[0:00] Jeremiah chapter number 21, we're going to have to add services so the cousins have more chances to sing together while they're in. Jeremiah chapter number 21, I want to plead with you from this chapter to not rebel against the God that they just sung about.
[0:14] We should delight in His promises. You know, just like the disciples when they were at the Lord's Supper and they knew that one person would deny Christ and everybody thought, they could never be me, but then it happens.
[0:26] Now when you get to church on Thursday night, you just think, I could never rebel against God. Why would I not want to worship that God? And we hear about Him as He sung and we sing together, but throughout our weeks and our challenges of life, we have opportunities and we're not always faithful to Him even though He is faithful to us.
[0:41] So in Jeremiah chapter number one, we look at the profile of a rebel, a man named Zedekiah. He had another name and it was changed. I believe Mataniah was his name and then he chose Zedekiah. And I want to introduce you guys to Trent over here.
[0:54] If you raise your hand, Trent. Trent is from Vision Baptist Church and I'm serious. All right, Trent, would you stand up here? All right, just for a moment. This is exciting. We have more people headed to the country of China.
[1:05] And so if people ask you what's going on and we get to be associating with Vision Baptist Church of Adairsville. So Trent at Vision is kind of confusing. So I'm going to suggest he changes his name tonight. All right.
[1:15] I'm not going to suggest Zedekiah. And I told him, I said, you better be serious about this because if you start coming around Vision, you're going to be tall Trent and I'm going to be short Trent. And I've never been adjective Trent. I've always been the only Trent.
[1:26] But now I have to be short Trent with him around, but it'll be worth it. But neither one of us are changing our names to Zedekiah because he is the quintessential example of what it means to be a rebel.
[1:37] And so you might relate with him. You may see this person in your life. But then Jeremiah is the perfect example of somebody who stands in his way and says, I'm not going to let you do this without a fight.
[1:47] And you're going to find yourself in one of those two places or both in your life where you choose to go down a path. Many times we're overtaken in sin. We fall and we get back up. But then there's just times in our lives where we say, I know right from wrong and I'm just going to choose wrong and live in rebellion.
[2:02] That's what Zedekiah does. So Jeremiah is not in chronological order. When we end up chapter 20, Jerohokim was the king. And now we fast forward 20 years and we're getting to the end of Judah and Zedekiah will be the king.
[2:14] And he's supposed to turn the lights off on his way out. He's supposed to shut down everything. And that is God's plan. And he tells him, God tells him, you need to submit yourself to Nebuchadnezzar and I will prosper you.
[2:25] I'll keep a rib net. I'm not done with my people, but this is what I have for you to do. The Zedekiah likes being king too much. And so he's not willing to turn the keys over to the kingdom too quickly.
[2:37] How many of you are a middle child? Would you raise your hand? Middle children, God bless you very much. All right. I'm a middle child. How many of you would say, you may relate with Zedekiah. How many of you say, I really know the story of Zedekiah really well.
[2:48] Would you raise your hand and come up here? Okay. I didn't think anybody would. All right. Nobody's going to go for that. Would you put that slide up, Josh, please? These are all the passages that you really need to read to know about Zedekiah.
[2:59] He's like the middle child. He's everywhere, but nobody ever notices. All right. And so all these passages of what's going on, there's a lot to know about Zedekiah, but it's not, just all in a couple chapters.
[3:09] He's all through the historical books. And he just makes an incredible picture of a person that had so much opportunity, who had so much hearing of the truth, who had a chance to turn.
[3:20] Jeremiah puts in such vivid imagery for him. Zedekiah says, I'm just going to do my own thing, and I'm just going to rebel. And we see how it turns out for him as it does with all the kings.
[3:32] I would kind of remind you, Israel wanted a king. Everybody else had a king. They said, we wanted a king. 500 years, they get a king. And we have Samuel chose Saul, and he looked like a king. Then we have David.
[3:43] And then we had a son that compromised Solomon, Rehoboam. He tried to outdo his dad, and he built all kinds of things, taxes, taxed the people and worked them really hard. Israel and Judah split. We have 300 years of kings.
[3:54] Then a bunch of men are carried out right before Zedekiah becomes king. One of the famous ones is Daniel. One day the city will be destroyed, Jerusalem, very soon. And a man named Nehemiah will come back and rebuild it.
[4:05] And Zedekiah did not like what he was given to do. He would not submit himself to God. And he makes just an awful mess of his life. And the prophecy of a rebel comes true in his life.
[4:17] You know, I don't know why Jeremiah 21 falls on a Thursday night, because none of you look like rebels. None of you look like James Dean. Some of you did on Monday night at the daddy-daughter date. You know, Mike did. He looked pretty tough that night. But right now, I'm not looking too tough right now, Mike.
[4:28] I'll tell you about it. All right. And we don't look like rebels, but man, is there potential for our rebellion, having being taught so much about God. And so rebels look like us. We can most certainly be rebels.
[4:40] And then we can also have the potential of raising rebels and knowing rebels. I told Pastor years ago when I was teaching the young couples class when they all were young before they got old. And I said, you know, everybody seems to have the job they want.
[4:52] Everything seems to just be going the way that everybody wants. They don't really have need for me to do anything. He said, just give it time. Life will happen. Things will happen to them. And one of the things that may happen to us is we may have many of those kids in Awana, people in your life, people we're sitting by, may just head into rebellion against the God of heaven.
[5:10] And we need to be the kind of friend that would stand in front of them and say, you're not going to do this without being confronted with truth. Let me read to you the first three verses and I'll pray. Then word came unto Jeremiah from the Lord when King Zedekiah sent unto him Pashurah, the son of Micaiah, and Zephaniah, the son of Messiah, the priest, saying, inquire, I pray thee, of the Lord for us.
[5:30] This is what he asks often. For Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, maketh war against us. If so be that the Lord will deal with us according to all his wondrous works that he may go up from us. Then said Jeremiah unto them, thus shall you say to Zedekiah, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, behold, I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands.
[5:47] Wherewith you fight against the king of Babylon and against the Chaldeans, which besiege you without the walls, I will assemble them into the midst of this city. Verse five, and I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand, with a strong arm, even in anger and fury and a great wrath.
[6:05] Heavenly Father, we come tonight knowing what you want to do in our lives. Lord, I pray that every one of us will find room for you in our hearts. Lord, there's strong warnings here.
[6:15] Lord, you've given me strong warnings this week. Pray that you'll do the same to my brothers and sisters in Christ. Lord, keep us from going down the path of Zedekiah. Lord, give us the strength to stand as a person like Jeremiah.
[6:27] Lord, don't allow us to ever not see you as good, Lord. We recognize you are holy. We delight in your promises. And God, forgive us when we see you as anything less.
[6:38] In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. So as we look at the profile of a rebel, it'll be no surprise to you, it's most certainly a matter of the heart. And so when God's speaking about Zedekiah rebelling, he just doesn't just talk about his actions.
[6:52] We're going to be constantly reminded about his heart. 2 Chronicles 36, 10 says, Zedekiah was one and 20 years old when he began to reign. He reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord his God. He humbled not himself before Jeremiah the prophet, speaking from the mouth of the Lord.
[7:05] He also rebelled against the king, Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God. But he stiffened his neck. He hardened his heart from turning unto the Lord God of Israel. Everybody likes to be the king.
[7:16] Everybody likes to live with some kind of autonomy and to do their own thing. So Zedekiah was supposed to turn it over. There had been a king before him. He made a covenant. Nebuchadnezzar said, I want you to make a covenant with your God that you will follow through what you said you were going to do.
[7:30] But as soon as Zedekiah got to sit on the throne, and as soon as the crown came up on his head, and as soon as he had some power, he couldn't let go of it. It grabbed a hold of him. He wanted that feeling of power and being in control.
[7:43] He wanted to make the rules in his life. Maybe one of the reasons that I feel so burdened to work with teenagers is because it just feels like yesterday when I was in a Christian school with a mom doing all she could to give me the best chance possible to be raised up in the serve of God.
[8:01] And I just remember looking down a path and said, you know what? I'm just going to try it. You know, everybody else seems to have so much fun doing all these things. And I don't know why. I just try to dabble in it. I'm just going to do whatever I want.
[8:14] I'm just going to go for it and see what happens. And I'm so thankful. Just like when Peter denied Christ and Peter looks upon the face of Jesus that God reeled me in and said, this is not the life that you want to live.
[8:26] But you just want to go for it at times. And our kids, as they get to grow up in a Christian home and they should be grateful for it and have all this going on, sometimes they just want something that's their own. They just want to be the boss for a little bit.
[8:36] They just want to try it their own way. They just want to have something that's private that nobody else knows about. They're tired of being seen by God by being seen by you. And they just want something of their own. And that's where a rebellion comes in.
[8:48] So they begin to make their own rules. And they kind of borrow, right? They kind of borrow. They say, I'm going to take some rules from the Bible. I'm going to take some rules from my friend. They kind of piecemeal a relationship with God in their own set of rules.
[8:59] And it leads to rebellion. And that's what we see Zedekiah doing. Just kind of working things together. Talking about God, but not submitting to God. Praying to God, but not surrendering to God. He didn't just completely walk away.
[9:09] But he was trying to make his own version of God. Jeremiah 21, verse 5, we've already read. It said he will fight against him. God will fight against the rebel because he loves them. So there's a prophecy in Ezekiel chapter number 17.
[9:21] And it says, Son of man, put forth a riddle and speak a parable into the house of Israel. And this riddle is about two different eagles. And I'm asking Jeff Bush that when we get to the book of Ezekiel, that pastor never travels or goes anywhere, okay?
[9:35] And I know in Ezekiel 17, we see a story of this one eagle flies to the top of a tree, takes the top out of it, flies, and it begins to grow. And another eagle, then the branches begin to go towards it. And what we have is this fight that's going on with the life of Zedekiah, where he is going to be influenced by the king of Egypt.
[9:52] Everybody knew where this story was headed. Everybody seemed to know except for Zedekiah. One of the best examples I've ever heard about this was years ago when a person said, and we don't see this much anymore, but I know I've told this to teenagers many times, is that when there used to be a police chase, when you're leaving, when you're watching on the news and they interrupt and they say, this man's fleeing from the place and he's driving down the road and he's weaving in and out.
[10:16] And he's like, nobody's going to catch me. Nobody's going to see me. Things are going to turn out different for me than they turned out for everybody else. But what happens every time? He hits the wall.
[10:26] He gets out of the police car. They tackle him really hard. That's what I would do. And every time it ends the same way. And he's driving and he's like, it's going to be different for me. Nobody knows where I'm at. I'm too fast.
[10:37] And we're all saying, we're at home. We see you. We're in our pajamas. We could catch you. We know where you're at. You're not fooling anybody. No matter how loud your music is, no matter how fast your car is, you're not going to get away with it.
[10:49] But please try. It makes for great entertainment. And so, and you see it as well. Some of you that are older, you see kids in that direction and you just say, it's not going to end up the way that you think it is. You're not as smart as you think you are.
[11:00] You're not going to trick the system. You're not going to come out of this thing unharmed just because you're protected by all these things that the life of a rebel is hard and it has consequences to it. And so there's prophecy.
[11:11] Then Jeremiah in 34, 3, which is happening before 21, he says, and you shall not escape out of his hand, but shall surely be taken. Jeremiah face to face with Zedekiah and he delivered him into his hand and your eyes shall behold the eyes of the king of Babylon and you shall speak with your mouth to mouth and you shall go to Babylon.
[11:28] Jeremiah lays out for Zedekiah how this is going to end. But Zedekiah says, I don't care. That's not going to happen. And he begins to find other people that will tell him differently because Jeremiah knew something that Zedekiah wouldn't admit is that rebellion always leads to pain.
[11:43] That our God always knows what's best for us, even when we don't seem to understand it. I kind of understand a little bit with Zedekiah like, are you sure that I'm supposed to surrender? I thought they were the enemy. I thought this was supposed to happen.
[11:55] But the word of God came into them and said, this is what I want you to do. But Zedekiah said, no, I'm going to try it my own way. And even though the details are different, the promises are always the same for the rebel.
[12:05] And so he heard of God's blessings as they went in exile. The truth couldn't be any more plain. He says in verse number six of chapter number 24, he says, I've set mine eyes upon thee for good and I will bring them again to this land and I will build them and not pull them down and I will plant them and not pluck them and I will give them a heart to know me.
[12:24] He sits out in front of him, his two options and what will happen. He would have seen Jeremiah walking around with that heavy yoke upon him, knowing that that is given to them. He would have heard the embarrassment in 27, 5 and 6 where it says, and now I've given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant and the beast of the field, which I have given him also to serve him.
[12:48] That God was using what was happening in his life. He was using the consequences of his sin to try to get Zedekiah to slow down and to surrender to the will of God in his life.
[13:00] But he doesn't. He just keeps running through red light, through red light and going his way. Zach Elrod sent me an email this week and he talked about a couple of guys that were kind of famous on YouTube.
[13:11] They were comedians and they both walked away from their faith. They said they were deconstructing their faith. And what they said, he said, it's like I'm in a ship and I'm jumping out of this ship into the unknown of uncertainty and I'm taking my family with me.
[13:25] And one of the things that he said, he says, when we drive down the road, our kids are sitting beside us in the car, but unbeknownst to us, they're developing an entirely different worldview. And even though we're together, they're still all alone.
[13:37] And he says, as it's going down the road, you're listening to something and they're listening to something. And kids are just developing a worldview. Did they see God move in a special way? Zedekiah should have seen Jeremiah with the yoke.
[13:48] He should have heard the message of the basket of figs. He should have heard all the warnings that were given. But even though he heard them, he wasn't making application to his heart. As parents and as people that disciple, we have to make sure that the kids are getting it.
[14:01] We have to make sure those that we're working with get it. That just because they're around it and in the right place and they're standing on the street when the preacher comes down preaching with the yoke on his back, that they're really understanding that the God of heaven is communicating with them and he's doing something.
[14:15] You ever been amazed at what your kids don't understand? Tinsley and Thatcher were talking about rugby the other day. And Thatcher said this one team won like 130 games, I think, and they lost nine. And Tinsley said, that's so sad.
[14:26] Nine people died in rugby. We said, no, that means how many people lost. He says, well, that makes a lot more sense. Every time you heard about sports, you thought that's how many people died on the other side. Thatcher told me the other day, he said, you know, dad, it's the word is only, not only.
[14:40] Oh, he said, I said, I know. He said, I wrote in my paper, O-N-G-L-Y, and my teacher told me it was wrong. And I said, of course it's wrong. I said, it's only. He said, it sounds just like you're saying only, dad, O-N-G-L-Y.
[14:52] My kid, there's all kinds of words he doesn't understand because he has me as a dad. But what is it? What are the big things that he's not getting? He's in the right place. He's supposed to be hearing the messages.
[15:04] Zedekiah doesn't get it. He doesn't get to his heart. Nobody could have had a more clear presentation of what needed to be done in his life. But he says, I'm just going to do wrong. Teenagers in here, you can't blame your parents.
[15:16] You choose to do wrong. They can stand in front of you and they're warning you. They have you here tonight and they're pleading with you, putting you in the right places. And they can't protect you. You know, rebellion may isolate you, but it never insulates you.
[15:28] It will take you away from authority, but it's never going to protect you. It will never fulfill what it's going to do. And you'll stand there recognizing this. How much were they hearing Psalms 18, 25?
[15:39] With the merciful that will show thyself merciful. With an upright man that will show thyself upright. What are they hearing when they hear that verse? Here's what Zedekiah heard in 21 verse 2.
[15:49] Inquire, I pray thee, of the Lord for us. For Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, maketh war against us. If so be that the Lord will deal with us according to all his wondrous works that he may go up from us.
[16:01] Zedekiah's prayer was, I know about God. He does big things. He does miracles. I know about the Exodus. Hey, God, I've got myself into this mess. And now I'm asking you to give me a miracle. And I'm asking you to stop all the consequences of it.
[16:13] So he knew there was a God that could do miracles. But did he know that he was a God that's with an upright man that will show thyself upright? Did he know that he has to live according to the will of God, enjoy the promises of God?
[16:25] He was just picking and choosing what he heard about God. And here Zedekiah is praying. He begins to manage the outcomes. We know God works in miraculous ways. Deuteronomy 4, 34 says, By war and by a mighty hand, but a stretched out arm.
[16:40] But he wouldn't pray for surrender. He prayed to God, but he was always praying for to get out of trouble. You ever prayed those prayers before? You ever prayed, I pray my parents don't find out.
[16:50] I pray my boss doesn't find out. I pray my wife doesn't find out. I pray that nobody finds out. Those are not the prayers of surrendered people. Those are the prayers of a rebel who's misunderstanding the God of heaven.
[17:03] Jeremiah prays for Zedekiah. Jeremiah 13, 17, But you will not hear it. My soul shall weep in secret places for your pride. Mine eyes shall weep sore and run down with tears. 22, If thou say in thine heart, wherefore cometh these things upon me?
[17:15] For the greatest of thine iniquity are the skirts that cover the hills are bare. This is thy law, the portion of thy measures from thee, saith the Lord, because thou hast forgotten me and trusted in falsehood. He says, How do you say where did this come from?
[17:28] This is what happens with the consequences of sin. So Zedekiah, not liking Jeremiah's message, he puts him in jail. Brings him out one day and he says, in Jeremiah 37, 17, he says, Is there any word from the Lord?
[17:42] And Jeremiah says, Come real close. Let me tell you something. There is. For said he, Thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon. Jeremiah was not changing. Zedekiah puts him down in a well.
[17:53] And he keeps him down there. And when he comes out, what does he say? Has the Lord changed his opinion? He said, No, you're going to have to surrender or there's going to be consequences. Zedekiah gets honest in Jeremiah 38, 19.
[18:06] And Zedekiah the king said unto Jeremiah, I am afraid of the Jews that are fallen in the Chaldeans, lest they deliver me into their hand and they mock me. Had a real coming to Jesus moment.
[18:17] Had a real intervention. Where Zedekiah looks at Jeremiah and just says, I can't back down at this point. I'm going to have to double down. I am afraid of what people would think about me. I'm afraid of what people would do.
[18:30] And he basically said, I will trust how I can navigate these problems better than I can trust putting my life into the hands of an all-knowing God. And that's rebellion.
[18:42] Zedekiah found people that would tell him what he wanted to hear. 28, 15. Then said prophet Jeremiah unto Hananiah the prophet, Here now, Hananiah, the Lord has not sent thee, but thou makest as people to trust in a lie.
[18:54] And so he goes and he gets different people that will tell him what he wants. And Hananiah is one of them. And I can tell you this world is filled with Hananiahs. Man, I was, without getting much details, I went to something this morning about mental health and students.
[19:08] And when I was there, I hate to say this, but that room was filled with Hananiahs. It was a room filled with people who did not talk about Jesus. They did not talk about the Word of God. But they talked about worldly ways to help somebody overcome the things in their lives.
[19:22] A way to try to bring the two together. No talk of sin. No talk of knowing God. No talking of identity in Christ. The world always has an answer. Hananiah has an answer that would pacify Zedekiah.
[19:35] The world will always have an answer that will pacify you. So he tells him, you're going to end up being all alone. He doesn't believe it. But some of you know how the story goes. It gets to a point where they're completely surrounded by the enemy.
[19:47] As far as he can look in every direction, the enemy is there. And then his friends are going to slip away in the middle of the night, leaving him there completely alone. Party always leaves you.
[19:58] Some of you that walk that road of rebellion, the ones that would say amen tonight, warning teenagers of it, you know what that's like. You know what it's like when they leave you. I told Tracy in here, one year my brother was in jail and he couldn't get anybody to bring him any socks.
[20:13] And Tracy took him like 100 pairs of socks, all right? And he called me crying and he said, you're like six hours away and somebody you knew came here and bought me all these socks and they gave them to me. And I said, brother, God has given me different kinds of friends because I'm going to follow him.
[20:28] You know, the type of friends that do something for you when you're in need. Not the ones that are going to leave you in the middle of the night. And that's what rebellion brought him, isolated and all alone. Consequences of sin will always catch up with you.
[20:40] We see it time and time again. Friends argue the truth. Hananiah is even audacious enough. He goes and takes the yoke off of Jeremiah and smashes it on the ground and says, don't listen to what Jeremiah says.
[20:51] He's mocking like in Psalms 1. When you're in that rebel mode, somebody's always going to tell you, no, you don't need to listen to what those people are saying. You don't need to follow through with all they're doing. You need to calm down. And this choice is just real simple.
[21:02] 21.8, Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death. It has been explained to them time and time again. Leviticus 26.27, And if you will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me, then I will walk contrary unto you.
[21:17] The promises are there for those that live in obedience to him. And so in Jeremiah 21.4 and 5, which we read, we have terms like outstretched hand and anger and fury and great wrath.
[21:28] So exactly what it says in Leviticus 26.28, then I will walk contrary to you also in fury. And I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. And so in Jeremiah 21.4.25, it says, I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger and in fury and great wrath.
[21:44] He's using the same words because what Zedekiah is forgetting is that God is for truth, that God won't allow you to live in sin. That is the side that God is on. God is on the side of righteousness, that just because he's the king and just because he's a people that have been great promises and great things that happened in the past, that God is always on the side of truth because he is truth.
[22:05] And so the outstretched hand will be against him, the anger and fear will be against him, and the great wrath, it won't be against the others. And it should have been a wake-up call, but it wasn't. And it's an unbelief to God's word. Then came the word of the Lord and the prophet Jeremiah.
[22:17] It's not enough to hear the word. It's not enough to know the word, but we have to be doers of the word. God's word about rebellion is always true. 2 Kings 25.6. So they took the king, Zedekiah, brought him up to the king of Babylon, the Riblah, and they gave judgment unto him.
[22:32] And they slew the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes and put out his eyes of Zedekiah and bound him with fetters of brass and carried him to Babylon, just like was prophesied. Last thing he saw was his sons.
[22:44] He killed him, then he was carried away. As God's people today, we need to realize that the only safe and sane response to God's chastening hand is submission. Hebrews 12. Furthermore, we have had our fathers of our flesh, which corrected us, and we gave them reverence.
[22:58] Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the father's spirits and live and live? Hebrews 12.9. That we submit ourselves to God, I mean to our fathers. We know that as a child, it's best to listen to our earthly fathers.
[23:09] How do we not know that so much the more about the God of heaven? Why would we rebel against him? Why would we think that our way would ever be better? And they was accused.
[23:20] Jeremiah in here, 38.4. For this man seeketh not the welfare of his people, but the hurt. Man, that hurts, doesn't it? When you're the person who's supposed to be representing the truth in the story, but everybody says you're judgmental, that you believe in inclusivity of Christ, and you believe that he's the only way.
[23:36] You know, the only way to have true peace is know the prince of peace, and there's no other type of peace out there. You know, I said that the day, and people looked at me like I had two heads. There's no other path to having inner peace in your heart if you don't know Jesus.
[23:48] That's not a mean message. I mean, people can be hateful and disguise it as loving, but if we say anything else but confront people with Jesus Christ, then we're not loving people. Jeremiah is pouring out the love of God in Zedekiah's life, and he's doing it because he won't move.
[24:04] He keeps hearing the same message. He doesn't waver in it. The world needs us to be like that. There is a great shortage of truth in this world, and we can't move from that position. We've got to say, this ain't my message.
[24:15] This is just what the word of the Lord says, and you have to live with the consequences or live with the blessings of it, but we don't make the rules. I am not the king. He is. Listen to those in your life that are warning you.
[24:26] Have people in your life that would warn you and that would tell you. Last verse, verse 13, Behold, I'm against thee, O inhabitant of the valley and rock of the plain, saith the Lord, which say, Who shall come down against us for who shall enter into our habitations?
[24:39] There's kind of a word play there where it says, Who will come against us? The rock of the plain. You know, the rock could be Jesus. Their life could be built upon the God and his promises, but their confidence had come upon where they had been sitting.
[24:51] They were high up above everything else. They could see when the enemy would come. They said, We are geographically set into a place where none of this is going to come to us. You're never too big to fall. You think you can dabble with sin and rebellion and that it's not all going to fall in on you?
[25:06] That's not the case. We're reminded time and time again in the Bible. Those that listen to God, enjoy his blessings, and those that rebel deal with the consequences because he remains a loving God who doesn't allow us to run from him without feeling the pain that sin will bring.
[25:21] You may have an army. You may have friends. You may feel like you can live in defiance. You may have got by with it for a long time, but secret rebellion will always make itself known. Maybe the night you've ran the first light for the first time, put the blinker on and pull over or you're going to keep coming.
[25:35] You know, God loves this rebel people. He loved us. When we were enemies and rebels, he still loved us. Around the same area, John the Baptist is going to show up and he's going to say, Jesus died for the rebels. Just like the rebels of Zedekiah and just like the rebels of your life, he died for them and he loves them.
[25:50] And today we ought to put our faith and trust in him and just submit to him. If you're a believer, you know your eternity is sealed, but did you know that here on earth, the sin has the same consequences for you? Sin has built-in consequences.
[26:03] Zedekiah was not the last king. John the Baptist will come and tell of the King Jesus that died for all the rebels. If you're in here tonight and you're living in rebellion, you're going down that path, don't think it's going to be any different from you.
[26:15] It doesn't matter that you're a member of this church. It doesn't matter what type of family you have. You're not too big to fall. God loves you too much to allow you to live in your sin and you will deal with the consequences of it. Pull over now.
[26:26] Don't think you're going to get away with it. It always ends the same way. If God has raised you up to be a Jeremiah in somebody's life to a Zedekiah, don't back down. Don't keep preaching the word.
[26:37] Don't move. Parents, don't back down. Do what God says. Represent him in their lives. Love people enough to share the truth with them.