Now shall we turn in our Bibles to
Psalm 10.
I'll read the first, the unnumbered verses.
Pastor Brian will lead the congregation in the
reading of the even-numbered verses.
Shall we stand as we read Psalm 10.
Why standest thou afar off, O Lord?
Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?
The wicked in his pride doth persecute the
poor.
Let them be taken in the devices that
they have imagined.
For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire,
and blessed the covetous whom the Lord abhorreth.
The wicked through the pride of his countenance
will not seek after God.
God is not in all his thoughts.
His ways are always grievous.
Thy judgments are far above, out of his
sight.
As for all of his enemies, he puffeth
at them.
He hath said in his heart, I shall
not be moved, for I shall never be
in adversity.
His mouth is full of cursing and deceit
and fraud.
Under his tongue is mischief and vanity.
He sitteth in the lurking places of the
villages, in the secret places that he murder
the innocent.
His eyes are frivolously set against the poor.
He lieth in wait secretly as a lion
in his den.
He lieth in wait to catch the poor.
He doth catch the poor, and he draweth
him into his net.
He croucheth and humbleth himself, that the poor
may fall by his strong ones.
He hath said in his heart, God hath
forgotten.
He hideth his face.
He will never see it.
Arise, O Lord.
O God, lift up thy hand.
Forget not the humble.
Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God?
He hath said in his heart, thou wilt
not require it.
Thou hast seen it, for thou beholdest mischief
and spite.
To requit it with thy hand, the poor
committed himself unto thee.
Thou art the helper of the fatherless.
Break thou the arm of the wicked and
the evil man.
Seek out his wickedness till thou find none.
The Lord is king forever and ever.
The heathen are perished out of his land.
Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the
humble.
Thou wilt prepare thy heart.
Thou wilt cause thine ear to hear.
To judge the fatherless and the oppressed, that
the man of the earth may no more
oppress.
Let's pray.
Father, as we come before you today, we
know, Lord, that you are just, that you
are holy, that you are righteous.
We know, Lord, that you are a loving
God.
And so often because of your love, you
are so patient and long-suffering with our
weaknesses and our failures.
But we realize, Lord, that in righteousness, you
must act to save us from the destruction
that we would bring upon ourselves as a
result of our own folly.
So we ask, Lord, that you would speak
to us today through your word.
We ask that our hearts might be open
to receive.
Bless, we pray, the study of your word
today.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
This morning, we'd like to draw your attention,
however, to the ninth chapter of Jeremiah, beginning
with verse 23, where the Lord speaks, 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 understands and knows me, that
I am the Lord which exercises loving kindness,
judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
For in these things I delight, saith the
Lord.
Here in chapter nine, the Lord speaks of
the exceeding wickedness of the nation of Judah,
and the judgment that was going to come
upon Judah because of their exceeding wickedness.
We are told in verse 13 that they
had forsaken his law.
They would not obey his voice or walk
in his ways, but they were walking in
the imagination of their own hearts and after
false gods.
This basically was the condition of the world
at the time that God judged the world
with the flood in Noah's day.
We read of those conditions in Genesis 6,
and God saw that the man was great
upon the earth, and that every imagination of
his thoughts and of his heart was only
evil continually.
And God looked upon the earth and behold,
it was corrupt.
For the earth was filled with violence, and
God said, I will destroy them.
As you read these conditions, it sounds very
much like the world in which we are
living today, in which people have forsaken the
law of God, are worshiping other gods, and
each man is doing that which is right
in his own sight, and really getting ripe
for the judgment of God to once again
come upon mankind.
Now, God tells us a little bit of
his nature here, and as we read the
Bible, it tells us about God, and probably
one of the chief characteristics of God's nature
is love.
God is love.
God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten son, Jesus said, greater love
has no man than this, that a man
will lay down his life for his friends.
We know that God is holy.
By holy, we mean that God is pure,
that God is true, that God is righteous.
He is surrounded by angels who cease not
saying, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which
is, which was, and which is to come.
God is in his law defined for us
what holiness is in his eyes.
Basically, anything that will ultimately hurt, harm, destroy
you, God considers unholy.
God calls that sin.
Those things, if you engage in, if you
practice, are going to bring harm and hurt
to you or to others.
God forbids you doing those things in his
law.
Basically, whatever is good, whatever will build up,
whatever will tend toward a loving relationship, a
good relationship with others, God looks upon that
as righteous, and God exhorts you to do
those things that are holy, that are righteous,
that are true.
Isn't it interesting today how that we are
seeking to sort of free ourselves from the
law of God, how that the courts have
ordered that you cannot have the 10 commandments
posted in the public schools.
Now, when the commandments only forbid those things
that are wrong or evil and encourage doing
those things that are right and good, why
do you suppose we would not want them
posted so that the children could see what
God requires of man?
You have to wonder about a nation that
forgets God, about a nation that really doesn't
want the law of God or their children
exposed to the law of God.
You wonder about men who would fight to
free us from the concepts of God or
from worshiping God.
God, in his law, told of the problems
that would develop when a nation would forsake
his law, the evil that would come upon
that nation and overtake that nation, the inevitable
consequences of doing those things that are wrong.
In the same token, God, in the law,
told of the blessings that would come to
a person or to a nation that would
keep his laws, the blessings that God would
bestow upon them, the things that God would
do for them who were obedient or the
inevitable consequences of living a good life.
And thus, in the law, he has shown
you, oh man, what is good, the prophet
Micah said.
And Paul, writing of it, said, for the
law is holy and just and good.
But man has rebelled against the law of
God.
They have said we will not have God's
law ruling over us.
Interesting that at the same time that our
nation has prohibited prayer in school and has
now actually restricted the posting of the laws,
the problems that have developed in our whole
school system, the problems that have developed as
far as the moral structure of our nation.
Today, schools have become a war zone in
many areas.
We have to hire armed guards to patrol
the schools.
When I was in school, the greatest problem
were kids chewing gum in class.
But oh, not today.
But we've strayed so far and we're beginning
to experience what God told us we would
experience if we would cast aside his law.
God is love.
God is holy.
And God is just.
Thus, when the law is broken, there has
to be a penalty for breaking the law.
It is not justice if the guilty party
is set free without punishment.
And here is where God's justice and his
love collides.
Because God is so long-suffering.
He is slow to judgment, plenteous in mercy.
And he will allow people to get by
with things seemingly, as he is hoping and
waiting for them to turn and to see
the folly of the path that they have
chosen.
God's long-suffering is oftentimes mistaken by man
for weakness or for blindness.
God doesn't see, as we read in our
psalm this morning.
And people think that God, because he hasn't
judged me immediately, I've gotten by with it.
But here in chapter 9, the time has
come where God's mercy and long-suffering has
been exhausted.
The people are continuing in the path of
unrighteousness.
And the time has come when God must
become more severe in dealing with their sin.
God had sent his prophets who exhorted, begged
the people to turn back to the Lord,
to turn away from the path of destruction.
God had sent certain limited judgments in order
to cause them to turn to the right
path.
But they have ignored the prophets of God.
And when the judgments would come, they would
have a surface repentance and God would relent.
But now they've gone too far.
God is going to have to become very
firm now in his dealing with them.
But as he does, he weeps.
God doesn't want to deal in a hard
fashion with our weaknesses.
He would rather that we just learn and
that we would just be open and that
we would repent with just a word from
him.
Years ago, we were celebrating our Thanksgiving dinner
with family in Phoenix, Arizona.
Our oldest grandchild was there at the table
and we were sitting down to eat and
it was a beautifully set table.
And he was sort of cutting up and
his parents were telling him to behave himself.
And he was still cutting up and I
said, Bradley, you must stop.
Those were the harshest words I'd ever spoken
to him.
And he broke down just weeping.
Oh, grandpa, you know, I mean, grandpa had
never spoken to him in a firm manner
before.
He was grandpa's boy, my first grandson.
God has difficulty in bringing severe or harsh
punishment, which is for our benefit.
And yet, well, read it there in the
first part.
Beginning with verse one, this is God speaking.
It's not the prophet Jeremiah.
He was the weeping prophet, but God is
speaking.
And God said, oh, that my head were
water and my eyes, a fountain of tears
that I might weep day and night for
the slain of the daughter of my people.
You see, God was going to have to
bring Babylon and the armies of Babylon.
And the daughters are going to be slain
in the streets.
The daughters are going to be raped.
And they're going to be taken away to
become slaves to the Babylonians.
And God's seeing this talks about, oh, that
I might just weep night and day for
this judgment that is coming.
Oh, that I had in the wilderness a
lodging place for wayfaring men, that I might
leave my people and go from them, for
they are all adulterers.
They are the assembly of treacherous men.
They bend their tongues like their bow for
lies.
They're not valiant for the truth upon the
earth, for they proceed from evil to evil,
and they know not me, saith the Lord.
They're on the path of total extinction, and
God is going to have to deal very
severely with them.
But God grieves over the severity of the
lesson that they must learn to survive.
When I was a child, my father used
to often say, son, as he was getting
ready to spank me, this hurts me more
than it hurts you.
I didn't believe him until I became a
parent.
And then I understand what my dad was
saying to me.
But you see, there are lessons that as
children we need to learn.
There are certain things that, if practiced, if
continued, can be very destructive and very harmful
to us, can bring us great pain, great
suffering.
And so we need to learn not to
do those things.
And if our parents say, now, never play
with matches, why would they say that?
Because they want to keep us from some
exciting toy?
No.
They can see what I couldn't see as
a child.
I couldn't see the danger of matches.
I couldn't see how that it could start
a fire, could burn down the house, or
that I could be severely hurt.
I couldn't see that, but they could.
And so, if I continued to play with
matches, after being told kindly that I shouldn't,
then they must inflict a form of discipline,
punishment, so to speak, so that they can
protect me from the greater danger that would
come if I would persist in that dangerous
practice of playing with matches.
You teach your child, don't run out into
the street, but stop and look both ways
before you go out into the street.
Why do you teach them that?
Because you know that if they just dash
out into the street, there's a great danger
of them being severely injured or even killed
by a car.
And so you teach them.
And if they continue and persist to just
run out into the street without stopping and
looking both ways, then you use more severe
measures in teaching them that lesson for their
own good.
Now, God knows that we are often engaged
in practices that can be very harmful and
destructive and can bring great pain to us
if we persist in them.
And Judah as a nation was in that
condition.
And so God is going to have to
teach them in a more severe manner the
importance of following the ways of God and
not taking these paths that are going to
lead to great pain and harm to them
as a people.
They won't listen.
They haven't listened.
And now God is going to have to
become very severe.
And the prophet is telling of the judgment
of God that is going to come as
the Babylonians will come and destroy and take
them away as captives, because they have to
learn this important lesson.
In the New Testament, we see Jesus as
He is approaching the city of Jerusalem and
as He is weeping over the city, because
they have rejected God's provision for their salvation
through Jesus Christ.
And Jesus sees what it's going to cost
them.
He can see the Roman troops that will
soon be coming and besieging Jerusalem.
He will see the Romans troops as they
break the walls and as they enter the
city and as they trample the children in
the streets.
He sees the some million people that will
be killed within Jerusalem as Titus comes in
with the Roman army and he weeps because
of the judgment that is going to come,
because they fail to walk in the ways
of the Lord.
Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet, but we
have a weeping God.
A God who weeps over our folly and
the things that He has to do to
turn us from our folly.
Through Jeremiah, God is talking to the people
about the coming judgment.
Because of their wickedness, because they did not
believe the Word of God, because they were
trusting in their own ability to deliver themselves,
the Word of the Lord came to them.
Let not the wise man glory in his
wisdom.
At this time, the wise men of Judah
were seeking a strategy to pit the Babylonians
against the Egyptians.
And they sided with the Egyptians, figuring that
the Babylonians could not conquer Egypt.
And by siding with Egypt, they felt that
they were secure as they turned the conflict
away from them toward the Egyptians.
The wise men had developed this brilliant strategy,
and they were trusting that the strategy would
keep them from being conquered by the Babylonians.
But the Babylonians conquered the Egyptians and then
turned against Israel, against Judah, and they conquered
Jerusalem.
Many nations trust in their superior wisdom for
their deliverance and for their help.
We feel that we have some of the
greatest scientists in the world who can develop
super weapons that are far superior to the
weapons of our enemies.
Our scientists have produced some of the fastest
planes, the best tanks, the most sophisticated weapons
in the world.
We have our think tanks, we have our
strategists, we have the Pentagon, we have the
CIA, and we glory in superior intelligence.
But superior intelligence will not deliver us from
the judgments that will come upon the nation
if we continue in the path of unrighteousness.
God said, let not the mighty man glory
in his might.
Another thing that a nation is prone to
glory in is their military power.
We've always believed that we had the strongest
military might in the world.
Vietnam became a very real shock to America
because we thought we were invincible till then.
One thing it proved, of course, was that
politicians don't know how to fight a war.
And the restrictions that they placed upon our
military led to our defeat.
The true strength of a nation does not
lie in the number of well-trained, well
-equipped troops that it can place upon the
battlefield.
But the true strength of a nation is
moral strength, moral character.
And that comes from a right relationship with
God, keeping the laws of God.
Jeremiah said, let not the rich man glory
in his riches.
We often boast of the fact that we
are the richest nation in the world.
Our standard of living exceeds that of other
nations.
But we've discovered that riches cannot buy peace,
they cannot buy happiness, they cannot buy contentment,
or they cannot buy true friends.
As a nation, we have sought by our
riches to buy friends throughout the world.
But we are one of the most hated
nations in the world.
The world is willing to look to us
for a handout.
But few are willing to lend a hand,
as demonstrated in Iraq.
NATO was quite willing to allow our bombers
to come in and to bomb Serbia into
submission.
But they're unwilling to help us in the
fight against terrorism.
The true source of national strength, and in
what we glory, the Lord said, if you
want to glory, glory in this, that you
understand and know me.
For I am the Lord, which exercises loving
kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
You want to glory in something?
Don't trust in the wise men, don't trust
in the military powers, don't trust in the
riches, but glory in the fact that you
understand me, and you know me.
The question is, do you really understand and
know God?
How well do you understand and know God?
You may be the poorest man in the
world by the standards of the world, but
if you know Jesus Christ, you are rich.
For he will supply all of your needs
according to his riches in glory.
You may have a very low IQ, but
if you know the Lord, you have far
greater wisdom than the majority of the college
professors in the world today, who often boast
of their ignorance in the most important knowledge
that anyone could attain, and that is the
knowledge of God.
For when you come to that area, they'll
say, well, I'm an agnostic, which is a
confession of ignorance.
You may be weak, but if you know
the Lord Jesus Christ, all of the power
that brought the universe into existence is at
your disposal.
Note how God describes himself.
I am the Lord which exercises loving kindness,
judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
Is that the God you know?
Have you experienced his loving kindness in your
life?
God declares that he delights in these things.
For in these things the Lord said, I
delight, saith the Lord.
Because he is loving and kind, he delights
when you are loving and kind.
Because he is fair, he delights when you
are fair.
Because he is righteous, he is delighted when
you are righteous.
In the New Testament, Paul said, God forbid
that I should glory, save in the cross
of Jesus Christ.
Paul was a very intelligent man.
From his writings, we do realize that he
was probably one of the wisest men of
his day.
And yet, Paul does not glory in his
wisdom, in his college degrees.
But he said, I glory in the cross
of Jesus Christ.
Paul did not glory in all of his
accomplishments.
He did more to spread the gospel of
Jesus Christ to the world than any other
man in history.
Yet, he doesn't glory in those accomplishments, but
he glories in the cross of Jesus Christ.
When you get to heaven, and you have
a chance to meet Paul, if you go
up and say, Oh, Paul, how I admire
you.
The way you took the gospel, the things
that you endured for the gospel's sake.
And all those wonderful epistles, Paul, I love
reading your epistles.
They help me.
Oh, how I admire you.
Paul, I'm sure would be embarrassed, and he'd
sort of blush and say, Hey, hey, hey,
knock it off.
I'm nothing.
If it were not for the cross of
Jesus Christ, I wouldn't be here.
You wouldn't be here.
Don't glory in me, but glory in the
cross of Jesus Christ.
Don't let the wise man glory in his
wisdom, nor the mighty man in his might,
nor the rich man in his riches.
But if you want to glory, glory that
you know God.
You've come to the knowledge of God, and
you've come to the cross and received the
forgiveness that God has offered to us through
Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, save
in the death of Christ my God.
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.
Where the whole realm of nature mine, that
were a present far too small, for love
so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my
life, my all.
Father, we thank you that we can glory
today in that we know you.
We've come to know you through Jesus Christ,
your Son.
And we glory, Lord, in the fact that
we can have fellowship with you.
Fellowship made possible because of the cross of
Jesus Christ, whereby the price was paid for
our folly and our disobedience.
Lord, we desire to know you better.
We desire, Lord, to serve you.
We desire, Lord, that we would live a
life that is pleasing to you.
We desire, Lord, to walk a path of
righteousness.
And so guide us and lead us, Lord,
in thy path of righteousness, for thy name's
sake.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
The pastors are down here at the front
to pray for you.
I don't know what you're trusting in.
I don't know what you might be glorying
in.
But the real issue is, do you really
know God?
Can you say, yes, I really know God.
I know his lovingkindness.
I know his judgments.
I know his righteousness.
Yes, I know God.
If you can't say that, if God is
just some far-off something way out there,
sort of untouchable, unknowable, well, the thing is,
you can know him.
He wants you to know him.
He wants you to walk in fellowship with
him.
And if you are straying, if you are
on a path that is destructive, can bring
harm or pain to you and others around
you, God will help bring his judgments in
order to turn you to the right path,
in order to bring you to himself.
Maybe you're going through some hard issues right
now.
How do you know but what?
God hasn't allowed that to turn you to
him.
As long as things are going well and
everything is happy, you know, and all is
fine, and people sort of just forget God
and go their own way.
And so, God brings things into their lives
to sort of cause them to look beyond
just the temporal things of the world and
to look deep inside, to really take a
real inventory of your life.
Do you really know God?
Are you really serving God?
Do you really love God?
Do you have a personal relationship with him?
That's what he wants.
The pastors are down here to pray for
you.
And if you would like to really know
God today, you can.
He is knowable.
You don't need to be agnostic.
The Bible says to know him aright is
to have life eternal.
We want you to know him aright.
And so, I would encourage you as soon
as we're dismissed, come on down to the
front and let these men pray for you
and help you answer your questions, that you
might come into a loving relationship with a
God who loves you more than you could
ever imagine.
I have loved you, he said, with an
everlasting love.
Therefore, have I drawn thee, saith the Lord.