Welcome back to the Daily Bible Podcast, ya'll! You ready for a rootin' tootin' good time? Hey, Pastor PJ told me he loves Lucille's Bar-B-Q and cats now. Don't tell him I told ya. And now, your hosts, Pastor PJ and Pastor Rod...

Hey everybody. You got Pastor PGA and Pastor Rod, as Bernard said. Thanks Bernard for that intro. I think you may have your facts a little bit wrong there on that. Whoa. We're not gonna call into question his character. We need to be establishing this character at this point. I think hes spiting out lies, is what I'm just gonna say. We don't know what he's saying. Bernard is a liar. I'm just saying that right now. If he, man, if he attributed Lucille's barbecue and me, and in any positive connotation, I think everybody listening to this knows enough to say. I is a liar. I'm flabbergasted. I just, I don't know. I don't know. We don't know how he gets his information. We just know that he says it with authority and it sounds, that sounds authoritative. I had to listen to him. Bernard sounds a lot like you though. He just sounds like he's, no, he sounds like Dr. Burner. He sounds like Pete Burner and Morgan Freeman, and that's pretty clear. Totally. He sounds like Texas is all I'm saying. He sounds like a Texan. I love it. You have a skewed view of what a Texan sounds like. I am just feeding into the stereotype that so many people have about Texans, and I'm happy to contribute to that. Yeah. I'm glad that you're doing that. Actual local Texans love it. I don't think they do. And people that aren't from Texas also love it. I, that's yet to be determined. Hey, you guys let us know. If pastor PJ should keep on using Bernard. Yeah, because it's me. It's me, but I'm the one Yeah it's totally me. Lemme tell you. It's all me. Lemme I gave you a chance to record into the a, into the application so I could use your voice instead of Bernard. And you've chosen not to. That's the worst idea ever. For whatever reason, to give you full access to just whatever you want me to say in my voice I don't understand why you don't trust me. We've been together now for years. I feel like there are contests. I trust you. Implicitly, I trust you to, this is just not one of those gimme feedback, the least important context in the pulpit. I trust you, as a brother in Christ, but on the podcast, think about the ratings, bro, on the podcast. I don't trust you. People would be like, this is the most amazing things PPJ has ever said. It would empty the pews. I doubt it. I think you'd have more people than ever the things that you would say. They'd be profound and provocative. Yeah. Okay hey, something pro. Pro profound. Okay. One of my favorite artists I don't know, probably everybody would say this guy's one of their favorite artists. Forrest Frank. Yeah. He's topping the charts billboard. He and Brandon Lake. They're doing a lot of good music. I guess I don't really know Brandon Lake as much. Yeah. But I know Forrest Frank. Yeah. So he's popping out new songs left and right. Even when he was in his bed with his back broken, he was popping out new music. One of those was called Lemonade. Really great song. Actually. He didn't write it. He contributed to it. But these other guys who's the figs? Yeah, the figs. They wrote the song saying, what would a Forrest Frank song sound like? And they did it and it sounds like that lemonade. And it was wonderful. And so he published that well recently. Forrest Frank went on his social media and said, God healed his back. Yep. He broke his back two weeks ago. God didn't. Maybe he did, I guess wait. It is God. 'cause he's ultimately the cause of all things. The approximate cause was Forrest Frank. He was riding a skateboard, but the ultimate cause was God anyway, whether Forrest or God broke his back. Contributed. His back was broken two weeks ago, and now Forrest says his doctor confirmed his back is healed. What do we do with that? God, it's a miracle. Does still do miracles today? If so, what should we expect? Is this an aberration? Is this an expectation? What do we do? Yeah, let's start right outta the gate. Does God still do miracles today? Yes, 100% he does. The question is. What are the means of those miracles? And let's define miracle for a second, because I think sometimes we can say it's a miracle when really it's not. When we're talking miracles, we're talking about things that, that def define natural law, where there's an intervention, there's a suspension of what you expect. Not that odds are defined. Odds are defined all the time. But that natural law is suspended so that something that you would expect to happen doesn't actually happen. It's a different result altogether. Like somebody who breaks their back two weeks later, being able to be up and walking around and seemingly back to full strength, right? That defies natural law. Natural law would say it takes longer than that for the back to heal. Would we categorize that as a miracle, not having all of the medical files and details in front of me. On the surface value, we would say, yeah, God healed his back. God suspended natural law to heal his back faster than natural law would dictate that his back should be healed. And you would say how did that happen? Benny Hint didn't show up at his bedside and lay his hands on him and say I command you to be healed in the name of Jesus. What happened is people were praying, lots of people were praying for him. He requested prayer from a lot of people on his Instagram page, and people were pouring in saying, Hey we're praying for you. We're praying for healing. We're praying for swift recovery. And I think God answered prayer and healed him in a way that was beyond what. Natural law would dictate. That's the way that we would say miracles still happen today. Is it always in response to prayer? No, it doesn't have to be. God's not dependent or contingent upon our prayers. What I would say that we have to be careful in and what I would cautious us against is saying I have the gift of healing. I have the gift to be able to go into St. Jude's Hospital and heal the children that have cancer there. By laying my hands on them and saying, in the name of Jesus, the cancer needs to be gone. We're not seeing that happen. Can God heal a kid who's got cancer that's terminally ill? A hundred percent he can No doubt about it. Can he heal that kid, even if nobody's praying for that child? 100% He can no doubt about it. But is there somebody in the church that has the gift of healing to be able to go and do that? We would say no. That, that, that's something that is not in operation today, the way that it was during the apostolic era when Paul and Peter were active and Peter was walking up to the Temple Mount and saw the lame man and said, I stand tell you, stand up and be healed. Long answer, yes. He was healed, and I do think it was miraculous. I think it was God doing it. Should we expect that kind of interaction from God? Then do we need to believe enough for him to do something like that? Do we get enough people to pray for us? And then God heals what are the rules of the game so that we know whether or not to ask for it and what to expect from it? That's a great question. So let's turn to the Bible passage that tells us and answers us all those questions for us. Okay. I'm waiting. Yeah, it's not there. It's not there. And that's instructive for us because if it was there, we could say thus says the Lord, you need to have this much faith. In order to be healed, you need to have this many people praying for you. In order to be healed, you need to go through this routine in order to be healed. So the answer there is. This is at God's will in God's prerogative, and sometimes he's not gonna heal. Take somebody like Johnny Erickson. Johnny Erickson was paralyzed as a young, younger woman when she dove into a lake that was too shallow and she didn't realize it. And she's been in, in a wheelchair ever since. And I guarantee you not only has she prayed, but other people, faithful believers have prayed for her. Early on and probably even later on in her life that God would do a miracle and heal her and he hasn't. Has Johnny been faithful to the Lord? Absolutely. She's used her platform and her testimony to testify to God's goodness and his faithfulness and his sovereignty, and even walking through her own frustrations with that whole experience and going through all that trial Johnny's been faithful and yet God chose not to heal her. Why? It's above our pay grade. We don't know. God is using her in a different way than he would've had. He healed her and she had been able to walk and she'd be, been able to run and do all those things. He's still using her. You may know loved ones in your life that have cancer and you've prayed, God please heal them from their cancer and he hasn't done that. It doesn't mean that he's not powerful enough to be able to do it. It doesn't mean that he doesn't care. It doesn't mean that he doesn't love you or them. It just means that his will is beyond our comprehension in that situation, to be able to understand how it's a better part of his plan for that person not to be healed than it would be for them to be healed. Sounds like you're saying that we should say your way is better. Yeah, that would be a good song too, I feel like. I think that would be a good song. Yeah. Okay. Serious question, but you're not gonna have any good answer to this one because I feel like Christians struggle with this one all the time. I'm praying for that healing, for that job, for that thing, and God's not answering yet. How long do I pray before I stop praying for that thing? Yes. Yeah, you're right. Okay. I don't have a great answer for that ask answered. That's super hard. It because it's hard because Jesus does caution us against multiplying and repetitive prayers. But he also says that the persistent widow that went to the judge over and over again was heard eventually because she was persistent in her prayers. So I think it, it has to come down to our heart. Are we praying with the right heart posture before the Lord? Are we bringing the request before the Lord with the posture that says, Lord. Not my will, but your will be done. And I'm willing to let this go. And if you feel that it's right for me to let this go, if you would, lead me towards that contentment with my CIR circumstances or with this person's circumstances, okay, so be it. But in the meantime, I'm gonna continue to come to you praying that you're able to do this if it's in keeping with your will. Amen. And I think that's the hardest takeaway for us. At some point, we do have to say, I'm gonna stop praying for this, and there is a time and place to do that. We just can't tell you when, right? We don't have a definitive answer to say three times, and that's it. Somebody use that. In two Corinthians 12, Paul prayed three times for the Lord to deliver him. God said, no. Now we don't have the benefit or the privilege of Jesus coming to our room and saying, Hey, that's enough. You can stop now. So until then, we have to rely on the subjective leading of the spirit to say it's a good time to keep praying, or it's a good time to stop. We can't give you a hard and fast rule to say it's time to stop or it's time to keep going. Let the spirit lead. Yeah, And I think Paul stopped eventually because he realized the lesson that God was trying to teach him with at Thorn was a greater dependence upon him and less dependence upon himself. Jesus also told him, and that's my grace is sufficient for you. That's one of those things that I feel like he had a slight advantage because you look at George Mueller. George Mueller prayed for. What, 50 years for a couple of his friends to be saved over and over again, every day and didn't give up, and God eventually answered those prayers. So yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's jump into Jeremiah seven, eight, and nine. Jeremiah seven is a new message from Jeremiah. This is now the third I believe, in the book here in, in chapter seven through 10. And this one comes from the temple. And I think it's poignant for us because man, Jeremiah indicts the people with a. A pseudo sense of confidence saying to them, basically, you think you're fine because you've got the temple here. You think you're fine? Because God would never do anything to his people and his temple. And yet Jeremiah is gonna say it's the opposite. Je, Jeremiah seven, four says, do not trust in these deceptive words. This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. In other words. Don't just sit here and points at the temple and think that you're going to be fine. Meanwhile, verse nine, you steal murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to bail, go after other gods, and then you come and stand before me in this house, only to go on doing all of these abominations. In other words, God is not gonna be mocked. What we sow. That is what we will reap. And so that he, later on in the chapter, beckons them to say, think about Shiloh. Look at where I once had my name reside, my presence, reside in Shiloh. Look at what it is now. Wrath will come. And the problem is that the people were trusting in their proximity to the temple as though somehow that was going to be all the. The justification they needed to continue on in their ways without concern. And so God was going to bring his wrath and they were going to be called out for that. So that's just a good reminder I think, for us that our confidence in our trust can't be in our morality or our, we're here in the South where cultural Christianity is the norm, less and less. So I guess as we see more different cultures and everything move in the area, but there's still that temptation to think I've always gone to church, so I'm fine. I've. I go to a church with good doctrine, so I'm fine. I, whatever it may be. And we have to remember, we can't disconnect our worship from the Lord with, from our, the pattern of our lives. And God is saying to the people, just because you show up at the temple with your sacrifices and offerings, don't think that we're good. The temple is not gonna save you. Being a cultural Christian is not gonna save you being a just a. A part of the church, because you were born with parents that brought you to church from the word go is not in the end going to save you from the wrath of God if you never repent and have a genuine relationship with him. So chapter seven is quite an indictment against the people there. Yeah. Chapter seven also shows us something that is really tough to read. We're just talking about prayer. But notice in verse 16 it says, as for you, Jeremiah, the implied audience here. Do not pray for this people or lift up a cry or prayer for them and do not intercede with me for I will not hear you. This is terrifying. In fact, this is not the first time God's gonna say this to Jeremiah. He's gonna say it multiple times. Jeremiah seven, Jeremiah 11, Jeremiah 14, Jeremiah 15. There's different ways that God appeals to Jeremiah. Tell him to stop praying for these people. This is hard. So with what we just said how would you sprinkle this in here? Is there a time for us to stop praying for people, especially when it relates to something like this, where this is judgment. Jeremiah's trying to pray off their judgment, pray off their their. Soon coming, destruction. What about under the new Covenant? Is there any ever a time for us to stop praying for somebody? I. I don't know that I would ever counsel someone to stop praying for someone. I think this is unique because God audibly tells Jeremiah, stop, I'm not gonna listen. God's not gonna show up and say to you, stop. I'm not gonna listen. I do think we can learn some things though, and that is that we shouldn't pray for somebody to be removed from God's hand of discipline in their life without them. Reaching the end of that discipline, which should be repentance and faith. So if you've got somebody that you love that's not a believer who maybe is at rock bottom or maybe is suffering or maybe headed that direction, I would say I, I would caution you against praying that God would relieve those things and remove those burdens if that's part of how he's trying to get ahold of them. We don't wanna pray for God's purposes to be short circuited. Now, they will never be short circuited, but we don't want to be those that are taking the posture of saying, God, I, I don't want you to do what you've purposed to do here. And I think that's part of what he's telling in Jeremiah is, I've made my purposes clear here. Don't pray that my purposes won't be what they are. Yeah, that's a really helpful clarification because that's not gonna be the case for us in the New Testament. God's not telling us what he's going to do in terms of judgment for this or that person. Only cross reference I can think of potentially is one John five. The sin that leads to death. Exactly. And that is what? One John five. But what is that sin? And that's the debate that's so hard, right? That is the debate. Yeah. What is the sin that leads to death? And clearly it's some kind of, it's some kind of sin of apostasy, I think. Yeah. It's a sin that leads to death, as in there's a sin that's unforgivable. Yeah. A sin. And that's why some people have connected it to the unforgivable sin blaspheming against the spirit. And maybe there is a relation there but whatever it is, it's something that is a person who is rejected the gospel, that in God's eyes there's no coming back. Yeah, and I think that's my point, this passage here, what we're seeing in Jeremiah is that in God's mind, there is a point of no return. In our mind. We don't know where that is, right? It's like crossing a line that you never knew existed, but God knows, and this is the danger with closing your heart against the gospel. This is the danger for everybody. Whenever you resist the Holy Spirit, there is a sense in which you can harden yourself beyond the point of no return. Yeah. That's terrifying. Yeah. That is terrifying. God's telling Jeremiah, you're gonna pray for them, but I'm telling you not to because they're past the point of no return. Yeah. And that is a scary place to be. Here's the comfort in this. You don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. Thank God. Which means for us, I think by and large, the inclination should generally be pray for the person. Because you don't know, right? I'm gonna pray. I may not pray for them as much as I used to. Maybe I pray for them weekly at first, but then it turns into monthly, then it turns into quarterly, and who knows what else. But we just don't know. But there is a point, and I think that's the most sobering thing you can learn from this. There is a point of no return. And make sure ever cross that. Yeah. Yeah. And for Israel, their punishment at this time, temporarily speaking in chapter eight, was gonna be exile. And that's where he goes and describes there, verse three, deaths shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family. And all the places where I have driven them to declares the Lord. And then what was the sin that was the unpardonable sin, so to speak, or the hardening of their hearts is, I think, described right after this. He says, why is this people turned away in perpetual backsliding, and so they are. We've talked about backsliding a couple times before, but they're continually not moving towards the Lord, but away from the Lord. They're persisting in their sin and they're unrepentant. Verse six, no man relents of his evil. The willful ignorance. Verse seven, my people. No, not the rules of the Lord. Verse 10 from the least of to the greatest. Everyone is greedy for unjust gain. They've healed the wound of my people lightly saying, peace. Peace when there is no peace. And so I think this fits with the description that you were just talking about there. This is a people that has crossed that line and God had sent them the prophets. God had sent them the word of God. And you think about the opportunities that they had to listen into repent. And they had been stubbornly, resisting and refusing to do that. And God had gotten to the place where he said, okay, now it's done. Here comes Babylon. I've called from Nebuchadnezzar. He's coming. It's going to happen. This is what's so confusing for me because under the leadership of Josiah, they were doing fairly well. I'm challenged by it. At the very least. I have always understood a pretty clear symbiotic relationship between the strength and the faithfulness of the leader and the strength and faithfulness of the people, and generally speaking, I think that's true. But I think the problem here is it wasn't systemic. It, maybe it was just Josiah. And the priests and the prophets and the others were out for themselves and maybe going through the motions because King Josiah told us to. But on the inside they were struggling and I think that's what's hard. And also something that's helpful for us to, chapter seven, you talk about the temple, you know we got the temple of the Lord here, the temple of the Lord. I think for us, we can maybe not have a temple, but I took communion this week. I served I've been going to church faithfully. We can take confidence in the wrong things and I think that's Jeremiah's point. You're putting your trust in things that are not gonna save you, and that's the danger for all of us. In fact, this Sunday you're gonna be talking about what we put our trust in. Yeah. And how we trust. I think that's so helpful. We need to hear that and constantly be reminded of that because so often we go on autopilot because that's how God designed our bodies. We're looking for the easiest, most efficient way to go from point A to point B. And then we stop thinking about things. We stop remembering that we need to put our trust not in the things, not in the communion, not in the preaching, not in the church. We put our trust in Jesus and that ultimately is what will save us. Yeah. And forgive me, let me, lemme just skip to chapter nine, verse 23. Real quick. Chapter nine, Jeremiah is grieving for the impending judgment. He knows what's coming down. He's mournful. To your point, he's a compassionate prophet in this, but I wanna build on what you were just talking about because in verse 23 he goes to where our confidence should be. So chapter eight he's, or chapter seven, he's talking about, don't just put your trust in the fact that this building, the temple is here. Instead, if you want to know where to put your confidence, verse 23. He says, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man boast in his might. Let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boast in this, that he. Understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth for, in these things idle light to declares the Lord. And so that's the key. That's what we have to put our confidence in. It's not in any of these other things. It's in our knowledge and relationship with the Lord. And that's an, a knowledge that's more than a head knowledge. That's the knowledge that Jesus is talking about in Matthew chapter seven, where he says, depart from me. I never knew you. And so that's where our boast lies, is in our relationship with the Lord, not in all of these other things that otherwise we might be tempted to trust him. Yeah, I love this passage because one of the things that I would focus on is, hey, don't boast in these things. But I love that the positive is boast in this. Yeah. I don't think there's any, I can't think of off the top of my head of any bible command or even implication. This isn't a command, technically speaking. I can't think of anything that says boast in something except for the Lord. I think you can probably connect that with praise. We're boasting in the Lord, we're celebrating his worthiness. But this is a really cool way to put it. Boast in your knowledge of God. That's really cool. That's a really cool thought. Yeah, that's just coming. That's falling upon me afresh, and I love the idea about that. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, let's let's wrap this up unless you've got anything else that you wanna throw in there from these passages. I've got so much, but we probably should wrap it up. We had a lot of googly at the beginning. Good googly, but an extended period of now that Bernard's joining us too. Yeah. Hey, let's pray and then you'll hear from Bernard. Yeah. We are our thankful for that reality that we can boast in our knowledge of you, our relationship with you, and that changes everything. And that boast is ultimately. Anchored not to something that we do, but everything that you've done for us, from giving us the faith to believe to sanctifying us, to making us more like c Christ, to eventually delivering us into your presence, glorifying us, giving us our glorified bodies and preparing an eternity for us with you on the new Earth. And Lord, we are anxious for the culmination of all of that. But in the meantime, here we find ourselves. Help us to not put our confidence in the wrong place, but to always boast in our knowledge of you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep in your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Yeah, bye.

Well, thank you for listening to another rousing 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 or, learn more about Pastor PJ by going to BestPastorEver.com. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and 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