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South Bay SDA Church

Eric Walsh

The Test of Liberty

Our scripture reading was done so well by the young man who read it.

The scripture says, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation or distress, or persecution or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long we are counted as sheep for the slaughter nay in all thing these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

Our message this Sabbath is entitled the test of liberty.

Father God, we thank you Lord for this opportunity to study a word.

And once again Lord, I just ask that you make me a nail hammered into the wall.

And upon that nail Lord, I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

Lord, it's irrelevant if I'm seen or heard.

Lord, we want to hear a word from the throne room of grace.

So, pour out your Holy Ghost on this place now and let him lead us into truth.

We claim the blood of Jesus over everyone here.

So that Lord as your word is preached, the Holy Spirit can do its work without difficulty.

So, if you go with me, turn with me to the book of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah chapter 19, that's where we're going to start.

And it is an interesting time in Israel's history.

The northern kingdom of Israel has already been wiped out, taken into captivity.

Judah is all that's left, but God has now finished the time of mercy even for the southern kingdom of Judah.

A prophet is called to prepare the people for what is about to come.

Jeremiah is also a, he also lives, he's a contemporary of Daniel and some argue he may have actually taught Daniel and the 3 Hebrew boys, part of the reason they might have been so strong in their faith when they get to Babylon.

If you read all of those books at the same time, you get to triangulate what was going on with God's people from different angles, whether from the palace where Nebuchadnezzar was with Daniel, whether the fields where the children of Israel were working kind of as slaves with Ezekiel or what was going on back home as Jeremiah tried to convince them that in fact the time that God would come to deliver them had passed, their iniquity was so great God would no longer come to deliver them and they needed to actually prepare now to go into captivity for 70 years.

But this was a message they did not want to hear.

It was an unpopular message and hence they fought Jeremiah at every turn.

He suffered because they did not give him the freedom to speak what needed to be spoken.

As an example, Jeremiah 19 and verse 1 says this, Thus saith the Lord, go and get a potter's earthen bottle and take of the ancients of the people, these are the elders, and of the ancients of the priests, and go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee.

Jeremiah, get a piece of pot, go and get the leaders, the elders, and I want you to go and stand at a prominent position at the gate near the, in the city.

Verse 3, and say, hear ye, this is what you're supposed to say Jeremiah, hear ye the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, this is speaking to Jehoiakim and Jehoachin, and inhabitants of Jerusalem, thus said the Lord of hosts, The God of Israel, behold I will bring evil upon this place which whosoever heareth his ears shall tingle.

Jeremiah says, my message, my sermon is so terrible that whoever hears it, their very ears are going to tingle.

It is not the kind of message that makes you leave feeling all fluffy and light.

He has told you've got to go in there and preach the unadulterated Word of God.

It will be so terrible that those who hear the Word, their ears are going to tingle.

But now that Oakwood, the pastor of the church is a man named E.C.

Let me tell you something, Eric Ward, E.E.

Brooks, these were the regular folk we sat and listened to.

If you haven't heard of them, YouTube them and listen to them now.

In fact, maybe I should get with Alistair and we get some of this stuff up on AudioVerse.

And let me tell you something, the way they said it was when we as college students went to church, Elder Ward would make it clear, you when you leave out of here, you might leave limping because the message is going to step on some toes.

We have come to a time when in fact folk are afraid to preach a straight truth.

They are more concerned that you're like them when you leave than that you are more convicted of sin when you leave.

Verse 4, because they have forsaken me God says and have estranged this place and have burned incense in it unto their other gods whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocence." And this speaks to the worship of the god Moloch, who they would take, and it goes on, explains a little more in verse 5, they have built also the high places of Baal to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal.

The wickedness of Israel was such that they sacrificed their children to Baal and Moloch and they would burn them and I have sermons that talk about this and in studying the ancient aspects of this and I actually when I lived in Israel, I got to see it.

They would make these like metal gods and then light a fire inside and then lay the child on top and you would hear that you could hear for miles.

They say the screaming and screeching of the children of the children of Israel.

I wish I could tell you, we'll talk about it more at 330, I wish I could tell you in a way we aren't still sacrificing some of our children.

We think if we just give our children everything they want we've done right, but we don't know that if you do not have boundaries in your home today you have left your child open.

Verse 5, They have built also the high places of Baal to burn their sons with the fire from burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it to my mind." God says, I never even imagined you'd do something like that to your children.

Verse 6, therefore, behold the days come, saith the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Topheth, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter.

Can you imagine if that's the sermon you were told to go and preach?

To go and stand where everybody can see you and preach that sermon?

Let me tell you something, this is the test of liberty.

The test of liberty is that you are able to speak an uncomfortable word.

And religious freedom is all about actually.

But what you will find is that when government, in this story, when the government and the religious organization are united as 1, persecution follows.

Now if you read on in 19, I won't keep going, it describes the horrors that are going to come to Judah because of her sins.

It describes the fact that the city's basically going to be destroyed.

They're going to turn on 1 another and in the end, Jerusalem is going to be left in ruin.

When Jeremiah preaches this sermon, This is the result.

Jeremiah chapter 20 and verse 1 says this, Now Paschor, the son of Emer the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things.

So, someone heard that this was happening.

This guy named Pasher, and Pasher smote Jeremiah.

Can you imagine, he walked, Jeremiah preaching, go up and, as they say in Jamaica, boxes the man, right?

Hits Jeremiah, smote him, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the Lord.

So now he takes him from where he was preaching, he, they physically assault Jeremiah and they put him in stocks.

When you study what that means, they actually put him in a contraption that contorted his body so that no matter what he tried to do, Jeremiah could find no position of comfort.

And then to make an example of him, they took him to 1 of the prominent places.

Scholars argue over 2 places that it might have been.

What does matter is everyone could see Jeremiah breathing in pain and in front of everyone because they wanted to shut Jeremiah up.

Verse 3, It came to pass on the morrow that Paschor brought forth Jeremiah out of the stocks.

So he takes Jeremiah out of the stocks, hoping Jeremiah now is going to change his message.

Then said Jeremiah unto him, the Lord hath not called thy name Paschor, but Megor Misabib.

Anytime in the Bible a name is changed by God, what is it a statement of?

The person's character has been redefined.

And it tells you a little bit about what it means it says it here verse 4, for thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself.

And to all thy friends, and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and then I shall behold it, and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon and he shall carry them captive into Babylon and shall slay them with the sword.

You have beaten me, he says, you put me in stocks, but guess what, the message doesn't change.

Your name itself now means terror on every side because you wouldn't listen to the word of the Lord.

They could have simply, if you read the book of Jeremiah, they could have simply submitted to Nebuchadnezzar, given up, done their time in Babylon.

Their time in Babylon had a double purpose.

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The Test of Liberty

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