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Does God’s Patience Ever End? Jeremiah 1:4-15 Compass of Salinas/Marina Life Group Discussions January/February #1 This is the first in the Jeremiah series Hope In The Rubble. It is a book rich in one-liners and application. Having never done a series on Jeremiah, I now have a new hero – him. I cannot imagine a more relevant book for the pressure of political correctness; it was the same in Jeremiah’s day. He did not buckle despite the price he had to pay for speaking up for God. 1. Please read Jeremiah 1:1-15 several times for reading comprehension. • In a couple of sentences sum up what these verses tell us about him. • What verse is the most encouraging or interesting to you and say why. • What does verse 1 tell us about Jeremiah’s status? What is he? 2. Consider the following quote: Jeremiah’s ministry began in 626 B.C. His preaching ministry spanned more than 40 years. He repeatedly warned God’s people that their moral choices would one day produce RUBBLE if they did not change. But they didn’t listen. They were having too good a time. And then God’s patience ran out and He lifted His favor from Israel, and the armies of Babylonia came and leveled Jerusalem and the Temple. Solomon built this Temple for God in about 1000 BC. For 400 years it had stood as one of the 7 Wonders Of The World. The people thought God would never allow His temple to be destroyed. But they were wrong. God had a higher purpose. It was to build a faithful people. A people surrendered to His Word….who would be light to the world. And if that required turning their lives to rubble to wake them up, so be it. The nation was in moral chaos. Sin had been normalized. What was wrong in God’s eyes had become politically correct just like in America today. The people moved farther and farther away from God. That is happening in America. Did you know that atheism is the fast growing religion in America? And as more and more of us stop worshipping the God of the Bible, is it any surprise that doing what is wrong in God’s eyes has become politically correct? It is GALLOP POLL morality. Morality by the numbers. The attitude is that if it is politically correct, if most people are doing it, it can’t be wrong…………Gallop Poll morality….morality by the numbers. Jeremiah stood alone. Preachers of the day said God is forgiving. His patience is inexhaustible, unlimited, unending. But they were wrong. Very wrong. God’s people backslid to the point that God’s patience ended. As they did wrong in God’s eyes more and more, they moved away from God, and of course lost the favor of God. Don’t you think it is silly to believe we have the favor of God even if we are doing what is wrong in His eyes? They believed the patience of God is inexhaustible, but they were wrong…,very wrong, and the armies of Babylonia came and turned everything in their life to rubble. Jeremiah is saying in this book: You can’t make the same mistake twice. The 2nd time it is no longer a mistake, it’s a stubborn choice, and choices have consequences. Stubborn, intractable, pig-headed, defiant…against what was right in God’s eyes, and God’s patience ran out…and the rubble came. Some people create their own storms, and then get mad at God when it rains on them. • Underline the most important sentence and say why? What is the application for you in our society? • God’s people depended on ‘false security’ – The Temple in Jerusalem which they thought God would never allow to be destroyed, and therefore there would be no consequences for their behavior. God would not punish sin because His Temple stood in their midst. What does “sin had been normalized” and “Gallop Poll morality” mean? And give at least 2 examples in America. • Can you think of anything today that for some Christians is like the Temple was when Jeremiah was warning of consequences coming? Anything people think is protection against consequences and a ‘free pass’? • Preachers said God is loving and forgiving so don’t worry about consequences. Cheap grace always produces immorality. God’s people thought God’s grace and patience was inexhaustible, but they were wrong • “You can’t make the same mistake twice. The 2nd time it is no longer a mistake. It is a stubborn choice, and choices have consequences.” Interact with that. How is that true? What is the application to us, especially if we are prone to apologizing but not repenting? No change. You know: professional apologizers. 3. What does verse 5 tell us about Jeremiah? • (Thinking deeper question). What does it teach about abortion? 4. Consider the following: So God sends a baby to turn Israel back to God. God says in Jeremiah 1 verse 5 “Before you were born I had plans for you, I called you to be a prophet (to speak up).” You see, a prophet in the Bible is not primarily one who predicts the future. A prophet in the Bible is a preacher, one who stands up for God, one who speaks up for God in the moral darkness of a country. Jeremiah didn’t want the job! He knows that people won’t want to hear what is right in God’s eyes. And they don’t! Jeremiah is beaten up, tortured, put in prison. Jeremiah was no crusader. He was an introvert. He didn’t want to speak up, so he made excuses. I’m too young. I don’t speak well. Favorite excuses for not speaking up today are….I’m only a housewife, I don’t know enough, I’m too busy. But excuses don’t fly with God. We claim that we are inadequate; God says we are not inadequate because He is by our side. You see, in the book of Jeremiah, and in our country today, there is a war going on. A spiritual war. It is all out war between Satan who wants to turn lives and marriages and families into rubble…..and God who wants to save us from choices that produce rubble! As C.S. Lewis put it so well – There is no NEUTRAL GROUND in the universe. Every square inch of it is being fought over by Satan and God. So the only question is: Whose side are you on? Gandhi said, “To believe something and not speak up is dishonest.” Is that true? If you are a Christian, you carry the name of Christ. Jesus makes it very plain that, like Jeremiah, all of us are called to speak up for what is right in God’s eyes, to speak up in the darkness of our time. So Jesus says in Matthew 5, verse 14 “You are the light of the world.” “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this sinful world, I will be ashamed of him when I come again.” (Mark 8:38) C. S. Lewis was a professor at Oxford University and an atheist but he became a Christian and he began to speak up for Jesus. He paid a price. He was denied the full professorship though his lecture hall was the only one in the university that had standing room only. Students crowded in to hear him speak up for Christianity, for his words that were light in the dark university. And he paid a price. He would not shut up and so academia denied him a professorship which he deserved. He had scars because he stood up for Jesus. In a politically correct world where people are ignoring what God says is right, if you speak up you can expect scars. But nothing compared to the scars Jesus has because He died for you on the cross. I read this last week that - - When we get to heaven, God will not measure us by how popular we were, or awards we were given, or our bank accounts. He will measure us by our scars. • Underline the most important sentence and say why. • Jeremiah did not want to speak up for God in a politically correct society. He knew he would sufferer if he did, and that is exactly what happened. He experienced massive rejection and criticism. He had some excellent excuses. List his excellent excuses. • Give at least 2 excellent excuses Christians use today for being silent. • What do you think of the Gandhi quote? Is it true? If not, argue against Gandhi. 5. Consider this quote. Don’t speed read. We are trying to develop skills as a Christian and that means learning ways to challenge Gallop Poll morality and PC ethics. The 2nd message of Jeremiah: It takes courage to be a Christian. It takes courage to speak up in darkness. Cowardice is not the opposite of courage. The opposite of courage is….CONFORMITY. Being politically correct takes no courage. GALLOP poll morality takes no courage. Even a dead fish can go with the flow. Lying is epidemic. Will Rogers once joked that if TRUTH WAS ever injected into politics, it would no longer be politics. On my vacation I read a powerful book entitled THE DEATH OF TRUTH. The author is a left wing academic but she is very concerned that truth is dead in America. People don’t care what the truth is.
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