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Amen, Jeremiah 37, the Bible reads in verse 1, and King Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, reigned instead of Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, whom Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had made king in the land of Judea. Now at this time, or Judah rather, a lot of the kings around this time, it can be a little bit complicated to understand who the king is, and in what order they reigned, and what their names are. Part of the reason is because a lot of these guys didn't reign for very long. Some of them would reign for three months, and so forth, because this is a very tumultuous time, as the kingdom of Judah is falling to the Chaldeans, and falling to the Babylonians, and it's going to cease to have a government for 70 years, when they're all taken captive into Babylon and into other places. But I do want to point out that when it says Coniah there, part way through verse 1, it says the same person as Jeconiah. So sometimes when you're reading the Old Testament, there will be different little variations on someone's name, like there will be a guy whose name is Jeconiah, or just Coniah for short, or Jehoiakim can come across a little bit different. So you just got to kind of pay attention to these names a little bit. Like sometimes Joshua will be called Jehoshua. You know, they'll have just little variations. So anyway, this new king, King Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, reigned instead of Coniah, or Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon made king in the land of Judah. But neither he, nor his servants, nor the people of the land, did hearken unto the words of the Lord, which he spake by the prophet Jeremiah. And Zedekiah the king sent Jehuchal the son of Shelemiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maasiah the priest, to the prophet Jeremiah, saying, Pray now unto the Lord our God for us. Now isn't this pretty typical? Here's a guy, he doesn't obey the word of God. He doesn't obey the Lord. He's not listening to preaching. But then when he's in a bind, when he's in trouble, he says to the king, Oh, would you pray for us, Jeremiah? Will you help us? You know, this is pretty typical where people only seek after the Lord when they need something. But does Zedekiah get help from the Lord? No, he doesn't get any help from the Lord. He ends up... Horrible things happen to him that we're going to read about in future chapters in the book of Jeremiah. Because that's not how God works. You don't just ignore God, ignore preaching, not listen to the man of God, not listen to the word of God. And then when you're in a bind, just show, Oh, pray for me, help me. Go to Proverbs chapter 1, I'm going to show you this. Proverbs chapter number 1. This is a sad truth, but it is the truth nonetheless. Look at Proverbs chapter number 1. And look at verse 24 of Proverbs 1. It says, Because I have called... This is God speaking. Because I have called, and ye refused. I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded. But ye have said it, not all my counsel, and would none of my reproof. I also will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when your fear cometh. When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you, then shall they call upon me. You see, now all of a sudden, they want God's help. They didn't want to show up for church on Sunday morning. They didn't want to show up for church on Sunday night, or Wednesday night. They didn't want to read the Bible. They didn't want to talk to the soul winners that came and knocked on their door, and asked them, do you know for sure if you die today, you go to heaven, and try to preach them the gospel. They rejected all that. But then, when they're in a bind, all of a sudden, then they call out to the Lord. And what does the Bible say God's going to do? He says, Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer, it says in verse 28. They shall seek me early, but they shall not find me, for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would none of my counsel, meaning they didn't want my counsel. They despised all my reproof. Therefore, shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices, for the turning away of the simple shall slay them. Watch this next phrase. And the prosperity of fools shall destroy them, but who so hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil. So when the Bible says there, the prosperity of fools shall destroy them, he's saying if you're a fool, and things go really well for you, you're in prosperity, that'll actually destroy you, because if you're foolish, you won't seek the Lord during that time. You'll think to yourself, what do I need the Lord for? I'm just going to eat, drink, and be merry, and enjoy my life. Things are going great. Things are going good. I don't need church. I don't need to read the Bible. I don't need prayer. But then, when bad things happen, if you go to seek the Lord, it says he's not going to help you. So the moral of the story is that when things are going good, when things are going normal, we need to honor the Lord during that time if we expect the Lord to come through for us when we're in a bind. We need to be seeking the Lord now, not waiting until it's an emergency. Oh, God, help me. We need to ask God to help us every day, even when things are going good. We need to be reading the Bible. We need to be hearkening unto God's word now before the calamity comes. Go to Jeremiah chapter 37, because if we didn't want to hear God's advice when things are going good, we can't expect God to come through for us when things are going bad. You know, one thing that always blows my mind is the derelicts who come to our church building throughout the week, and they don't even come on Sunday morning. They don't come on Sunday night. They don't come on Wednesday night. There's none here now. Oh, but they'll be here on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, just coming and asking for money, asking for freebies, asking for... And basically, they all have these lying sob stories about how they're in such calamity, and I always ask them the same question. I always say, Well, where did you go to church on Sunday? Oh, nowhere. Well, where did you go to church the Sunday before that? Oh, nowhere. Well, where are you going on Wednesday night to church? Nowhere. And if they say, Well, I went to such and such the church, I always say, Well, then go to that church and ask your pastor. You need to go talk to your pastor and get help from your church. But usually they say, Well, I didn't go to church anywhere. And then I ask them, Then what kind of nerve do you have to come down here and ask the church to give you money, okay, because you got knocked up out of wedlock, and you basically have despised all of God's commandments. You've despised the institution of marriage. You've despised chastity. You've despised purity. And here you are not showing up on a Sunday morning to hear the Word of God, but you're showing up on a Tuesday afternoon just asking for free money, just asking me to prop up your sinful, wicked lifestyle. Now, this kind of preaching is not popular. People get mad when I preach this, but I'm preaching the truth right now. The Bible does not teach that the church is supposed to just give away free money to every fornicator, every lazy person, every godless person. The Bible even says that the church is only supposed to help widows if they meet certain criteria. They have to be godly. They have to be serving the Lord. This is what the Bible says in 1 Timothy 5. It's crystal clear. It doesn't just say, Just take all the Lord's money and just give it to every drug addict and derelict and whore and whoremonger that comes asking for it on a Tuesday. But the thing that blows me away is how these derelicts are so lazy that they don't even have the character to sit through one church service. Like, how hard is it to sit and hold down a chair for an hour? But these people lack character so much that that's too much to ask, literally. I mean, literally, I can't even count how many times people have come and they said, Oh, I need to talk. You know, I'm in the middle of working. I'm doing real work. And then they say, Oh, you know, you've got to help me. And I say, OK, no problem. Tonight's service is at 7 o'clock. Come see me after the service and I'll be glad to help you. Oh, well, you know, they can't even sit through one church service. They don't want to hear the word of God. So recently, I had one come to me and it was a few hours before a church service because listen to me. I'm not a heartless monster. I'm all for helping people. But I'm not going to help people who despise to hear the word of God and then they want to go to church. Look, if you can't stand the Bible and can't stand preaching, then you should go somewhere else to get help than the house of the Lord because God's not just this ATM machine. Look, even an ATM machine, you've got to have an account there. You know what I mean? Well, it's like, Oh, I need to withdraw money. Well, do you bank here? Well, no, I bank down at Wells Fargo. Well, this is Bank of America. You know what I mean? Go ask your pastor. You know what I mean? So the point is, you know, these people just want free money and they're just, all they're doing is just going from church to church to church to sucker to sucker to sucker and just getting free money and free stuff. And you know what you say? Well, I'm offended. This is my last time here. Well, good. I'm going to make sure and give it all to you while you're here then because you need this teaching. Okay. I know that people don't like to hear this kind of preaching, but it's true. It's the truth. It's a true story. And I don't know about you, but when I put money in the offering plate, I don't want it to go to a drug addict to buy them more drugs anyway. Okay. But anyway, this lady comes and asks for help and I said to her, I said, I said, you know, Yeah, the service is in a couple hours. You know, come back for the service and I'll be glad to speak with you after the service. See what we can do for you. And she shows up for the service and I start preaching and I start preaching against sin and she gets up and walks out. You know, so it's like, she doesn't want to hear the word of God, doesn't want to hear the truth, doesn't want to hear what the Bible says, but she wants God's money. That's not how God works. And that's what Zedekiah is trying to do. Zedekiah just wants to disregard the word of God. His servants are disregarding it. He's disregarding it. They don't want to hear Jeremiah's preaching, but they want Jeremiah to pray for them. And this is what the world wants from us today. They don't want to hear my preaching. They don't want to hear Roger Jimenez's preaching, but they want both of us to pray for the victims of Orlando. Right? They want us to mourn and have sympathy and pray for the victims of their sodomite nightclub shooting. Although they don't want to hear anything that we have to say or anything that the word of God has to say. You know, this is the mentality today. This is the mentality of ungodly people where they just want to take, take, take, but they don't want to hear the truth or contribute anything. And like I said, you know, I'm all for helping people that are in need, but, you know, we're supposed to consider the cause of the poor, the Bible says, not just indiscriminately hand out money to wicked people or people that refuse to work. There's nothing in the Bible that teaches that. Yeah, the Bible teaches to help the poor, but it especially says, especially those that are of the household of saints. Now you can take your personal money and you can give it to whoever you want. You can give it to whatever widow you want. You can give it to whatever poor person you want. But when it comes to the church's money, there's actually a specific protocol that says these are the requirements to give out the Lord's money in First Timothy chapter five. So anyway, this is the mentality that Zedekiah and his servants have. They want to only come to the Lord when they need something, when they can get something from him. And they're only going to show up to church. They're only going to talk to Jeremiah when they want to get something from him. That's it. So pray now unto the Lord of our God for us. Look at verse four. Now Jeremiah came in and went out among the people for they had not put him into prison. So it's just saying at this point he's free. He's not in prison because in the previous chapter it talked about him being in prison. It says in verse five, then Pharaoh's army was come forth out of Egypt and when the Chaldeans that besieged Jerusalem heard tidings of them, they departed from Jerusalem. So here's what's going on. The Chaldeans army, the Babylonian army has surrounded Jerusalem and besieged it. No one can go in. No one can go out. And they're doing that because they want to kind of starve them out. So they're in a bad place. They're surrounded by the enemy army. That's when they go to Jeremiah and say, would you pray for us, please? And he's like, where were you on church on Sunday? Okay, so then the king of Judah, they had this plan that Egypt is going to bail them out of this predicament. Like, they're not really looking to the Lord. They're not getting right with God. Instead, they're leaning on Egypt to help them. So the king of Egypt, he comes up out of Egypt with an army. To support Jerusalem against Babylon. So if you think about how the geography is, and some people might know the geography better than others, but I'll make it real simple. You know, Jerusalem is kind of between Egypt and Babylon in a sense, if you look at a map. So basically, the Babylonians are besieging Jerusalem. Well, from another direction, the Egyptians come to help Jerusalem. So as soon as the Babylonians get this intelligence, that the Egyptian army is on their way, obviously they need to prepare to meet the Egyptian army on a battlefield that's going to be suitable for them. They don't want to just be surrounding Jerusalem and fight a battle while surrounding Jerusalem. Because then they're going to have two enemies, you know, Judah and Egypt at the same time. So they leave Jerusalem and they go to face the Egyptian army. Does everybody understand? Alright, look down at your Bible. It says in verse number 6, Then came the word of the Lord unto the prophet Jeremiah, saying, Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, Thus shall ye say to the king of Judah, That sent you unto me to inquire of me. Behold, Pharaoh's army, which has come forth to help you, shall return to Egypt into their own land. And the Chaldeans shall come again and fight against the city and take it and burn it with fire. Thus saith the Lord, deceive not yourselves, saying, The Chaldeans shall surely depart from us, for they shall not depart. For though ye had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up, every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire. So he's telling them, don't get a false sense of security here just because the siege is over, just because the Babylonians left for a little while. He said, they're coming back. You know, the Egyptian army is going to flee. They're going to leave. They're not going to help you. They came like as if they're going to help you, but they're going to change their mind. They're going to go home, and then the Chaldeans are going to be back, and they're going to fight against you. They're going to defeat you. They're going to burn this city down. So don't get a false sense of security that everything's going to be okay. He's saying, I'm so intent on destroying you. God is saying to them, I am so dead set on destroying you that even if every single person in the Chaldean army gets wounded, if you guys fight so well that you're able to wound every single person to where there's not one soldier left in the Chaldean army that's not wounded, even just the wounded man. He said in verse 10, For though you had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them. Only the wounded are left, just dead and wounded. He's basically saying that the wounded men will get up and defeat you and burn this city down. I'll help them do it. Elsewhere in the Book of Jeremiah, God said, I'll take the weapons and I'll fight against you myself if I have to. You know, God's saying, look, when God's going to destroy you, he's going to destroy you. You know, you can't think, well, we're going to fight really hard and we're going to win anyway. No, no, no. When God decides you're going down, you're going down. And we need to understand, it's God who controls our destiny. It's God who holds our fate in his hand. And if we make him angry, there's no fixing it. He'll make sure that we're doomed. And it's too late to wait until the judgment's coming down on you like a ton of bricks to say, okay, God, I'm sorry, I changed my mind. At that point, he says, it's too late. You know, you've got to seek the Lord while he may be found, not just be like having this foxhole conversion. You know what I mean? Where all of a sudden, now you're crying out to the Lord in your last moment. So look down at your Bible there in verse number 11. It says, it came to pass that when the army of the Chaldeans was broken up from Jerusalem for fear of Pharaoh's army, then Jeremiah went forth out of Jerusalem to go into the land of Benjamin to separate himself thence in the midst of the people. So basically, now that the army no longer is surrounding them, Jeremiah can move around a little more. You know, so he's leaving Jerusalem, and he goes down into the land of Benjamin. It says in verse 13, and when he was in the gate of Benjamin, a captain of the ward there whose name was Arijah, the son of Shelemiah, the son of Hananiah, and he took Jeremiah the prophet saying, thou fallest away to the Chaldeans. So Jeremiah, he decides he's going to go preach somewhere else. You know, he's been preaching in Jerusalem. He wants to get out and stretch a little bit after the siege. He heads to the land of Benjamin. He starts preaching, and somebody accuses him of being a traitor. You know, you're a traitor. You've basically sold out to the enemy. The reason you're preaching that the Chaldeans are going to defeat us is because you're one of them. You know, you're on their side. You're a secret agent, you know, for the Babylonians. You're falling away to the Chaldeans. You know, you want to receive money from them to ruin our fighting spirit or whatever. It says in verse number 14, then said Jeremiah, it is false. I fall not away to the Chaldeans. But he hearkened not to them. So Arijah took Jeremiah and brought him to the princes. So he does a citizen's arrest on him here, and he takes him to the princes there, and it says in verse 15, wherefore the princes were wroth with Jeremiah and smote him and put him in prison in the house of Jonathan the scribe, for they had made that the prison. When Jeremiah was entered into the dungeon and into the cabins, and Jeremiah had remained there many days, so first he's in the house of Jonathan the scribe is a prison, then he's in a dungeon, then he's in some cabins, and it says Jeremiah had remained there many days. Verse 17, then Zedekiah the king sent and took him out, and the king asked him secretly in his house and said, Is there any word from the Lord? And Jeremiah said, Yeah, there is. For said he, you shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon. Yeah, you're going to lose. You're going to die. Same thing I've been telling you. So what's the news? It's like, this is so funny, when people, they keep going to the preacher and asking him the same question and trying to get a different answer. You know, I've had people literally come to me and ask me for advice on something. I tell them, hey, this is what the Bible says you're supposed to do. And then they come back and they didn't do it, and they say, you know, now what do I do? Well, what did I tell you last time? Same thing. They just, it's like, it's like Balak, where he keeps going back to Balaam trying to get a different answer, different answer every time. You know, so they keep going back to Jeremiah and asking him, So what's the word of the Lord? Can you pray for us? Can you help us out? And, but they're not listening to his preaching. They're not learning the Bible. It's so funny, people, they want the pastor to counsel with them one-on-one. I mean, isn't that what he wants with Jeremiah? You know, he goes in secretly, he wants to sit down with, it's like everybody knows what Jeremiah's been preaching. He's been preaching and preaching and preaching. They've heard it, they've heard it, they can hear it more if they want, but instead they want to have a little one-on-one session. You know, this is like where you get up and preach on marriage, right? People don't implement anything that's preached, but then they come to you and they want marriage counseling. It's like, I'm not going to marriage counseling. You know, I usually just hand people a CD. Like, here, listen to this. Take two of these CDs and call me in the morning. That's what I tell them. You know what I mean? Because if you're not going to listen to the preaching, if you're not going to listen, why would I waste my time with you? Like, I'm a busy person. You don't think Jeremiah's a busy person? Everybody's busy, right? We all have work to do. We all have things to do. And people just want you to sit and spend hours with them, but they won't spend an hour listening to church. But they want you to spend hours talking to them and wasting your time. Because if someone won't listen to the preaching, then having a private one-on-one with them is a waste of time. Because the answers are in the preaching. Now, there's a time and a place for, you know, getting specific answers to specific questions. And, you know, people come to me and ask me questions, and I'm glad to answer their questions. I'm not mad at you for coming. But don't skip a bunch of church, not listen to any preaching, and then come ask me a bunch of questions. If you do, I'll refer you to some sermons. And usually I'll tell people, listen to these sermons, and if you still have a question, come back and see me, and then we'll talk. But, you know, he's going to Jeremiah for a one-on-one in prison, where his henchmen have thrown Jeremiah. And he wants Jeremiah to help him all of a sudden. Now, people are going to lie about you also, is another thing we can learn from this story. And the Bible says, Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. And one of the big ways that that persecution comes is in the form of people lying about you. So if you're going to be a preacher, if you're going to serve the Lord in any way, if you're going to do great things for God, you've got to expect people to lie about you. That's why in the Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5, it says, Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And then, you know, just one verse away from that, just right on the tail of that is, Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. So persecution often takes the form of lying about you. Now everybody, if I ask for a raise of hands, I'm sure everybody's been lied about at some point. Whether that was at school, at church, at your job, on the internet. I mean, people lie about you as a way to attack you, punish you, persecute you. Probably all of us have experienced it, or if we haven't, we're going to experience it in the future. And it's pretty frustrating when people lie about you. Like, when people say bad things about me, or criticize me, or don't like me, it doesn't really bother me, but sometimes it bothers me when they're lying about me. You know what I mean? Like, if they say stuff that's true, derogatory about me, at least I'm thinking to myself, you know what, okay, fine. You don't like me, fine. You don't like the preaching, fine. But it's so irritating when they just tell lies about you. They just have no basis in reality. It gets frustrating, right? But I don't think God wants us to be frustrated because he actually just tells us, rejoice and be exceeding glad. When they say all manner of evil against you falls asleep from my sleep. And we need to be careful that we don't make a full-time job of trying to correct all these lies. Now, for someone like me, who puts stuff on the internet, and there's thousands of people seeing it, and hundreds of people lying about me and attacking me and criticizing me, you know, if I just got really wrapped up and I got to set the record straight on all this stuff, I mean, that could really waste a lot of time and be a full-time job, just constantly just defending myself. You know, sometimes we need to just let the Lord defend us and just realize, you know what, it's persecution for the cause of Christ, rejoice and be exceeding glad. We don't always have to set the record straight. Now, there are some times when it's a really big lie or it's really prevalent when it makes sense to put out some facts and set the record straight. We don't always have to do that, you know. We can just rejoice and be exceeding glad. And if you're going into the ministry, you have to be thick-skinned. You can't be real thin-skinned and easily offended, and, oh, man, I can't believe these people are lying about me. It has to just be another day at the office for you when people are lying about you and attacking you and persecuting you. You know, the first few times we got death threats and hate mail and, you know, people lying about you, you know, you get a little worked up, but after a while, it just becomes water off a duck's back. It just becomes part of your daily routine of just, you know, just getting all the hate mail. You get to where it's just funny to you. I mean, my wife and I have gotten packages and just laughed about it, just the death threats and the white powder spilling out of the envelope, and that was a good one, you know, and we're just kind of throwing it in the trash. You know, you got to just lighten up about these things, right? But honestly, you know, even if you're not a preacher, though, you're going to deal with it where people lie about you on your job, lie about you at school. You know what? Just remember that if they're doing it because you're doing right, if you're suffering as a Christian, rejoice and be exceeding glad. Be exceeding glad, it says. So we don't need to let that discourage us or get us down. You know, rejoice about that. So Jeremiah is being lied about. He just simply says it's false. I'm not falling away to the Chaldeans. You know, he just denies it outright. But what can you do, right? He goes to prison, goes to the dungeon, goes to the... I mean, the cabins don't sound that bad, but, you know, they might have been some rough cabins, we don't know. The cabins sound better than the dungeon or the prison, right? But then it says in verse number 18, after he gave him that really exciting new word from the Lord that they're going to be defeated by the Babylonians, which is why he's been preaching all along, it says in verse 18, Moreover, Jeremiah said unto King Zedekiah, What have I offended against thee, or against thy servants, or against this people, that you've put me in prison? Where are now your prophets which prophesied unto you, saying, The king of Babylon shall not come against you, nor against this land? So all the popular preachers and the ones that were sponsored by Zedekiah, they were saying that Babylon was never even going to besiege them whatsoever. He said, well, where are those guys? You know, and that's... Whenever these preachers make these false predictions that don't come true, wouldn't you think they'd lose their following at that point? But they never do. Like that phony Nigerian prophet, T.B. Joshua, who said that Hillary Clinton's going to win the presidency. He predicts it two days before the election, because all the polls were in favor of Hillary. You know, because Gabriel came and told him that two days before. Because that's real important that the Nigerians know that two days before it happens. And of course it didn't happen, but I get emails from his followers. Ever since I said that a few weeks ago in my sermon, I get emails from his followers every day for the last two or three weeks. I'm getting messages from them like, Why did you slander this man of God? T.B. Joshua is a true prophet of God. And you need to come to Nigeria and tell him that. I'm like, no, I think I'll just stay here in Arizona. It's kind of a long trip just to go confront this guy and tell him, Trump won. You're wrong. All right, I'll see you later. You're an idiot. You lied. Jesus doesn't talk to you. You made that up. You know, you made up that vision about Hillary. But it's just amazing. And then people, they have all these ways that they twist and try to fall all over themselves just to try to prove that he wasn't wrong. So they're like, well, she did win the popular vote. You know, he just won the Electoral College. You know, they have all these different ways. Or this is what they said. They said, well, he was saying that Hillary was going to be a judgment of God. But then all the Christians prayed really hard. So then God delivered us from Hillary. He said it was, this is what they said. This is his church's official explanation. They said, well, here's what happened. It's sort of like in Nineveh where God says he's going to destroy Nineveh. But then they all prayed and got right with God. So then he didn't destroy. Yeah, except I don't remember America getting right with God in those couple of days. November 7th and 8th. I didn't see any sackcloth on the animals, you know. I didn't see people turning from their wicked ways en masse on November 6th, 7th, and 8th, you know, so that the wrath of God in the form of Hillary, you know, Hurricane Hillary or whatever, you know, wouldn't be averted. I mean, but these people, they willingly believe a lie. These prophets who prophesy smooth things, they tell people what they want to hear, they preach things to those who have itching ears, and they just want to believe a lie. So they can sit there and say, oh, the king of Babylon is never going to come. And then he comes and surrounds the city and it's like, we're still listening to these guys. And Jeremiah's like, whoa, buddy, what about those preachers? But they will never admit that they were wrong. Now, I'm never going to have to admit that I made a wrong prophetic prediction because I don't make any predictions. I don't lie and say, God came to me and told me that X, Y, and Z is heaven. So I'm never going to have to eat crow like that because I don't make those kind of predictions because those kind of predictions are a fraud. People are just making things up and they're lying. It's like Jim Jones with all his fake healings and fake predictions and fakes. There's a whole business out there of just faith healers and fake prophets, and they're doing it for the money because they can make a lot of money. I don't know who these people are. But then again, you go down to the store and there's a whole line of people lined up to buy lotto tickets, and that's foolishness. And then there's all kinds of people lined up to throw money down the toilet on cigarettes. I mean, paying $7 a day to give themselves cancer. They're not even wasting $7 a day. They're throwing away $7 and getting cancer and all the other problems from all the junk that's in cigarettes. So there's all these people lined up to buy lotto tickets, all kinds of people lined up to buy cigarettes and waste their money. It doesn't really surprise me, I guess, that there are all kinds of people just mailing in money to these prophets and fake healers and preachers. There's just truly a sucker born every minute. And you know what? The Bible says that if we're wise, God will protect us from these people and we won't be deceived. We won't be like children tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine and the cunning craftiness whereby they lie and wait to deceive. We'd be rooted and built up in the faith, grounded in what we believe, so that we don't just fall for every charlatan and every false prophet and every fake preacher. You know, the TB Joshua's of this world. I saw another preacher. This guy's name was, I've got to remember his name. Apostle, whatever. You know, they always give themselves these crazy titles. Instead of just calling themselves a prophet, you know how some of these guys are calling themselves a major prophet? You know how in the Bible you have the major prophets and the minor prophets? There are guys now, some of these guys are calling themselves Major Prophet Anderson or whatever. Like they call themselves that. But it's funny how none of them say, well, I'm a minor prophet. They're either just a prophet or a major prophet. You know, none of them is a junior prophet. So these guys with all their lofty titles, well, this guy's name is something Taylor. Who saw this guy? The guy on Facebook that was in court? What was it? What was he calling himself? Was it Apostle? Yeah, okay. So this guy, Apostle David E. Taylor, I think was his name. There was this video that was going around of the guy in court explaining the spending of his ministry, this prophetic ministry. And I went to the guy's Facebook page. He's been making all kinds of prophecies and predictions. The guy's just clothed in just crazy expensive clothes. I mean, just the wildest gold, like his clothing had like gold in it and stuff. So the guy's in court and the lawyer is questioning him about these expenses. Not that he's spending of his own personal money. That'd be bad enough if he's just paying himself millions of dollars to be a preacher. That'd be bad enough. He's actually using the church's money for expenses. So they're asking him, okay, so the ministry has three vehicles. You know we have a church van, the Ford E350 van, 15 passenger van, okay, which we bought used six years ago for $15,000 cash. And it's been working great for the last six years. Praise the Lord. God's blessed us with that. Very few problems. This guy's three ministry vehicles are a Mercedes, a Bentley, and a BMW. Okay? The ministry vehicles, you know. And then they said, well, what's this $50,000 charge at limo land? And he said, well, we had to cut the Mercedes into a limo. So he can't even just buy his own limo, which is obviously already extravagant and ridiculous, for the work of the Lord. I mean, can you imagine Peter and John showing up to the temple at the beautiful gate in a limo? Hey, silver and gold have I none. It'd be like, why don't you just take off your belt? It's all silver and gold. You know, silver and gold have I on every finger is what they would have said. So he said, well, we got these three ministry vehicles, the Bentley, the BMW, and the Mercedes, and we had to spend $50,000 to cut the Mercedes into a limo to turn it into a customized Mercedes limo. You know, so that when we have guest preachers, you know, we could pick them up. It's like somebody teach this guy about Uber or something. You know what I mean? But anyway, so basically, then they're, then they're talking to the guy has some he's, he's leasing. He's doing a rent to own on a $2.85 million mansion in the Bahamas, rent to own, lease to own. And they're like, well, what are you, what are you doing with that? You know, he said, well, that's a place of, of teaching. It's a, he said it's a residential center because it's a house also known as a house. You know, that's a residential center where teaching and, you know, different, different ministers can go there and, you know, kind of be refreshed. Yeah, I guess so. You know, for a little teaching and fellowship and everything. And they're like, okay, you spent $6,000 over here at this super fancy store. It's, it's brands that I've never even heard of with Louis Vuitton or so. I've never even heard of it. You're listing all these brands. And then there, he said, oh, that was probably belts. And she's like, you really need to spend thousands of dollars on a belt. And he's like, well, it's just that, you know, I really go through belts and those ones last a lot longer. You know, those belts from JC Penny, they just don't last. And he said, I also have to say, and she's like, why are you spending thousands of dollars of ministry money on clothes? Like, why don't you buy your own clothes? Well, he, I, you know, I, when I'm doing work for the Lord, I tend to sweat through my clothes. So that's a ministry. It's a ministry expense, you know, because there's a lot of sweating on these trips. Yeah, I'm sure that guy sweats real hard working for the Lord. I mean, I thought when somebody showed me this video, I thought, well, this guy must be in prison. No, I mean, you know what I mean? To be spending his ministry's money, the IRS is going to have a field day with this guy. I'm like, this guy's got to be in prison. I mean, if he's buying these thousands of dollars of belts and shoes and he's going to all these, he was going to the Gucci store in the Bahamas and spending thousands, thousands of dollars. And he's, you know, got the mansion, he's cutting a limo for the ministry use. The guy's not in prison. On his Facebook page, he received a lifetime achievement award from President Obama. The guy's still on Christian TV. He's got all kinds of big plans for 2017. He's still asking for money. He's still, I mean, it's just like, who could believe in this guy? Apostle David E. Taylor, put your hand on the screen. But these guys, they look, they're into all the faith healing and all these fake predictions and I'm a prophet and all this stuff. It's for the money. It's because they want to preach things which they ought not for filthy lucre's sake, the Bible says. Real preachers like the Jeremiah's of this world, they spend time in prison. You know, they're being persecuted, they're being hated of this world. You don't see Jeremiah and even the New Testament preachers, Peter, James, John Paul, you don't see them living large and, you know, wining and dining and extravagant, going around extravagant chariots or anything. You know, they had to cut the chariot into like a limo chariot or whatever. You know, you don't see anything like that. But these phony prophets, Jeremiah said in other chapters of Jeremiah, he said they prophesied for gain. You know, they're preaching what people want to hear and they're taking lands and houses and gain. There's nothing new under the sun. Jeremiah, on the other hand, is in prison. He said, you know, why have you put me in prison? Verse 18, look at verse 19. Where are now your prophets which prophesied unto you saying the king of Babylon should not come against you nor against this land? You know what he's saying? Why don't you put them in prison? Why aren't they in the cell? If you're imprisoning preachers, why don't you imprison the guy who preached lies? Put him in prison. Instead, you're putting me in prison and what I said would happen, happened. And you know it happened. That's why you're coming to me and asking me for advice because deep down you know I'm telling the truth. They're asking him because they know that he's been right so far and he's going to continue to be right. Therefore, verse 20, here now I pray thee, O my lord the king, let my supplication I pray thee be accepted before thee, verse 20 there, that thou cause me not to return to the house of Jonathan the scribe lest I die there. Then Zedekiah the king commanded that they should commit Jeremiah into the court of the prison and that they should give him daily a piece of bread out of the baker's street until all the bread in the city were spent. Thus, Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison. So look at the stupidity and hypocrisy that King Zedekiah is going to go to him and ask him, What is the Lord saying? Can you pray for us? Can you tell me what's going to happen and leave him in prison? You know what I mean? Just a total one way. What can you do for me? My name's Jimmy, I'll take all you give me, but you stay in prison. Oh, but I don't want to die there. Okay, well, I'll make sure that you get one piece of bread every day so that you don't die until the bread ran out. And then there was a time when he wasn't even getting the bread, it says. Just a piece of bread. I mean, he's on bread and water in a prison suffering for the Lord here in this chapter. Now, we pick up the story a little bit further in Jeremiah chapter 38 next week where we see more interaction with Jeremiah and Zedekiah. We understand a little more what's going on in Zedekiah's head here because he's kind of going back and forth here. Throw you in prison, but can you pray for us? Throw you in prison? What if I was thrown in prison for preaching and then secretly the mayor of Tempe or the governor of Arizona is coming to me like, Hey, can you expound the Bible to me or can you pray for me? Hey, I've got a relative that needs the gospel. I heard you're a pretty good soul winner. Can you win the Lord? I mean, can you imagine the stupidity and hypocrisy of that? That's what's going on in this chapter. It's unbelievable, isn't it? So when we read stories in the Bible, we need to understand they are relevant to us today. There are people just like this today, everything you see in the Bible. There are preachers that are just like Jeremiah and then there are preachers that are just like those false prophets. And then there are leaders that are just like Zedekiah where publicly they put you in prison. I mean, why is Zedekiah putting Jeremiah in prison? Does he hate Jeremiah? Apparently not if he's coming and talking to him and asking for help. He's trying to appease people, but then he secretly goes and asks him. It's sort of like Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews, right? Publicly he won't stand for Jesus, but then by night in John chapter three, he goes and talks to Jesus. So all of these characters in this story, they still exist today. There's nothing new under the sun. We have these type of things. And it's the same as it ever was that when God is going to judge us, we need to get right with God if we expect God's help. We can't just say, oh God, help me. And then God sends us help in the form of maybe somebody telling us how to get right with God, clean up our life, get in church. And then, oh, I don't want to do any of that. Well, then you're doomed. And what you see in this chapter is a bunch of people over and over again coming to the preacher, asking him questions, asking for prayer, asking for advice. But they're never sincere. They never want to change. They never want to hear preaching. They never want to clean up their life. They never want to get right with God. And that's why the story does not have a happy ending because they all get destroyed. Spoiler alert, you know, for future weeks, they're all they're all going to get destroyed. They're all going to, you know, Zedekiah is going to get his eyes poked out. Spoiler alert for future chapter. Let's pray and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much, Lord, that you are an ever present help in time of trouble, Lord. But only for those who actually seek you early. Lord, help us not to be foolish where when we're prospering and doing well, we ignore you, Lord. Help us to spend those times of prosperity being faithful to church, reading our Bibles, praying, going soul winning. Living a clean life, taking care of our families, doing what's right, Lord. And then we'll have the assurance to know that in times of trouble, you're going to be right there with us, ready to help us, Lord. Help us not to be foolish and to just goof off and ignore you during the good times and then expect you to come through in the bad times, Lord. Help us not to be that foolish. It doesn't work out in the Bible. And we thank you, Lord, for our church. We thank you for the great year. 2016 was definitely the best year that our church ever had by far. And we're excited about what you're going to do in 2017, Lord. So please just give us a great year, Lord. And in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.