Forsake Worthless Idols

You may remain standing as I read the words. Jonah chapter 2, 7 through 9. While my soul was fainting within me, I remembered Yahweh, and my prayer came to you, to your holy temple. those who regard worthless idols forsake their loving kindness but as for me I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving that which I have vowed I will pay salvation belongs to Yahweh it's a reading of God's holy word you may be seated Jonah chapter 2 we have Jonah's prayer recorded which is most likely part of much more praying Jonah did and the prayer is recorded as being part of his prayer while he was in the belly of the fish, but as well, I think, some of this is as he was even going down, down, down, down, as Jonah did.

Jonah says that while his soul was fainting within him, he remembered Yahweh. And his prayer came to you, to God, to his holy temple. And then Jonah makes a statement that is pregnant with theological implications and meaning. Jonah says, those who regard worthless idols forsake their loving kindness. if you were paying attention to the call to worship in Psalm 31 the psalmist mentioned regarding worthless idols and then loving kindness in the very next verse I think we again have a situation where Jonah is drawing our attention to another passage of scripture which can be instructional for us Psalm 31 if you want to turn there I just want to give you a taste of Psalm 31 it's a bit of a longer psalm in some ways it's not one of those ones that's really long like oh wow it'll take a while to read but it's not a quick one either let's just read the beginning of it together in you oh Yahweh I have taken refuge let me never be ashamed in your righteousness protect me incline your ear to me deliver me quickly be to me a rock of strength a fortress to save me for you are my high rock and my fortress you know we have a mighty fortress as our God we have the rock of ages these are all images that the Bible gives us.

For your name's sake, you will lead me and guide me. You will bring me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me. And he says, for you are my strength. Now he says, into your hand I commit my spirit. If that phrase doesn't immediately bring to your mind the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, then you do not read the New Testament enough. Jesus also quotes this psalm when he's on the cross.

He says it's to God that he commits his spirit, right? He says, you have ransomed me, O Yahweh, God of truth. Now, he says, I hate those who regard worthless idols. strong language. He says, but I trust in Yahweh. He says, I will rejoice and be glad in your loving kindness. Now what did Jonah say?

Jonah said, those who regard worthless idols forsake their loving kindness. He creates a dichotomy or a contrast, if you will, a dichotomy being a dilemma where there's basically two opposing options and only one can be true usually. Quite in logic, you'll hear people say someone's created a false dichotomy where someone presents something as if one or the other of two options must be true and it's not the case.

But Jonah says you can either regard worthless idols or you can not forsake your loving kindness. It's one or the other. If you regard worthless idols, you've forsaken loving kindness. But in Psalm 31, the psalmist says, I will rejoice and be glad in your loving kindness. He says, because you have seen my affliction and have known the troubles of my soul.

Idols are a problem throughout Scripture, and idols are a problem throughout the history of Christianity. Idols were a problem for ancient Israel, and idols are a problem for us today that we must deal with. Turn to the book of 1 John chapter 5 You may recall that most of the New Testament letters have a really sweet greeting at the beginning from an apostle or a writer to a group of people You know, grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you know, things like that.

And then we have these benedictions at the end of every letter where we say things like the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirits. and those types of things where we actually can model our way of interacting with others in the church by remembering to greet people in the Lord Jesus Christ and to bless them with the benediction at the end of our conversation and even the way that we write to them. And yet John, after exhorting the dispersion for five chapters about light and darkness and about walking in the path of the Lord and reminding them over and over that it is the truth that sets them free. It's John who wrote, the truth will set you free in John chapter 8.

And it's John who writes all about truth throughout his other letters. John tells us that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. and John is utterly concerned that people are not following the truth. And I'm not sure he necessarily is concerned that they're unbelievers. I think John recognizes that believers themselves will have the ability to be deceived even temporarily.

And the way that different Bible searches work could be different, But if you just do a search on the phrase, do not be deceived or let no one deceive you. John says that a lot to people. John is aware. So if you imagine John, too, maybe a 90-year-old man here, he's seen it all. We always think of old people as like feeble and not with the times. And they don't know how to use their iPhone.

And you get them a new fridge with a computer on it. And they don't know how to use it. We almost think old people are dumb because they're content with the technology that got them through the first 60 years of their life, right? But in fact, an old saint like John would have seen it all. He would have seen convert after convert turn away from the Lord at times.

He would have buried people probably in his time that he had seen come to Christ. He would have seen churches planted and churches go. He would have seen things flourishing. He saw the destruction of the temple. I don't mean live, but he was around still at the time of these things. And when John writes the book of 1 John, I'm leading all this up to tell you that in the last verse of 1 John, the last sentence, he just says, Little children, guard yourselves from idols.

Idolatry is the breaking of the second commandment. It's also breaking the first commandment. Turn to 1 Thessalonians for a minute. I would argue with you from the scriptures that the mark of a Christian is one who has turned from idols. A mark of a Christian is one who has turned from idols. So put in the opposite speak. someone who still worships idols or gives honor to idols is not a Christian.

By definition. By definition, a Christian is somebody who has turned from idols to the living God. Look at 1 Thessalonians. We'll start in verse 6, chapter 1. Paul says, You also became imitators of us and of the Lord. He says, having received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.

This is huge. To us, these are just these places that we can't probably find on a map sometimes. They're cities that we read about over and over, and they're regions, and we don't even know if it's a city or a region or a state. We don't even know sometimes, right? because all we do is read it over and over and sometimes we get the big picture and we don't get the details and that's okay.

But this is a big deal. They've become a model to all the believers in these other places. Thessalonica would have been a Gentile land. This would not have been a group of people who had spent their entire life worshiping the God of Israel in the Jewish way and then suddenly found out, well, we really are supposed to worship him as Christ, the Messiah, and then read the book of Hebrews, and we change a few things from how we used to do it.

These would have been people whose entire lives would have been serving the false gods of Greek mythology. Achaia, Macedonia, basically Greece, right? Modern-day Greece. These people were religious people, just like most people you know are. Do you know that the most hardened atheist that you interact with is very religious? Did you know that?

They'll deny it. But in fact, most of them are probably a bit more zealous than we are at times. And just as dedicated to their belief as we ought to be. Jehovah's Witnesses and these Mormon guys, they spend their whole life walking around looking silly in their outfits. and evangelizing for their idols Muslims at least some of them become suicide bombers It one thing to die for your faith because persecution comes It's another thing to just commit suicide because you think there's a greater cause there.

These are dedicated religious people. Christians have no corner on the religious market. We just have the truth. So what we worship happens to be, it doesn't happen to be truthful. We worship that which is true because God has revealed it. But Christians are as, other people are as religious in their dedication.

Everyone else has what they worship. And what you worship will demand of you sacrifice. What you worship will demand that you sacrifice your time, your money, your adoration, and one day even your life. everyone you know has their set aside times when they do their worship they don't call it that they always have some other name for it it's usually in the form of entertainment here in the west we are afforded luxuries in the united states that 99 of all people who ever lived can imagine.

And so we can create entire entertainment venues where we simply worship people because we perceive them as beautiful and things of that sort. Back to 1 Thessalonians 1, Paul says, the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place. Your faith toward God has gone forth, he says, so that we have no need to say anything.

Their faith was of such fame that they didn't even need to tell people about it. They were turning things upside down. Things were changing where they lived. And then Paul explains that it's actually being reported things about them to him. So instead of Paul talking about their faith, he's hearing about them. So it'd be like if I went out somewhere tomorrow and somebody came to me and said, hey, did you know Mr.

Bowman was doing XYZ, you know? I said, well, I didn't know that, but it's having such an impact. I'm hearing about it through other means. And he says, for they themselves report about us what kind of entrance we had with you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God. If you are a Christian, there is no room for idols. Psalm 96 has something to say about idols.

The whole Bible has things to say about idols. Psalm 96 tells us in verse 4, Great is Yahweh and greatly to be praised. He is more fearsome than all gods. Little g gods. He says, For all the gods of the peoples are idols, but Yahweh made the heavens. The God who actually made everything is the God worth regarding. and so we have to ask ourselves the question what is an idol why does God call something else a God he says here all the gods of the peoples are idols the word God is of course a special word and it's reserved for the God in heaven at the same time anything that we choose to worship anything that we put in the place of God, even unintentionally, in our lives and in our hearts is a God of our own manufacturing.

And so, although anything that I worship that is not the one true God is not actually God, or technically even a God, because there can only be one by definition, any polytheistic concept is by definition irrational. But forgetting that for a moment, if I put anything in the place of God, if I give anything the reverence and the obedience and the commitment that God deserves, rather than giving it to God, I have manufactured something in my own heart and in my own mind that is a God. John Calvin said, our hearts are little idol factories.

We create these gods of our own mind, and usually that which we worship is ultimately something that makes us feel good. It's something that makes us feel a little bigger than we are, something that makes us a little bit less self-abasing. So usually a god will come in the form, we'll take the Roman Catholic Church God and the Roman Catholic Church God that will tell people, oh, you're bad.

Oh, you're real bad. But here's some stuff you can do to make up for it. Or you can take the God of Universalism that just says, hey, we're all going to heaven. You can take the God of Reincarnation that says just live the best life you can and then when you come back, live the best life again and eventually you'll achieve Nirvana. You also have the false god of self.

The one that says you need to take care of yourself more than you do. And I not against taking care of yourself wisely and properly but we have a god now in our culture a spirit of the age that teaches us that our comfort is our number one concern We have a God now who the doctrine of demons is pervasive in our country. It says you as an individual get to decide what is right and wrong.

You can decide even what is true or false, right? You think pronouns that people are espousing is a non-religious concept? When people tell you that a person who has clearly been made male by God is to be called with female pronouns, they are telling you we can redefine truth. And if you believe Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, then you have no right to do that. and then when they threaten it, you will suffer for it.

Or they'll accuse you of not being loving, because a loving thing would be to be hospitable to your neighbor and respect their wishes to be called by something else. Which brings us to the second point that Jonah made. If you regard worthless idols, you're forsaking loving kindness. Now I think in that verse, you're forsaking the loving kindness of God, but just for a moment, if you'll indulge me, if you will regard worthless idols with your life, you will not properly love your neighbor.

Because you cannot love your neighbor if you do not love God, and you will not love your neighbor if you do not love God, because you will not listen to God's commands. You will not understand how God has told you to treat his neighbor. You will have no interest in actually performing the things he's told you to do for your neighbor. And thus you will end up treating your neighbor in a way that is objectively hateful.

Even if for the moment it feels loving to you and even to them. you have been taught and you have been conditioned to believe. Now listen to me here. You have been conditioned by the world around you to believe that if you hurt someone's feelings or offend them or bother them, that you are wrong and you have thus been unloving. that is what you have been conditioned to believe by your culture and every adult in this room I think I confirmed went to a government school or except Elijah there went to Christian school that's what we've been conditioned to believe it's 2022 and it's rude if you would hold a door for a woman at a store because that's common courtesy and chivalry nowadays because they would be so easily offended that you would think that you should hold a door for them.

Yet, you're also responsible for how everyone around you feels all the time no matter if whether what you said was true and whether they're being irrational or not at the time. That is how you've been conditioned and you need to watch for it. when people come and they start to persecute Christians, and when I say start, Christians are being persecuted all over right now. And in the United States, Christians are being persecuted.

I mean, there's people who have been fighting court cases so they can simply make cakes that don't violate God for years now, some of them. but when the persecution comes, they don't show up with tanks and say, hey, all the Christians come out and stand in front of the tank. We're going to just run you over. It starts out with getting you to deny your faith in small ways.

And the way they do that is by appealing to aspects of our faith that we all are somewhat convicted of. Don't you want to love your neighbor? I do. God tells me to love my neighbor he tells me to love my enemy I have to know what that means in order to do it though and if I let the state or the atheists or the college professors or frankly anything but the pure word of God define for me what love is I will fail to love my neighbor some people will tell you that if you look at them and directly tell them that if they do not repent of their sin that God will cast them into hell but God has provided a redeemer and if they would believe in the Lord Jesus Christ death, burial and resurrection they could be forgiven of all their sins and they will tell you that that is unloving to tell someone that and mark my words some of you in this room will live long enough to see when that's illegal where you live right now.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope the tide gets turned. Are any of you ever afraid of the things you're going to say that something could happen to you? I don't mean afraid like in a sinful, bad way, but just the concern that, Wow, if people that I worked with knew some of the things that I believe, would they even want me to work there anymore? If I simply said something that I learned from the Bible, In company last night, would we have been ostracized from the family?

So if you want to love people properly, you cannot have false idols, you cannot regard worthless idols. You must know the one true God, and you must try to get to know Him through His revelation, the Bible, and know Him well enough that in each situation you know what love is. when the Bible says thou shalt not steal thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor honor your father and your mother and you shall not covet the Bible gives us a recipe for exactly how to love others and yet we have to have some discernment to flesh that out we have to be able to know how to interpret the word we have to study the word and we have to be able to talk about it but in Jonah when Jonah says those who regard workless idols forsake their loving kindness I think what Jonah is really pointing out is that the loving kindness of God is forsaken when rather than regard God the one true God the only deity that exists the creator of all the universe, that when you regard worthless idols in any way at all, you're actually forsaking God's love and kindness toward you. And I know it's easy for you to think to yourself, well, I don't do that.

I'm in church and read the Bible and we all homeschool here, so we're cut above already, we think. And yet, the way that the devil has devised all of the false idols of the world is clever and subtle, and he's smarter than you. And even if he wasn't, he has years and years of experience dealing with sinful humanity and knowing what gets us. And so if you want to go to another country or even someplace in the United States and you want to see people that build idols and bow down to them and you want to judge that and say, yeah, that's really bad and that's silly.

And you see the pictures of the, you know, there's the famous picture. I don't know how famous it is, but there's a guy, it must be India or something, and he's in a flood. And he's not India if it's a flood. I don't think they get a lot of flooding there. But whatever. And this guy is obviously Asian, is carrying a god on his back, a statue, right?

And the caption says, when your god's so weak that you have to save him from the flood rather than him saving you, right? So that's easy to mock, but here in the West, our gods are usually supernatural, we'll say, or immaterial is a better word. we usually worship concepts like beauty, money, fame, power, prestige. Those are our idols. Sometimes we have a physical idol.

For example, I would say that most of the people that you know and most of the people in the United States are very idolatrous in the sense that they worship the satisfaction, the temporary satisfaction they get from immorality. Whether it's drugs and alcohol use, whether it's sexual immorality, there is a sense where that dopamine hit that people get when they commit sin actually becomes a God they worship. and if you've known anyone that has ended up taking their life through their drug use or destroyed their life through gambling or immorality you know how that false idol of theirs demanded their time, attention money and ultimately life you've seen divorces happen just because one person chased gambling it could be something that God gave to be good for example sex or food and somebody wanting to use it in a way that God did not intend it's an idol for them when you sin in any way whatsoever you are actually committing idolatry at the same time you are shaking your fist at God but Jonah says ask for me I will sacrifice to you oh no he says those who regard worthless idols forsake their loving kindness turn to Titus chapter 3 we're going to look at a few verses about God's love we're not going to do a big long series on it maybe I will, but right now I'm not everyone's like, bro we thought you were almost done yeah, I know one of the mistakes we make as Christians sometimes is that we become focused on combating the evils of our society and sometimes we can become a bit lopsided in the way that we do things and so Christians have been accused now I've not been a Christian that long but Christians have been accused of not preaching enough of God's love. In fact, I was accused of that a few days ago at Planned Parenthood.

Interestingly enough what I was saying at the moment was you can be forgiven for your sin but evidently that not loving enough This was by one of the people on the sidewalk, by the way, who was opposing me. This wasn't a person going into the clinic. This was one of the people that supposedly was there to intercede on behalf of the people being taken to slaughter. but so we can make an error and not talk about God's love enough we can go through the ten commandments for forty weeks or so, thirty weeks and we can talk about the law, we can talk about obeying the law as parents some of you can spend the entire day some days just telling people what they did wrong you would be right in all the cases.

We also want to remind people that the Bible says God is love. And if you regard worthless idols, you are actually forsaking the love that God has expressed toward you. Listen to Titus. Chapter 3, verse 3. For we ourselves once, also were foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, despicable, hating one another.

And he says, but when the kindness and affection of God our Savior appeared. When the loving kindness of God appeared, he saved us. If you look at Jeremiah chapter 30, I'm going to jump around a little bit, just do a little, a short survey on some passages that remind us that this is a God of love. He was the God of love in the Old Testament too, contrary to some people's beliefs.

Jeremiah chapter 30, verse 22, it's not really the best place to start, but I just like that verse. You shall be my people and I will be your God. 23 says, Behold, the storm of Yahweh, wrath has gone forth, a sweeping storm. It will burst on the head of the wicked. The burning anger of Yahweh will not turn back until he has done and until he has established the intent of his heart in the last days.

You will understand this. At that time, declares Yahweh, I will be the God of all the families of Israel. And they shall be my people. He's speaking about the church. Thus says Yahweh, the people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. Israel, when it went to find its relief, Yahweh appeared to him from afar saying, I have loved you with an everlasting love.

Therefore, I have drawn you with loving kindness. it is actually God's kindness it is God's love that leads us to repentance but if you will not forsake idols if you will pay regard to worthless idols if you will honor that which is not God as God you're actually throwing away the kindness that God is offering you there's a sense that okay so we're Calvinists here we just read from our own confession that no one's going to believe unless God grants them faith we get that and yet it is also true that as God expresses himself and reveals himself in the gospel and that as people have preached the gospel that anyone who chooses to continuously disobey and disbelieve the gospel and believe in whatever worthless idol they would rather cling to than the God of heaven, they are forsaking the loving kindness of God that's been expressed toward them. In Ephesians chapter 1, verse 5, no really verse 4 is where it says in love so we'll go back just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and weightless before him in love by predestining us to adoption of sons through Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will listen to the praise of the glory of his grace which he graciously bestowed on us in the beloved the God of love. Romans 5 was quoted earlier.

One would scarcely die for a righteous person, but maybe for a good man, one would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God's love is in a sense synonymous with the gospel. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their loving kindness. Those who do not believe in the gospel forsake the loving kindness of God.

It's really just that simple. God is a God of love. He's not only love, but he is love. Ephesians 5, we have some talk of love. So if you want to know how to love people and how God loves people and how God loves you if you can say with Paul it not I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me, Galatians 2.20.

If you want to be able to say that, you need to ask yourself, well, what does it mean that God's demonstrated his love? In verse 25 of Ephesians 5, we have a command to husbands. And yet, if you read through the section, it's interesting how it almost stops talking about husbands, and you just see what it's really about, what Christ has done. He says, husbands, love your wives.

It should be hard enough. Wives are sinners. Husbands are sinners. Getting any two sinners to actually love each other is an act of God. But he says, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. So first of all, let me make one point.

If Christ gave himself up for the church who is his bride, and it's because he loved her he did that, then for you to somehow think that there's anybody that's not part of the church that Christ died for, you're effectively giving Christ a mistress. He died for his bride, and that's it. and that means that every single person who has ever lived and breathed and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, whether they breathed or not, anyone who is one of the elect, numbered and adopted as sons and daughters of the Lord, is part of his bride, the church. But he says, husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

That is how God demonstrated his love. Christ, who didn't think it was robbery to be thought equal with God, humbled himself by taking on the form of a servant, becoming a man. God became a man. Do you get that? God, who is totally separate from creation in such a way that he's a whole other category of stuff. There's God and then there's everything else.

And he decided, I'm going to become part of creation. And he humbled himself by becoming obedient even to the point of death. So God, who is life and who gives life, actually died. In the person of Jesus Christ and then even death on a cross. A lot of you are going to die. Some of you might die difficult deaths.

Jesus basically picked the worst possible death imaginable for himself. that's how he loved the church he gave himself up for her that's what you forsake when you regard worthless idols and if you love people if you love your dad if you love your mom if you love your cousin if you love your nephews if you love your neighbor if you love your co-workers if you love everyone else at the co-op and you find out that they are paying regard to worthless idols. And that they may be forsaking the loving kindness of God that's been bestowed upon them. It's our duty to say something.

Not only for the glory of Christ, which should be enough, but for the sake of somebody else's soul. You see a Christian in error? Playing around with Enneagrams? playing around with all these, there's all sorts of things. I hate to try to name them. But Enneagram is the big one for Christians now. You need to say something to people.

You need to try to do it in a way that's helpful and loving. But in some cases, you're actually going to free people from bondage to a false god that they didn't know they were in. It says, He did this so that he might sanctify her. Verse 26, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. That's how God loves us. He cleanses us with his word.

That he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. This was about husbands, wasn't it? It's not. This is about Christ and the church, the mystery that's revealed. he says so husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies he loves his own wife loves himself no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it just as christ also does the church kind of goes back and forth a little bit here he says we're members of his body now it gets really neat he says for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

We thought marriage was about us. We thought marriage was just a neat way God picked so that we could have a legal way to procreate and fill the earth. That's what we thought. For this reason. What reason? So that we might know the mystery that is great in reference to Christ and his church.

So that we might know the union that we have with Christ is even greater than the union husbands and wives have with each other, which is just insanely tight. In Proverbs 6, if you read the end of it, you'll see that it says a man whose wife is violated by another man, not even a bribe will keep him from vengeance. This isn't referring to Christian husbands loving their wives.

God has built into people a normalcy that is jealous for a bride And if a bride is giving the affection that is due to her husband to anyone else a man is rightfully jealous And not even a bride will keep him from maybe even doing harm to the offender. That is how strong the bond of marriage is. And yet our bond to Christ is even stronger. and he will crush the idols that are seeking the affection of his bride.

You want to know how Christ loved you? Turn to Psalm 31 again. The psalm that Jonah brings our attention to, the psalm that Christ himself brings our attention to. Now I want you to remember verse 6. he says I hate those who regard worthless idols now I want you to consider for a moment that when Christ was on the cross when Christ was being crushed by the Father and it was pleased it pleased God to crush him it pleased Yahweh I want you to consider for a moment that Christ was treated as if he had committed all the sins that his people ever committed which includes regarding worthless idols, some of us for decades before we came to Christ.

Do you understand me? If every moment of my life for the first 30 and a half years I was regarding worthless idols because I did nothing but worship other things, Christ had to pay for all of it. Do you understand me? Imagine your son meets a woman, or you're already married, but imagine you meet a woman and she says, Hey, yeah, you look real pretty. I want to marry you.

You're great. And she's like, oh, yeah, thanks. You know, and then you say, so tell me a little bit about yourself. And she says, well, I'm a million dollars in debt right now. Would it make you run a little bit, maybe? Would you maybe tell your son this might not be a wise choice of a woman?

And yet Christ willingly took our debt on himself. Now, listen. When the psalmist talks about the enemies of God and how God is going to treat his enemies, what I want you to remember is that although God delivers Christ from death, the way the enemies deserve to be treated and are treated is the same disdain and hatred with which God poured out on his only son so that you could come up here and have a little drink of wine and some bread today.

And for half of the service have maybe your mind wander and then spend your week doing whatever you want to do, some of us. he says my eye is wasted away from grief from a nine my soul and my body also my life is worn down with sorrow and my years with sighing my strength fails he says because of my iniquity and my bones waste away and christ suffered all that for his people that's love that's why when i stand on the street and i tell people you can be forgiven of all your sins because somebody else paid for it. And then somebody accuses me of not preaching the love of God. It's offensive to me because I think that's the epitome of the love of God is the forgiveness offered.

He says, among all my adversaries, I have become a reproach. You realize the reproaches that were due to others fell upon Christ. listen he says especially to my neighbors and an object of dread to my acquaintances those who see me in the street flee from me i am forgotten like a dead man oh my god my god why has thou forsaken me the fact that christ had to say that at all should humble you daily i have heard the bad report of many. Terror is on every side.

This is David freaking out about enemies around him. Jonah being sad because bad things happened to Jonah who was a crazy sinner. And yet Jesus suffered all of it. They took counsel together against me. They schemed to take my life. But as for me, I trust in you, O Yahweh.

I say you are my God. Jesus didn't regard worthless idols, did he? While God is punishing Jesus for sin, Jesus is worshiping. He says my times are in your hand. Into your hand I commit my spirit, right? I trust you with everything, he says.

Make your face to shine upon your slave. Let lying lips be mute which speak arrogantly against the righteous. And turn to 21. Blessed be Yahweh, for he has made marvelous his loving kindness to me in a besieged city. As for me, I said in my alarm, I am cut off before your eyes. It's the cry of the Son of God.

Nevertheless, you heard the voice of my supplications when I cried to you for help. That's what God does for his people. Oh, love Yahweh, all you his holy ones. You want to regard worthless idols? You're going to forsake the loving kindness of God and you won't have any loving kindness of your own to even return. But we love because he first loved us.

Yahweh guards the faithful. He repays fully the one who acts in lofty pride. Again, Yahweh repaid fully Jesus for all of your pride. You get that? The sinners around you that are marching down the street in June with their flags, most of them are going to burn in hell for their pride. Jesus paid for yours.

Thank him for it. Serve him. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Father, it is our pleasure to worship you. in the splendor of holiness. And we ask you to humble us by the mercies of Jesus Christ that we might become people who more regularly meditate on your loving kindness toward us. And may we turn from all evil and turn from everything that wants to take the place in our hearts and minds that you deserve.

Forgive us for our weakness and our failure and even forgive us for our excuses we've made and cause us to be people who walk in your ways. In Christ's name I pray. Amen. I'd like to invite the men to pray. You don't need to worry about the microphone. I don't think it's working anyway.