Jeremiah chapter number 12, the Bible reads in verse 1,
Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee,
yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments.
Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?
Wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?
So in this verse of chapter 12,
he's basically starting out by giving God respect
and he wants God to know
that he's not doubting his righteousness
or doubting that he has done things right,
but he does want to just kind of vent to God a little bit
that he's perplexed and he wants God to explain to him
why the way of the wicked is prospering.
He doesn't think it's fair
that wicked ungodly people are thriving
and doing well and prospering
and so it makes him upset and he's asking God,
why are you allowing these people to prosper so well?
But first he starts out just by being respectful,
saying Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee,
yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments.
Wherefore, which means why,
does the way of the wicked prosper?
Wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?
Thou has planted them.
Yea, they have taken root, they grow.
Yea, they bring forth fruit.
Thou art near in their mouth and far from their reins.
Basically when he says you're far from their reins,
he's saying you're not whipping their backside,
you're basically putting food into their mouth.
I mean you're blessing these people seemingly,
nothing bad's happening to them
when they're such wicked people, they ought to be punished.
And this is something that a lot of people today
could ask the same question where you look at a lot
of just really wicked ungodly people
just prospering and succeeding,
whether that be the politicians in our country,
our leaders that we know are godless wicked people
and yet they prosper, they're millionaires,
in many cases they're healthy,
they're popular, they're succeeding.
We see that in all different spheres of life
where ungodly people rise to the top in business
or in politics or in athletics.
The cheaters, the people who are doping,
they're winning the athletic competitions
and probably the guy who's doing it right feels this way.
We all feel this way at times when we feel like
people are just getting away with murder,
God's people are suffering
and the wicked are thriving and prospering.
Of course, Psalm 73 is a whole Psalm
that deals with this subject where Asaph is questioning God
and not understanding why this is.
But look what the Bible says in verse number three,
but thou, O Lord, as Jeremiah continues,
but thou, O Lord, knowest me, thou hast seen me
and tried mine heart toward thee.
Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter
and prepare them for the day of slaughter.
So basically, Jeremiah is pleading with God,
destroy these people, wipe these people out,
slaughter them, they're wicked, they're ungodly,
I'm sick of them getting away with it.
Now, there are a lot of prayers like that
in the book of Psalms.
In fact, there are 19 Psalms that are specifically known
as the imprecatory Psalms or Psalms where David is praying
that God would bring destruction swiftly upon his enemies
and to destroy those that are wicked and ungodly
and prospering in the world.
But when you go to Psalm 73,
what Asaph finally realizes, and he feels like an idiot,
he even says, man, I was such a fool, I was like a beast,
I can't even believe I thought that the wicked
are prosperous to the point where I envied them.
I wanted to be them because it seemed like
they were so much better off.
The thing that Asaph finally understood
was that the wicked will eventually get
what's coming to them.
And that's what we have to keep in mind,
that the Bible says vengeance belongeth unto me,
sayeth the Lord, I will recompense.
And when you understand that God will judge the wicked,
God will bring justice in the end,
it actually allows you to not have to get so angry
and worked up about things
because you know God's gonna take care of it.
You don't have to take vengeance,
you don't have to take up the sword
and go right every wrong
and go destroy these wicked perpetrators.
The Bible tells us that God will avenge us,
God will avenge other people that are innocent victims,
and so we don't have to take it upon ourselves.
That's why he said, dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves.
The Lord will avenge.
But see, the problem is today
that we have a doctrine in a lot of churches
and amongst Christians that God's not gonna judge,
God's not gonna bring vengeance, God's not gonna revenge.
God's just gonna bless everybody
and they don't preach on the wrath of God.
And as a result, you end up with a lot
of really angry, frustrated people
because there's actually great peace
that comes from knowing that God's gonna punish the wicked.
See, if you didn't think
that God's gonna punish the wicked,
you might get all angry and worked up
and just, you know, these people are just getting away
with it and these people are ruining my life,
they're ruining their life.
And have you ever known people
that are just really angry like that all the time
and they're frustrated and they're mad?
And I mean, it really causes some people to just go crazy,
go off the deep end.
But there's actually great peace
from knowing that God will recompense
when God said, I will repay.
But then you have churches and preachers teaching people,
hey, God's not gonna repay the wicked.
God loves them and is gonna bless them.
And then what it does is,
then it makes people really mad and frustrated and angry
because then they feel like they have to avenge something.
So you say, well, Pastor Anderson,
by preaching these imprecatory Psalms
and by, you know, talking about the fact
that there are wicked people that God hates,
that God's gonna destroy,
that people are gonna burn in hell.
You know, you're actually preaching hate
and you're stirring up violence
by preaching these biblical doctrines.
But it's actually the opposite.
You know, the Bible actually subdues violence by saying,
look, you don't have to avenge.
You don't have to take up the sword.
You don't have to go out and right every wrong in this world
and destroy the wicked
because God said that he will destroy the wicked.
It's the exact opposite.
You know, I remember I prayed years ago,
you know, that Obama would perish in an untimely manner.
And people freaked out, you know,
you prayed for the president tonight.
You know, and this is what they said.
They said that I was threatening the president.
But I said, actually, this is exact opposite
because I'm actually just praying
that God will take care of what needs to be taken care of.
I'm not gonna take things into my own.
I never would take things into my own hands.
I'm not telling other people to take things into their own hands.
I'm actually removing the sword from their hand
and saying, hey, why don't we just get on our knees
and pray about it?
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Tell it to Jesus.
It's not a violent, but see, the world gets things backwards
because they don't understand the word of God.
They don't understand Christianity.
They don't understand that we're not violent.
We're peaceful.
But we believe in a God that's gonna judge.
He's gonna avenge.
He's gonna bring justice.
It's not our place to bring the justice and judgment
upon the wicked.
Vengeance belongs unto the Lord.
But there are people out there teaching
it doesn't even belong to him.
And then at least people are really frustrated
because then it's kind of like,
well, who does it belong to at that point?
Who is gonna repay?
Who is gonna take care of these things?
And so funny because people thought
that I was so radical and so crazy
whenever I preached that sermon.
But it's funny, I was talking to my sweet little grandmother
who was like almost 90 years old.
And she had not heard anything about my sermon
or anything like that.
And the subject of Obama came up.
And this is what, these were her words.
I'm praying for something to happen to that idiot.
That's it, you know?
And she didn't get that from me.
She just said, well, I'm praying for something
to happen to that idiot.
And you know what?
There are probably a lot of people
that are praying for something to happen to that idiot.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, you did too, yeah.
God bless you, I see that hand.
I did too.
So the point is, we need to make sure
that we don't become these people
who are just enraged all the time,
just filled with anger, filled with rage
on a continual basis of just, oh man,
we gotta stop these people.
Look, anger has its place.
There's a righteous indignation.
But we need to keep in mind though
that God will judge, God will recompense.
Yes, we need to preach the truth.
Yes, we need to strongly rebuke
the evil workers of this world.
Yes, we need to teach the truth
and stand up against wickedness.
But we need to make sure that we don't cross the line
of feeling like it's our job
where we have to right every wrong in this world
and we have to repay and we're gonna take revenge
and so forth.
We need to just realize that that's in God's hands.
And then actually, we can get angry
when the time comes to be angry,
when it's appropriate to be angry.
But then we can put off anger as the Bible says.
We can have the peace of God
which passeth all understanding.
We can go to bed and we can sleep soundly on our pillow
and we can wake up with a smile on our face.
Look, I get up behind the pulpit
and sure, there are times when I rant and rave
and foam at the mouth and get angry at sin.
I believe that a preacher who doesn't do that is remiss
in part of what God expects him to do as a preacher
because God does demand that we preach hard against sin.
And spirit-filled men of God all became angry
and railed on sin.
Jesus was filled with anger a few times
when dealing with the Pharisees and so forth.
King Saul, when the spirit of the Lord came upon him,
it says he's filled with anger.
There's a righteous anger.
But I'm telling you, there are people who are angry
on a continual basis like they wake up in the morning
and they're angry.
And at noon, they're angry.
And at night, they're angry.
And that is not right.
The Bible tells us that we need to give place unto wrath.
You know, there's a place for anger.
He said, be angry and sin not,
let not the sun go down on your wrath.
And the Bible says, make no friendship with a furious man
and with an angry man, thou shalt not go
lest you learn his ways.
So we shouldn't even hang around people
that are just constantly angry,
just constantly mad all the time
because that'll rub off on us and give us a bad attitude.
You know, the joy of the Lord is our strength.
And so we need to have balance in our lives.
But it seems like people tend to go off
on one direction or the other.
Either they're just angry all the time and mad.
Or they just never get angry.
You're like, whoa, are you ever gonna get mad
about something?
Look at all the bad things going on.
You know, we need balance.
We need to understand that there's a time for anger
and time to put off anger.
There's a time to preach the good news
and there's a time to get up and preach bad news.
And we need to do all of it in its due season.
And so here we see Jeremiah, he's frustrated.
He sees the wicked prospering, he's upset.
So what does he do?
He prays to the Lord and says,
Lord, destroy these wicked people.
Now, people would say, oh, he shouldn't have prayed that.
That was wrong.
This is inspired scripture.
Not to mention the 19 Psalms that are inspired scripture
that are teaching us this, okay?
So don't just sit there and say, well, I don't like that.
I don't think that's right to pray that way.
Well, it's a lot better than being violent, right?
So turn to, look at verse number four.
It says, how long shall the land mourn?
And the herbs of every field wither
for the wickedness of them that dwell therein.
The beasts are consumed and the birds
because they said he shall not see our last end.
And it's just talking about the fact there
that the land is suffering as a result of the wickedness.
God's bringing judgment and punishment
and famines upon the land
and things are withering and so forth.
But here's God's response in verse number five.
It says, if thou has run with the footmen
and they have wearied thee,
then how can thou contend with horses?
And if in the land of peace were in thou trusted,
they wearied thee,
then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?
For even thy brethren in the house of thy father,
even they have dealt treacherously with thee.
Yea, they have called a multitude after thee.
Believe them not, though they speak fair words unto thee.
God is warning Jeremiah that even his relatives,
even the people of his hometown, Anathoth,
that he's already brought this up in other chapters,
that they're conspiring against him.
They're trying to get a whole multitude riled up
to literally kill him.
They want Jeremiah dead.
That's how bad they hate him.
And God's warning him saying, don't trust them.
Don't trust the people from your hometown
and don't trust your brethren, your relatives.
Even your own family is out to betray you, Jeremiah.
But what he says in verse five is very profound.
If thou has run with the footmen and they have wearied thee,
then how can thou contend with horses?
He's saying, if you can't keep up in a foot race
against another human being,
how are you gonna run against horses,
which are better runners than human beings in some ways?
And then it says, and if in the land of peace
wherein thou trustest, they wearied thee,
then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?
And we ought to ask ourselves the same thing.
And this is actually something that's been on my mind a lot
over the last few weeks.
This concept of just how good we have it over here
in the United States in 2016,
just how much freedom we have
and just all the technology we have available,
all the opportunities that are there,
we could do so much for Christ right now.
I mean, we could win so many souls.
The sky is the limit.
We're sitting here in a city of 4 million people
and it's just all white under harvest.
We can just knock doors.
We don't have to worry about the police coming
and telling us, hey, you can't do that
and arresting us or beating us.
We don't have to worry about being beheaded
or stoned to death or hung from a rope.
We don't have to worry about being punished
by the Roman Catholic Inquisition or something like that.
We can just freely walk down the street,
knock as many doors as we want,
preach the gospel to as many people as we want.
And then we have the technology where we can hop in the car
and just drive to somewhere 100 miles away
or 400 miles away and just do the same thing,
just knock doors, win souls.
I mean, we have the opportunity to preach a Bible sermon
like I'm preaching right now and upload it to the internet
and just have it viewed by tens of thousands of people
and just broadcast it to the world
to where there's people on all five continents listening.
I mean, the opportunities are just amazing, aren't they?
I mean, when has there ever been a time
when you could do as much for the kingdom of God?
When has there ever been a time
when you could as easily win souls to Christ?
When you could as easily preach the gospel
to thousands of people?
Just even just by being a faithful door-to-door soul winner
week after week, you could win.
So, I mean, think about it.
Even if you just went soul winning
and just won one person in the Lord every week on average,
you know, spend a few hours every week,
you won one person under the Lord on average.
And let's say you did that for 10 years.
I mean, do the math.
There's 52 weeks in a year.
If you're winning 52 people to the Lord every year,
you did that for 10 years,
you'll have won 520 people under Christ.
You did that for 20 years, just nothing fancy,
nothing special, just a faithful soul winner.
Every week, you strive to win.
You know, some weeks you might win two people to the Lord,
three people, some weeks you'll win zero unto the Lord.
But if you just average that, one a week approximately,
right, and then 20 years later,
you've won over 1,000 people unto Christ.
What an amazing testimony.
What an amazing life's work.
Not to mention what God's gonna do
in and through the 1,000 people
that you've reached with the gospel by doing that.
I mean, there are just so many opportunities.
It's so easy to get your rear end to church,
Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night,
when you've got buses, and you got cars,
and you got bicycles,
and you've got all kinds of ways to get here.
I mean, you can get here.
I mean, you've got a nice place to live,
you got transportation, you got a church sitting here
that's ready to preach the Word of God to you,
and it's right here, and you can easily get here.
But think about how other people in other times
and in other places have not had these opportunities.
Where if they go soul winning,
there's a good chance they might take a beating
in an alley somewhere.
Or if they go soul winning,
they could get arrested, and they're doing it anyway.
Or people who don't even have an independent Baptist church
or even a church that's preaching
out of a King James Bible,
anywhere near them where they're saying,
hey, the closest church that I can find
that's preaching salvation by grace through faith
out of a King James Bible is four hours away.
It's five hours away.
And I even hear from people in these other countries
that make treks like that.
They're getting on a train
and they're going to some city five hours away
so that they could be baptized
because they couldn't find a church in their area
that's preaching the gospel that can baptize them.
I mean, if you can't serve God in 2016 America,
when you have all the technology,
you got a car, you got a bike, you got a bus pass,
whatever you got, and the church is 20 minutes away
or 10 minutes away or 45 minutes,
oh, it's 45 minutes away.
But it's only 45 minutes away.
In time passed, if the church was two and a half miles away,
it would have taken you 45 minutes to walk there.
Think about it.
I mean, in the olden days, well, they rode horses.
You know, throughout history,
most people didn't ride horses, okay?
It was wealthy people and certain kinds of people
that rode horses.
Your average Joe has always walked throughout history.
He has walked and ran where he needed to go.
Now in modern times, of course,
we pretty much all have a vehicle
or we have vehicles available to us, bicycles, cars,
you know, public transport, whatever.
But in the olden days,
if the church would have been two and a half miles from you,
it would have taken you 45, now what's easier?
Walking 45 minutes in Phoenix in August
or hopping in the car, turning on the air conditioner,
you know, adjusting the lumbar of your seat a little bit
and driving 45 minutes to get to church.
I'm just putting things in perspective for you.
Look, if you can't run with the footman,
how are you gonna contend with the horses?
And if in the land of peace where you dwell,
if in the land of peace wherein thou trustest,
they wearied thee,
then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?
How are you gonna do when the flood comes?
You know, you can't even stand when there's nothing,
when you're just standing in peace,
you're just too tired, you wanna sit down and relax.
What about when you're standing in a raging river, he says.
You know, you can't keep up with people that are on foot.
How are you gonna keep up with the horsemen?
And so God is rebuking us here
for thinking that we have it hard
when we don't really have it that hard.
And it's easy for any of us to start feeling sorry
for ourselves thinking that we have it so hard.
But honestly, everybody in this room has it a lot easier
than a lot of people in other parts of the world tonight
that are struggling to get to church.
They're struggling to find a church.
They're facing great opposition from their family,
great opposition from the government
or from the authorities, and they're struggling tonight
in a situation that makes our situation seem so easy.
And I just keep asking myself, you know,
am I doing everything that I can
with the opportunities that I'm being given?
And you know, I mean, sometimes you just wanna ask people,
are you doing anything?
What are you doing?
And imagine, you know, getting up to heaven
and there's gonna be all the saints of time past
that have gone through the trials and tribulations
that have been stoned and sawn asunder and everything else,
and people who've struggled and been in prison and beaten
and faced great opposition.
And then, you know, basically your big trial and tribulation
was just, you know, somebody laughing at you
or maybe, you know, you had to drive a little further
in your air conditioned vehicle to get to church
than you wanted or whatever.
I mean, we just need to put things in perspective.
And honestly, I don't know about you,
but I wanna do greater works for the Lord in 2016.
I wanna see great things happen in and through this church.
I believe that the sky is the limit.
And you know, I love what we're doing.
And you know, I just feel like that we could do
just amazing things for God
if we just keep doing what we're doing.
And especially if some people who aren't involved
would get involved and jump in and get involved.
I mean, we have hundreds of people in this church now.
I mean, we could turn this city upside down.
We could knock every door six times.
I mean, imagine that.
What if that was going on in every city in America?
You know, and we can reach the small towns.
We can travel to Los Angeles.
We can travel to South Africa, for crying out loud.
Why?
Because we have amazing technology,
amazing opportunities.
We have the freedom to do it.
Let's make the most of it.
And let's start practicing now.
It's so funny how some people would even say,
hey, I'm willing to die for Jesus Christ.
You know, I read Fox's Book of Martyrs
and I'm willing to go to the stake
and be burned at the stake.
I'm willing to die for Jesus Christ.
But you can't come to church
or you can't get out soul winning.
How are you gonna die for Jesus Christ
when you can't even live for Jesus Christ?
You know, I mean,
if you can't get your butt out soul winning,
if you can't get to church,
if you can't get, you know, read your Bible and pray,
I mean, how are you gonna die for him?
That's all just talk at that point.
So we need to realize that if you're gonna deal
with that swelling of Jordan, if it comes,
you better learn how to serve God in the land of peace
and you better start running with the footmen
before you start telling us
how you're gonna outrun the horses.
And by the way, it is possible for a human being
to outrun a horse over 100 mile distance.
People do it every single year.
There's a man versus horse race that's out there.
And the men win, by the way.
We're the greatest creation that God has created.
We're greater than any of the animals,
you know, on so many levels.
But that's another story.
Look at verse number seven.
The Bible reads, I've forsaken mine house.
This is God speaking.
And God forbid that that would ever be said of this church
because the church is the Lord's house in the New Testament.
And so wouldn't it be a shame if God said,
hey, I've forsaken my house.
I've forsaken that church.
And you say, well, God would never do that.
Well, in Revelation two and three,
that's exactly what he said he would do
to churches that went into false doctrine
and that stopped serving him and stopped doing
the first works.
He said, if you don't repent,
I'll remove your candlestick out of his place.
And that candlestick represented the church.
He said, the seven candlesticks which I saw
are the seven churches.
He said, I'll remove your candlestick out of his place.
It's possible for a church to get into false doctrine
to the point where God would basically just remove
the candlestick from that church,
where he no longer recognizes it as a church
that is a legitimate bonafide Christian church,
Baptist church.
We need to realize that in order to have God's spirit
mightily upon us, we need to keep the doctrine right
and we need to keep the works right,
according to Revelation chapters two and three.
Because in this case, they had completely gone into idolatry
and they'd gone into a lot of sin.
And he said, I've forsaken my house,
referring of course to the Old Testament God's house,
which was the temple at Jerusalem.
They might've thought that the presence of God was there,
but he said, no, I'm pulling back.
I'm withdrawing my blessing.
I'm taking my hand off this thing
and I'm gonna let you be destroyed by the Babylonians
that are coming in.
He said, I've forsaken my house.
I've left my heritage.
I have given the dearly beloved of my soul
into the hand of her enemies.
Now, the dearly beloved of his soul here
is the nation of Judah at this time,
the nation of the Southern Kingdom of the Israelites.
Those were the dearly beloved of his soul.
His house was that temple in Jerusalem.
And he's saying, I've forsaken it.
I've left it.
I've given it over into the hand of her enemies,
which is the Babylonians.
Mine heritage is unto me as a lion in the forest.
It crieth out against me.
Therefore have I hated it.
What a sad state when God goes from calling it
the dearly beloved of his soul to saying, I hated it.
What does heritage mean?
It's that which you inherit.
Heritage is synonymous with our modern word inheritance.
It's the same exact concept here.
That which is rightfully his that belongs to him.
He's saying, I'm to the point where I'm just,
I'm pulling out of there.
You know, these should be my people.
It's supposed to be my land.
It's supposed to be my house, but I'm leaving.
And not only is it not the, you know,
it was the dearly beloved of my soul,
but he's saying, therefore have I hated it.
What a terrible state of affairs.
It says, my heritage is unto me as a speckled bird.
Now I don't know exactly what he means by that,
but I don't think it's a compliment
when he says that they're like a speckled bird.
The birds round about are against her.
Come ye, assemble all the beasts of the field.
Come to devour,
referring to all the people that are gonna die.
It says, many pastors have destroyed my vineyard.
They have trodden my portion underfoot.
They have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.
Now, what does he mean by that?
Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard.
Well, if we get the context of the book of Jeremiah,
in the last several chapters,
he brought up the pastors repeatedly.
He brings them up for a few verses in almost each chapter.
He talks about how the pastors are brutish
and how they've not sought the Lord,
but he also brought up the fact
that they were dealing falsely
and that they're actually ripping people off financially
and taking advantage of the poor
and actually serving themselves.
Both the rulers politically and the spiritual leaders
were both just getting wealthy off the backs of the people
and being dishonest in their dealings and so forth.
So that's a reference to that once again,
trotting the people underfoot,
the poor and the disadvantage and so forth.
It says in verse number 11,
they've made it desolate
and being desolate it mourneth unto me.
The whole land is made desolate
because no man layeth it to heart.
The spoilers are come upon all high places
through the wilderness.
For the sword of the Lord shall devour
from one end of the land, even to the other end of the land.
No flesh shall have peace.
They've sown wheat, but they shall reap thorns.
This is referring to a literal sowing and reaping.
They're sowing something that they wanna eat,
good food that's gonna bring them wealth and sustenance.
They've sown wheat, they're gonna reap thorns
because God's not gonna bless their crops.
God's gonna bring a curse upon the land
in addition to the invading armies that are coming.
He said, they've put themselves to pain,
but shall not profit.
And they shall be ashamed of your revenues
because of the fierce anger of the Lord.
So what do we see in this chapter?
Just a lot of anger coming from the Lord.
He's upset about the false doctrine.
He's upset about them worshiping false gods,
you know, mistreating the poor and so forth.
Look at verse 14.
And this is a really interesting scripture
verses 14 through 17 here,
where instead of talking to the land of Judah
and talking about Jerusalem,
which is most of what this is directed at
in the book of Jeremiah,
he actually addresses the neighboring countries around Judah
and he calls them my evil neighbors, all right?
And he's referring to these evil nations
that are near unto the children of Judah there.
Now what?
This is really interesting.
And I think sometimes it's easy to read over stuff like this
without actually letting everything sink in what God says.
But let's read this very carefully.
Beginning of verse 14.
Thus saith the Lord against all mine evil neighbors
that touch the inheritance
which I have caused my people to inherit.
Behold, I will pluck them out of their land
and pluck out the house of Judah from among them.
Now what's he saying in this verse?
He's saying that the neighbors of Israel,
the neighbors of Judah that were hostile unto Judah
that have touched their land,
that basically wanna take advantage
of maybe Judah at a weak point.
And the Jews at a weak point when Nebuchadnezzar's coming in
and they basically wanna see the downfall of Jerusalem.
They wanna see the downfall of Judah this time.
He says, not only are the children of Judah
and the Israelites gonna go into captivity,
but he's saying,
you're gonna be plucked out of your land as well.
So pay attention.
When Judah is taken captive to Babylon,
he's saying, you evil neighbors are going with it.
Everybody understand that?
He's saying, I will pluck them out of their land,
talking about the evil neighbors.
I'm gonna pluck them out of their land
and pluck out the house of Judah from among them.
He's plucking the neighbors and Judah from among them.
Watch this, verse 15.
And it shall come to pass,
after that I have plucked them out,
I will return and have compassion on them
and will bring them again,
every man to his heritage and every man to his land.
So here he says,
that eventually he's gonna bring the children of Judah
back to their land and have compassion on them.
We know that that happened 70 years later,
already happened, right?
Jeremiah is being written
before the 70 year Babylonian captivity.
So he's prophesying, look, the children of Judah,
they're wicked, I'm cursing them, God's angry.
And he's saying, I'm gonna pluck them out of their land.
The evil neighbors are gonna get plucked
out of their land also,
but children of Judah are gonna be plucked.
But he says, Judah is coming back eventually,
and they're gonna be brought back
and put in their own land, which we know happened.
Of course, we can read about that in Ezra and Nehemiah,
right, them coming back to the land, rebuilding the wall,
rebuilding the temple.
But look at verse 16, this is really interesting.
And it shall come to pass,
if they will diligently learn the ways of my people,
to swear by my name, the Lord liveth,
as they taught my people to swear by Baal,
then shall they be built in the midst of my people.
But if they will not obey, I will utterly pluck up
and destroy that nation, sayeth the Lord.
Did you just understand what he just said there
in verse 16?
He says to the evil neighbors, as he calls them,
he says that if they will turn unto the Lord.
And he's saying these people, and notice,
these are distinct from what he calls my people.
When he says my people, he's talking about the Jews
in the land of Judah, which in the Old Testament
were God's chosen people.
But distinct from my people, he says,
it shall come to pass if they, meaning the evil neighbors,
if they will diligently learn the ways of my people.
So if those neighboring nations would learn
the ways of God's people, you know, when they come back
and they're doing right 70 years later
and they're serving the Lord,
if they will diligently learn the ways of my people,
to swear by my name, the Lord liveth,
as they taught my people to swear by Baal.
So he's saying these evil neighbors in the past
had taught God's people to swear by Baal.
See, Judah had picked up all these idols
and false religions from the neighboring nations.
So he's saying if they will swear by my name,
the Lord liveth, as they taught in the past,
he's saying my people to swear by Baal.
What's God gonna do for these evil neighbors
if they'll get right, if they'll turn to the Lord,
if they will learn how to worship the Lord
according to the Word of God?
It says then shall they be built in the midst of the Lord
in the midst of my people, in the midst of,
in the middle of, among, he's saying my people.
Look, there are so many scriptures like this
in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, so many.
So many, you could preach so many sermons
where you never even read the same scripture twice
as you just went through Jeremiah and Ezekiel and teach it,
where God is always reaching out to the foreign nations
and saying you can also be God's people also.
You can be God's people.
I'll plant you in the midst of my people.
And in fact, in Ezekiel, he goes so far as to say,
hey, if the foreigners and the strangers will come in
and they wanna join up with the nation of Israel,
he says, of course, they'd be circumcised
under the old covenant and worship the Lord
and keep the Passover and so forth.
He said whatever tribe they dwell among,
they'll inherit with that tribe.
And right here, it's crystal clear
that if these evil neighbors would get right with the Lord
and if they wanted to be a part of God's people
and if they wanted to learn the ways of God's people,
he'll plant them in the midst of God's people.
Or, he says in verse 17, if they'll not obey,
I will utterly pluck up and destroy that nation,
saith the Lord, and many of those neighboring nations
have ceased to be a nation unto this day.
There are a lot of nations that you read about
in the Old Testament that aren't a nation today.
We don't really know who those people are
because they were just so scattered and obliterated
and God intermingled and nobody even knows
who they are anymore.
So, this goes to show what a false doctrine is,
this thing of, well, it's your blood or ethnicity
or race or nationality that makes you God's people.
This is just yet another scripture
that flies in the face of that.
Who cares what their ethnicity is?
The evil neighbors could come and join unto the Lord.
What about in the book of Esther when it says
many of the people became Jews?
What, did they change?
Did they get all the DNA removed from their body
and all of a sudden get Hebrew DNA?
No, because it never was ethnic.
It never was hereditary.
It never had anything to do with race or ethnicity.
That, even in the Old Testament,
let alone in the New Testament,
even in the Old Testament,
where genealogies did play a role
and when they did matter
and when we see frequent genealogies,
even in the Old Testament,
where there was a physical nation of Israel
that was the chosen people of God,
even then he's saying that any foreigner could join.
All he has to do is just get circumcised,
dwell in the land, worship the Lord, keep the Passover,
and he'd say, well, yeah, but what tribe is he?
I've heard people pull that out.
Well, you know, all you gotta do
is go to Ezekiel, chapter 47,
and he spells out at the end of the chapter there
which tribe, whichever tribe they dwell among,
that they become that tribe.
But this flies in the face of their racist belief
that somehow the so-called Jews are God's chosen people
because of their ethnicity,
which their ethnicity is a joke anyway
because not one of them can produce a genealogy
proving that they even are who they say they are,
none of them.
You could talk to the most orthodox rabbi
and he'll tell you, hey, I don't have a genealogy
that even goes back to the time of Christ,
let alone, you know, going back further than that.
And if you remember in the book of Ezra in Nehemiah,
when they came back to the land,
there were people that couldn't produce their genealogy.
But they said, we're Levites, we're priests,
we're coethites, you know, we are of the lineage
that's supposed to be serving in the temple
in the house of the Lord.
And they said, okay, prove it.
And because they could not produce their genealogy,
they were put from the priesthood as polluted.
They were assumed to not be truly Levites,
to not be priests.
But today, we're just supposed to assume
that every white-skinned, freckled redhead
or blonde-haired, blue-eyed person
over in the Middle East today is Jewish
because they said so.
You know, Pulaski, Likowski, Kaczynski, you know,
that's all their real names, by the way.
What was, what was, what was,
does anybody know Netanyahu's real name?
Somebody help me out.
All these, like these guys, you know,
they all have these names that sound really Hebrew.
You know, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Or what's that other, what's that other guy?
I knew the names real well when I was researching
for the Marching Design film.
What's that, you know, David Ben-Gurion,
and all the, you know, all these guys that were,
if you look at all those guys' names
that have all these really Hebrew,
so, oh, we're going back to Promised Land.
But then you look at that,
that's not the name that they're born with.
What is it?
So, so yeah, Benjamin Netanyahu's real name is,
he's saying Maliekukowski,
I don't think he's pronounced it right,
but none of us know how to pronounce it.
So the point is, a bunch of Kapowski-Malowskis
show up in the Promised Land.
The Palestinians are like, when these people left,
they were brown, and when they came back,
they were like, the Jews are all white.
And we're just supposed to take their word for it,
and we're like, well, how are you Jewish?
And they're like, well, my mom's Jewish.
And they say, well, our dad doesn't matter,
it's just our mom's Jewish.
Well, in the Bible, wasn't it always the father that even?
Aren't all the genealogies like the father,
you know, Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob,
Jacob begat Judas, right?
Judas begat Pharaohs and Zara, you know.
Wasn't all men, but the Jews of today do a matrilineal.
So it's all on their mom's side.
Is that biblical?
So how are these people Jews again?
Well, because they said so.
Can't you see that they're Jewish?
But then they're like, oh, these Palestinians, man,
they're interlopers, these Arabs, man.
But here's the thing, those Arabs have probably
just as much blood of the Jews of 2,000 years ago
mixed in as these bunch of white Europeans.
And look, I'm not disputing that these white Europeans
don't have a little bit of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob's blood in them, I'm sure they do.
But I'm sure the Palestinians do too,
because it's been so mingled and mixed over there
because the Jews are scattered into all nations and so on.
But all that to say this, it's never,
it's never been hereditary.
It's never been some, even in the Old Testament,
when genealogies mattered to the point
where Ezra is saying, sorry, you can't be a priest
unless you can prove to me that you are.
But then we get into the New Testament
and God says, avoid genealogies.
The only genealogies that you're gonna find
in the New Testament, the only genealogies are of Jesus.
Jesus.
Now, in the Old Testament,
we have all these big, long genealogies.
You have two long genealogies in the New Testament, right?
Matthew chapter one and Luke chapter three.
There's your genealogy.
And you know why we have that?
Because that's the only person's genealogy
that matters is Jesus.
Why?
Because if we're a son of God,
if we have Jesus Christ as our everlasting father,
that's all that matters.
Who cares about the rest of it?
The rest of it, just avoid it.
But even in the Old Testament,
when genealogy mattered for certain things,
even then, God's telling a bunch of evil neighbors,
the evil neighbors of Lebanon,
the evil neighbors of Jordan,
the evil neighbors of Syria or whatever,
hey, if you will learn my ways and worship me
and serve me, I'll plant you in the midst of my people.
I wonder if the Jews so-called of today
would make that offer under their neighbors.
Say, hey, if you guys will worship the Lord,
you can be planted in the midst of Israel.
You guys can all come in if you'll worship the Lord.
But see, here's the problem with that though.
If the Jews made that offer today,
they'd be inviting people into a false religion.
They'd be saying, hey, if you renounce Jesus,
if you'll reject Jesus Christ, oh, Palestinian,
because you said, well, you know,
you can't go to Israel if you convert to Judaism.
Yeah, if you'll sell your soul to the devil.
Because in order to convert to Orthodox Judaism,
you have to renounce Jesus as the Messiah.
You cannot believe that Jesus is the Son of God.
I don't care, we talked to the most liberal rabbi.
Okay, I mean, we talked to Orthodox rabbi that said,
hey, if you believe Jesus is the Messiah,
you can't be Jewish.
But then we talked to the most liberal possible rabbi
and he said, well, you can believe that Jesus is the Messiah
and still be Jewish, you can still convert to Judaism,
but you just can't believe that he's the Son of God.
Then he's not gonna do you any good,
because he that believeth on the Son has everlasting life.
So the point is that there are a bunch of Palestinians
over in Israel today that claim the name of Jesus Christ,
and the Jews want them out of there.
Hey, this is our land or whatever, right?
And the only way that those Palestinians
could really have the right to be there,
according to the so-called Jews,
is if they would renounce the Lord Jesus Christ
and join the false religion of Judaism.
And then we have a bunch of Christians in America today
who are basically saying, yeah, the Jews are right,
we need to side with the Israel,
we need to get the Palestinians out,
throw out the Palestinians.
So you have places now in Israel
that used to be like 20% of people claim the name of Christ.
I'm not saying these people are all saved.
Obviously, they're all different denominations
of Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians,
all manner of so-called Christian.
Whether they're saved or not, some of them are saved,
a lot of them aren't.
Obviously, if they're Catholic, they're not saved,
but there's just a mixture of all these denominations.
But in areas that were demographically like 20% Christian
that are now, since Israel was founded in the 40s,
now they're like 1% Christian or 2% Christian, right?
And then basically what you have is in America,
a bunch of evangelical Christians saying,
we need to get that one or 2% out
so that God's people, the Christ-rejecting Jews,
can own all their land.
I mean, see what I mean?
It doesn't even make sense.
And God, when they worshiped other gods, God pulled out.
He said, I've forsaken my house.
I've left my heritage.
I hated it.
I mean, isn't that what he said?
Even in the Old Testament, that's what he said.
And then he's reaching out to foreigners and saying,
hey, if you guys will learn my ways,
I'll plant you in the midst.
But to the modern evangelical Christian,
to the modern independent Baptist,
nope, it's all about race.
It's all about ethnicity.
I guess these bunch of white people over there,
they just like self-identify as Jews.
You know what I mean?
They self-identify as the sons of Abraham.
And you know what?
That's no more legitimate than some dude
going into the women's room at Target.
I mean, a dude belongs in the women's room at Target
just as much as these bunch of white Polish Europeans
have a right to say, hey, the promised land belongs to me.
I'm dead serious.
Because I self-identify.
No, why don't you know, if you weren't born a man,
you don't belong, or if you weren't born a woman,
I guess that's what it is, right?
They're trying to, see, I don't really care.
They're all perverts, stowing them with stones.
But anyway, if you weren't born female,
what are you doing in the ladies' room?
Well, Kapowski, if you don't have a genealogy
to show us that you're born of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
why do you think you could just waltz into the promised land
and just claim it, throw out the inhabitants
that have been there for hundreds of years?
Well, this is my land now.
They reject Jesus.
I'd rather stand with Christians.
See, I don't have this race, and you know what?
I don't have racial pride.
I'm not gonna stand here and say,
hey, I'm proud to be a white person today.
Hey, you know, Asian pride, black pride, black power.
You know?
Him that glories, let him glory in the Lord,
and the Lord's name is Jesus.
So here's the thing, I feel a lot more kinship
with a black person, an Asian person, a Hispanic person,
that believes in Jesus, that reads the King James Bible.
I have way more kinship with that person
than some white pagan who's worshiping Thor
in Scandinavia or something, you know,
because my name's Anderson, so I'm of Sweden or whatever.
Who cares about that junk, and how can Christians
have just been so brainwashed on this
where they actually think, oh, well, you know what?
It's in their blood, it's their race.
They don't believe in Jesus,
but they're still God's people.
What Bible are you reading where you could ever
be God's people by virtue of race?
That didn't even fly in the Old Testament.
Even in the Old Testament, he said,
you don't get circumcised, you're cut off from the people.
You don't keep the Passover,
you're cut off from the people.
Well, let me ask you this.
Do the Jews in the Holy Land keep the Passover biblically?
Do they kill a lamb, they put the blood on the doorpost?
No, then God already said they're cut off.
That should be a case closed, end of story, done.
Sermon's over, let's bow our heads and go home
at that point.
But evangelical Christians today are so obsessed
with this thing of race and nationality
where they just think, oh, well, these Palestinians,
you know, even if they're a Christian,
they don't belong there.
Put the Christ-rejecting Jews in there.
Because they're not all Muslims, folks.
There are some that are different.
And that's what it should go by.
It should go by, you know, who we're gonna,
who, you know, are you siding with the Muslims?
No, I only will side with my brothers and sisters in Christ.
And if they're ethnically so-called Jewish or Polish
or whatever, great, I'll side with them.
But I'm not gonna side with Christ-rejecting Judaism
any more than I would side with Christ-rejecting Islam.
And this is just another chapter.
And you say, well, why do you preach on this all the time?
I don't even wanna preach on it.
But it just keeps being in the Bible.
And then I just can't, I'm not kidding, like,
it's just like, okay, Jeremiah chapter one, there it is.
Jeremiah chapter two.
Oh, Jeremiah 12, surely we're gonna get a break from it.
I'm not writing this stuff.
I mean, this is a pretty interesting passage.
People aren't really talking about it.
But it's a key doctrine here
that God loved the foreign nations,
even in the Old Testament,
where he's constantly reaching out to them, right?
Or do you think God just hated everybody
except Israel in the Old Testament?
And then all of a sudden in the New Testament,
he's like, whoa, there's other people in the world.
Let's teach all nations, right?
Let's go into all the world and teach all nations.
No, he was trying to do that in the Old Testament too.
But the Israelites are too stubborn,
and they got all hung up on race and everything
to where when Paul wants to preach to the Gentiles,
they wanna kill him.
Take this fellow from the earth
that's not fit for such a one to live,
because he said, God sent me to preach to the Gentiles.
Oh, God forbid.
But they're like unto Jonah
where they wanna see Nineveh perish.
They want Nineveh to go up in flames.
They hate people of other nationalities.
And you know what, we should not be that way.
And I don't care whether you call me a liberal or a hippie.
I don't think we should hate people of other nationalities.
And I don't think that we should think
that we're better because we're white
or because we're American or because of anything.
The only thing that would make one person
better than somebody else is if God
had basically made that person his child
and made them a king and a priest
through their faith in Christ.
That's the only thing that separate.
There's two kinds of people in this world.
Those who are saved, and those who are about to get saved.
No, those who are saved and those who are not saved.
And that's it, two kinds of people, saved and unsaved.
Who cares about your nationality and all this other junk?
But you know what, Christians will say
that they understand that, but then all of a sudden
when you start talking about Israel,
that just goes out the window and it's like,
whoa, but it's their nationality
that makes them God's people.
It's like, they need to just understand
that that makes no sense.
And then you know what they call us?
Anti-Semitic.
They have the call, which is implying that I'm racist.
That's what they mean by that.
When they say anti-Semitic, you hate people of another,
even though they're white and I'm white.
Supposedly I'm racist against myself,
because I'm racist against white people,
according to these people.
But they say, you're anti-Semitic, you're racist,
because I said they're all equal.
Because I said Jews and Gentiles are equal,
that makes me racist.
No, anyone who's Zionist is racist.
Zionism is inherently racist.
It's racist because you're saying by virtue of race,
these people have rights that these people don't have,
these people get, it's a fraud.
But then they call us racist.
And then they'll say, you hate Jews.
No, you know who hates Jews?
The people who tells them they're going to heaven
when they're really going to hell.
The person who loves them tells them the truth of the gospel.
I don't hate Jews.
I want Jews to be saved,
so I tell them that they're worshiping Satan,
because they don't know that.
Somebody needs to tell them that.
I'd love to see them turn to Christ and be saved.
Let's pray and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for this chapter, Lord,
and Lord, help us all to take that admonition
about running with the footmen
so that we can be prepared to run with the horses someday.
Lord, we don't know when our opportunities
are going to be gone, Lord.
We don't know when the internet
could be shut down and censored.
We don't know when there could be laws against soul winning.
We don't know when things could be locked down
to the point where we can't travel freely
and go soul winning freely, Lord.
And we don't know when the end of this world will come.
No man knoweth the day or the hour, Lord.
But help us to do everything we can right now
while it's easy, while it's available, while it's free, Lord.
Help us to do everything we possibly can
to reach this world with the gospel, Lord.
And Father, I just pray that you would just open the eyes
of the Christians in this country who are so deceived
where they have this Israel worship cult
where they just, they don't understand
that the only thing that matters is Jesus.
They don't get that, Father.
And I just pray that you would just open their eyes
that if people don't have Jesus, they don't have anything
and that they need to be saved
and that worshiping in a synagogue
is gonna damn their soul straight to hell, Lord.
Please just open our eyes, Lord, as a nation.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.