Welcome back to the Daily Bible Podcast! We're so glad you've joined us. Here's a fun fact: shrimp's hearts are in their head. And now, your hosts, Pastor PJ and Pastor Rod

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello, and thank you, Bernard, for another incredible introduction. I find that he's developing a pretty large fan base, and before long this will be his podcast. You think so? I think so. Okay. It would save us time. It would, and. The development of ai. I'm not accusing Bernard of being ai, but I'm just saying the development of AI in including the release of the new chat, GPT five, which I know is at the top of everybody's mind right now, everyone's been thinking about it. Everybody has it won't be long before people are able to say, Hey, come up with a 15 minute summary Bible podcast for this passage of scripture. You could probably already do it right now. Yeah, you can't. Yeah. It's just a matter of feeding him the right lines and having him say the things. Right now it's all. Human intelligence. What was that called? Hi, it's, hi. So it's someone behind the voice, someone, which I'll let you guess who that might be. Who could that be? There's a few options, but I'm still okay with if you gimme your voice. And I put my voice into the system. I think we could have something really fun. Yeah. See, it's the giving you my voice thing. I know there's plenty of it out there already. You could do it on your own. I could, I just feel but I'd like to do it ethically. And so I, I trust that that you will. 'cause I, I don't I don't wanna do that. Someone's gonna do it though. It might as well be me. I see. Why Let someone else beat me to the punch? No. Now people are doing it with MacArthur and other people like that. I'm not on the radar and I'm happy to be not on anyone's radar. Alright. Nobody's putting fake YouTube channels of me out there. Not preaching, not yet. Sermons about how women should be pastors and the such. Not yet. Let's keep it that way. We'll see. Let's keep it that way. Anyways, yeah. What else is going on? Hey, happy Birthday Church. We we were remiss in that we forgot your birthday on August 6th, but we have flowers in hand right now and we're asking for your forgiveness. Yes. Please forgive me. Yes. Yeah. No man. It's I was thinking about it that morning. It's a, it is a huge deal because it's God's faithfulness to bring us through another year and he has done great things and even just we think back on this last year and moving to a new facility. We got new offices this year. We, our VBS was even better than it was the year before. And the year before was, it was great. Then our student ministry is growing. We're seeing taking new ground. Yeah. We're seeing God do awesome things and it's so good for us to pause and remember his faithfulness to us over the last year. So we wanna celebrate. That. And yet, some people have said, are we doing another church birthday party? Things like that. And the answer there is no. We're doing this back to school celebration today actually at church. And so the Kona Ice Trek's gonna be out there but really, this is. A church should, if they're doing their job and being faithful to what the word has called up to a church should continue to progress. And that's our goal here. We're grateful for God's faithfulness. We will always remember August 6th, 2006 or 2000. We've been around much longer than I realize. The years have gone quickly. 2023 2006 is my anniversary. August 26th. Anyways, you know that yes it is. We'll always remember that date. And we will always look back on it and be able to say, okay, year three, year four, year five, should the Lord Terry not return, but. Yeah it's, we're just, we're doing ministry and you guys are all doing ministry and this is a good thing. And so God has been faithful to us and that's something to celebrate and rejoice in for sure as we continue to look forward to what he's gonna do this next year too. Yeah. We're thankful to av Elisa Viejo. Yes. We often say AV. To be clear, so everyone knows who's listening. CIO Viejo is our sending church. They're the original Compass Bible Church. And we're thankful to Pastor Mike and the crew that still supports us in so many ways, not just financially, but also with their prayers and with their encouragement. So thank you for planting us. We're honored, we're privileged. We love what we do. We could not do it without you. We really could not. And that's. Sincerely I offer no joke in that is sincere. We could not do it without you. We are grateful to God for your partnership and for your love. We are grateful and hopefully we'll honor you and make you proud by the work that this church does. Absolutely. Absolutely. And one of the things that we wanna do, in fact this morning at church, we're talking about the difference between being a church on vacation in a church in ex. Oh, and we want to be the church in exile. And that sounds weird. We, it sounds like you'd wanna be the church on vacation. That sounds more appealing. But one of the markers that we're gonna talk about is the church in exile is a church that is passionate about growing and we want to continue to grow as we're in year two. And we're seeing, grow trends year over year, which is awesome. We don't want that to, to plateau. We don't want to get con complacent, we want don't wanna grow contempt or, yeah. Complacent. And look with contempt on where we're at. And so hopefully when you show up at church and you look around the room and you see some empty seats, you're thinking about people that you can invite. We're gonna talk this morning about invite cars and in inviting people to church, in fact, we're gonna have a challenge during the summer to invite a person to, to church each week. Oh like a challenge. And make that your goal to say, okay, I've got a stack of invite cards in my car. I'm gonna hand it to somebody and invite them to come be a part of our church this week. We want to see God's church here at Compass Bible Church North Texas, continue to grow. We wanna be sitting here a year from now going, man, we've got so many space issues. We have headaches. This is keeping us up at night. We're losing sleep over this. We'd welcome that. But we want, we don't want to be a church that wastes our impact, that wastes our opportunity with where God has put us. We're excited to see what he's gonna do this next year. You remind me. Our sending pastor used to say something like, if we don't utilize what God has given us, he might take it away. Yep. There's no guarantee that the space that we have, the building that we have, the people that we have, the resources that we've been entrusted with will always be there. So we ought to do our part and make sure that we're taking full advantage of the gifts, time, and talents that he's entrusted to us. Yeah. If we don't use it. We'll lose it, right? That's right. Yeah. There's another church that could come behind and say, Hey, we can make use of that space and beyond mission. That's right. Let's jump into our DBR passage today, which is Jeremiah 10 through 13. Jeremiah 10 through 13. Jeremiah chapter 10, basically in summary is just, here's the idols and here's God. This is this is God. This is Yahweh who is contrasting himself with these false gods and in calling them out. He says in verse five the idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak. They have to be carried. They cannot walk. This is familiar language for us by now in our time in the Old Testament. God has multiple times in the prophets called out the idols for what they are, and that is they're powerless. The statues themselves. We've talked about that fact that there are likely demons behind these false gods that are responsible for a lot of the things that lead the people to worship them. But the idols themselves, God is saying that they have no ears. They can't speak, they can't walk. And the contrast there, Jeremiah holds out in verse six. There's none like you, oh God, for you are great and your name is great and might in might. And what is he owed? Verse seven is fear. Who would not fear you? Oh, king of the nations for this is your due. And so in chapter 10 God is saying, here's the idols, and here am I. And he lays out in the second part here his identity as the creator. The one that created informed everything. And again the context is in contrast to Beal and Asra and all these false gods that the Israelites were going after in worshiping. He says, none of them are like me for he is the creator. And then Jeremiah, towards the end of the chapter we see his grief here. Jeremiah is interesting. He's the mouthpiece of God, and yet the message that he conveys so often causes him distress and angst in his heart. And we see that here at the end of chapter 10. He is bemoaning what is happening here and bemoaning the state of the people as well. He delivers God's message and also gives us a glimpse inside his own heart. As he's delivering the message about how he feels about all this. Yeah. Interesting. On verse five, in verse five, rather he says, don't be afraid of those. I idols. Whether they're scare crows in a cucumber field or something like that, they can't speak, they can't do anything. They are effectively powerless, even though. In reality, they do possess a spiritual power if they are in fact demons that are operating behind these idols. And that's what we believe. That's what Paul says in the New Testament. So in verse five, he says, don't be afraid of those. In fact, be afraid, as you pointed out in verse seven, be afraid of the Lord. The king of the nations. You are the ones whom all people should fear. And in fact, let me remind you, the fear that you have over idolatry or even let's say someone casts a spell on you. You have a neighbor who's bowing down at an idol in their living room, let's say, and they. Pray to their God to hurt you in some way because you've offended their sensibilities or something like that. Christians have no reason to fear. There is no demon strong enough to violate God's will for your life and say, I'm gonna go attack this Christian and I'm gonna do it apart from Yahweh's permission or his good purpose and will for me. You have nothing to fear. I love this idea because what it does is it neutralizes any threat in the Christian life. Nothing can hurt me, no harm can befall me, except that which God, Yahweh decides is good for me and good for his glory. That ought to free you. So the fear that you might have against an idol or something else, let's just put it outside the realm of the idolatry. You might fear catastrophe, financial collapse, or maybe you fear for your health or something like that. You have nothing to fear. The only one that you should fear is God. And even the fear that you have toward God is not a trembling in your boots kind of fear, knocking of the knees. It is a fear of love and adoration and respect. That's the fear that you should cultivate, and you do that by spending like a lot of time in your Bible, praying to that same God, worshiping that same God, which you hope that you're gonna do this morning with us and then loving him with your life. That's the kind of fear that you wanna cultivate. Speaking of worshiping with him this morning, we we do worship not only in the preaching of the word, but. Song, which is how most people think about worshiping. It's true. And you have something that you provide each week as a resource for that. I do. And I'm so grateful that 42 of you at least are listening to this playlist, or at least have the playlist in your Spotify. So we use Spotify and I publish a playlist. It's only four, sometimes three songs depending on the week. Four songs long and it's gonna be all the songs that we're gonna sing on the weekend. So if you are looking, if you're looking to be prepared for Sunday Worship and occasionally for Pro, probably more frequently in the coming weeks and months ahead, I'll have new songs in there. If you wanna be prepared for those, you can sign up to listen to our songs beforehand. In fact, this morning you're gonna hear a new song called I Am Not My Own. It's one of my favorite songs. It's such an earworm, it's so catchy, but it's a new song. If unless you listen to the Gettys, if you happen to listen to the Gettys, you'll know the song probably. But if you don't, I would strongly encourage you. Listen to this playlist. It's called Compass, NTX Weekend Set List. And you'll see that I am the author, rod Gomez. I own the playlist. Sign up for that. Listen to it. And you'll do your heart well as you prepare to show up to worship. In fact, if you're wondering, how do I get there? On Fridays we send out an email for our weekend service each week on Friday, that details, Hey, here's what the weekend's gonna be like. There's also a link to that same playlist in there every single week. In fact, I think it embeds itself in the email as it's sent out. So you can click directly on that and it'll take you to Spotify. Hit subscribe and follow that playlist. That's right. Chapter 11 starts a new. A new address, a new message from the prophet. This is the fourth one in the book that he's going to give here. This is gonna go from chapter 11 all the way through chapter 13, which is the remainder of our reading for today's DBR. And in chapter 11, he's gonna address the basis for the judgment that's coming against the people, and that is the broken covenant. And. It seems to be, and I think it fits contextually with what we read about in the Mosaic Covenant. It seems to be that this is the mosaic covenant that he has in mind. There's a lot of different covenants that are there. We're gonna get later on, I think in a couple days here, we're gonna be reading, he's gonna be talking about another broken covenant in the context of the kings. I would still say there it's the mosaic covenant, although it. Could potentially be the Davidic Covenant as well Here. I'm pretty sure this is the Mosaic covenant that he's addressing and you think back to the blessings and cursings that are given there in Deuteronomy, in the Mosaic Covenant. And a lot of that had to do with whether or not they stayed true and faithful to worship God and God alone. And if they didn't, one of the things that God promised to do is to send them into exile. And Chapter 11 details that as well. In verses 10 and following there he says, the House of Israel, the house of Judah, have broken my covenant that I made with their fathers. Therefore. Behold, I am bringing disaster upon them that they cannot escape. That disaster is going to be exiled. They're gonna be taken away, they're gonna be carried away, their city is going to be destroyed. And God is sovereign over all of this. And that's what's you mentioned. We are untouchable unless something comes from God. And that's what's true here as well for Judah. You look at verse 17, the Lord of hosts who planted you has declared this disaster against you. And so God says, I formed you and yet I'm the one that's going to. For lack of a better word, inform you here. Now he's gonna spare a remnant, but this is significant judgment coming against them because of the broken covenant there. The mosaic covenant and the breaking of it is so significant and so devastating that he says in verse 14 to Jeremiah, do not pray for this. People do not lit up a cry or pray on their behalf, or I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their trouble. Awful. But here's what it teaches us. Number one, God takes his covenant seriously. He upholds the words of his covenant, which is incredibly comforting to those of us under the new covenant. If he is covenanted with us to say, I will love you to the very end, which is what Jesus has said, we can take that to the bank and know with confidence he will fulfill his word. It is impossible for God to lie. He cannot do that. Secondly, though. This is interesting. Verse 14, do not pray for these people or lift up a cry or prayer on their behalf. In other words, God's telling Jeremiah, look, I don't want you to let your feelings for these people cause you to intercede for their good. Do not intercede for their good. How devastating is that? But that tells us there is a category in God's mind where there is someone who is so far gone that he does not want us to appeal to them for their good because they're violating his covenant. They're violating and rebelling against all that is right, true and good. I think this tracks for today. There's a book that came out recently. I still think it's helpful even if you might quibble with some of the things that he says. It's Joe Wrigley's book called The Sin of Empathy. I think it's helpful. I know there's another one by Ali Beth Stuckey out there called Toxic Empathy, if I'm not mistaken. Idea simply is this, there are certain categories of sin that you should not feel bad about. It's not that you don't love the people. We're not saying that you should hate people. But that because God's word speaks so clearly about certain categories of sin, that we are wrong to feel badly when those categorical sins are judged and held as guilty because they are, again, it doesn't mean we don't love people. It doesn't mean we don't care about them. It doesn't mean we don't pray for their salvation. It just means that we are clear about the boundaries of right and wrong, and it is wrong for us to offer pity to someone who does not. Warrant that, that kind of response. In fact, most of the time, sins that are against the Lord don't warrant Christian's pity, but a Christian's anger, you're violating this good Lord's law. You're violating his covenant, you're rejecting him. That's a bad thing in fact it's even unloving to love somebody by showing them pity in that state because it's as though you are. Agreeing with them. And that's part of Joe's point in that book is it's almost like you're agreeing with their objection to why they're in the place that they are by coming in and showing them pity and trying to empathize in the world sense with them. Yeah. I love that illustration you uses of the quicksand. I've gone back to that so many times. It's, they want you to jump both feet in the quicksand where what they need is for you to keep one foot on dry land, on solid ground and to pull them outta the quicksand. And that's that calling to repentance, calling to godliness, all of that. So yeah, I would endorse that book as well. Yeah. Helpful. Chapter 12 this is again, a glimpse into Jeremiah's heart in the midst of all this and this is Jeremiah and God talking to each other, and Jeremiah's gonna go to the Lord and say, Lord, this does not seem right. I hear everything that you're talking about, and yet I'm looking around. He says in verse one of Chapter 12, righteous are you, that's gonna establish the foundation of his complaints. And similar to Habak, he's gonna say, yet, why does the way the wicked prosper. The treacherous are thriving. You're near in their mouth and far from their heart. I underline that because that was just such a poignant description for the fraudulent religion that we see so often of people who are Christians on Sundays and anything but that the rest of the week he says you're near in their mouth, but far from their heart. And so he is asking the questions, God, when are you gonna do this? Essentially? And the Lord answers him in the remainder of the chapter and reminds him of his sovereignty and even his passive judgment. He's already judging them in the sense. In verse seven, he says, I have forsaken my house. I've abandoned my heritage. I've given the beloved of my soul into the hands of her enemies. Some of God's judgment was already active in a passive sense because he was withdrawing his hand. He was withdrawing his revelation. He was withdrawing his protection and also ordaining the people to come and defeat them in the process. Reason being. Things like verse 10, many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard. The spiritual leaders had failed. In other words, they've made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness, and yet. In spite of all this, in his judgment of this coming, he's not gonna make a full end, and that's the end of the chapter. There is hope still for a remnant and even hope for the nations if they will repent if they will John Deere, to him. If they will forsake their idols and their faults, gods as well. There's hope for not just the remnant, but also for the nations. I love that idea that God can't help but say, but I'm gonna restore you. Even amidst all the judgment and it's clear that God's going to do it. He's saying, don't pray for these people. I'm bringing the judgment, Jeremiah, but I'm also gonna restore them. I love that. But I have a question for you now. Verse eight says to Jeremiah, this is God speaking. He says, if you've raced with men on foot and they have wearied you, how then will you compete with horses? In other words, don't get weary, don't get discouraged. You're gonna not only do this, but you're gonna actually have to go further than this. How do we compare that passage to something that Christians often recall in their minds at God will never give you more than what you can handle. Have you heard that before? Of course you have people say that here, it doesn't look like that's what's happening. It says, it seems like God is giving Jeremiah more than he can handle and saying, buddy, toughen up. We've got even further to go here. How do we put those two passages together? Won't give you more than he can handle. Jeremiah toughen up. You can do this. Yeah. The won't give you more than you can handle is not actually a passage. Oh. Good catch. Distort it. Because we go to Paul's words I think in one Corinthians 10 13. 10 13 or 10, 12 or 13. Yeah. Let me, lemme pull it up here. Let me just read it since we're here. Yeah, please. No temptation. This is one Corinthians 10 13. No temptation has overtaken you. That is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But what the temptation will also provide the way of escape. You may be able to endure it. Yeah. So he won't let you be tempted beyond your ability. Meaning you can never, at the end of the day say I couldn't resist. I couldn't flee temptation. I couldn't help but sin. God is not gonna put you in a position like that. That passage has been distorted to God's never gonna give you more than you can handle in life. That's actually not the case at all. Oftentimes he will do that to cause us to be broken to the point of going, God, we, I need you. I think the Apostle Paul, when he, in second Corinthians chapter 11, is going through his laundry list of all of his sufferings. We even mentioned it the other day the thorn in his flesh. That was the lesson God was teaching him, is getting Paul to go, okay, God, then I'm gonna trust you. Your strength has to show up because my strength isn't enough right now. And we don't know what that thorn was, but still I God will give us more than we can handle. And so I think that's just a confusion of those two passages. I'm glad we brought that up. Then. Let the record show God does give us more than we can handle. Yes. All the time. Yes. That's the way that he operates with us. This is not just a Jeremiah thing. This is the way that God treats his kids. So if you feel like you, you have a burden on your shoulders that you can't carry, hey, welcome to the club. This is what it is to be a Christian. The point is not to make you trust in your own strength. The point is exactly the opposite is to make you trust in his strength. So it's a good thing if you feel overwhelmed and you feel heavily laden, take it to Christ. Yeah. He's here to carry the burden for you and help walk you through the season, even if it's incredibly challenging like it was for Jeremiah. Yeah. Alright. Chapter 13, let's talk about loin cloths. Are you wearing what? Nope. Okay. Yeah, Jeremiah said is told by the Lord to go out and get a loin cloth, which was an Old Testament undergarment, basically. And he says, Hey, go and bury it in the muddy bank, and then go dig it up. And Jeremiah says it's spoiled now. And God basically says, yep, that was Judah. Judah was the loin cloth. I had made it clinging to me as a lo cloth clings to the waste of a man. And in other words, the intimacy of the relationship between God and his people. And and he says and yet, Judah has become spoiled. It's become good for nothing. It's become worthless. And so as a result of this, here comes the. Poignant part about exile. Exile is coming. There's still an opportunity. Verse 16, give glory to the Lord your God before the he brings darkness. Before your feet stumble on the twilight and the mountains, while you look for light. He turns it to gloom it. It seems there's still an offer of repentance. There's still a hope that they might turn and avoid this, and yet. What seems that is, is inevitable at the same time is their stubbornness and heart is gonna lead them into exile. And he even projects what they're gonna say when they are in the exile in verse 22, if you say in your heart, why have these things come upon me jump down to verse 25 because you have forgotten me and trusted in lies. So God is answering this question. The loin cloth is Judah. And as a result, because it's worthless, they're gonna be cast out just like Jeremiah's to cast out that loin cloth that people are gonna be cast away from God. They have become, in so much as they're offering such vain worship, they've become worthless in God's eyes as far as the people that he had originally intended them to be. I would encourage you to make sure your theology doesn't ruin what you read in this chapter. When God offers repentance and forgiveness, I think it's sincere. Yes, it is a sincere and real offer. What we also know though, is theologically God knows what they're going to do. It is as good as done because God knows the end from the beginning. But I would be careful as you hold these two precious truths, namely A, that God is sovereign, and B, that man makes real choices. I'd be careful not to bang them together such that you lose the. The weightiness and the truthfulness of both, hold them gently. Understand that this is a real offer from God. He's saying if you would turn, things would be different, but they're not going to, and that's why God can speak like this. We often talk about passages like this under the terminology, the prophetic perfect. In other words, he speaks about it like it's already done. Because prophetically we know that this is going to be the case. It is God's will being disclosed to us. And in this passage, you also have the famous passage here. Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard, his spots? And then also can you do good who are accustomed to do evil? This showcases the fact that our human need is deep and grave. We are in desperate need for God to intervene, and unless he does, things won't be any different. This is often the doctrine that we call total depravity. Total depravity. To be clear, he's not. Does not mean that you are as bad as you could possibly be. That's not true for anybody, probably. But it does mean that every part of who you are is touched by evil. It is touched by sin, and therefore we desperately need God to change us if we're gonna be changed. Yes. And amen. And. If you haven't yet listened to the sermon today, that may have something to do with some of the stuff. We're covering the sermon today too. Oh, maybe it will. Hey let's let's pray as we wrap up another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Let's do, God, we are just in awe of our, of your magnitude and our finitude are your greatness and how small we are. We understand, but a sliver of who you are, the fringes of your garment as scripture talks about. And sometimes we pretend to know so much of more of you than we do. Keep us humble, Lord, keep us teachable. Lord, keep us soft to what your word says. Help us to always come to your word as the authority and not to what our feelings say or not to what we've heard some pop theologians say or anything else like that. We wanna be guarded. Guarded and guided by your word and by the truth contained therein. And so help us to understand what we're able to and to know our limitations there and when we should step back and say, God, I trust you that you know exactly what's going on here. And we're thankful that you do. And so help us to trust you more. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep your Bibles tuning again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye.

Well, thank you for listening to another uproarious episode of the Daily Bible Podcast, folks! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. If you like this podcast we would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on. If you don't like it please keep your thoughts to yourself. We hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said