I chose to take a long text because the text illustrates the theme very well, and it's sort of a passage of scripture that doesn't require a whole lot of exegesis or explanation. It's fairly self-explanatory. It's found in Deuteronomy 28, 15-68. Just a brief review. We are talking about revival. And we started with personal revival. Each one of us needs to look in our own hearts and say to the Lord ourselves, revive me. Revive me, O Lord. And if you've not become a Christian to say, Lord, give me life for the first time. To revive means you've had life and it's waning or it's languishing. And so you're praying, God, to revive me. But if you've never become a Christian, you've never been born again, that you pray that God give you spiritual life for the first time. We move from there to local church revival, saying it's easy to look at other people and see their problems, but what about us as a church, as a corporate body? We need to look at ourselves and ask the Lord to revive us as a corporate unit, as New Hope Baptist Church. We're one body, many parts. The hand cannot say to the foot, I don't need you. I am essentially kind of like the mouth. of the church in many ways, because I speak, but the mouth cannot say to the hands, the feet, to all the rest of the parts of the body, I don't need you, not at all. We look then to national revival. This is kind of building one step on another. We live in a nation that is dying before us. We are seeing the death of America. We are seeing the end of our nation as we know it. Rapidly, for some time now, we have been destroying our foundations. We've been abandoning the convictions of our forefathers. The church in America is in deep trouble and we need to pray for our nation, for the churches across America. I went to Romans 1 from there and showed that homosexuality and the growth of it in our culture is proof that we're under wrath Because that's the argument Paul uses in Romans 1. He says, "...the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth of unrighteousness." They take what God makes evident to them within and without in the creation. They suppress it. They exchange the truth of God for a lie, and they worship and serve created things rather than the Creator. Therefore, God gives them over to unclean and vile lusts like homosexuality. That was the argument. That is a proof that we are under wrath. We looked at abortion. Shedding the innocent blood of over 50 million children is a dreadful provocation of the Lord. And that means our country is in trouble. We have endangered ourselves as a nation. We looked at the dismal prospects of a broad revival in our country as so long as the churches are filled with false prophets who continually lie to the people, who conceal the truth of God from them, who conceal the truth about sin from them, who conceal the truth about God's wrath against sin from them, and how unlikely it is for churches to ever experience revival if the Word of God is not preached in the pulpits. I mean all of it. Nobody can preach every word of Scripture. I mean, I won't live long enough to 52 Sundays a year preach every verse of Scripture. But do your best to cover the broad themes of Scripture. Do your best to cover the attributes of God, the major themes emphasized in it. That's not happening. The false prophets are all over across the land. That has led to a famine of the Word of God. And once you take away the Word of God from the pulpits, Even if people read it or just, you know, briefly cover it, that's not enough. And if you take away the Word of God, you take away the very possibility of salvation, for the Scripture is clear. Being born again happens through, not in a vacuum, but through the Word of God, through hearing it. Faith comes through hearing. So that as the Word of God is taken away, faith is taken away. Salvation is taken away. America has been left to grope around in the darkness. And that's where we are today. And America doesn't care. America says, who cares? I don't want the Word of God anyway. Don't give me that anyway. I'm glad you're taking it away. And so what is a punishment of God upon us? The taking away of this book from our churches. The taking away of light and guidance. America does not feel it as a punishment. Does not feel the pain of it. We walk around in darkness and are clueless about what life is about and there are many consequences and we have no framework even to interpret anything. But America does not feel it as a consequence. She's happy. Get the word of God out. I don't want to hear it, she says. So that leads to the next step. If the absence of spiritual food does not bring America to her knees, then God will take away the other food. God will move from spiritual judgments to physical judgments. Our comforts, all the things that are important to America, food, prosperity, health, our sovereignty, our life, God will touch America's flesh. things that America idolizes, God will take away. And how sad it is that God can't get America's attention any other way. But by touching that which is least important in reality, but unfortunately most important to our nation, physical comforts. This is not unique, this is kind of the way the pattern works as you see it in the Old Testament. Things got spiritually bad for Israel before they got physically bad, usually. And it wasn't until things got really bad, physically, that Israel was brought to her knees to cry out to God to save her. And God often did. After giving the law through Moses, God warned the nation of Israel that if they ever forsook him, he would lay a heavy, heavy hand upon them. And that's what we find in our passage, Deuteronomy chapter 28, verses 15 and following. I read, But it shall come about, if you will not obey the Lord your God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes, with which I charge you today, that all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your baskets and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the offspring of your body, and the produce of your ground, the increase of your herd, and the young of your flock. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will send upon you curses, confusion and rebuke in all you undertake to do until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds because you have forsaken me. The Lord will make the pestilence cling to you until he has consumed you from the land where you are entering to possess it. The Lord will smite you with consumption, and with fever, and with inflammation, and with fiery heat, and with the sword, and with blight, and with mildew, and they shall pursue you until you perish. And the heaven which is over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust, and from heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed. The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them, but you shall flee seven ways before them, and you shall be an example of terror to all the kingdoms of the earth. And your carcasses shall be food to all the birds of the sky and to the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away." There'll be so many of them, people won't even be able to bear it. The Lord will smite you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors and with the scab and with the itch from which you cannot be healed. The Lord will smite you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart. And you shall grope at noon as the blind man gropes in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways, but you shall only be oppressed and robbed continually, with none to save you. You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall violate her. You shall build a house, but you shall not live in it. You shall plant a vineyard, but you shall not use its fruit. Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat of it. Your donkey shall be torn away from you, and shall not be restored to you. Your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you shall have none to save you. Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and yearn for them continually, but there shall be nothing you can do. They people whom you do not know shall eat up the produce of your ground and all your labors, and you shall never be anything but oppressed and crushed continually. And you shall be driven mad by the sight of what you see. The Lord will strike you on the knees and legs with sore boils from which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head. The Lord will bring you and your king whom you shall set over you to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone. And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a taunt among all the people where the Lord will drive you. You shall bring out much seed to the field, but you shall gather in little, for the locusts shall consume it. You shall plant and cultivate vineyards, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worms shall devour them. You shall have olive trees throughout your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives shall drop off. You shall have sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours, for they shall go into captivity. The crickets shall possess all your trees and the produce of your ground. The alien who is among you shall rise above you higher and higher, but you shall go down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head and you shall be the tail. So all these curses shall come on you and pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. And they shall become a sign and a wonder on you and your descendants forever, because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and with a glad heart for the abundance of all things. Therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord shall send against you in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things. and he will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you. The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as an eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you do not understand, a nation of fierce countenance who shall have no respect for the old or show favor to the young. Moreover, it shall eat the offspring of your herd and the produce of your ground until you are destroyed, who also leaves you no grain, new wine, or oil, nor the increase of your herd or the young of your flock until they have caused you to perish. And it shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls in which you trusted come down throughout your land, and it shall be besieging you in all your towns throughout your land which the Lord your God has given you. Then you shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you during the siege and the distress by which your enemy shall oppress you. The man who is refined and very delicate among you shall be hostile toward his brother and toward the wife he cherishes and toward the rest of his children who remain. so that he will not give even one of them any of the flesh of his children which he shall eat, since he has nothing else left during the siege and the distress by which your enemies shall oppress you in all your towns. The refined and delicate woman among you who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness and refinement shall be hostile toward the husband she cherishes, and toward her son and daughter, and toward her afterbirth which has issues from between her legs, and toward her children whom she bears, for she shall eat them secretly for lack of anything else during the siege and the distress by which your enemy shall oppress you and your towns. If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written in this book, to fear his honored and awesome name, the Lord your God, then the Lord will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, even severe and lasting plagues and miserable and chronic sicknesses. And he will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. Also, every sickness and every plague which was not written Which, not written in the book of this law, the Lord will bring on you until you are destroyed. Then you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as the stars of heaven for a multitude, because you did not obey the Lord your God. And it shall come about, that as the Lord delighted over you to prosper you and multiply you, so the Lord will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you. Then you shall be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. Moreover, the Lord will scatter you among all the peoples from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth. And there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone, which you your fathers have not known. And among those nations you shall find no rest, and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot. But there the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and despair of soul. So your life shall hang in doubt before you, and you shall be in dread night and day, and shall have no assurance of your life. In the morning you shall say, would that it were evening, and at evening you shall say, would that it were morning, because of the dread of your heart which you dread, and for the sight of your eyes which you shall see. And the Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships by which I spoke to you. You will never see it again, and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves. But there will be no buyer." This is what God promised to do to Israel if Israel ever forsook him and became idolatrous and abandoned him. And sure enough, it was done. Many, of course, will object with an objection that is becoming all too common. Well, that's just the Old Testament. You'll remember that the scripture reading read this morning from Hebrews chapter 10 says that if a person died on the testimony of two or three witnesses for forsaking the law of Moses, how much severer punishment do you think he will undergo who tramples the Son of God underfoot? The New Testament is not more soft and kind than the Old, it's more severe. Severer punishment than the Old Testament. This idea that the Old Testament is full of just anger and wrath and there's no love in it, and the New Testament is full of love and grace and there's no wrath in it, is ridiculous. It's nonsense. It's said by people who don't know their Bibles. In the Old Testament we have lots of love and grace of God. Many verses that are very familiar to people that talk about the love and grace of God, and there's lots of demonstrations of God's wrath. In the New Testament, yes, there are many demonstrations of love and wrath, excuse me, love and grace, and then there's lots of verses that deal with God's wrath. Read the book of Revelation. God does not change. He is the same today, yesterday, and forever. He does not change. Another objection, America is not Israel, so this passage doesn't apply. Well, I agree that America is not Israel, but that doesn't mean nothing applies from this passage. That's one of the lies of dispensationalism. The notion that we can just sort of cut the Old Testament off and have nothing more to do with it, as though it has nothing to do with this anymore, except for maybe when we die and we want Psalm 23 quoted in our funeral. Doesn't work that way. It's not the way it is. Look at the reverence that Jesus and the apostles had for the Old Testament, and that's the way we should be. Study the words of Jesus, see how many times he quoted the Old Testament, see how many times the apostles quoted it, and how they applied it to their day, and you will see how we should treat the Old Testament. America is not Israel, I agree. America has never been under covenant the way Israel was, I agree. But America came into being by the good providence of God. God was good to us. God brought people here who have religious convictions, who wanted to see Christianity prosper and flourish and not be always subject to the oppression of whoever king might come into power. And so they came over and they started this. And if you read the documents and you read many of the founding fathers and their statement and Supreme Court justices, they continually quote scripture. Our country was laid upon the foundation of the scriptures, and they owned it, and they professed it openly. And there are consequences to a nation that goes from that position to the position that we are today. You can't pray in schools, you can't have the Ten Commandments up. The church is supposed to be just off in its own little corner, minding its own business, never talking about anything, and has nothing at all to do with society or the state. And we've rejected it wholesale. Scripture says there are consequences to a nation that does that. It's called apostasy. And there are consequences to it. We know better. We had the truth. We exchanged it for a lie. And there are consequences to that. And you don't have to be Israel and be identical to Israel under covenant for there to be consequences. As if Israel is the only nation in the world God's ever punished? I don't think so. There are greater punishments to people who know the will of God and reject it than to those who have never known it or never known it in its clarity. There are greater punishments for a country like ours that has the scriptures in abundant supply and has lots of opportunities for you to hear the truth, even if it's unfortunately not in a local church near you. You know, somebody's out there thinking, well, it's not anywhere near me. Well, you can get it online. There are good books. There's lots of availability. There's no excuse for not reading the Bible. We have it available. It's in English. It has been for a long time. It's cheap. There's no excuse. And there are greater punishments for those who know the will of God and don't do it and reject it than those who are off in some dark corner of Papua who lived their entire life and never heard the scriptures. They will be punished according to the knowledge God has given them in their conscience and what is revealed through creation, but they will not be punished nearly so severe as America will be. 2 Peter 2, 20-21, if after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, if after that they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. It would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than having known it to turn away from the holy commandment and hand it to them. It would have been better for America never to have had the scriptures at all than to have them, embrace them, profess them, and then abandon them. Luke 12, 47-48, that slave who knew his master's will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will will receive many lashes. But the one who did not know it and committed deeds worthy of a flogging, papuans out in the dark jungles who have never read the scripture, will receive but few. For everyone who has been given much, much will be required, and to him whom they have trusted much of him they will ask all the more." God does not merely punish nations that have been in covenant with him and have rejected his covenants. See Sodom and Gomorrah. They were never in covenant with God. They never had the scriptures. See the Canaanites whom God destroyed, had them utterly destroyed in the land so Israel could possess it. They never had the scriptures. the Philistines, the Syrians, Tyre, Sidon, Edom, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Midianites, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Rome, Nineveh, over and over again, pagan nations that never had the scriptures, or had very little of them, were punished severely for rejecting the law of God revealed in nature and in conscience. How much more punishment will he deserve? How much more punishment will a nation deserve? Who have not only rejected law revealed by general revelation, by conscience, and by just the way things are that you can kind of observe by looking at life around you, and looking at the world around you. If those people receive severe punishments, how much severe punishment those who trample under put the Son of God in His Word? Conclusions from this text, this long text, one conclusion that is very obvious is that calamities come from God. Amos 3.6, if a trumpet is blown in a city, will not a people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city, has not the Lord done it? The Lord is not embarrassed by acknowledging these things, because the Lord knows how sinful man is, and He knows that when He brings calamities on people, it's just. Now it's hard to find ministers today who don't blush over this and want to skip past it and ignore it and say, like we heard about this man who was seeking counsel from John Piper, he's trying to find a minister who will acknowledge that calamities are from the Lord, that He brings them. It's hard to find anybody today who will admit that. Lamentations 3, 37-39, who is there who speaks when it comes to the past unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill go forth? Can be translated calamity. Why should any living mortal or any man offer complaints in view of his sins? So the fires in Colorado are from God. It doesn't mean that there maybe wasn't some fool on a secondary cause who threw a cigarette down the grass. Maybe so. It's still from God. God controls and overrules all man, including their foolishness. And God determines how wide the breadth and scope of the consequences of man's foolishness will spread. Am I saying that everyone who's had their house burned down is an evildoer? No. There might be Christians who've had their homes burned down. God will help them. He will help them recover. He will teach them something that they did not expect. He will bring good out of out of this calamity. But it is a judgment of God. It didn't just happen. Hurricane Katrina didn't just happen. It's of God. Tornadoes are from God. Floods are from God. Droughts are from God. All over this passage, this is so obvious. God controls the weather. He controls all circumstances. He controls the economy. Calamities are from the Lord. Isaiah 45, 5-7, I am the Lord and there is no other. Besides me there is no God and I will gird you though you have not known me. That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides me. I am the Lord and there is no other. The one forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity. I am the Lord who does all these. But today in America, people only want to own the one half. Yes, the Lord causes well-being, although people really don't give God that much credit for that. When well-being happens, people just expect it, they assume it, they take it for granted. They really don't give thanks to God. And then, you can kind of tell that people know calamities are from the Lord, because when calamities come, people, one, sometimes start praying, and secondly, they start grumbling at God. Well, if God has nothing to do with it, what are you grumbling at Him for? So people kind of know that this is true. They just won't find any minister to admit it. Or, few. I'm not saying I'm the only one saying this. I'm just speaking in an exaggerated way here. There are few ministers who are saying this. There are those out there doing it. America has no chance, it seems, of knowing what is happening to her. Her false prophets teach evolution and deism. that God is not involved and things just happen. And so God isn't involved in the calamities of the earth. They teach a God of love who would never bring a fire, never bring a flood, never bring a hurricane or a tornado or anything like that. He would never do that because he's a God of love. They teach that mankind is basically good, so why would God punish mankind anyway? And so This can't be from God. And so America has almost no chance, so to speak, of properly interpreting what's going on. God can pour out one punishment after another, but because the false prophets keep lying, they have no idea it's a punishment from God. And if you don't know you're being punished, you don't know you need to be reconciled to Him, or that you need to beg Him or get on your knees before Him. Weather stuff comes through, and what does America do? Let's get more global warming regulations, because it's obviously climate change. They have no idea that it's God punishing you, America. Listen to the words of Jesus. This is Jesus now. These are the words in red, so you can read these. On the same occasion, there were some present. You reported to him about the Galileans. whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And Jesus said to them, Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those 18 on whom the Tower of Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who lived in Jerusalem? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will also likewise perish. Jesus is not here saying that this didn't happen of God. No, He's saying, yeah, this is a consequence. This is a judgment. The only thing He's correcting is their notion that the people who have been judged are worse than the people still walking around. That's the only thing He's correcting. Don't conclude that because the tower didn't fall on you, that therefore you are more righteous than they, you will likewise perish." God does not merely punish nations that are in covenant with him. A second point is that the rise and fall of nations is determined by God. Israel's rise was determined by God, Israel's fall was determined by God. Job makes it explicit Job 12, 22-25, He makes the nations great, then destroys them. He enlarges the nations, then leaves them away. He deprives of intelligence the chiefs of the earth's people, and makes them wander in a pathless waste. Don't be surprised if your leaders become really dumb, for He deprives them of intelligence. They grope in darkness with no light, and He makes them stagger like a drunken man. God makes the nations great, and then he destroys them. Not because he's some overgrown child that wants to build a tower and then just knock it over. What Job is not telling you in there, but what we read from many other places in Scripture, is that it's because of nations' arrogance and what they do when they get powerful. Every nation you see that gets powerful in the Old Testament, God eventually judges them, because what do they do when they have power? They abuse people, and they become arrogant with it. Proverb made famous, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, really isn't true, but there's a point that it makes. Power doesn't corrupt, it simply exposes the corruption that's already there. And there's no one who's ever had absolute power but God, and it didn't corrupt him. But it exposes corruption. People will do things when they have lots of power that they don't do when they don't have lots of power. We see also from this text that the Lord deeply resents proud, rebellious, ungrateful, apostatizing nations. He deeply resents them. Proud, rebellious, ungrateful, apostatizing nations. Listen to Deuteronomy 8, 6-20. Spoken to Israel, therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him, for the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills. America's like that. A land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, a land where you will eat food without scarcity. America's like that, in which you will not lack anything. That's like us. A land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you've eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which he has given you. Beware. that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today. Otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, He led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions, and thirsty ground, for there was no water. He brought water for you out of the rock of flint. In the wilderness He fed you manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you, and that He might test you to do good for you in the end. Otherwise you may say in your heart, My power and My strength, the strength of My hand, made Me this wealth. But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. It shall come about, if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you today that you will surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so you shall perish, because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord your God. America has been greatly blessed with a great land full of prosperity. We lack nothing. We started out giving thanks to God. That's why we have a Thanksgiving holiday, because our original founders started it up and thought it was good and appropriate for us to give thanks to this good land that God has given us. And they acknowledge that the power to make wealth, and the power to have good crops, and the power to have good livestock, that reproduce and do well, and to expand, and to cultivate the land, and subdue the earth, and so forth, all comes from God, and He deserves thanks for these things. But if we become a nation that forgets God, not only forgets Him, but just flat out turns against Him deliberately, rejecting Him at every turn, look out, for God resents. proud, rebellious, ungrateful, apostatizing nations. That is clear from our text. We see from the text that when things go well, it is because God makes them go well. When things go bad, it is because God makes them go bad. Our good health, our jobs, our income, our success in our enterprises, our ability to have children, the health of our children, the safety from criminals, from disasters, from wild beasts, from poisonous snakes and insects, the stability of our economy, the reliability of the dollar, the stability of society, the growth of our crops, the lack of pests that would devour our crops, and the successfulness of pesticides that kill them. The amount of rain that we have, good weather for growing things, are all the gifts of God, and God can withdraw all of those gifts if he so chooses. Don't be surprised, fellow Americans, if there are more devastating hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes and tsunamis and floods in some areas and droughts in others and fires. Don't be surprised if pests descend upon our crops and eat them up. Pests that we haven't seen in decades and that we thought we'd conquered and become impervious to them because of our pesticides. Don't be surprised if our economy fails and goes into utter chaos. Don't be surprised if we have unemployment that reaches to percentages we never dreamed of. Don't be surprised if lazy people who have done nothing but mooch off the government for years have their gravy train dried up and don't be surprised if they resort to stealing from you. rather than try to get a job, which will be scarce anyway. Don't be surprised if our society descends into chaos, anarchy, civil war. Don't be surprised if martial law is imposed and there's curfews at night. Don't be surprised if crime goes to the roof and there's not enough police to deal with it. Don't be surprised if the vast majority of restaurants close, as well as a lot of other businesses that depend on discretionary spending. I'm not This is not a prophecy. I'm not saying, oh, this is definitely, all these things are going to happen. I'm just giving you examples based on the text and what we saw in there of things that could happen and we shouldn't be surprised if they happen. Because we deserve it as a nation. We wouldn't be surprised if we have routine power outages or caps on our power consumption and we have to sit in sweltering heat like this because the air conditioning doesn't work. I mean, it's not going to be fun. None may be surprised if multitudes of older people die in the heat. had huge power outages in the east in the last few days and reports of older people dying. They cannot handle this kind of heat. We don't realize in America how our lifespan is a whole lot longer sometimes for no other simple secondary cause than the fact that we're not living and having to endure sweltering heat. It's really hard on older people and they will die by the thousands if we lose it. Don't be surprised if you go to the grocery store and the shelves are sparsely populated with products. Don't be surprised that the only kind of fruit you can get in the store is moldy. Don't be surprised that health care becomes overwhelmed with people and their long lines. Overwhelming the medical staff. Don't be surprised that treatments you used to take for granted are no longer available. Don't be surprised that medicines you once took for granted are no longer available. Don't be surprised if new plagues and pestilences, things we haven't had to deal with for years, that we vaccinated away, come back. Don't be surprised if huge numbers of people die by these plagues. Don't be surprised if foreign armies come and invade us, something we've never had to deal with before. And don't be surprised if America becomes a slave nation to a cruel people, and that the suicide rate goes to the roof. I could go on and on and on and on and on, presenting a picture of gloom. Don't be surprised. Why does God bring these judgments? The verses are clear. Verse 20, on account of the evil of your deeds, he said to Israel, because you've forsaken me. Verse 45, so all these cursers shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you until you're destroyed because you would not obey the Lord your God by keeping his commandments and his statutes which he commanded you. See with Israel, things got pretty bad for several years before God's patience ran out. He's extremely patient, but I almost hesitate to say that because then that makes people just sort of say, oh, well, I guess we've got to let His fault to time and then we won't worry about it right now. Verse 47, because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and a glad heart, for the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom the Lord will send against you in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in the lack of all things. If you won't serve me in the abundance of all things that I gave you, we'll see how you do in the lack of all things. There are consequences to rejecting God and His law and His Son, Jesus Christ, and I fear that God is going to make America know the consequences. There's only one application that is appropriate following all this. Repent. Repentance. Our nation's only hope is repentance. There's no other message. Nothing else to say. Repent or perish. Jesus says repent or you will likewise perish. The power fell on those 18 people. Repent or you will likewise perish. We must turn. from our sins and we must turn to God. We must own him again. We must seek his face. We must get on our knees. We should fast. We should beg. Think of this with respect to Nineveh. Here was a nation that perhaps is in one sense as wicked as we are, or maybe we should say we're as wicked as they were, the Ninevites. Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, and Assyria was a wicked people, cruel people. I guess the difference is they never had the word of God embraced them and then turned from it. But Jonah was sent to this wicked people, and all he was sent to say to them, or all he did say, was, 40 days and you're dead. That was his message. That was his evangelistic message. Went all around the city. Forty days and you're dead. And he didn't like them. He didn't want to go there in the first place. He resented the fact that God had mercy on him. So this is a very unlikely instrument for salvation, for God's mercy. He's a very faulty evangelist in many ways. Jonah began to go through the city, one day's walk, and he cried out and said, yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown. And inside he's thinking, and I hope they are. Then the people of Nineveh believed in God. They actually believed Him. Amazing. And they called a fast. And they put on sackcloth from the greatest of the least of them, itchy clothes, to make themselves uncomfortable. I don't deserve to be comfortable, and I deserve to be uncomfortable, and to remind myself to continually be in a humbled state before God. That's why they would wear sackcloth. From the greatest to the least of them. This wasn't just the nobles, this wasn't just the leaders. All of them, even the children, put it on. When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he arose from his throne, laid aside his robe from him, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat on ashes." They're burning fires, of course, so they have a regular supply of ashes, and to sit on the ashes means you're saying to God, I'm nothing, I'm dust, I'm dirt. I'm about as good as ashes. I deserve to be burned up. It's a self-humbling act to sit on the ashes. He issued a proclamation and it said, in Nineveh, by the decree of the king and his nobles, do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste the thing. Do not let them eat or drink water. And even the animals couldn't eat or drink. But both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth. and let men call on God earnestly that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence which is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and withdraw his burning anger so that we will not perish. He didn't even know, and he certainly didn't get any indicator from Jonah, that God would have mercy. This would make any difference. For one is not to suppose that if they put on sackcloth and they fast and they make everybody around them do it, that somehow I've earned something now. Now I've done a good work. Now God's obligated to be merciful to me. No, he's not. Who knows? Maybe, just maybe, he'll relent and turn away from his burning anger and have mercy on us. When God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way, That's the key. That's repentance. They turned from it. They didn't just say they were going to. They did. They turned from it. Then God relented concerning the calamity which he had declared he would bring upon them. And he did not do it. That is America's only hope. That America turn from their wicked ways. Stop doing them. And beg God and humble themselves before him. May such a work happen in us as it happened long ago in Nineveh. Let's pray. Oh, Father, we plead on behalf of the nation that we live in. We tremble when we... It's just like our banner says that Thomas Jefferson looked around him in his day, and what did he see? He saw things that made him worry about the country even back in our early days. Because he knew that God was just, and the justice of God cannot sleep forever. God has patience. But your patience does not last forever. There is a limit to it. How much more should we say this today, Lord? We know that you are a just God, and you are rightfully angry at the things that our country has done. Things we're doing today, things that our forefathers did, and there's been no repentance. We don't deserve kindness. We don't deserve mercy. We deserve to be wiped out and be the subject of every single plague that I read from Deuteronomy 28. We, your people, know nothing else to do but to pray and to call out to you and to beg on behalf of our nation. We beg in Jesus' name.