Warning to an Apostate Nation B

Do you realize that God chose you before the foundation of the world? Do you believe that He wants you to confront this world with a direct message?

Is your heart broken so that there's a mourning? Do you want to fulfill your God ordained calling or do you just want to be comfortable? What is our response? I think it's more than just calling people to Christ. I think it's confronting their lifestyle and calling for a holiness and a righteousness that pleases God. 9-11, Hurricane Katrina, and the COVID-19 pandemic are just a few events that prompted many communities to revise their crisis plans. In contrast, remember what John MacArthur said yesterday on Grace to You. Though man automatically thinks of a program in the face of a crisis, God immediately thinks of a baby. On the eve of Israel's darkest days, God used Jeremiah to sound a warning.

And it's a warning even to the United States and really to every nation today. God's word to an ungodly society. That's John's focus here on Grace to You. So let's get to the lesson.

Here's John. I believe in Christ, busy giving full expression to their reprobate minds. Evil abounds in our society and sadly has even filtered its way into the church.

I really believe that we've gone too far, too far in the church and too far in our nation. And I think we face a divine judgment in these days. The prophet Jeremiah faced the very same kind of time.

He faced a nation on the brink of a disaster. And this was not just any nation, but the nation of Israel specially loved, specially chosen, specially made the objective of God's plans and purposes in reaching the world. And yet this nation had rejected God. And because they had rejected God, God was going to come against them in a very severe judgment. And Jeremiah was the prophet of doom. Jeremiah is the one who brings to them the Word of God just before the judgment comes to pass. Jeremiah chapter 1. Jeremiah had to face this fact, people, and I want you to get this, that he was called out of that society, that he had a divine mandate that lifted him out of that society. He was to preach judgment.

That was his calling. Three features can be seen in chapter 1 verses 4 to 10 that lead us to comprehend his divine mandate. Three features that tell us he was set apart for God's service. First, he was prepared by God. Verse 4, then the Word of the Lord came unto me saying, Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Secondly, not only the preparation of God, but the provision of God, verse 6, then said I, Ah, Lord God, behold, I cannot speak for I am a child. He says, Wait a minute, you got the wrong guy. I'm a child. What do you mean? I mean, I don't have the credentials. I don't have the experience. By the way, the word I cannot speak, the word cannot there has reference to knowing something by experience. Jeremiah is saying, I can't do this, I don't have any experience.

I'm not qualified. He cries, Ah, Lord God. It sounds like Isaiah in chapter 6 who said, Whoa is me, you got the wrong guy. He shudders at the very thought of such a task because he sees himself as inadequate. That's just the kind of people God uses, you know. It's the kind of people who line up and say, Here I am, God, wouldn't you like to use me?

That he's not interested in. If you feel fearful, if you feel inadequate, you'll be in the prophetic succession, at least in that point. Jeremiah was young.

Most estimates are that he was 30 years of age. It's a good time to start. Jesus thought it was a good time to start. But he thought himself a child. I'm just a child, I have no experience. But look at the response in verse 7, But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child, for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee, thou shalt speak. Be not afraid of their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord. I'll speak through you and you need not have any fear.

Don't worry about your voice, don't worry about your looks, don't worry about your wardrobe, don't worry about your experience, don't worry about your ability, don't worry about your personality, you just open your mouth and let me use you. That's what he's telling Jeremiah. I'm Almighty God and I'm going to provide for you. Third thing, you have a divine mandate which involves preparation by God, provision by God, and thirdly, power from God. Verse 9, Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. See, I have this day...get this now...set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out, to pull down, to destroy, to throw down, to build and to plant.

I mean, that is absolutely unbelievable. He's got one little common guy from a little nowhere place and he says, You are my man and you will speak to all the nations and you will lift them up and tear them down. You don't have to be the king to have power. You don't have to be the president to have power. You don't have to be the governor or the mayor or a senator or a congressman or an assemblyman to have power. The greatest power facing a nation at any time is in the preachers of that country.

I believe that. And of course, when preachers abandon the message, then there's a serious, serious downfall. Jeremiah was unskilled and oratory and so God touched his mouth and said, Jeremiah, I'm going to take care of that part. He put in him the living, burning, shattering, building mighty power of the Word of God so that that simple, humble man was literally set over.

I have this day, set thee over. The word means to supervise. Listen, Jeremiah became the supervisor of the world. When he spoke, things happened. He was able to root out and pull down and destroy.

He was able to build and plant. This is power like no politician ever has. A thirty-year-old obscure man from an obscure town in an obscure country was told, I have set you over all the nations and kingdoms of the earth. Listen, people, do you realize what it is to have the power of God in your life? Do you realize what it is to have been prepared by God before you were born, to have been provided by God with the Word to speak and empowered by God to take your place over the nations and kingdoms of this world? With that kind of a resource and a divine mandate, it is behooving to us to stand boldly in the face of a dying nation and to speak the message that our preparation, our provision and our power demands of us. We have a divine mandate to speak the truth. Secondly, Jeremiah not only had a divine mandate but a direct message, a direct message. He spoke directly to the issues of his day.

He went right to the core of the matter. Chapter 14 verse 7, O Lord, though our iniquities testify against us, do it for Thy name's sake, for our backslidings are many, we have sinned against Thee. Jeremiah preached on sin. I heard a preacher say, one thing you can never do is preach on sin, that turns people off. I never preach on sin.

You have to make people feel good. You know, when I sit and listen to somebody say that, it does a lot of strange things to me. All I ever think about is God's Word that is in exact opposition to that. Jeremiah spoke to the sins of his day. Jeremiah said in chapter 17 verse 9, here is the real issue, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

In other words, you are vile, sinful people and you have wicked hearts. That's what needs to be said. That's the message. And he zeroed in on it. Boy, I mean he went right for the jugular. Let me show you some of the sins he preached against. Chapter 3 verse 9, false religion is the first one. It came to pass through the lightness of her harlotry that she defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and with trees. You see, oh how vivid, how vivid. He says, you've committed your adultery with stones and trees.

What does he mean? Up in the groves to the idols you've committed your adulteries. And those idols were not only spiritual adultery, but they had physical adultery attached to their worship, your idolatrous. Chapter 9 verse 13 and 14, same thing. And the Lord said, because they have forsaken My law which I set before them and have not obeyed My voice, neither walked in it but have walked after the imagination of their own heart and after Balaam.

Again, false religion. Chapter 11 verse 10, they're turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers. They've gone back before Josiah's time who refused to hear My words.

They went after other gods to serve them. He says they've broken My covenant. But you know what is sickening beyond everything is, in chapter 7 it tells us...you don't need to look it up, it just says this, that you kept coming to the temple. You kept coming to worship Me all the time. You come and stand before Me in this house and I say, why are you delivered to all these abominations? What are you doing here? You've got your false religion and then you come over here to this house.

This house which is called by My name has become a den of robbers in your eyes. False religion, play the harlot. Jeremiah faced a day of false religion. Secondly, he faced a day of corrupt leadership.

Chapter 5, the people didn't even trust the leaders. They said in verse 13 of chapter 5, the prophets are windbags. That preacher, he's a windbag. I've heard that said of me.

I'm in good company. Prophets were windbags too. Verse 30, chapter 5, an appalling and a horrible thing is committed in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests bear rule by their means and My people love to have it so. In other words, the prophets are phonies and the priests can be bribed and that's the way the people love it. They are false leaders. They never speak the truth and they take bribes.

Sound familiar? Look a long time in our society to find somebody who really tells you the unmitigated, unadulterated, open, complete truth. I mean, if people who lead in this country would just for one time say what is true, it would sure straighten out a lot of things. People take bribes and they tell lies. And even the prophets, the people said, are nothing but windbags. Preaching is a whole lot of platitudes, positive thinking, possibility thinking, make me feel good, watered down sermonettes for Christianettes and on and on and on. People speak in their own ideas. The delusion is complete. The prophets have no credibility.

That's right. The leadership in the spiritual end and the leadership in the political end of Jeremiah's time was all corrupted, not unlike our time. Thirdly, there was a perversion of marriage. Chapter 3 begins with a verse that talks about divorce. There was no place in the whole land that wasn't touched by sexual vice. The land was totally polluted because people were messing up their marriages and playing the harlot.

It was just a total dissolution of families. Fourthly, if you look at chapter 3 verse 24, there was general wickedness. It talks about shame, devouring the labor. Verse 25, we lie down in our shame.

They were literally like pigs, wallowing in shame. In chapter 5, the first two verses talk about lying and deceit. It says, see if you can find a man that executes justice. See if you can find anybody to give you real justice. Find somebody who doesn't swear falsely. Everybody lies.

Everybody's unfair. In chapter 11 it talks about unfaithfulness. Verses 8 to 10, people don't keep their promise. They abandon their vows. They break their word. Now what do we have, people?

Listen. You have unfaithfulness, wickedness, fouled up families, spiritual adultery, physical harlotry, sexual evil, rotten leadership, corrupted priests and prophets. You have this wholesale thing going on in Jeremiah's land.

It's just the same as we face today. People, we don't want to kid our society. We have to preach sin. We have to preach rottenness in human hearts. We have to preach judgment.

Oh, there's the other side. We have to preach love and grace because that's there too. But Jeremiah summed up this lesson in chapter 13 verse 15 by saying, Here and give ear, be not proud for the Lord hath spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God before He cause darkness, before your feet stumble on the dark mountains and while you look for light He turn it into the shadow of death and make it gross darkness. He says, You better change because if you don't change it's going to be a tragic doom.

God will cause you to stumble on the dark mountains and you'll be looking for light and you'll fall into blackness. But that introduces to us a third part of Jeremiah's calling. Yes, a divine mandate.

Yes, a direct message. But finally and just briefly, also a deep mourning...a deep mourning. Did you look at verse 17 there? You say, Well boy, it seems Jeremiah's pretty cold-blooded. Does he do this with glee, with a lack of compassion, with a sense of superiority?

No, no, no. Look at verse 17. But if ye will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places for your pride and mine eye shall weep bitterly and run down with tears because the Lord's flock is carried away captive. Listen, I'll tell you something, beloved, if you don't preach judgment with tears, you don't preach it the way God intended it. If you can identify with Jesus who knowing He was going to bring judgment in 70 A.D. on the city of Jerusalem yet sat over its brow and wept tears and said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how oft I would have gathered thee as a hen gathereth or brood, but you would not. If you can't identify with Jeremiah who could preach out of fire in his bones, who could preach judgment like no other Old Testament prophet perhaps, and all the while, while you're preaching that judgment, have such a heart of compassion for the lost that your eyes run down with tears, then you miss the right mentality. Listen, do you care at all that souls are perishing?

Do you care at all? If you cared at all, you would warn, you would recognize the divine mandate, the direct message, and with a deep mourning you would cry. I wonder sometimes how we can sit around speculating about when the Rapture will occur. We can sit around speculating about who the Antichrist is.

We can become so detached. We look at the Tribulation when all hell breaks loose and we do it with a theological eye that has absolutely no grief for the lost. It is better that we should shut our mouths than to have such a conversation. We are becoming indifferent evangelical eggheads.

We know more than we need to. There are so many people stockpiling themselves in Bible studies convinced that the essential thing is to debate semantics. And all we do in such debate is reveal our cold hearts.

People are perishing and we are content to be in non-strategic functions, doing everything to pad our seat, better our lot, be more comfortable, more successful. And we are icy toward people bound for hell. Jeremiah was not. He was so grieved in verses 17 and 18, he called for the official mourning women to come and cry. There's nothing wrong with tears.

Some people think tears are the act of a coward, but they're not. There are tears of strength in Jeremiah's case. Jerusalem was in laughter.

That's the funny part of it, see? They didn't think anything was going to happen. They thought Jeremiah was crazy.

They had advanced so far. The party was on and Jeremiah was a sad man at a party. They mocked him and they threw him in jail to shut him up because he was raining on their parade. Our tears will not be understood. Our message will not be understood because the world merrily goes to hell. We may weep alone, but we weep if we care.

Spurgeon had a great word. I can identify with this. He said this, I hate my eyes. I feel as if I could pluck them from their sockets because they will not weep as I desire over poor souls who are perishing. But mere weeping isn't enough. It isn't enough just to weep. We not only are to have a deep mourning, we are to have a direct message.

We must speak. There is hope, you know. There is hope. Even in Jeremiah's case, there was a little remnant who believed and who heard. In Jeremiah 15, 11, just listen, the Lord said, verily it shall be well with thy remnant.

It's going to be okay for the little group to believe. And you know, in America today sometimes I get so upset. I get so distressed. I sometimes have tears in my eyes when I see the things that go on in our country and I see the innocuous, useless efforts of a watered-down religion in combating it. And I grieve in my spirit and I wonder if anything is ever going to happen in our day for the glory of God. And I'm reminded that there will be a remnant. Jeremiah said in chapter 33 verse 3, for God He said this, call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not. Listen, for the responding heart there is an answer, for the responding spirit there is salvation, for the one who listens judgment is averted. In Jeremiah 31, 17, and there is hope in thine end saith the Lord. There's hope.

I mean it isn't all over. There are going to be some that God will reach out and claim for His own. Are you willing to be faithful? Do you realize that God chose you before the foundation of the world? Do you believe that He wants you to confront this world with a direct message?

Is your heart broken so that there's a mourning? Are you willing to be a servant or are you just trying to be a success? Do you want to fulfill your God-ordained calling or do you just want to be comfortable?

What is our response? I think it's more than just calling people to Christ. I think it's confronting their lifestyle and calling for a holiness and a righteousness that pleases God. Let's pray together. Father, I hear the words of Jeremiah chapter 23 verse 5 as he says, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch and a king shall reign and prosper and shall execute justice and righteousness in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely and this is his name, the Lord our righteousness.

O Father, we do look to that day, but even in this day know that the Lord our righteousness has made the provision for salvation even now. I pray for any who are caught in the doom of a dying nation that they might be part of that remnant that reaches out to the one who is the Lord our righteousness to take hold of that nail-pierced hand, the hand of the one who died for them. And Father, for the rest of us, help us to preach faithfully, to rebuke a godless day with tears so they hear the message and see our love and in so hearing and seeing are drawn to the one alone who can save them from the terrible future that you may receive the glory. And if like Jeremiah no one ever listens, may obedience be its own reward and if perchance some are used to reach the remnant, may the glory always belong to you. We thank you in Christ's name. Amen. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. Today John looked at how in Christ alone we find a source of unlimited living water. It's part of John's series, God's Word to an Ungodly Society.

John, in your closing words, you said that we have a responsibility to confront the world with a direct message. And with that in mind, what would you say has been the church's downfall in that area? What are the weak spots in terms of how evangelicals are now reaching out to a dying world?

Well, I think we're all pretty much aware of this. I would say over the last 30, 40 years the church has manipulated itself into a position where it tries to win the affirmation of the unconverted. It wants to be popular with the world, so it develops the world's music, the world's style, even the wardrobe of the world.

The notion is that somehow if we're going to win the world, we've got to make the world like us the way we are. And that means we have to hold back the things that offend them. And so much of the offense of the gospel is removed in contemporary evangelicalism, and it has been for a long time.

I've written a number of books on this. You know, when the church courts the favor of the world, it is impossible not to compromise, because the gospel is an offense. The gospel is the most offensive thing you could ever say to a human being. Can you think of anything more offensive to say to a human being than, you are a sinner, everything you do displeases God, even the best that you do displeases God, even the things you think are good are filthy rags in his eyes, and for all of that you're going to come under his divine judgment and be sent to hell where you burn forever and ever. I mean, that is an absolutely terrifying message, and if you want to offend somebody, try that. So what has the church done but sucked that all out, and you've got this smiley-faced quote-unquote preacher telling people God likes them just the way they are and wants to give them everything they ever dreamed for and wished for, and turning God into some benign, loving, gentle grandfather-type personality rather than the holy judge who is full of wrath against sinners.

So that's what the church has done, and as a result of it, it's lost the power of its witness. We have to confront, and that's why we're doing this study on God's Word to an ungodly nation. And by the way, this is available to you. It's available to download God's Word to an ungodly nation. The audio files and written transcripts are available. Just go to gty.org for the MP3s and the transcripts, and we still have some CDs available if that works better for you. You can order them from Grace to You, God's Word to an ungodly society.

That's right. And also, friend, a perfect companion to this series would be John's book, Right Thinking in a World Gone Wrong. It will show you how to think biblically and how to avoid compromise when it comes to the most pressing moral issues of the day. To pick up that book or to download God's Word to an ungodly society, contact us today. You can order by phone, dial toll-free 800-55-GRACE, or log on to our website at gty.org.

Right Thinking in a World Gone Wrong addresses issues like abortion or living in a secular economy, illegal immigration, and much more. You can order your copy when you call 800-55-GRACE or log on to the website at gty.org. And to download every lesson from John's current study, God's Word to an ungodly society, go to gty.org. There you will also find any previous series that we've aired on Grace to You and hundreds of lessons that we haven't yet put on the radio. In fact, all of John's sermons from 53 years of pulpit ministry are free to download in audio or transcript format at gty.org. And to find out what series we'll be airing in the coming days, you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Keep in mind, Grace to You television airs this Sunday. Check your local listings for channel and times, and then be here next week when John shows you what will happen when Jesus comes. That's the title of the series, John Begins Monday, with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.