Welcome back to the Daily Bible Podcast! We're so glad you've joined us. Pastor PJ told me to tell you that he has no input on what I say. And now, your hosts, Pastor PJ and Pastor Rod Hey, thanks Bernard. We appreciate you as always. We hope that you feel our gratitude for you because we wouldn't be who we are without you's at this point. That's right. That's right. And everything that he says, 100% true and reliable every time. See I don't know that I would go that far. In fact, we go any further is what you're saying. As you're saying that, I'm gonna go ahead and check and see what he just said. We don't know what he just said yet, because he is still yet to be programmed, yet to chime in. Okay. Alright. 'cause right now, as I'm looking at it, it looks like this is a pretty generic opening from Bernard for us for this episode. But maybe his friends know that you read these things and so perhaps it's possible that the things could change before they actually get out to processing. A couple days ago when you threw in cats, in addition to Lucille's barbecue, the fact that you were onto him made it necessary that we spice it up a little bit. Yeah. So that you're thrown for a curve ball. Yeah. So you're just, I just wanna be clear, so everybody hears this, that I have no input in what Bernard has to say before these episodes go out on it. You have. All the input 'cause we have the same access to the machine. No but I don't see that's where you do that. No, because you go from here and you go and type in your things that you or you know, Bernard decides what he wants to say and then you hit export into the MP three file that goes up onto our captivate system. You could change it anytime you wanted to. You, in fact, you have greater access than I do. It's under your account. So really? I think you're hoping that I put these things out there so that you can finally come out and say, you know what guys? You got me. I don't. Lucille's actually is wonderful. See I own all the cats. No, I trust that I don't need to go back and reinvent the wheel. I trust your first round of production on this. Okay. See if you trust me, then you'll give me your voice so I can help. I don't trust you that far though. I think okay. Anyway, anyways. Happy Monday. My kids start school this week. That's a huge praise. Not because I'm excited to get rid of my kids. I love my kids. I love having them home for the summer. I actually get a little sad when I have to send them to school. Yeah. But we're really excited this year because for Jacob, he's now 16. He has his license like Josh does. I remember when you posted the obligatory photo on Facebook saying, I didn't watch out. Drivers Josh burners on the road. No, I didn't post that. When you posted that, I was so moved by it that I thought, you know what? I'm gonna do something similar. Anyway, Jacob has his license. And you heard me talking about it a few days ago saying, yeah, we're looking for a car, and God has blessed us. He has given us a family at our church who has graciously given us their car. They're getting a new vehicle. They're like, Hey, we could trade the sin, or we could bless you guys with it. And they decided to give it to us. And so we are so enthusiastically grateful for that. I don't wanna. Use their name 'cause I wanna protect their blessing. And if they wanna talk about it, and maybe you'll talk about it during the sermon at some point in the future. But I'd really like to let them enjoy the heavenly blessings that come with that. So thank you fam for doing that. Jacob is pumped. We just took it to one of the local mechanics. In fact, if you are local. Bobcat Automotive has been great to us. And this is not Christian Brothers. We really appreciate Christian Brothers. They've been helpful to us. But Bobcat Automotive came up 'cause we were looking for multiple pricing points for a certain fix, and he came out pretty good. And so far we've had a great experience with him. His name is Lawson and we've really enjoyed using him. So he fixed a lot of the things on the vehicle. We're not out of the woods yet, but some of the things that needed to be done were done. He took care of us and he said, I'm gonna quote him. He said. I think you can get three years outta this car. Okay. When another mechanic was saying, we think that you guys would do better by just selling it. So we're gonna trust him. 'cause we like what he's saying better anyway. What would Bernard say about it? That's what everybody wants to know. Know, we don't know what Bernard would say. I'll have to think about that. He'll have to think about that. Hey, you mentioned, you don't want to say the names 'cause you want to wanna protect their blessing. Their blessing. I want them to enjoy the blessing. Is that a thing? Is there are, because I had a prophet college who he, and he was tongue in cheek, but anytime we would go to him and say, Hey, thanks for something or say, Hey, we really appreciate the lecture, he'd be like, oh, stop that. You're stealing my heavenly rewards. Stop doing that. And it was a joke. But is that a thing? Do people lose their heavenly blessings because people are grateful for the things that they do or they get. Acclaim here on Earth. So everyone utilizes this thought. It's kinda like what we were talking about in the last podcast where they have a phrase that they throw out, right? And they think, oh yeah, that's a biblical thought, right? But it's not. However, I think this one has a little bit of bearing, and I'll explain why. So this comes from the idea where Jesus says, look, if you fast and make your face look dirty and you're trying to like, oh, my stomach hurts, right? Oh what's going on? Pastor pj? Oh, it's 'cause I'm fasting today. Oh, don't worry about me, dude, this seems really personal. So Jesus says, look if that's what you're doing, you have your reward. Yeah. If you want the physical, if you want the earthly blessing, then great. You can have that. So when I do it I'm conscious that I know they didn't do it for the earthly human praise. I know they do it for God's praise. They want his reward. And so I'm trying to be complicit with that and be sensitive if they want to let people know. We're not hiding it by any stretch. We're telling people like, yeah, this car, this came from that family. It is just in a setting like this it's different. Yeah. I don't want it to appear like we're trumpeting something and that they're behind it or maybe they're encouraging me to say things 'cause they want people to know it's not like that at all. So I'm really trying to protect them because I don't want them to lose the reward, but not because, not because they're in some way behind that, am I being clear about that? How would you accent that? Yeah. Yeah. I get what you're saying. The problem Jesus was addressing with the Pharisees is that their motivation for doing what they were doing was to get the acclaim of man. Yeah. Matthew, chapter six. Yeah. They do this in order to be seen by them, that they may be praised by others. And Jesus says they have the reward in full. If another family comes along and does something. Generous like this, and you say, Hey, thank you. And you happen to tell somebody else, Hey, they did it. They, their heart motive was still the beginning. Hey, I, we just wanna bless you guys. Yeah, we just want you to use this because you can use it and it's a need there. So I, in that sense, I don't think their heaven, heavenly reward is lessened or tainted by that, unless they wanted that. Unless they want, unless that's what they're going for. And we don't know. And we don't know. That's a great point. Yeah. You never know someone's heart motivation. So is it even worth then, protecting it? Yeah. I think so because you're erring on the side of caution. You're like, Hey, I love you enough to protect you from potentially giving you something that. Was the wrong motivation for this? I don't know. Maybe your motivation changes could maybe, initially you do it with the right heart and then suddenly you're like you know what? That was pretty great. Wasn't it you like I did do that. I did. Yeah. Tell me more about that. You a t-shirt made. It's I did this. I don't have a third car because you know what? Now that I say this and I'm talking it out loud with you. Yeah. I don't know if it's my responsibility. To care. To care for that. Okay. Because I don't know their heart. That's true. I can say, man, praise be to God for this particular act of generosity by this person. Yes. And if someone. Does it for that purpose? Yeah. Okay. I guess there's your reward, but if someone gets attention and they find out, oh man, you did that special thing that is so you, they can respond in one of two ways. They can say, yeah, that was kind of me. Thank you. Tell me more about that. Tell me more about me, or they can say, Hey, praise be to God, man. We were just in such a great position, or Yeah. Was a sacrifice and we did it because we love the Lord, we love our pastors, or whatever it is. I wonder if it's even my responsibility to care. I mean care. Yes. But if it's my responsibility to protect that, I wonder. It's like when pastor Mike said once, pastor Mike is our former pastor from Viejo he's the one who's sent us he said something to the effect of, look, when you're giving somebody a compliment, it's not your responsibility to protect their. Pride or their humility, right? It's up to them, right? It's up to you to say, look, I'm gonna receive that and give glory to God, or I'm gonna receive it and feed my pride. You can't protect that. You can't guarantee that all you can do is be faithful to God by encouraging your brother and your sister in the Lord, and so it's up to them to really referee that in their own hearts. I think that's probably the right posture. Yeah, there's probably gradations to that, right? Like there's a difference in you having a conversation with somebody at church and saying, it was this family that, that did this for me. Yeah. And you putting it on the podcast where there's a lot of people and it's more of a public platform saying it was this family that did it for me. There, there's gradations of, you know that praise there and Yeah. But that's interesting. Yeah, I'm gonna think more about this now. Yeah. Hey, let's think about God's word and our DBR today is going to be Jeremiah 14 through 17. Chapter 14 is going to reveal that God is going to use more than Babylon to judge his people. In fact the pestilence, the famine and the sword. I don't remember exactly how it goes. The famine sword, pestilence, I guess that's the the heading there is a common way that, that we find God's judgment represented in the prophets. And it's this threefold. It's not just through armies, but it's also through, we read about drought in chapter 14. We read about the extreme hunger and then the disease that's gonna ravage to the people as well. God's wrath is gonna come in different forms. In other words Jeremiah is gonna. Struggle with this. Again, he's going to protest. He's gonna say in verse seven, there are iniquities testify against us. Acto, Lord, for your name's sake he's clinging to hope in God's mercy. Still, even as God is saying, this is what's going to happen, and yet God's response in verse 10 is, you know what? It's too late. It's too late. He says, therefore, the Lord does not accept them. He will not. He will now, he will, excuse me, remember their iniquity and punish their sins, god is gonna tell him again in verse 11. As Pastor Rod, you've pointed out a couple times, don't pray for them. Jeremiah, don't intercede. Don't keep clinging to this hope for for mercy. They've had lying prophets, they've had false leaders. They've had all of this. And now God says, I'm going to judge the sword, the famine, the pestilence. It's going to come upon them and the people still towards the end of the chapter are going to protest. Have you utterly rejected? Judah? Does your soul loathe? Zion, we acknowledge our wickedness. Oh Lord. Iniquity of our fathers. Do not spur us for your namesake. Are there any other false gods of the nations that can bring rain? Only you can. In other words, there, there's this maybe from some of the remnant here. Their voice is being lifted up here in, in protest and maybe Jeremiah is participating in that as well. But still God is going to reveal as these. Future chapters unfold it. It's too late. There is no more mercy to be found, which is fascinating to me for a few reasons. And the first one being that there is a real dynamic in relationship between God and us, even though God has decided this is going to be the course of action, he still entertains. In some way, Jeremiah's prayers, he invites them because he doesn't tell a Jeremiah, Hey, just stop coming to me. He does chastise him. And I wonder if part of the reason why is because Jeremiah appears to be praying on behalf of the people, as the people. He's identifying with them corporately and saying, Hey, though our iniquities testify against us, Acto Lord, for your namesake. Maybe he's getting around what God had told him to not pray. And he's saying look, I'm praying for us. And God's saying that's still not. What gonna what? That's still not gonna work. I don't want you to do that. So it's interesting that God entertains it. He allows it, and I think the part of the reason why is because God himself is a person He en enjoys interacting with us as people, which is amazing because God Himself is God. There's no one else like him. He is the high King and ruler of heaven and earth. He's the one who made everything. And yet he talks to peons like us. He allows us to be in conversation with him. We get to approach as. The book of Hebrew says The Throne of grace and find help in time of need. Jeremiah is showing us a glimpse of this under the old covenant showing us that God does really care that we interact with him, even though right now, again, judgment in view, but God still entertains and enjoys the interaction of his people. Yeah. Yeah. And the answer comes quickly in verse or chapter 15. He is gonna say, even if Moses and Samuel were here, David, I still wouldn't relent bring it out to heaven, even if John MacArthur and RC sprawl were preying on your behalf. I would not answer your prayers, right? Yeah, that's, yeah. Sobering. For sure. And we get his sovereignty, those who are for pestilence to pestilence, those who are for the sword to the sword, those who are for famine to famine. So God has sovereignly, doled out this punishment and he's bringing it. He says, I will appoint them for kinds of destroyers. He talks about there for the sins of notice, man, nasa. Now, this goes back to one of the questions that we had asked would, wouldn't it have been better if Hezekiah had just died? And this is an indication. Yeah, it would've, because Manas was born in that 15 year period when Hezekiah's life was extended. And it seems that Manassa wouldn't have been born. Maybe things are different. Who knows? It's easy to play the what ifs, but certainly this is is an indictment against that. But God is done and he makes this clear. Verse six, you've rejected me to clears the Lord. You keep going backward. So I've stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you. I'm weary of relenting. God says I'm, I've grown tired. And again, God's immutable. So this is. Anthropo pathic language to help us understand his emotional state, his in a way that we can comprehend it. But gotta send I'm done. I'm not going to relent anymore. And judgment is gonna come. And that leads again to Jeremiah opening up his heart for us and the rest of the chapter saying, okay, but Lord, but what about me? And Jeremiah's pleading is integrity. He says in verse 16, your words were found and I. Them, I devoured them. And your words became to me, a joy. The delight of my heart for I'm called by your name, a Lord God of hosts. What about me? And God is gonna answer him and say to him, Hey Jeremiah, I will be with you. I will protect you. I will deliver you. And he's gonna be true to that word. Jeremiah's gonna survive. The onslaught. He's not gonna fall prey to the sword the famine or the pestilence. And he's gonna see to much to his dismay and his grief as the Book of Lamentations records for us the downfall of the city to the Babylonians. Yeah. Jeremiah's interaction with God here demonstrates something that is often referred to as the remnant, the faithful few that God does approve of and that God is pleased with. And Jeremiah is among those people, obviously during this timeframe during the kingship of Zeek Kayah. And so I think one of the translating principles here is that. Even under the new covenant. And Jesus says, remember there are few that find it, few that find the narrow road, and there are many who go in the other way. And so I think it's important for us to recognize that even though there's lots of Christian churches and denominations that operate under the banner of Christianity, not all of them are equally good. Or equally true. And therefore, it's important to find yourself as the faithful few. Now I start to ask the question, how do I know that I'm part of that? How do I know that I'm in a church that is part of the remnant? You're gonna know in part because you're gonna see the Bible held high. You're gonna see the spirit operating by providing repentance and providing faith, and showing people demonstrating the fruit of righteousness the fruit of the spirit. Galatians 5 22 and 23, you're gonna see love as you preached on last week. You're gonna see love for God and love for people. You're gonna see things that demonstrate. God is at work among these people and it's gonna center around his word and the operation of his spirit among his people. So if you wanna know if you're part of the remnant or if you're part of the faithful few, look for these signs. God gives promises of assurance. I'm gonna take care of you. I will be with you. I'll never leave you nor forsake you for those who are the faithful remnant and not just for those who go to church. Chapter 16. Then we get into more of this judgment that's coming. We find out Jeremiah was a single guy. He says there in 16, two, you shall not take a wife. Neither shall you have sons or daughters in this place. And so Jeremiah's not gonna be married. He is not gonna have children. At least not at this point in time. And we've talked about how God said, don't pray for the people. He's now gonna say when the people begin to die, he says, don't grieve for them. Don't go into the house in morning don't when they're celebrating, when they're having feast, when there's joy, he says, don't go there either. Don't go participate in the false joy that the world provides that they're celebrating in. And why? Because your fathers have forsaken me. Verse 11, that the judgment is coming. And Jeremiah, when the judgment comes, when they try to escape it, maybe through their mirth and their frivolity don't participate in that. When they're weeping in their mourning, they're grieving because judgment has taken away their children and their spouses and their loved ones. Don't mourn with them because they're dying for the sins that they've committed against me. Difficult for sure. After this though, God is going to hold out that the hope still, and this is verses 14, and following that there is gonna become a restoration period for Israel. That remnant that we were just talking about this is looking forward to the millennial kingdom, but this is going to be language of the Exodus again. Notice he says in verse 15, for I will bring them back to their own land that I gave their fathers as the Lord lives, who brought the people out of Israel, out of the north country, out of all the countries that he had driven them. This is the language of the Exodus again. And God is gonna regather his people. He's gonna bring them back in, and he's going to be their Lord and their king. But verse 18, not before judgment, but first I will doubly re repay their iniquity and their sin. This is the message that we see in Jeremiah and also now or in that we saw in Isaiah rather, and also now in Jeremiah, that God is a God who is going to judge, but he's also a God that is not yet done with his people. One of the main reasons why we remained dispensationalist. Amen to that. And on top of that, another reason why we love God's grace, it's only when you see the judgment that his grace makes a lot of sense. And that's why I appreciate books like this. They help anchor me and remind me of who God is, apart from the grace that is offered in Christ. God is angry at sin and righteously, so he is not a tyrant. He's not flying off the handle because he can't control his emotions. He has a God measured and precise in his judgment, and that happens because of our sin against him. Praise be to Jesus that we have him to rely on and not our own righteousness. Yeah. Yeah. Chapter 17 then is sobering because he says the sin of Judah is written in a pen of iron. And so this is an indictment against them. In the contrast in verse seven, he says, blessed is the man whose trust is in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. This is language of Psalm. He's like a tree planted by water that sends its roots out by the stream. Contrast that in verse nine. With the wicked, the heart is deceitful. It's a famous verse, right? The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? People saying, follow your heart. Follow what your heart wants. Whatever your heart wants, that's what you need to have. Jeremiah would say no. God would say no. The heart is deceitful and can deceive us into thinking that these are good things. A question though, pr he. It goes to the Sabbath and it almost seems outta place here because he's dealing with judgment and everything else, and then all of a sudden he's going, Hey, you know what you need to do? You need to keep the Sabbath. My thoughts are that was one of the most basic commands, one of the earliest commands that Israel was given. And so it's given as a representation if you can't even do this, then who are you to think that you can obey me in every other command that I've given to you? But I, I'd be curious to get your thoughts as to why you think he goes to the Sabbath here in, in the end of chapter 17. Yeah, I think. I appreciate that. I didn't see it with that particular angle, but I like that because it does suggest that this is one of those commands that ought to be the easiest, and for that reason ought to be one of those commands that they cherish and pride themselves on keeping, because what God among the pantheon of Gods ever said, I want you to rest and to enjoy me. I want you to not carry burdens. I want you to let me carry your burdens. I appreciate that. I found myself saying, okay, this is a mosaic structure. This is one of the most basic mosaic commands. But I never put the two and two together, as in this is one of the easiest. And interestingly enough, it's also one of the hardest 'cause it takes such great trust Yeah. To stop what you're doing, to say, I'm gonna just let God be God and I'll be me. Yeah. Let's pray and then we will down with another episode. Lord we don't want to find ourselves as Judah did, as those that were going through the motions. Those that were, as we talked about maybe in yesterday's episode whose mouth is closed to you, but heart is far from you. We don't wanna trust our heart even as we just read, because the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. And that's gonna mean that there are sometimes that we're gonna have to overcome how we feel and choose instead. To do what we know intellectually even is right by you. And how to worship you, how to obey you, how to follow your commands. And so help us to do that, Lord, and not to be led astray by our emotions or feelings or anything else, but to be anchored to your word as the guide. And so we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep in your bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. We'll see you folks. Bye. Well, thank you for listening to another stupendous 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