Episode Transcript
Good morning.
Well, we have a fine-looking crowd here this morning.
Some of you we hadn't seen in a while, and I'm glad your health has allowed you to come back.
That's wonderful.
And, of course, welcome to the people online.
It's 10 o'clock for all of you.
Even if you're in a different part of the world, it's 10 o'clock right here.
2 Kings 22:17 is our new text this morning.
2 Kings 22:17.
Now last week, we looked at the wrath of God.
Now we didn't look completely at it, but because it was a subject that came up in our text, We took a glimpse at it and we saw how when God executes His wrath, He executes it completely and looked at scriptures that teach that very thing.
And in verse 16 of our text, which we studied last week, we came across a prophetess named Huldah and she told King Josiah's messengers that God was going to bring to pass all the words of the book which Josiah had read and that book was called the book of the law and we learned about God's wrath and we realized how frightening the statement must have been for Josiah that God would bring to pass all the words that are written in the book.
And now in verse 17 this prophetess tells the messengers what the cause of the evil will be that is brought upon Judah or what the cause of the evil actually was because it had already been done the damage had already been done by the children of Israel.
So "Because they have forsaken me and have burned incense unto other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands, therefore my wrath shall be kindled against this place, and shall not be quenched."
It says, "because they have forsaken me," and I emphasize that word in my study, Because it tells us that the people of Judah, that's who they are, the people of Judah are the ones who are responsible for the consequences that God will pour out upon them.
They're not going to be able to blame someone else, only themselves.
You know, you may have said this or heard this, If it weren't for Adam and Eve making that bad decision in the garden, we wouldn't be where we are today.
And that's true.
But if it wasn't for you and me and the decisions we've made, we wouldn't be in the shape we're in either.
We can't say, "Well, Adam and Eve did wrong, but we've done right."
There's none righteous, no not one, from Adam all the way down.
So the children of Israel in Judah will not be able to blame someone else for the consequences.
And you know it's become more and more common for people to play the victims when in fact they are the perpetrators.
And this comes from a failure of mankind to take responsibility for his own actions.
You know where that started?
The Garden of Eden.
That woman you gave me.
That serpent deceived me.
It's the "me too" started in the garden.
When a large group of people gather to riot over some perceived injustice, that riot includes crimes such as destruction, assault, often on peace officers, arson, they love to set cars on fire.
And of course theft, shoplifting, all of that that goes with it.
And so every one of those people who participate in a riot understand that they're breaking the law.
None of them are ignorant of that.
And they know there will be a law enforcement response to their actions.
And when the police show up, the rioters are put on notice that they have a certain amount of time to depart from the area and stop committing these crimes.
And so let's say that's five minutes.
That's enough time for you to get out of an area.
Get to your car, go to your house, get on the dart bus, however you got there, you can get out of there in five minutes.
And after that time, the police will often employ tear gas, pepper balls, and other less than lethal ways of causing the crowd to disperse.
And yes, the rioters who knew they were breaking the law had been given notice to leave, but many of them not only refused to leave, they continued to commit the crimes they were committing, even though the police have arrived and warned them against that.
So the police began spraying tear gas, making arrests, and dispersing the riders by violent means if necessary.
And so the result of this law enforcement action involves the riders sustaining bumps and cuts and bruises, some burning eyes and lungs from the tear gas, and a few arrests.
And later on, and you've seen it, some of these criminals will be interviewed by a news person.
And they'll present themselves as victims of police brutality.
And they'll refuse to accept that the consequences they received were direct results of the evil they committed.
So in our text, Huldah the prophetess tells messengers of God that God said this about Judah, "They have forsaken me."
Now let's look at the words for "have forsaken."
Forsaken, that's from a Hebrew word that means to loose the bands.
Like a rubber band, that's what we call a band today, to loose the bands.
And the first time the Hebrew word is used is in Genesis chapter 2 and verse 24.
Genesis 2 verse 24.
"Therefore shall a man leave," there's the word, "his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh."
So when a man leaves or forsakes, it's not always an ugly thing, the word forsake, that's why you need to see what the original language means rather than what you think the word forsake means.
When a man leaves or forsakes his father and mother to get married, he's removing himself from the rules and the authority of his father's house, of his parents' house.
And he's now assuming an authority that God has placed over him as a husband.
God's given the man an authority.
Now he never removes himself from the authority of God.
We're never removed from that authority.
But that chain of command has now been shortened.
And do you know what that does to the husband?
Some may say, "Well, boy, that just frees him up."
No, it puts more responsibility on him than he had before.
Because before, he was under his parents' authority.
And if his dad or his mom told him to do something and he did it, and what they told him was wrong, they bore a great amount of that responsibility.
Now, the parents are here and the husband has left because he has a new home he creates with his wife or the wife with her husband.
And when Judah forsook or left God, it was as if Judah divorced the Lord.
Now when a man leaves his parents to go marry his wife and move into a new house, that's a good thing.
That's a good forsaking.
He's supposed to do that.
Although I have a tremendous amount of respect for my parents, if my dad were to call me today and say, Andy, I need you to start going to bed a little bit earlier."
I'd say, "Dad, I love you, but that's my decision."
Now if I were 10 years old and he said, "Tonight you're going to go to bed at 8 o'clock.
We have to get up early."
Then I would say, "Yes, sir."
He had the authority to tell me to do that.
But Judah had been bound to God by a covenant, and it was God's covenant.
A covenant He made with them.
And God didn't break this covenant.
He didn't forsake Judah.
He didn't say, "You know what?
I don't think I want to be their God anymore."
They forsook Him.
So again, the responsibility for breaking this covenant, for this forsaking or loosening the bands, rested with Judah.
Because He said, "They have forsaken Me." in verse 17, it said, "and have burned incense unto other gods."
This was the specific way in which Judah forsook or left God.
Now, had they abided in the covenant that God made with them, The covenant to which they agreed to be bound, then they would not have forsaken God.
You can't do both.
You can't obey and disobey at the same time.
Now that's simple enough to understand.
Exodus chapter 20, verses 2 through 5, where we tie this covenant together with what we're learning here in our lesson.
"I am the Lord thy God which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.
For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and the fourth generation of them that hate me."
And after Moses read all the law, this wasn't all he read.
It goes on all the way through chapter 24 of Exodus.
After Moses read all the law, including these commandments to the children of Israel, here's what they said in Exodus 24, verse 7.
And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments.
And all the people answered with one voice and said, 'All the words which the Lord has said will we do.'
So they bound themselves to that covenant then.
Now in our text, they've decided to loosen themselves from the covenant.
And may I say to you, there is no way that man could keep a covenant with God by his own sincerity.
They were very sincere.
They'd seen some pretty mighty things on Mount Sinai, didn't they?
They were sincere.
Man can't keep the covenant with God by his own self-discipline or will.
Oh, they wanted to and they started off well.
And because of this fatal error that is in man, this sin nature, man was helpless to remain in covenant with God by his own actions.
In fact, man would always forsake God and His law.
So there came one who obeyed that law perfectly, Both in word, in deed, in motive, in heart.
Jesus, the lawgiver, was also the law keeper.
And he never forsook God.
He never forsook his God.
He was bound to God by sonship.
He was his son.
He was bound to him by obedience.
He who knew no sin, the Bible tells us.
And yet he took upon himself our sin so that he could absorb the wrath of God.
And I'm glad he didn't just absorb some of it or the worst part.
He absorbed the entire wrath of God for our sin upon himself.
And that wrath was the result of the people whom God created forsaking their God because we disobeyed Him.
And in the case of Judah, that forsaking specifically involved the burning of incense to these other gods, worshipping and serving these other gods.
Exodus chapter 30, verses 8 through 10.
Exodus 30, verses 8 through 10.
Now this is speaking of the high priest Aaron and his duty when it came to the altar of incense.
That's what we're reading about here is incense.
"And when Aaron lighteth the lamps at evening, he shall burn incense upon it, a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations.
"Ye shall offer no strange incense thereon, "nor burnt sacrifice, nor meat offering, "neither shall you pour drink offering thereon.
"And Aaron shall make an atonement upon the horns of it "once a year with the blood of the sin offering "of atonements.
"Once in the year shall he make atonement upon it "throughout your generations.
"It is most holy unto the Lord."
Now I've taught on incense in the recent past in perhaps the last six to nine months.
So if you've come, you should have some good notes on that.
If not, go back and you can find that on Facebook.
What I want you to notice here is that the high priest lit the lamps and burned incense upon the altar of incense.
And that altar, if you can picture the tabernacle, That altar was just before the veil or the curtain that leads to the most holy place, also called the Holy of Holies.
Now that's where the Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy Seat were.
But outside that room was the Holy Place, which was the remainder of the inside of the tabernacle.
It's what you'd first encounter when you walk in.
Certain Levites could go in there.
Nobody could go into that Holy of Holies, not even the high priest, except for once a year when he would take the blood in there on that day of atonement.
So we're dealing with the incense altar which positionally sat in front or before the veil, the curtain that went into the Holy of Holies.
And God commanded, as we just read, that no strange incense was to be burnt on that altar.
Any incense that was burned to other gods would be strange incense.
Because the Exodus passage told us it was a perpetual incense before the Lord, not before Baal, not before Molech or Ashtoreth or all these other so-called gods that the people worship from time to time.
And any incense burned to the Lord, but that was not the incense God commanded, would also be strange.
They'd say, "But we're burning it to you, Lord."
And He'd say, "Yes, but that's not the incense I commanded to be burned."
And the Exodus passage also tells us that this incense altar was most holy unto the Lord.
Now Judah has defiled the whole ordinance of burning incense because they burned it to other gods, as our text tells us.
And going back to the Ten Commandments there in Exodus 20, I'll re-read verse 3.
It says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
So not only was Judah not to burn incense before other gods, but they weren't even supposed to have any other gods before the Lord.
And the word "before" is translated as the word "upon" more than any other word.
It's also translated as the word "over" or "beyond" or "on."
Can you imagine in your mind, here's God and you stack another God on top of Him?
That's the idea here.
The idea behind the word "before" is "preeminence."
And we studied that word a few lessons ago.
A pastor taught on preeminence.
That means having first place, being before all others, which is where the Lord is and should be in our lives.
And when you put anything over God, which is putting anything before God, then you have given that thing, that image, preeminence.
When you put anything on God, as it were, like you would put water upon the ground or wood upon a table, then you've placed God under that thing.
And that's what Judah had done.
In their hearts, God was underneath these things they preferred, which was the burning of incense to other gods.
That was one of them.
There are, in fact, no other gods in the sense of being able to rival or to supersede God.
There's only the God of this world, and that's Satan.
But he's not eternal like the Lord is.
He was a created being.
He wasn't eternal.
He had a beginning, and he's going to have an end.
And in forsaking God, what Judah has done is assigned him second place in their lives.
They've given the blue ribbon to other gods, and that word is Elohim, And that belongs to one God, doesn't it?
The God who is three in one.
And it says back in our text now, "They burned incense to other gods that they might provoke me to anger."
Burning incense to other gods provokes God to anger.
And God warns His people about what will provoke Him to anger.
In fact, He knew they would provoke Him to anger.
So He had Moses write a song about it.
You know, at work sometimes I'll hear somebody tell me about some call for service they went to, how these two people were going through a divorce and they got drunk and got into a fight.
I'll say, "Man, that sounds like the beginning of a country song."
That's what most of them are, isn't it?
Well, God had a song that he wanted Moses to teach the people, and this was a forsaking song.
Isn't that sad?
He knew his people would forsake him.
And I don't know the tune, but I know the words because they're found in Deuteronomy chapter 31 verses 19 through 22.
Deuteronomy 31 verses 19 through 22.
Where God said through Moses, "Now therefore write ye this song for you."
So Moses told the children of Israel, "Write this song down." and teach it the children of Israel, put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel.
And so here are the words of the song, "For when I shall have brought them into the land which I swear unto the fathers, that floweth with milk and honey, and they shall have eaten and filled themselves in waxen fat, then will they turn unto other gods and serve them, and provoke me and break my covenant.
And it shall come to pass, this must be verse 2, and it shall come to pass when many evils and troubles are befallen them, that this song shall testify against them as a witness.
For it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed, for I know their imagination which they go about even now, before I have brought them into the land which I swear."
Moses therefore wrote this song the same day and taught it to the children of Israel.
How would you like to have to learn a song about what's going to happen when you disobey God and then have to sing it later on when you've disobeyed God and you're suffering the consequences?
Judah was without excuse when it came to knowing what provoked God.
He said, "This is going to provoke me," and the word "provoke" is in the song.
They couldn't say, "Well, we didn't see this coming."
Or, "We've never heard of such a thing."
Their ancestors had been taught the song in Moses' day.
And that song was to be passed down to all the generations, so that any generation that disobeyed God and was delivered into affliction, like God did many times, would know this is why it happened.
We've provoked God.
We broke His covenant.
If we know what provokes God, why would we ever do those things that provoke Him?
Man has been provoking God ever since he fell in the Garden of Eden.
He's forsaken God's covenant and turned to other gods.
And it sounds like a broken record, but that's what the Bible tells us.
He's chosen the God of this world over the God of all creation.
You think, "How could man, having read the Bible and reading all those times when God's people whom He loved disobeyed Him and He punished them and delivered them into affliction and they suffered and suffered and died and had pestilence upon them, and then He delivered them because they repented, and then they did it again, and He delivered them, and you just keep reading all about it.
How could man think today, well, I know what the Bible says, but I want to go my own way.
I'm going to do my own thing here.
God will understand.
How foolish.
You know, I read in the news, in the Dallas news, on one of the news feeds there, WFAA, where two public educators, one a coach and one a teacher, in the North Texas area, got arrested. for one was for soliciting a minor online and another was for indecent act of some type.
I don't remember what the offense was.
Every week it seems an educator or a police officer or public figure gets arrested for committing a crime and everybody else reads about it and we think oh he got caught and you would think the ones that are still doing it would say okay I'm done.
They're catching these guys and they're them in jail.
They don't.
The next week we have another one and the next week we have another one because that's man's nature.
Every year I read about people who've gone to Yellowstone National Park and have been killed or injured by a buffalo and here is what one of the signs says.
I just copied and pasted.
You might even be able to read it on there.
In the biggest caps you could scream on a billboard.
It says, "Do not approach Buffalo!"
Exclamation point at the end.
These animals may appear tame but are wild, unpredictable, and dangerous.
Many visitors have been gored by buffalo.
Alright?
Plain enough, isn't it?
The smallest adult female buffalo weighs over 700 pounds.
The largest adult male buffalo weighs about 2,600 pounds and so in between there every animal is bigger and stronger and wilder and more unpredictable than we are.
They're faster even though they're large.
And that right there is enough to keep me away from those beautiful powerful creatures.
But if I had any doubts about the risk involved in getting too close to a buffalo, the words on the warning sign would convince me.
Because it clearly tells me the animals are wild and unpredictable, that they're dangerous, and that many, it uses the word many, many visitors have been gored.
That means they've had a hole run through them.
So the danger of these animals, the danger they pose is just not some theory.
It's proven that it is true.
Did you know that most people obey those warning signs?
Most people stay in their vehicles or at a safe distance if they choose to photograph the animal from outside.
It's the few who think they are invincible, faster than the buffalo, or that they're immune to such attacks who end up on the mortician's table or in the surgeon's operating room.
Many others have disregarded the signs, have approached the buffalo, taken their photos, and left unharmed.
That's how we know they're unpredictable.
And so this causes people to think the buffalo is not really a danger.
So they do it again.
That's the other side of its unpredictability is it may do nothing.
You may think, "Wow, I got away with it."
And what happens?
You go back and try it again.
And people often see God that way.
See the judgment of God that way.
They think, "Well, I've been a drunk for 20 years.
God's never done anything to me."
Or, "I've been a thief all this time.
God's never done anything to me.
I cheated on my wife.
God's never done anything to me.
He hadn't caught me."
That's kind of the way they think.
If we knew exactly how close we could get to a buffalo and still be safe, then the animals wouldn't pose such a danger.
But they're unpredictable.
Yet God has given man the way to be safe from his wrath.
He's not unpredictable.
In fact, He's taught us what it takes to please Him.
He's taught us what it takes to provoke Him.
He's not unpredictable like the buffalo.
In fact, God by His own nature is absolutely predictable.
He tells us clearly that He will pour out His wrath, and that there's no chance He won't do it.
When He says He'll save all that come unto Him by faith in Jesus' work, there's no chance that He won't save you.
Some think that there's a chance He won't save you.
That if you put your trust in His work at the cross, that He still might require something else, or that maybe you're not of the elect, or any of those things.
They think God's unpredictable.
That's not the God of the Bible.
And Judah knew it.
But they ignored the warning sign, just like the people in Yellowstone Park ignore the Buffalo warning signs.
And then and now, people think God is unpredictable in their favor and that He won't punish them.
He understands their wrongdoing and that is foolishness.
Now how did Judah provoke God to anger?
We further see in verse 17, look back there if you would, in the middle of the verse, "that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands."
Once again we see something here with the pronouns, this one being possessive. the works of their hands.
Remember it was they who provoked God.
They have burned incense to other gods.
And here it says, "with the works of their hands."
That's what the building of idols and images were.
The works of their hands.
That's what the burning of strange incense upon a strange altar to a strange God were the work of their hands.
It certainly was not the works of God's hands.
All of God's works are good.
So nothing done by God's own hands could ever provoke him.
He doesn't make himself mad.
He was angered when Lucifer and his followers rebelled in heaven, so he cast them out.
And he's angered when mankind whom he created and whom he loves, sins against him.
You know, the Bible is not kind to the works of man's hands, because those works are tainted with sin.
They're tainted with our sin nature.
Here's some of the passages that teach us that truth, about why the works of the hands of those in Judah would provoke God to anger.
Exodus 20, verse 25.
Exodus 20, verse 25.
"And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone; for if thou lift thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it."
So God said in the event, let's say a Jew was out in the wilderness somewhere and wanted to build an altar, an altar of stone.
They take a rock and that's their altar.
They don't take their tools and chip away and try to make it look nice or flatten out the top of it, because the moment they put their hands to it, it's polluted.
That's what God teaches right here.
Isaiah 59 verses 2-3.
Isaiah 59 verses 2-3.
"But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear.
For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, "Your tongue hath muttered perverseness."
So it's the work of our hands, not the works of God's hands that defile us.
The works of our hands pollute our works before God.
I want us to look at a small word that tells us how bad this really was.
That last phrase we read said, "With all the works of their hands."
Do you see that?
Outside of the covenant God established with Judah and Israel, there was nothing they could do that would please Him.
Nothing.
And with what was God provoked?
With all the works of their hands He was provoked.
Now the condition of the average church is caused by the work of the hands, of the pastor and the people, or the priest, the bishop, and their congregations.
And many of those churches meet at the same time and day we meet.
They have singing, they have praying, some kind of sermon, and all kinds of activities.
Some churches are known for feeding the community food, worldly food, handing out clothing or having some sort of charitable effort.
Many of them are filled with friendly people.
You walk in, you just feel right at home.
But those churches are outside of the covenant that God established through his son Jesus.
Those churches have pastors who preach another gospel rather than the one we've received from Jesus and the one that was passed down by the apostles, the one that was delivered to the saints that we are to contend for earnestly even today.
And the average person may walk into one of those churches and feel welcomed.
They may say, boy, that was some good singing in there.
May feast upon the food after the service and maybe join the church and become members.
And yet every work of man's hands in those churches provokes God to anger, every one of them.
Because without the gospel of Jesus Christ, you have no church.
He said upon this rock, "I will build my church."
That's upon Him.
He was that rock.
And He is that rock.
And without the gospel of Jesus Christ, you have a community center.
You have a food kitchen.
You have a social club.
But you don't have a church.
And when we preach God's Word to people from churches like that, they do one of two things.
They either are offended and leave and don't come back.
Or they say, "Man, I never knew that.
Some of you are like that.
Some of you online.
You began hearing truth and you said, 'I don't believe I've ever heard that before.'
And that's sad.
Because I know we're not the only church that preaches truth.
But if you came from one that did not preach truth and had everything else going on, then when you came here you said, "This is what I've been looking for."
God's Spirit is bearing witness with you through His Word.
But the people who are offended will walk away and say, "We're mean-spirited.
We don't care for the poor."
And yet, they don't see that the works of their hands provoke God to anger.
In all the works of their hands that they do, there is nothing they give to the people who come that can please God.
Not a thing.
There's nothing given to those people that can reconcile them from the wages of sin.
They can't be reconciled to a holy God by all their feasts and meetings and activities that they do.
And because some places like that call themselves churches, they're no better than the Jews in our text who forsook God and burned incense to other gods.
They provoked Him to anger with all the works of their hands.
And look back in the text at the end of verse 17, he said, "Therefore, my wrath shall be kindled against this place, and shall not be quenched."
Now we studied what it means that God's wrath is kindled.
So you should have that in your notes from the last couple of weeks, and if not, you're free to go review that.
We archive that message on Facebook just like we do all of them.
But here in this part of the verse, I want to look at what happens after that wrath is kindled, after the thing is on fire, if you can use that image.
It says that wrath shall not be quenched.
That means it won't be extinguished.
Proverbs chapter 26 verse 20 gives us a good picture of that truth.
Makes it very simple in fact.
Proverbs 26 20, "Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out."
Now that's the same Hebrew word as quenched.
So where there is no tail bearer, the strife ceases.
I won't teach on that, that's coming up if you'll stay with us on Wednesday nights, you'll get that lesson soon enough.
But the first part of that verse teaches us where there's no more wood on a fire than the fire is quenched.
That's not a hard concept to understand, is it?
And when you think about the wrath of God, it comes in two types of duration.
This is how it made sense to me, so this is how I've broken it down for you.
The first duration is temporary.
That is, what happens when God pours His wrath out upon an earthly person or people, upon an earthly land, and once their land has been conquered, and it happens with the children of Israel over and over, once their land has been conquered and the people have been stricken with the illness or with the death, then the wrath has run its course.
And then there is a time where the people repent and they turn back to the Lord, usually during the wrath.
And so, if you think about a campfire, you understand that a campfire will be quenched one of two ways.
Either you pour water on it until there's no more fire, or the wood on the fire has been completely burned. where there's no wood, the fire goeth out.
Now John, the second type of duration for God's wrath is the eternal one.
That means it never goes out.
That's the wrath that God pours out upon the unbelievers by having them thrown into the lake of fire with the devil and all of his angels.
And the Bible clearly teaches that that lake of fire burns forever and forever.
Revelation 20 verse 10, "And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever."
So the torment of those flames is forever and ever.
What stops the torment of you burning your finger on a hot stove?
You're taking it off.
That still hurts, but it doesn't hurt like it would if you left it on there.
That's why you take it off.
Your body says, "Get the finger off there."
John 3:36 teaches this terrifying truth from a different angle.
It says, "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life. "but the wrath of God abideth on him."
I think that was one of our memory verses not too long ago.
So those who believe on the Son, that is Jesus Christ, have everlasting life, and that means it never ends.
Yes, the body will die, the physical body will die, but the believer's spirit will never die.
He'll never be separated from God.
On the other hand, this same verse tells us that the ones who do not believe on the Son of God shall not see life.
They don't just cease to exist like the atheist believes.
They don't just fade away like a breath in the wind.
They are the recipients of God's wrath.
And if the life of the believer is everlasting, then the wrath upon the unbeliever is everlasting as well.
Using the example of the campfire from earlier, the wood that keeps the fire of God's wrath burning never runs out.
It's never consumed and it abides forever.
It shall not be quenched.
And whereas the wrath against Judah will for a short time, it will continue for a short time, that wrath against the unbeliever knows no end.
One is earthly, one is eternal.
In Matthew chapter nine, verse 43.
Matthew 9, 43, and we'll close with this verse.
Jesus said, "And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off, "for it is better for thee to enter into life maimed "than having two hands to go into hell, "into the fire that never shall be quenched."
God's wrath will be executed just like He warned us, just like He warned Judah and Israel, and that, my friends, should be a great cause for concern among the ones upon whom it will be poured out.
And with that, we'll stop for the day.
Father, thank You for all the ones who were here.
Thank You for the physical healing You've given several that they could be here today. you for the good attention that your word is received and I pray Lord that we would be helped by it today that we would accept its truth even the hard parts meditate upon it and Lord where we need to change that it would change us and where we need to be confirmed and reassured that it would do that too and we pray this in Jesus name amen
