altogether, even if they fled far away, that there was no escape. God calls leadership, whether it was the king, whether it was a prophet, whether it was the priest, whether it was a political leader in our day, whether it was a pastor, no matter who it is, if God called us in any place of leadership, the responsibility is that we live to that leadership. No matter if it rises, whether it falls, that we have been given a responsibility and that first responsibility is that we keep that. You know, you think about, I don't know about you, I like to read as much as I like to watch movies, mainly war movies or westerns, but the things that I read are these, that you find men that stand out, or even women who stand out, like Deborah, who stand out, who face the problem, who face the difficulty, and they don't run away from it. And when they're called to stand in a place that's a difficult place, maybe even to their own harm, like Gideon, very much could have been. That they stand and their strength isn't in themselves, but rather it's in the Lord. And they're forsaking everything and fleeing it off and trying to save their own skin, as it were. Trying to save themselves, they've lost it. And didn't Jesus tell us in the same way, he who is going to save his life will lose it and he who loses his life for his sake would what? Would gain it? So it cost us, it cost all of us in our lives, it cost us a giving away of things, of dying to ourself, of dying to even sometimes our own aspirations in pursuing that which God has called us to do. We may have had a different direction than what God has set us in. And yet, even in that different direction, if God's called us to do something, to put our hand to the plow, as Jesus said, we don't look back. Because if we do look back, then we are not worthy for that position. We're not worthy for that calling. And so the demise of the people came because of the fall of the leaders. As the leaders go, so go the people. And we ought to see that in our own case, in our own life, in our own time, that that goes very much as well. He looks at it, and it reminds me of several things in the New Testament. First of all, you remember in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew's chapter 24 and 25, that in chapter 24 it talked about a time of trouble, of tribulation, of Jacob's trouble that would come, when the one that would oppose God would stand and the the desolation would come of Jacob. It says, if he who is upon the housetop, don't go down to take clothes. And if you're in the field, don't come back to the city, but to flee from there. And wherever you are, from there to go. And we find them up on the housetops, all of them up on the housetops, but they're not doing what one would suspect that they were doing. If you've ever read Josephus' history of Israel, whether it's the battles of Israel, the war of Israel, or whether it's just the history of Israel, one of the things you'll find out is that when Titus had surrounded Jerusalem, previous to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, that you'd expect the people working together, trying to find some way of defense, some way to protect themselves and to guard themselves. But what you found was that there was rioting in the streets, There were bands of people who had gathered themselves together as gangs. They were robbing, they were stealing, they were killing. And it's just like he says here, they're shouting, the whole town, it's a noisy shamble. A jubilant town, they're all shouting, they're noising, and those who are dying are not dying by the sword, they're not dying in a battle. But rather, they're dying because of what's going on in the city. That the people have gone into chaos. Now we've seen chaos in our own time. I think back all the way back in many things that have happened in Los Angeles. But we find that people that live and run pursue chaos. That's what they're going to get. That's all they're going to get is chaos. And instead of someone giving direction and saying, let's do this, let's do that, let's find this means of defense, or let's find this means by which we can rescue the city by making negotiations that we can give a surrender of peace. Rather you find them killing themselves. But like you said, not by sword. They're not falling in battle. They're falling among themselves because they have no one to direct them. And then Jesus said that my people are like sheep without a shepherd. And what do sheep do that have no shepherd? They scatter. They just wander. And there is no defense because their only defense is a shepherd. It's the one that would watch over them, protect them, and guide them. Isaiah doesn't see this with glee. He doesn't see this in some kind of a gladness. I'm sure glad they're getting what they deserve or in any of that regard. But rather we find him very much emotionally tied up into it in verse four. Because in verse four he says, don't look, he answered, he said, don't look at me, don't watch me. Because his life was filled with bitter weeping. And he said, don't try to comfort me, because the daughter of my people are destroyed. We should never rejoice even when our enemies come to their own demise. There should never be a rejoicing at the falling down or the failure of someone else. There should never be that. We ought to see people for what they are, made in the image of God, created as God has designed them to be the image bearers of God and to bring glory to God in their very lives. So when we see people that are broken, when we see people that are down, that we ought to fill, in some sense, a compassion, a mercy, a gentleness towards them, and that we do pray, and that we do weep, and that we find ourselves pleading to God. It was said of John Knox that he had pled before the Lord, and he says, God, give me Scotland or let me die. And we don't find that passion for people that are lost, do we? We don't find ourselves looking at our neighbor and find the trouble that they're having. But when we do pray for our neighbor, and I won't mention neighbors, but over the course of 21 years living on our street, we've had some neighbors that have had some problems. And they've had some bitter problems. In fact, even problems that would take it out in the middle of the street. and to talk to them and pray with them and see that God would show mercy and restore a family and make them a strong, not only a strong family, but a strong Christian family that now serve the Lord. Are we ever driven in our own emotions towards people and their need? Are we ever compelled that we would reach out to someone that's maybe not like us, someone that is having trouble? We don't have to look far, we really don't, because they live all around us. and yet to look and to see the demise of someone and not be concerned at all. He said, don't try to comfort me, because I look around and I see the destruction of my people. You know, it's the irony of this whole thing is, is that the other messages have been against other nations. And yet, for Israel to think that because they were the people of God, that they are the choice of God, that they were the only people of God, that God had no other people, and that they were so special that that's all that mattered. The reality is it was never that way. It's never been that way that Israel was the only people. Egypt's called my daughter, and we find Babylon and Assyria are called my son in all of these messages. And so it's not as though God's chosen one people and said, these are the ones that I favor. God's favor is upon humanity. I think of Daniel 7, and I think of the book of Revelation in chapter 7 and 14. and also in the songs of Revelation chapter 5, where it says that Christ has redeemed people from every tribe, every language, every speech, every kind of classification that we can give to people, Christ has redeemed for himself out of those nations. And Daniel 7 says that because of he has offered up his soul, he comes before the ancient of the days, and he gives him the nations as his inheritance, and they, the people that he has given to them, they will be the ones that will reign on his stead upon the earth. And so we look and we find Jerusalem, and Jerusalem with its neighbors, and there's always an unrest and uneasiness, but we find that their fall, their failing is because of failing of leadership. Ezekiel saw the same thing. He described them as rams. They go down into the water only concerned about themselves, and they go down into the water to drink, and they muddy the water. They even use the restroom in the water, and they muddy up everything, and then the weak of the sheep come along, and that's what they have to drink. That's what they have to sustain themselves on, that which had been trampled down, that which has been left. When leaders are not concerned for the people that God has put them over, then there is certainly a day of judgment that comes. He describes it how? Because any defenses that Jerusalem have are gone. And the only really defense that they ever had was the Lord. Walls never were able to keep people out or to keep people in, were they? You can't keep people out with a mere wall. Walls can be broken down. In fact, we find they're tearing their own houses down, ripping their houses apart in order to try to fill the gaps in the wall that have been breached because of the battering. And the battering of the walls in this valley of vision, this is what he sees is coming upon Jerusalem. And they're shouting, and they're looking into the mountain. Where does our help come from? Well, the Psalms tell us that. My help comes from the mountain. I look into the mountain for where my help comes from. It comes from the Lord. But there are other things in the mountains, too. Because for all of Israel's history, they did go to the mountains. They went to what was called the Baal Moth. They went to the high places. And there they worshipped under every green tree to every kind of deity that exists. They worshipped their economic strength, worshipping the gods of Baal, which was the fertility god that brought the harvest in the fall and brought the spring rains to bring the crop and the growth. They worshipped the Asherah Pole that brought them prosperity. They worshipped gods that would give them strength against their enemies. They worshipped all kinds of things except the Lord of Hosts. And though they did everything in their possible power, everything that they could possibly do to be a defense unto themselves, they tried to fill in the breaches, they tried to make places so that they'd have water to sustain them during this siege. And yet the one thing they did not do in verse 11, and most of the time it's the last thing that we do, they did not look into the one who made it, the one who made the ancient poles, the one who made and has sustained them, nor has planned it long ago, they did not look to him. What does it take for us to look to the Lord? How far do we have to go down the track before we finally stop and we look up? You know, I think for many, I know myself, I think for many of us that we have come to the end of our rope before we ever looked to the Lord, who truly was the one that would sustain us at the beginning of the road. And we wait until everything's finally in a mess and we have no place else to look, and then we look up and say, God help. Or maybe we don't. Maybe we begin to cuss God and curse God. We begin to cry out as somehow or another, God is unworthy of our respect and our love because, well, he hasn't done what we wanted to and he didn't do it the way we wanted to. Because I hear both sides, I see it in both directions. The reality is, is there's only one place that we're ever secure, and that's in the Lord and in the hand of the Lord. I took my first mission class from a former Southern Baptist missionary who had been in Uganda in the 70s during Idi Amin. And Jimmy Hooten and his wife and two sons were there. And they got a warning because the military was Muslim. They'd gotten a warning from one of the Christian officers and he said, you've got to flee the country and you've got to get out of the country tonight. Because tomorrow they're coming through the villages and they're going to kill every Christian. Well, there was an independent Baptist preacher said, well, I'm not going anywhere. Military came through and they took about a 26 penny nail and they drove it through his forehead and pinned him to a tree. He trusted in the Lord, but he lacked good wisdom, didn't he? And Jiminy's wife and the two boys, they got in their Land Rover and they went cross-country because the roads weren't safe. I don't know if you ever saw Hotel Rwanda or not and the kind of things that happened along the highway while you had the genocide going on. But Jiminy's wife were going through and they had to go through some villages on their way out of the country. And as they were fleeing, they came into one village, and people were running through the village. And he and his wife stopped. They're only white folks in the whole area. And they stop, and they're there in this SUV. And they're stopping and watching all the people fleeing through the village, and they hear guns, and they see the military, and they're chasing them, and they're shooting them down the street. And a side door opens in the SUV, and this lady gets in. She doesn't say a word. She just sits there. And it's like God put his hand over their SUV, and as the people were fleeing through the village, and they were being shot at, They didn't even notice them. And they ran past them, they went on through the village, and as soon as they'd gone past, the lady got out of the van. And it was like God had put the van there for that lady at that time, because they wouldn't have normally been there, would they? And it was like God had put a shelter, had put a covering over their SUV, because if he had not, they too would have been shot right there in the village, would they not? And so here's Jimmy Hooten and his two sons and his wife. And here's this lady whom they never knew before and they never met after. And they're saved in the midst of all of this horror. Horror still comes. And we find that where we find our strength is that we look to the Lord. We look to God in everything. It doesn't have to be something so severe as that. But what about when things are falling down in your own home? Where do you look? Where do you look? You just kind of tough it out because we're Americans and that's what Americans do. We pull up our bootstraps and we just get with it. Is that what we do? There's some things that even men can't fix. If it's plastic, it's pretty tough to fix. And super glue won't fix everything, will it? There's some things we can't fix. And the only thing that we can ever do to repair them is to get on our knees before the Lord, just like I told the kids earlier. That's where our strength is. Our strength is to bow down before God. and to make confession that God is our strength. And if there's any hope for any of us in anything in life, no matter what we're going through, our strength's in the Lord. And our God is able to accomplish it. Why? Well, for several reasons. First of all, He's the one who made us. And that's what He says. Why not look to the one who made it? Why not look to Him? And God's plans, God's plans are eternal plans. God, from the very beginning, has been planning our salvation. Jesus Christ is called the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Do you think it surprised God on the day that Adam and Eve sinned in the garden? Do you think it caught God by surprise and goes, huh, what am I going to do now? The people I made in my own image, look, they messed up. It didn't surprise God in the least, because even Satan fell because of pride. Every sin is at the root of it is pride, that somehow or another I deserve whatever I'm going to do. It's mine. I deserve it. I have a right to this in any regard. The reality is we don't. God has plans, and we don't look to the one who has planned. Isn't it one of our favorite Bible verses that comes and tells us Romans 8.28. I'm just waiting for somebody to say it. Romans 8.28. It's like John 3.16. These are some Bible verses you ought to know. Go home and look it up today. Write on a three by five card, memorize it. Because it reminds us to those who love God and are called according to a purpose, all things are working together for good. Everything. In Romans 12 too, that God's will is good and perfect and acceptable. That it's in all ways, God's plan's always the best for us if we will just trust it. And they didn't. And because they didn't, what do we find them doing? doing what desperate and hopeless men do. They think, and somehow, that in slaughtering, we're going to lose them anyway, so we might as well enjoy a good feast tonight. Slaughtering of oxen, and slaughtering of sheep, and eating flesh, and drinking wine. They became good Epicureans before Epicurus ever lived. Eating and drinking for tomorrow we die. At least I'll die on a full stomach. That's good confidence, isn't it? Maybe that's where we got the last milk for people on death row, I don't know. But I can hardly think that if I knew I was dying tomorrow, that the thing I'd be worrying about is eating today. I think I'd be trying to get all my affairs in order. I'd be trying to get everything right before God, before the day that I have to meet him. And he says, this sin of theirs, Listen to this, because the word to cover over, kephar, it's atonement. It's used of the covering that was covered, the pitch that was covered over the ark. What was the purpose of putting pitch on the ark? So water wouldn't come in and it'd float, it's cover. And kephar is atonement, it means to cover over. And what has covered over our sins? What covers us? the blood of Jesus Christ, that we have been covered, we've been atoned for, that God doesn't see our sin because it's hidden under the blood of Christ. It's hidden in his life, it's hidden in his death. And he says, this will not be atoned for, even to the time that you die, while you're living in this reckless ray, and it's a time for repentance. And that's what God's looking for. You remember the first words of John the Baptist or the first words of Jesus Christ. We heard them in Mark. We find that their message began with one word. What? Repent. Why? Because the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus said those words. John said those words. And what's God asking them to do? What is he looking for? He says, in that day, the Lord of hosts, Adonai, the Lord of hosts is looking. He wants them weeping and mourning and baldness and the girding of sackcloth. These are what should have come. In the midst of this disaster, there should have been a call to a national prayer and a day of fasting. You remember that's what the Ninevites did in Jonah. When they hear of their demise, they repent before God, they call for sackcloth and ashes. Even the animals were to be humbled. And they had fasting and they had prayer and God heard their prayer and he forgave them for a hundred years. It wouldn't be until Nahum had written that God would judge and finally destroy the Ninevites. God is looking for our repentance, for a change of heart, a change of me. that when I stand before God that I don't come with this great boasting of, Lord, look at me. I tie them my mint and my coming, but look at that man. Thank you, God, I'm not like him. You remember that in the Gospel of Luke, and the poor guy in the back is beating his chest and he's saying, God, have mercy on me. God's looking for repentance. God's looking for us to respond. He's looking for his own people, Israel, to do the same. And all he found was gulching themselves in drunkenness, because after all, tomorrow we die. Well, there's always somebody that raises their head up, and in an absence, in a vacuum of leadership, somebody always finds themselves in. And it's one that was neither worthy, nor was he qualified. God had set apart that there would be one sitting upon the throne of David, who was a son of David, and none else. And we have a man whose name is Shebna. You know, there's some times you like to see your name, and there's other times you wish it didn't appear. You know, if you're on the dean's list, you kind of like your name to be up there. You know, if you're on the honor roll, you kind of like to see it in the paper, right? But if you're on the dean's list because you're in trouble, or you're a troubled student, or your name's on a list that goes to the office because you've been acting up, you don't want your name on that list, do you? There's some times you don't want your name to be mentioned. I remember in church, I had only been a Christian. I hadn't even been a Christian a year. I was sitting with Francis, and we were kind of on the right side to the preacher. And right in the middle of it, I hear him go, Phil Sigmund. Now, I'm 23 years old, and I'm scared to death. because I'm paying attention to what he's preaching and I hear my name and I'm thinking, what did I do? You know, I always get that kind of this nervous sweating and all that when my name was called. And he said, there's some boys walking outside that ought to be in this building. I see them passing through the glass. I need you to go out there and tell them to get in here. And when they're coming in, I want your moms to look over there and see it's your son or your daughter and you need to get onto them. Man, I just melted. I didn't want my name to be called. If I called your name, would you want me to call your name in the middle of a sermon today? No, none of us do. We don't wanna be called out, but that's exactly what Shemna's being done. Here in the midst of all this, God's pointing him out. I don't know about you, but this, at that point, I'd have been weeping and crying. And he asked him three questions, and each of them has the word here, here in this place. Hebrews kind of difficult, it says, what to you here and who to you here? So it's basically he's asking the question, why are you here? Why are you in the palace? Why are you in the place where David's descendant is supposed to be? What are you doing here in the palace? And what is it to you that you're here? What's your claim to be here? What's your right to be here? And then why have you hewn out a tomb for yourself here? You know, here's what I can only think about this guy. He knows he's gonna die. But before he dies, he wants to make sure that he has some kind of honor in his death. He wants to be honored. He wants people to honor him. Does he deserve to be honored? Anyone? Does he deserve to be honored? Does anyone, does this guy named Shibna, does he deserve for people to remember him in infamy because he is buried with the kings in the city of David? No, he does not qualify. You know, they're never going to call my wife on the day that I die and ask her if she would like to bury me in Arlington Cemetery. Can you imagine that? I am not going to be buried in Arlington Cemetery. How come? I'm not qualified. There's no good reason for me to be there. Now there'll be a plot of ground in a country cemetery that I'll go to, but it's not gonna be Arlington Cemetery. How come? For the same reason that Shibna had no business being buried in the temple, or being buried in the palace. He didn't belong there. And it was not his place. And not only did he not belong there, but God was not going to allow him to be there. And listen to it. God says, the Lord says, I'm going to shake you. I mean, you can't get, for this word in its tense, I mean, it's violent shaking. I mean, it's just, I've never been in an earthquake where buildings are falling down, but I can just see it that way, that everything's falling down around him and he's just shaking the pudding out of him. He says, like a strong man, just shaking you. And then I'm going to take you like a ball. I'm going to hurl you around. I'm going to throw you out into the wildest field in the broadest place. And that's where you're going to stay. That's where you're going to be buried. You're not even going to be buried. You're going to be left in the field for the birds and animals to eat. You will not be here. And your glorious chariot will become the shame of your master's house. You'll be ashamed, people will be ashamed, and there'll be no glory and honor to you. We are never given the place to take honor to ourself. You remember Jesus told of a banquet, and he said, when you're invited to a banquet, don't take the highest seat, you take the lowest seat. Because it's far better that if you're sitting at the table and you take the seat of honor, it's far better that if you're sitting in the seat of honor, that you're rather sitting in the seat, the lowest seat, and that the person who has invited you, the host who has invited you to the banquet would say, no, no, no, I want you to sit up here with me. Then if you're sitting beside him at the seat of honor, he'd say, I'm sorry, but I need you to go sit over there because I choose to honor somebody else. This seat's for someone else. Which one do you want to be? Shibna had taken the place of honor and God said, nope. You don't have any, in fact, you don't even have a place here. And he's cast out. Out into outer darkness. No memorial and nothing. But God says, and He gives a messianic promise. And the messianic promise isn't the Messiah, but it is a picture of the Messiah. And this guy whose name is Eliakim. Eliakim, and he is the son of, and I'm gonna say it in Hebrew because it's, you have at the end of it, it's Hilkiyahu. Hilkiyahu. Yahu at the end of the name means that they were worshipers of Yahweh. And El is that God is their God. And so my God is exalted is what his first name means. My God is exalted. You know, if I was to have a son, I think El Yaquim would be a good name to name him. That my God is exalted, not me, but my God is exalted. And he calls him, my servant. He says, my servant. When we get towards the second half of the book of Isaiah, we're going to find four songs that are called the servant songs. And they are messianic pictures. And so he's a foreshadowing of that messianic picture. So what's he do? There's one that's going to come. He's going to dress him in the robe. He's going to put the sash upon him. He's going to put the authority in his hand and he's going to be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. He's going to do exactly what a king is supposed to do. He's going to come and he will be to them the father to those who dwell in Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. The king's responsibility was to look over, to care for, to nourish, and to defend the people. And that's what El-Yakim would do, because he was the Lord's choice, and he was the Lord's servant, and the Lord's anointed. And you think about the book of Revelation. In Revelation, because it says he has the keys upon his shoulders to the house of David, Revelation 3, verse 7 says, speaking of Christ, that he will open and no one will shut, and he will shut and no one will open. If God opens the door, no one can shut it, and if God shuts the door, no one can open it. And he says of him that he will open and shut the door, and no one will have authority greater than his, and even that is going to be short-lived. It's only for a time. He'll bring honor and glory to his father, to his family, because he rules rightly. He's doing it exactly as God has set for him to do. He'll be a peg. He'll be something upon which to rest it. We find that in the book of Zechariah that there's a peg, Joshua is the peg, and that God will take both the king and he puts a crown upon Joshua, the high priest's head. But he doesn't leave it there, he takes the crown and he puts it up on his head and then he takes it off and hangs it on a peg inside of the temple. And he says that in one man that these two offices would be joined. You remember that there was one, the first king of Israel, Saul. He tried to join the two offices. He was king and he wanted to be priest. He wanted to offer up sacrifices before a battle. And because of it, God took away his throne and took away his right to throne. He never had a son to sit upon the throne after him. And yet we find that here in this one, and it's again a picture, that here is this man, that in this place, this sacred place, that God has given him a place. but it's only temporary. It'd be a place of honor for a while, and everything that was left in the temple, because even before this, they had begun to lose some of the vessels, the gold and silver, because of having to pay tribute to other kingdoms and other kings. And he said, the peg will give way, and it will be cut down, it will fall, it will be cut off, and the burden will fall from upon it. Even here it's short-lived because he's not the Messiah. He's only a picture of what the Messiah would be, one who would judge rightly and justly. But Israel's demise was determined because Israel as a nation refused to repent and mourn. They refused to go and sackcloth in ashes and in mourning, but chose gladness over it. And the end is the worst of it all, for the Lord has spoken it. God offers us today, we're in a valley, as it were, a valley of decision, a valley of vision. We know that there is a day that comes to all of us, a day of accounting. And we know that in our life and in the course of our life, that there are many things that come to us and come against us that we're always struggling with. In fact, in some sense, it's a trail of both joy and tears that we live. But in those times that we're struggling, to whom do we look? Do we find ourselves looking at all of our possessions or like the Jews during the 70 AD besiegement, find ourselves going through and pilferaging the city and raping and killing our brethren? Or do we find ourselves in sackcloth and ashes, humble before the Lord and asking God's forgiveness and God's grace, God's direction and God's healing, God's restoration? and for our salvation to be found in the sermon of the Lord, the one that did come, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Our hope is only found in him. As the catechism says, our only hope in life and death is in Jesus Christ. That's it. There's no other place I can turn you to. There's no help agency, there's no federal agency, state agency, local agency that can help you out of the mess that we call sin. But there is a God. A God who made us, a God who has planned for us from all eternity. If we look to Him and we honor ourself before our God, our God will raise us up. He will give us life, He will give us forgiveness. But if we don't, we will find on the day of our death that there has been no atonement. Today's the day of salvation. Today's the day of decision. And the invitation is to you, will you come? As we stand for the invitation, will you come?