that happening now. It's happening now, now, now. Where is the conscience of the church? Well, because of the effects of the apostasy, you can see that the majority of consciences, including church leaders, are seared with a hot iron. Their convictions about even the large essentials are very low, let alone the finer points, the small things, the minutia, the fine print. I don't know about you. When I'm walking in the spirit, suddenly the fine print of truth becomes large and very important for me to obey. But as conscience is diluted and diminished, the fine print, we justify disobeying it, saying, well, you know, I'm following the spirit of the letter, but not the letter. But the time will come, 2 Timothy 4, 3 and 4, when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables. How many religious institutions calling themselves the church have turned aside to fables? But then in Luke 21, we read in verse 25, and then there will be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars. And on the earth the stress of nations with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring, men's hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And so we see generally the populaces of the world, the various masses and cultures and various countries, Fear and trepidation and anxiety is growing at an exponential level as violence and terrorist acts are becoming almost a daily thing now, right? In the last week, we've had three or four major terrorists terrorist attacks in Turkey and other places, one day at a time. It's almost a daily occurrence now. And people all over the world are bewildered. They're looking at one another saying, what is going to come on the earth? And fear grows on their hearts as they wonder about the things that are going to be coming behind this last major problem, this last major situation. When we look at the church, we see so many falling away, so many who were once orthodox, in the faith, so many pastors who would not compromise even if they were fired from their position because they stood on the truth, how many are compromising today? Let me just briefly recap a little bit more from our last study with that introduction. In our last study we described some of the pitfalls of our technological fast-paced culture and they are Several of those pitfalls are this idea of instant gratification. Secondly, quick fixes to deep-rooted problems. The attempt to fix, very quickly, deep-rooted problems. Number three, obeying God only as a last resort. And number four, procrastination. When these approaches to life's challenges don't achieve the desired effect, they result in anger, impatience, and a defeatist attitude. When you don't get what you want when you want it, instant gratification, when you attempt quick fixes to serious problems, when you only obey God as a last resort, and when you procrastinate as a Christian doing what is right, and you don't get your way, so many respond with anger, impatience and a defeatist attitude. They give up. These approaches to life seem to be the greatest flaws of the millennial generation, the generation right now, the young people right now, those in their late teens and early twenties and so forth. These four problems and should be replaced, though, with the attitude of delayed gratification. That's an old school idea. This is the idea that goals and fulfillment are obtained by patience and hard work over a long period of time. But these bad perspectives of life do not fit with true Christianity and the Bible's teaching on the mindset and lifestyle of a godly person. The philosophies of instant gratification, quick fixes to deep problems, obeying God only as a last resort, and procrastination have taken root deeply in many churches. And these churches have adopted business, advertising, merchandising, and entertainment methods to increase the size of their churches, which have resulted in the appearance of outward success to the uninformed and undiscerning person, but to those whose standard and measure of success are biblical principles alone, they are but empty shells filled with the noise of sounding brass and clanging cymbals. But the Bible teaches that most things of spiritual value, listen, you know this by your own experience, most things of spiritual value are obtained by suffering, patience, humility, testing and severe testing over a long period of time on the part of many. obedience, submission by an investment of pain, sacrifice, self-denial, and persistence to achieve the goals that God himself has for you. And so we saw last week in the first place concerning verses eight and nine, a loud wake up call. God is sending Israel a loud wake up call because Israel themselves were trying to approach God through these four shortcuts. Instant gratification. It's too long, you know, to have to pray. Why can't we have it both ways? We'll go down in the morning to the temple of Baal. We'll get his blessing. And just to make sure we have all of our bases covered, we'll go to Jehovah in the afternoon and we'll set up these things on the high places or we'll go to the local synagogue or we'll go to the temple in Jerusalem. God forewarns of a coming day. in verse 8, where he says, blow the ram's horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Rama. He says, cry aloud at Beth Haven. God forewarns here of a coming day of severe punishment and judgment, which was taking place, but especially when Israel would be carried away into captivity by Assyria. But God uses three metaphors to lift the warnings of Israel to the highest possible level to get their attention. God sent prophets, he sent his prophetic word to them, but now he told Hosea and many other prophets, blow the ram's horn now. Blow the trumpet. Get the instruments that make the loudest noise. to get their attention. Cry aloud, don't just speak a prophetic, cry aloud, scream, get their attention, because they are insensible to the looming judgment that is within days or perhaps weeks at their door. God is saying at the end of the verse, look behind you, O Benjamin, we looked at this, that the wrath of God is beginning to fall heavily on Israel. Look behind you, O Benjamin, Because you're next. He's saying, look behind you, Judah and Benjamin. The wrath of God will catch up to you if you don't repent. When you hear about the Assyrians attacking the next town that's close to you in Israel, then you will be forced to examine yourself and your relationship with God and repent. Sometimes we only listen to God when the danger is seconds away or when it falls upon us. That's the only time we'll listen. When you're laying in bed sick and all the strength is taken out of your body and you're in pain, okay God, I'm listening now. Isn't that sad? God is much more worthy of our attention and our praise and our submission than as a last resort when we have no other choice but to serve him or to do his perfect will, not his permissive will, but his perfect will. Well, let's continue in verse 9 concerning a loud wake-up call. Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke among the tribes of Israel. I make known what is sure. Now remember, there's a lot of negativity in this exposition of Hosea because the entire book is about judgment, God's judgment against Israel. He's trying to get their attention because they are deaf to the loudest, most convicting calls that God could make, to have them returned to him as his representative people in the world, with purity of heart and dedication of life and service. God's wrath is a strange thing, the Bible says. He doesn't want to have to chastise his people, especially severe chastisement, but he will do it if we don't listen. God continues the shocking wake-up call here. Ephraim shall be desolate. This is a day of reckoning for them. All their sins, all their deafness, all their indifference to God from the past years and decades and centuries has finally caught up with them. The Hebrew word for desolate here in verse 9 is very strong. The word signifies something stupendous and severe. The judgment, in other words, will cause amazement because of the severity of the spiritual and physical desolation it will cause within Israel. that all of our health and apparent external vitality with all of our history and background and serving God our knowledge is propped up and it's conditional in terms of the effectiveness and continued usefulness of it is a condition, is conditional rather, based on our obeying God and being faithful to him now. We can't rely upon our past works. What does the Bible teach us? What does this teach us about our sins? Just as in the case of Israel, our persistent deafness and rebellion can bring desolation in our lives. No wonder why some of us haven't borne fruit in a while. It breaks my heart. I labor night and day, blood, sweat, and tears that you might bear fruit to equip you, to see you flourish in the garden of the Lord, not only sowing and planting, but reaping, reaping souls through your evangelistic activities, and reaping the fruit of increased love, joy, gentleness, peace, the fruit of the Spirit in your deepening relationship with Jesus Christ. We must always keep these things forefront in our minds. There are weightier matters of scripture that need to be re-emphasized frequently. And this is one of them. That if we turn a deaf ear to God, the first thing that will go is our effectiveness in His service. You see, God has set times for rebuke and punishment. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, there's a time for under heaven every season right for everything under heaven when we persistently sin and wander from God. God has days of correction and chastening for us when we don't listen to especially the loudest wake-up call. He says, do not be deceived in Galatians 6, 7 and 8. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he that sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap life everlasting. Much of the sin that Israel is being judged for and carried away in captivity is rooted in sexual immorality. Many of the cult religions, including Baal worship and many others that the Jews were involved in, had that as part of their temple ceremonies. But the women were not immune to that problem and that sin. And the whole nation was mired in it. And these false gods and their rituals and their temple services were regulated in an atmosphere of sensuality that sifted any form of godly, holy spirituality from the hearts and minds of the Jewish people. And we have our own modern version of this. as we watch our television screens and the sensuality and the sensual spirit that comes from those screens sifts us of the mind of Christ and plants seeds and temptations in our hearts for the devil to take advantage of after we turn off the screen. It's a very important lesson. The idea of desolation teaches that when lesser forms of correction are ignored and don't bring us to repentance, the chastisements will increase. Don't you understand that? If you ignore the chastisements in the lesser forms, that they will increase. Those of you who have children, when spanking a child with a diaper on doesn't get their attention, you know, three little pats, no, no, no, we take the diaper off. Right? We need to increase the level of punishment until we get the retention. I remember when I was a boy, one time I got spanked, and I pretty quickly figured out my dad's way of spanking me, and I was a really good actor when I was a kid. So, the harder he spanked me, the longer he spanked me, the decibels of my pain would increase accordingly. And I knew that once I screamed no more, okay, I won't do it anymore, at a certain point he would always stop. And I fooled him into believing I got the message. But there were some times when I did something really bad that he wouldn't stop spanking me even though I reached that level. He kept spanking me and so I was no longer in control of that punishment opportunity he had. He took over. And that's when I got the message. The same thing with us, spiritually, as Christians. There are days when the chastisements come like rain, and when it rains, it pours, right? One bad thing after another, after another, after another. Where we, at a certain point, we take our eyes off the circumstances, and the pain, and the deprivation, the loss of a job, the loss of health, or whatever God is using to get our attention. And we now turn our attention vertically, and all we're looking at is God. Because we know it all comes from the Lord. Our sovereign God orders everything. All things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to His purpose. Even the bad things work together for our good. And this is what's going on in Israel. And this is what is going on in the church today. And when the, like I said, the, when the lessons, uh, or the, the idea of desolation teaches that when lesser forms of correction are ignored and don't bring us to repentance, the chastisements will increase. Even listen, if sometimes it results in death, the Lord has three schools. The school of instruction, the school of correction, and the school of execution. When the lessons in the first school are not received, he graduates you to the next level, including the level of destruction or execution, where God actually destroys a person. That's the case with Israel in the book of Hosea. At the Assyrian captivity, And at the Babylonian captivity, especially the Babylonian captivity in 587 BC, they were wiped out. Shortly after 587 began the intertestamental period when there was no longer a word in Israel. He removed them for all intents and purposes as his representative people on the earth. They were just a shell. They were just this formalistic institutional hypocrisy. that ground out their services, but God wasn't hearing them, and God wasn't using them. Do you and I want to get to that place as a church, where we tune out the loudest calls to God, and we try somehow at that point to convince ourselves, oh, God still is blessing me, God still is using me, and we're denying and we're ignoring all of the signs to the contrary. God sends loud wake-up calls because we're near disaster. In 1 Corinthians, we read of that man whom Paul said in chapter 5, verse 5, I don't know about you, but I don't want to leave the world like that, where I enter God's last school of chastisement, which is called execution, that we're so fixated on doing what we want to do, whether it's sexual immorality or any other kind of persistent sin, we're no longer listening to God that says, OK, you're going to graduate from the school of correction to the school of execution, because you're not listening anymore. And if you keep going on the path you're going, you're going to be causing more reproach and destruction to the Church of Christ, to the name of Christ. I'm gonna take you out to save the spirit and destroy the body. And there are many believers. I was talking to someone the other day. Sister Pat was telling me about a couple of relatives of hers. One was a pastor and his son after him was a pastor. And they both died while they were preaching. Now I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Well, all I know is I want to die as a faithful servant of the Lord. You see, it's not how you start that matters. It's how you finish. And so run that you may finish the race faithfully. You might receive the crown, as Paul talks about, that is laid up for us, that imperishable crown. In that terrible day, the wrath of God stored up against them will come crashing down on them, where God's highest form of punishment will catch up. Not necessarily death, but in that case, in the case of the Assyrian captivity, many of them died. In the case of the Babylonian captivity, many of them died. And about 600 years later, in 70 AD, when Rome came down and laid siege against Jerusalem for two years, building up the anger of the Romans in their hearts when they broke through the walls of Jerusalem. Many of them. If you read Josephus, who was a Jewish general that defected over and became Titus' advisor. If you read Josephus, blood ran in the streets that were up to the horse's bridle in some places. If you read that, you'll see it. God's wrath builds up. Sometimes it takes hundreds of years against, in Israel's case, against them. And it can happen to a local church too. And every member ought to be extremely interested and have a vested interest in the life and health and spirituality of the local church and its individual members. We cannot just be churchgoers and pew sitters. We must be engaged and actively involved in maintaining our union with Christ the purity of our hearts, vital, lively, dynamic Christianity, where the Holy Spirit continues to build us up individually and corporately into the image of Christ. And yes, it is a process throughout our lives, fraught with many speed bumps, many fluctuations, thousands, tens of thousands of fluctuating, vacillating strength and grace, up and down, up and down. This spirit of persistence and perseverance that when grace wanes in the heart, we go back to the Lord, we repent and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for cleansing and sanctifying grace to come in and wash us from the fresh impurities that we have poisoned ourselves with in contact with the world, the flesh and the enemy. Amen? What does it say in the Gospels? about the kingdom of God suffering violence until this day, and the violent take it by force. That those individual people, not all of them, but there is a segment of them who are described as being violent. These are the ones that are proactive, that are aggressive, true, genuine Christians who have the Spirit of God abiding in them, the seed of God remaining in them, And when grace falls to a low ebb, the Holy Spirit stirs them up to take violent actions, aggressive actions, laying hold of the promises of God afresh, bringing them and claiming them at the throne of grace based on the shed blood righteousness and meritorious work of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. When we're at our worst and lowest, the true violent Christian always falls back on the Lord Jesus Christ and lays hold of the horns of the altar and won't let him go until he revives us again and pours out times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord upon us. How many times has he done that very thing in our lives? A thousand? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Well, it depends on how long you've been saved. But all of us have experienced those same things. that same process and will continue to do so until we die because we do not attain to perfection in this life but there is progressive sanctification that is we grow incrementally in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord over a lifetime thank God for that that our Lord doesn't let us go. Even when we're paralyzed in the quicksand of sin, he comes faithfully. He leaves the 99. He comes, seeks us out, and finds us. With our faint cries, he's heard us, and he pulls us out of the miry clay. He cleans us up. He washes us afresh in that fountain for sin and for uncleanness, and he plants our feet back on himself, the rock. Thank God for that. Don't you love the Lord? Don't you just love him? If he was here right now, I'd just fall down and worship him. But he is here right now. What am I saying? Worship him, thank him, praise him for his preserving and persevering grace in your life and in mine. Let's move on. I want to try to get through this chapter today. Bear with me and we thank you for bearing with the word of exhortation. But as I said, God will never leave nor forsake his true saints, but all of Israel's services are now rejected. And the critical lesson is that if God won't honor himself any longer through Israel's worship services and their sacrifices on the altar, and all of these rituals which were designed to draw the people to Christ, to purify them because of their love for him, he will be honored by their sufferings and their chastisements. In either way, he will be honored and he will be praised. It's as if God says, since you won't give me my glory from your duty and service, I will still get my glory from your sufferings and your chastisements. But it's always best to give him glory from the former and not the latter. Secondly, we see in our text weak leaders, verses 10 through 12. Weak leaders. Verse 10, the princes of Judah are like those who remove a landmark. I will pour out my wrath on them like water. Now God addresses the leaders of Judah. Like I said, Judah is not innocent, but they're not as bad as Israel yet. And Judah's leaders, like Israel's leaders, were guilty of breaking the covenant. God says that. How? They moved the boundary stones which disrespected God's law. If the leaders publicly disrespected the law of Moses, then the people will be emboldened to do the same. And this will cause chaos and the ultimate breakdown of society. We see our leaders in politics, political leaders in our nation, many of them scandalously Well, used to be anyway. Now it doesn't matter what scandal takes place. They decide to stay in office. But when I was growing up, I'll be 61 years old in about a week and a half. When I was growing up, if the slightest little scandal occurred and it bore out to be true, the politician would resign. He would do the decent thing and resign because if he stayed in office, it would cause the people to not respect the law. But removing or moving the boundary stones was forbidden in the laws we read in Deuteronomy 19, 14. You shall not remove your neighbor's landmark, which the men of old have set in your inheritance, which you will inherit in the land that the Lord your God is giving to you to possess. And it carried a curse if they did that in Deuteronomy 27, 17. Cursed is the one who moves his neighbor's landmark. And so this act of moving the boundary stones was tantamount to theft. You were stealing some of your neighbor's property. When no one was looking, you'd move the landmark about 15 feet that way. And you're stealing some of his property. And so it obscured the legal boundary between properties. And this was a way of taking land that belonged to someone else. And God exposes the injustice of the leaders. God says he'll pour out his anger upon them like a flood. The leaders were doing this. They were moving the landmarks, the boundaries. They were taking land from the people. See, God was not only angry with the people, He was angry with the leaders. The leaders were more sinful and wicked than the people, generally speaking, with rare exception. They broke every kind of law, civil, religious, spiritual. Nothing seemed to restrain them in this period of national life in Israel. They got very bold and brazen. As we see today, our politicians are very bold and brazen. They stay in office when they commit the most atrocious crimes and sins. And if the church doesn't cry out against it, if pastors are not the last line of defense in stirring up the consciences of the people to remind them that we need to have godly biblical principles regulating and controlling our society and our churches and our families, for these are the institutions that God has raised up to keep us in peace and in health and protected from evil. And the church is God's teaching institution to correct those in the world and in society. But we need to do it God's way. We don't go off like a bull in a Chinese shop and get in some senator's face and start rebuking him and quoting the Bible. I mean, there's a time and a way and a place for everything. We need to use wisdom. But it starts in the church. We are the institution. that teaches the world the truth and calls the world and each other back to maintain the standard of the truth in our behavior and lifestyles. Nothing seemed to restrain these leaders though. Maybe they thought that they were above the law and that the laws are for the common people and not for the high and mighty. This is not the case today in the world and in the church. Leaders break the laws. Is there to be no end of the scandals of pastors? You know, I still see Jim Baker. And what's the name of that other evangelist? I don't even want to say what he did. This is 20, 30 years ago. Charismatic evangelist. He's on TV still. Huh? Jimmy Swagger. We need to be careful when we call people out, because it could happen to us for sure. Let any man that thinketh he stand, take heed, lest he fall. But at the same time, by way of application, is a perfect example. We have pastors who pay lip service to repentance. They take a few weeks out of the pulpit. Large churches, 10,000 members, I've heard. Church growth churches. Whether they take a few months off or a year off, they divorce their wives, sexual immorality, all kinds of other problems. Charles Stanley didn't miss a beat. You know, his wife divorced him, but you know, still has his worldwide ministry, television ministry. Is there no deference and concern to what the word of God says? to God's feelings, God's thoughts. It seems as if leaders are growing more emboldened in their sin and hypocrisy in these end times. And this demonstrates how much corruption is in the heart of man. This brings up the application and the historical fact that Morally weak political and church leaders will bring God's judgment on themselves and everyone else under their influence and authority. And we don't understand why we're experiencing such judgment now in America and in our churches. It starts with the leaders and our leaders are weak and immoral. Most of them, not all of them, thank God, but many of them. And the people are spineless, they have banana spines. And I don't know how, in our current political presidential race, one of the two candidates who is under investigation for breaking many laws and has a long history of corruption, proven corruption, can receive a higher rating percentage-wise in the polls than the other candidate who hasn't been convicted. who's a non-politician. That itself is an example of what I'm talking about. In 1965, that would never happen. In 1975, 1985, that would never happen. The minute the scandal came up, if it was proven, stop, suspend the campaign, I'm out. It shows you the withering work of the Holy Spirit, who is removing the restraints on sin, as we read earlier in 2 Thessalonians. And we as Christians, whom the Lord Jesus told us that we will not be ignorant of the signs of the times, we see these things taking place before our very eyes. And when we see these things taking place, the Lord Jesus says, lift up your heads, for your redemption draws near. He also says in the book of Luke chapter 21, to end times Christians, addressing us specifically, in verse 34, He talks about the importance of watching. He says, but take heed to yourselves, verse 34 of Luke 21, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that day, the capital D there means day of the Lord again, come on you unexpectedly, for it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Worldwide snares are very rare to occur in the Bible and in history. The context here is the end times and the coming of Jesus Christ. Look at verse 36. Here's the remedy. Watch therefore and what? Pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass and to stand before the Son of Man. The phrase stand before the Son of Man doesn't say pray always that you won't lose your salvation. It's talking about the fact that We're to pray that God would give us persevering grace, that our garments would not be soiled. Nothing can take away our salvation. Don't let me even imply that. But there is an aggressive, proactive, active approach to perseverance that we are to have, not a passive, lethargic posture towards working at our salvation with fear and trembling. It means we need to use every means available that God has given us to stay faithful to him, both spiritually and otherwise. The fact that there seems to be a growing amount of corrupt leaders and politics and political positions of authority and in church positions of influence. indicates that God's curses and judgments are growing rapidly upon us and our nation. They are here. They're being poured out upon us now. And our hearts cannot be hard and indifferent to this reality. You and I must respond to the clarion call God gives us in his word, like I just read in Luke 21, 36, where we are to watch and pray always. Are you and I watching every day in our individual walk? Are you examining yourself? Are you aggressively and vigorously repenting of any known sin? Are you searching your hearts? Are you asking the Lord for a spirit of repentance? Are you asking Him to search your heart and try you and see if there be any wicked way in you? Are you looking unto Jesus? Are you fixing your faith on Him, clinging to Him, holding on to Him by faith until He releases fresh grace through His blood, to wash and purify you from dead works and from sins committed that you have not repented of. That is a process that must take place daily in our individual walk. And then, are you doing the minimum as a Christian? Are you availing yourself of the minimum means of grace? Now there are some exceptions because of physical limitations and pain that some are in. We have our share of hospital patients here at Christ Bible Church. Sometimes I call I call us instead of a church, I call us a hospital because we have so many people who have physical maladies and illnesses and chronic physical problems. But aside from those people, We should not have the attitude of, well, I'll stand as close to the line as I can possibly get and still survive and see if I don't fall off on the other side into sin, temptation, and back into the world again. No. The wise servant is going to stay as far away of that line as possible. and avail himself or herself of all of the means of grace. Every prayer meeting, every Bible study, every worship service, you can't get enough because you want to come under the sanctifying, penetrating, revival Word of God that will stir you up. It is the preaching and teaching and studying of the Word of God that he ordained to take his convictions His truth and His mind and replanted deep into your heart again so that your whole inner man is fortified and galvanized with the highest convictions you can possibly have afresh to keep you as far away from the line as possible. It is the preaching and teaching of the Word of God, a searching word, a word of exposition and application to our consciences that God specifically has ordained for you to come back in, as far away as you may be right now, on a weekly basis. If the Word is preached and taught in the way God has ordained it, He will bring you back into the very altar and throne room of God in your heart. exposing sin, and reminding us of how forgiving our Savior is, how willing, ready, and able He is to reform us, to restore us, and to revive us. So are you availing yourself, or are you doing just the bare minimum? Are you one of those, like the Jews here, last resort Christians? As a last resort, I'll give my one dollar a week and my one hour a week to God on Sunday afternoon. As a last resort, I'll do my duty, and until then, I need to hear the loudest wake-up call possible from God to get my attention, because I'm not exposing myself to daily reading, meditating and prayer, and availing myself of all the means, external means of grace that the church offers. So I'm not putting myself in a place where I'm being pulled and called back to God of my own choosing, and therefore I've developed this attitude of procrastination. I put off and put off God's priorities and put it off and put it off and put it off until I absolutely have to do the right thing. But if any of us are filled with the Spirit, If any of us hear from God, if any of us have God's convictions in some medium or large way, we are zealous for the truth. We want to be everywhere and anywhere where God calls us to be, to learn, to study, to grow, and to serve. Are you hearing me? I know when I'm walking in the Spirit and I have the mind of Christ and a clear conscience, I can't get enough. I delight in the law of God after the inward man. All my desire is for Him, for His people, for His word, for His truth. Everything else in my life becomes secondary in importance. However important it may seem to me when I'm backslidden, or when my convictions are at low end, when I am walking with the Lord in a blameless way with clean hands and a pure heart, It is the things of Christ that I delight in and everything else is an interruption between the times I can immerse myself in the Word of God and praise Him and worship Him and abide long at the throne of grace and adore my Savior and renew my marriage vows to Him. He is a faithful Savior. He will not forsake us nor leave us, but over time, he will make us ashamed and humiliated that in the case of some of us, he has become last on the priority list. And it'll fill our hearts with sorrow and regret that we've treated him in a way that is not fitting for us as his bondservants and slaves. especially since he died for us. You say, oh, here you go with your Jewish guilt trip. It's not a guilt trip. It's what the Bible teaches. Verse after verse in the New Testament uses the atoning death of Christ as the highest motivation to inspire us to the highest levels of sacrifice and service to the Lord. He died. As we read in second Corinthians chapter five. For the love of Christ. Verse 14 compels us that or because we judged us that if one died for all, then all died and he died for all that those who live should no longer live for themselves. but for him who died for them and rose again. He died to release us from the chains and captivity of vain lifestyles that were leading to hell or leading to nowhere as much as we may heap up possessions and money and material things and achievements and degrees and all of these things that we worked so hard to obtain and it's okay to study and it's okay to get an education It's okay to get all these things as long as you keep them in eternal perspective and don't make idols of them at any time along the way. And if you do that, usually you'll have to change your plans and arrive at an unorthodox way of achieving those goals instead of the program way that most people do it. because you realize at a certain point that you will not be able to walk with the Lord in the way that you need to walk with Him to maintain your relationship with Him in holiness, and you will not be able to serve Him as an active member, not an inactive member, but an active member of the church if you're going to be taking 16 units or 18 units a quarter or semester, if you're going to be working 60, 70 hours a week, if you're going to be doing this, that, and the other thing, you cannot serve God faithfully as well, at least maintain the minimum spiritual level of faithfulness heart to heart with the Lord that he requires of us. You can't do both. Especially in our world, in our world where time management and our schedule and our commitments drown us, drown us. in the cares of this life. Unintentionally, listen, unintentionally most of the time, right? But then one day you wake up and you say, wait a minute, I'm dry as a doorknob. I haven't experienced the joy of the Lord in a long time because I know the level of Bible reading and meditation and prayer that I need to be doing to get to that point where God and I go back into the Garden of Eden and walk on that level where there's an open heaven and I'm partaking of Jesus in love and in close fellowship. Right? That's where he wants us. That's our priority. The Lord Jesus is worthy to receive Everything we have in our, if we had 10,000 lives to give him, it would barely touch the hem of the garment. He died a criminal's death for you and for me. We were the criminals. We broke the laws of God. But he prevented us from having the shame and humiliation and embarrassment on an unbelievable level that you and I would have on Judgment Day, if we die outside of a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. And every person who has ever lived is standing there at Judgment Day to observe all of my sins, all of the perversions of the thoughts and the words and the actions that you and I have done. Can you imagine the embarrassment that it would cause in your mind and in mine. But the Lord Jesus paid the price. He is the one who died in our place vicariously on the cross. He is the one that absorbed the shame. It says as he set his face as Flint to go to Jerusalem, dying on the cross, despising the shame. The shame of being exposed as a criminal, dying on the cross. He didn't deserve that. But he suffered and died that way in my place so that I don't have to experience that humiliation and shame on judgment day. On the contrary, when I stand before God, I hear words. I don't hear any words about sin. I hear words of commendation. Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord. Oh, that righteousness of Christ was transferred to me. So that God's opinion of me changed. He now loves me. I'm His child. I'm accepted in the Beloved. I have fellowship with Him. All of my sins are forgiven. And God loves me and accepts me. Because of what Jesus did, bearing my punishment, bearing the handwriting of ordinances that was against me. in his own body on the cross. Billions and billions of sins of word, thought and deed that I committed over a lifetime. He bore them in his own body so that the wrath of God against me was completely diffused and exhausted. There was none of it left. He poured out all of that wrath on the head of his son who took my place. And he took my place not because I deserved it, but because he loved me anyway. as unlovable and as unworthy of his love as I am. That's a love, that's agape love. It's not of this world that I was loved with by the Lord that I don't deserve. Doesn't he deserve to be served as the top priority of our life, not as a last resort Not only when we absolutely have to, if the pastor calls me and says, can you go out and hand out tracts today with the street preachers, please, please, please. Or do you go to the pastor and say, okay, pastor, what ministry needs some servants to serve in? Well, I need somebody to clean the toilets. When you have the mind of Christ and the love of Christ driving you and guiding you, no task is too dirty. I remember when I was in the Marine Corps and I'll close with this. I had become a new Christian. I'd only been saved for a couple of months, 20 years old. I was a rifle instructor. I was a Sergeant. I taught Marines how to shoot the rifle for qualification on the rifle range once a year. They called my job primary marksmanship instructor. And there were about 10 of us in our unit of instructors. And every day after, well, this was during working hours. I guess it was around lunchtime. And I was one of those he-man, macho marine sergeants. And nobody could get over on me with anything. Being Jewish, it added a little bit of clarity and discernment, because usually a Jew can see somebody coming to try to take something away from you. Not that we're better than anybody else. So I had gotten saved, and the guys were just kind of finding out what I had gone through. And they were amazed. And then there was this job that needed to be done. It was a menial task, sweeping up garbage or something. And there was a gunnery sergeant, about six sergeants, and a corporal that was in the conference room there talking, our office. The lieutenant came in and said, OK, we got somebody. One of you guys need to clean up the garbage. And I was one of the senior sergeants. I'd been in rank as sergeant for a while. So one of you guys need to go out and sweep up the garbage out there. So everyone's looking at each other. And I never volunteered for anything before I'd become a Christian. No, I mean, let these other people do it. I was the last guy who would ever raise their hand. They would look at me, and I'd laugh at them. So all of a sudden, everyone turns to the corporal, the Hispanic corporal that was there, because he's the lowest rank there. And while they're turning, looking at him and smiling, because they knew he had to do it, I jumped up and said, I'll do it. And they all almost fell over in disbelief. But I was so filled with the love of God If the lieutenant came in and said, everybody take off your boots and have Jacobs wash your feet, I would have done it. You see, that's the kind of love you have for the Lord Jesus Christ. You do anything to obey him and serve him. You would keep giving and giving and giving until you have nothing left. And even when you have nothing left in your mind, you would tell the Lord, Lord, give me some more so I can keep giving to you. So we want to be true Christians, not Sunday Christians, true Christians, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Let's serve him. Let's keep him at the top of the priority list, above school, above work, above everything else. And if you have the right motivation, you have the spirit of God driving you, inspiring you, there won't be any needs here at Christ Bible Church. We'll have too many volunteers. We'll have to say, go back, go back. We have enough. Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for giving your people such grace to hear a word is this on a very hot day. But we thank you, though, for your warnings and admonitions from the scripture. You know just what we need at the right time that we need it to hear and to be reminded of. We thankful where we thank you for your faithfulness to our souls. And that even when we forget, even when we forget you and our priorities are changed and you end up being last on the list, you're still faithful to our souls. You still think about us and pray for us and take care of our needs and make sure that we have our needs met. We praise you for this. We love you, Lord Jesus. We bless you and we pray that every heart, every mind, every spirit would be in submission to you right now as we prepare our hearts for the Lord's Supper. In Jesus name we pray, amen.