Incredible Disaster, Incredible Victory

Larry Kirkpatrick.  Southhaven Seventh-day Adventist Church

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• Introduction
• The condition of Judah before going into captivity
• God's message of imminent judgment
• Heaven's call for a change in our religiosity
• What happened to Judah
• Application to ourselves

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Introduction

Please turn with me to Revelation chapter 14:9-10, and let us read there:

And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, if any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.

In the last few pages of the Bible, we find a final, triple-message for the end of time. One by one, three angels move across the screen as the battle between good and evil reaches its inevitable climax. We do not need to pause to ask for a show of hands: "How many here would like to receive the mark of the beast?" None of us have any interest in receiving this final imprint of hopelessness. How can we avoid it? Does heaven have any means to truly heal us--to truly change us? Is there--in the Being whom Christians call their Lord-Jesus Christ--is there any power to change us? to take away our sins and empower us to truly walk in newness of life? Why are not the people of God in this world ready for Jesus to come? Those are important questions. And as we journey today, the answers await us. We hold in our hands today God's last-day lesson Book. He gave us the Bible so that we might learn from the example of the past experiences of His people (1 Corinthians 10:11), and that we might have hope (Romans 15:4). And while what we hear in the next few minutes will sound at first like an incredible disaster, in the end we will take courage at what is actually an incredible victory!

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The condition of Judah before going into captivity

The Bibles' Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet; and that characteristic comes, in part, from the passage to which we now turn, starting with Jeremiah 8:5, 7-9, 11. The ten northern tribes, called the kingdom of Israel are already carried off into captivity and have ceased to be a nation. All that remains is the southern kingdom, centered in Jerusalem and consisting mostly of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. And God through His prophet Jeremiah asks the question: "Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual backsliding? They hold fast deceit, they refuse to return." Jeremiah 8:5. In the seventh verse, God points out that the birds know when to migrate, but that when it comes to those who claimed to be His people, "My people know not the judgment of the Lord." In verse eight and nine He asks how they can claim that He is with them when they have rejected His word. He as much as says that while His people disobey Him, the pen of the theologians is empty. They can chatter all day about what they think about God, but obedience is still better than sacrifice. In the eleventh verse God puts His finger on a pivotal problem: "For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying Peace, peace; when there is no peace." And I want to suggest that there are many parallels today between the problem here in Judah, and the way that too many in the Christian world function today. There are too many warm-fuzzies going around, and not enough solemn-solids. Remember, the world today is facing its judgment, and we can't just pursue Christianity-as-usual! We were not called to the kingdom at the beginning or the middle of the conflict. We were born into the end-time. Jeremiah 9 opens with Jeremiah weeping for God's people. Listen to His words:

Oh, that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! For they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not Me, saith the Lord.

In verse five we find that "they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity." Finally in verse six we learn that for too many of those who considered themselves God's people, Jeremiah had to say "through deceit they refuse to know Me, saith the Lord." So there we are. God's people are staring judgment in the face, and heaven's evaluation of them is that their experience is actually one big giant moral failure. His people are NOT valiant for the truth, but they are restlessly living out their darkened lives in a sequence of continuous sin. Through their deceit, they refuse to know God. With their itching ears they have heaped up to themselves teachers that fill their ears with theological cotton-candy. And those who love truth find themselves weeping, knowing that incredible disaster is certain!

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God's message of imminent judgment

And it is! Listen to Jeremiah 9:11-13, and see if you can hear the reason God gives for sending judgment upon His people:

And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant. Who is the wise man, that may understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of the Lord hath spoken, that he may declare it, for what the land perisheth and is burned up like a wilderness, that none passeth through? And the Lord saith, Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them, and have not obeyed My voice, neither walked therein...

Because of their disobedience, God says that He will give them bitter water to drink, He will scatter them, and He will send a sword after them to consume them. Notice also that this generation is not the first in line with this behavior. Verse 14 says that it was their fathers who taught them to worship false Gods. Somehow, a problem extending beyond that present generation was impacting the relationship between God and His people. Again, I point out that Revelation 7:1-3 indicates that there does come a time when heaven is ready to end the conflict between good and evil, but the command goes out to the angels to wait, because God's people are not ready, they are not sealed. The Bible teaches that the second coming of Christ will be delayed by God's people in the end of time. Friends, while it is not my purpose today to outline the Bible evidence that has suggested to myself and many others that according to God's Word, the second coming of Christ could have already happened by now, and we could all be in heaven, I have to tell you that that is exactly what I believe. And I believe that the experience of Judah we are considering now is very important to God's people today. Because the next verses of Jeremiah point to the closeness of judgment for Judah. It was right upon them even as Jeremiah prophesied. Look at verse 21: "Death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without and the young men from the streets." God's last-ditch effort to save Judah was ready to instantly spring forth. It would mean a horrifying wake-up call too loud to miss, as these verses show. Men would die in the streets as Judah was carried off to Babylon and into captivity. For too long had those claiming to be God's people gloried in their ways of serving God, instead of God's ways of serving God. Now all their pride and glorying would be stopped in mid-stream and God would humble His people in a last-ditch effort to get them focused on His mission. Notice here that God judges His people, not to destroy them, but to save them. He has not utterly forsaken them, although it looks like the end.

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Heaven's call for a change in our religiosity

God now called His people to an entire change in their religiousity. Consider verses 23 and 24:

Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith Lord.

Notice these words of hope. The wise mustn't glory in their wisdom. The "educated" among us must not pass themselves off as knowing it all--as being our theological specialists and experts upon whom we are to blindly rely. The Bible reminds us that all of us are brethren, and we are to call no man "father" among us, because God is our Father (Matthew 23:8-9). Besides, remember Jeremiah 8:8: "The pen of the scribes is vain" when they do not teach obedience to the Lord. Nor must those in authority in the church perceive themselves as being a power of their own. The power of those in positions of spiritual leadership remains subject to the Word of God, and they will meet again the way they led God's people in the judgment. Nor are those in the rich that have been favored with more cash to become wrongly proud at what the funds they have given and returned into the treasury have accomplished. Back then, the spiritual leadership of God's people had fallen into these very traps. There was no shortage of religion among them. But it had become strangely ineffective, bizzarely readjusted theologically, and peculiarly rebellious. Today, we must avoid falling into the same trap. We must stick so close to this Word, brethren, that Scripture becomes glued into our minds. No, we cannot glory in any of those tragically misguided ways. But we are told what to glory in: that we UNDERSTAND and KNOW our God. "But brother Larry, aren't those the same? Isn't it the same to understand and know God?" Let me ask you a couple of questions. Does Satan understand God? Oh, yes. He understands perfectly well what God is doing. A fascinating book, Ellen White's Patriarchs and Prophets, pg. 66 points out that "When Satan heard that enmity should exist between himself and the woman, and between his seed and her seed, he knew that his work of depraving human nature would be interrupted; that by some means man would be enabled to resist his power." Oh yes. Do you remember Genesis 3:15? God promised that He would intervene to make possible the salvation of the human race. Does Satan understand what God is up to? Why, you bet he does. Make no mistake, Satan knows God. He understands Him. But he isn't reconciled to doing things the Father's way. In fact, Satan gloried in his wisdom, his power, and his riches. But all the goodness that he had had been granted him by God. He ought to have gloried in God. But as he turned what God had given to self-serving, he ruined himself. Satan understands God, and even knows him. But he does not agree with His exercise of lovingkindness, judgment or justice, and righteousness. Satan refuses to delight in the things that God delights in. But may I suggest that the understanding and knowing of our God, and our delighting in God's ways, is ultimately determined by how we respond to Him? Remember, obedience was the bottom line issue for Judah. They wouldn't obey God, and they came to use some kind of tottering, theological false-gospel deception of their own construction to rationalize their disobedience. "Through deceit they refuse to know Me." Jeremiah 9:6. But Jesus is "The Way, the Truth, and the Life." John 14:6. Yes, when we draw close to Jesus, we become "valiant for the truth." Turn to Jeremiah 8:22. Listen to these questions: "Is there no balm in Gilead?; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of My people recovered?" What are the implications here? The very question about whether there is balm, or medicine for healing in Gilead tells us that there is medicine in the gospel for our healing. Paul called it "The power of God unto salvation" (Romans 1:16). God saves us not in our sins, but from our sins. By whom does this salvation come? The question "Is there no physician there?" tells us that there is indeed a physician there. His name is Yeshua, or Jesus, a name that itself means salvation. By the way, you know that in the Greek, there is one word translated two different ways in the New Testament. The word translated "heal" is often translated "salvation" as well. What I am suggesting, is that the difference between healing and salvation is not so great. Jesus blended it all together when He asked His listeners whether it was easier to say "your sins are forgiven," or to say, "Arise, walk." (Matthew 9:5). Friends, Jesus is the Physician, and He is absolutely able to heal us. Then why aren't God's people healed yet? It's altogether so simple. We have not gone to our Physician Jesus, and not let Him apply to us the balm of Gilead deep into our sin-sick wounds. We have accepted partial-cures instead of whole ones. We've only taken part of our medicine. Oh that we would become valiant for the truth, obey God, understanding and knowing Him, and His exercise of lovingkindness. Oh that we would receive more of this personally! Yes, today, these are things we must consider.

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What happened to Judah

So you may ask now, before we finish this morning, what happened to Judah? What happened to God's southern kingdom with death entering in through the windows in judgment? You already know, that she was carried off into captivity in Babylon. Everything looked like it would finally be an incredible disaster in the end. Yet while in captivity, a man named Daniel received a vision from God. And what do you think God told His wayward, backslidden, carried-into-Babylonian-captivity people through Daniel? We find that answer in Daniel 9:24: "Seventy weeks [490 prophetic years] are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city [the Jewish nation and the broken-down city of Jerusalem] to finish the transgression, and make an end of sins, and to bring reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in ever-lasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy." Do you see? In the face of incredible disaster, God had not yet forsaken His people. He now called them to understand and know Him in a way that would lead them to accept Him as their Messiah, receive from Him forgiveness for sins through His death in their place, and to let their lives be the scene where He would bring in everlasting righteousness. All the prophecies pointing to the coming of the Messiah would be fulfilled and humankind would be renovated. Four hundred and ninety years was set aside for their final period to prepare and receive the Messiah. In their lives would be experienced the privileged blessing of--through the mercy and power of God--absolutely not through their own power--of the blessing of a cleansing that down through the ages was only dreamt of. Their lives would show what God can do when His people get serious about living for Him. But alas. Yes, an incredible mission was given to them. But they did, in the end, fail. They rejected the Messiah. They did not bring in everlasting righteousness. And so, guess what? When Jesus comes the second time, to you and to I comes a very similar mission. And so what will we let God do in our lives? And maybe another final question: Will God succeed with His last-day people at the very end? Does the Bible tell us?

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What finally happens among God's people? And Application

Turn with me now to our last passage: Revelation 14. Read with me verses one and four and five:

And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with Him an hundred and forty and four thousand, having His Father's name written in their foreheads... These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God.

Do you notice that God is victorious? That He produces a people who are entirely obedient, who are willing to follow Him no matter what the truth of God steps on in their lives? So it really comes down to you and I. What will we let God do in our lives? Where will we draw the line? Where will we limit the holy one of Israel? Where will we say "no" to Jesus? Will we give the angel messages of Revelation 14? Will we come to understand and know God and experience the impact of His lovingkindness upon our lives, or will we receive the mark of the beast? Will we glory in our supposed "wisdom," or our supposed "power," or our supposed "riches." Or will we glory in understanding and knowing the one who went up on the cross so that we could live? I appeal to you today. If you've drawn a line in the sand in your life that you won't let God cross, bend down and wipe that line away, and let Jesus come in, and remake you, and restore you, and give you a place in the sight of His throne.