Habbakuk | Chapter 1:12-2:20 | Pastor Drew

and Israel's the left, you can't see this fully, maybe some of you in the front can, and Judah on the right.

There were three kings in Israel.

When the kingdom was united, you had first of all Saul, and then you had David, and then you had a king by the name of Solomon.

After Solomon, Solomon's son and Solomon's secretary or superintendent, they kind of split.

And so then what happens is you have a split in the United Kingdom of Israel.

And so then what happens is Israel takes ten tribes, Judah takes two tribes, Benjamin and Judah go together, and there's a split.

And then what happens is you have a history of kings because of this split.

There's a history of kings in Israel.

As you can see, Israel's on the left.

Since Jeroboam won, all the way down, there is not one righteous king in Israel.

Not one.

Isn't that interesting?

Judah, on the other hand, some of these, even the blue ones are a little suspect, but for the sake of this chart that somebody already put up here, we'll use it.

Judah, on the other hand, has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight that were considered good somewhat.

Some of them started off bad, finished well.

Some of them started off well and didn't finish good.

And then you have just about five of these.

Five of these eight are ones who started well and they finished well.

So then you get down here to Habakkuk right after Josiah.

You see here Hezekiah and then you got Manasseh and Ammon.

And then you have Josiah.

He's right here towards the bottom.

Now Israel back in 722, they had been exiled into Assyria.

Assyria had conquered them and captured them and had their way.

I think because there were a few good kings in Judah.

Judah had a little bit longer of a dynasty in reign, but eventually they got into exile too in Babylon 586.

And they're captured by the Babylonians.

Habakkuk, there's a prophetess named Huldah, there's another one named Jeremiah.

They're all contemporaries in this period.

Huldah is a female prophet.

I want to be clear about that because I said this a couple of weeks ago.

Joseph Josiah needed a word from the Lord, and he sent his priest to go hear from God through a woman prophetess.

I just want to be clear about that.

She gave a word to return back to the Lord, to return back to the Torah, to the law, right?

And so then you get down here.

You have Josiah, who's righteous.

He restores the Torah in the temple and tries to take Judah in the right direction.

But don't worry.

Good things don't last forever.

He eventually passes it on.

He dies.

Joahaz, which is his fourth son, becomes the king for just a few months.

Then he's taken into captivity by Egypt.

And then all of a sudden, his second son, Jehoiakim, is now the king.

And Jehoiakim, Jeremiah writes about, this dude is evil.

As a matter of fact, in Chronicles, you'll read about the different kings of Israel and they're either a king, this king did what was right before the Lord or this king did what was evil before the Lord.

I wish I could tell you that there was a middle way, but there's not.

And so Jehoiakim has sold out.

He was a vassal for Egypt, and then now Babylon is coming in with power, and they're conquering.

And so we began last week with Habakkuk's complaint.

He has two complaints.

In these three chapters, there are two complaints, and this is to also encourage some of us, the people of God, Christians, followers of Jesus, it's okay to have some complaints.

As a matter of fact, we should have some complaints at times, but it's what we do with them.

So last week we had complaint number one.

Complaint number one, it began in the first four verses.

And he says, how long, oh Lord?

And he starts to lay out what happened.

And there was three things really that he was complaining about with why and which violence and injustice was happening.

Do you remember the three things I talked about last week, anybody?

What were one of the three things that I talked about with why injustice and violence and evil were happening.

Does anybody remember one of the three?

I'm just curious.

Wickedness?

Evil?

Yep.

Leadership is one.

Leadership is one.

Does anybody remember a second one?

Anybody remember a second one?

I'll give a hint.

The law.

The Torah.

The teachings of Yahweh was the second one.

Does anybody remember the the third one.

I'll be gracious to you.

Read the Bible.

So with this, he ends this complaint.

Yahweh responds to him in his complaints.

But Yahweh says something to him that sometimes my mic, make sure your mic, what's that say?

Plug it in all the way.

All right, it's plugged in all the way.

He says here that Look among the nations, observe, be astonished.

Because what I'm about to do, you won't believe it.

Do we have a view of God sometimes that we put God in our own little box and we begin to see God through our image and likeness and create a God that serves us?

Oh man, we can do that, don't we?

And so God does something unique here.

God says, I am raising up the Chaldeans.

Let's be clear about it.

God is raising up an enemy and oppressor that is more evil and unjust than Judah.

This is how God judges.

You don't have to like it, but if you look at the history of the way God has worked in the world and still works in the world, whenever people want to be disobedient to God, God will give you over to that thing that you're disobedient to.

being about.

As a matter of fact, God will let that thing take you over.

Now, when we get next week to chapter 3, we'll see there's some mercy and wrath, right?

But we're not there yet.

We're in complaint number 2.

So now what's happening is the Chaldeans are taking over, right?

In Habakkuk, he starts off in verse 12.

He says, Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One?

You will not die.

He He's talking to God, right?

He's talking to God.

Now, he's still in conversation.

This is important.

Even in your complaints, even when you live in chaos, when you live in a world full of injustice and evil, it's important to still stay at the table and stay in conversation with God.

Again, Habakkuk is three chapters of a prayer of lament.

It's a poem of lament.

Throughout three chapters, Habakkuk's not even talking to the people of Judah.

He's talking only to God for three chapters, and he's also listening to God.

This is the kind of posture that we have to have, church.

We can't do all the talking.

We've got to be willing to listen.

But when we listen, we also have to be open to things that we might not like to hear.

But again, this only exposes that we need to repent because we've created a God in our image and likeness and we haven't bowed down and worshipped the one true God, Yahweh.

we have not set in our hearts who's Lord and who is not.

So Habakkuk has a second complaint.

God, you are holy.

God, you are forever.

You are eternal.

You are the Holy One.

Surely you will not look upon evil.

Surely, God, this is not your plan for judgment.

Surely you won't allow these Babylonians, the Chaldeans, or Babylonians.

Surely, God, you will not allow these Babylonians to win and to take us over surely God this is not your way oh but it is oh but it is let me ask you a question in your own personal life do you have something that was once a struggle that now rules you you got a little secret sin that every now and again you kind of flirted with You know, you messed around a little bit with, but you kept doing it.

And you kept doing it.

And you kept doing it.

And you kept doing it.

And you kept doing it.

And you kept doing it again.

Last week I talked about repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.

God's got nothing but time.

We don't.

God is not bound by time.

We are.

And then all of a sudden, that thing that you kind of struggled with or you played around with, now all of a sudden that thing has taken over your life! It could be addiction to pornography.

A couple of little clicks here or there, social media.

A couple of little clicks here or there ain't going to hurt me a little dab, but do you?

And all of a sudden, you wake up, you go to bed, and throughout the day, you can't wait to look at pornographic imagery.

Maybe drugs.

Maybe work.

Maybe you start off with just a few overtime hours.

Maybe just a few overtime hours.

overtime hours, got you, right?

And now all of a sudden you're so exhausted and you cannot see straight.

Because what?

Work has consumed you.

Isn't it interesting that part of the way in the New Testament that Paul talks to the church about church discipline, when somebody has given in to sin, unrepentant sin, and they keep doing it, Paul says, cast that brother or sister from among you so that they might be tormented by the enemy and repent and come back.

Isn't it interesting that Old Testament and New Testament ways of dealing with sin is part of God's goodness is that God will actually give you over to the thing that you've been playing with.

Money, lust, power.

You'll eventually realize that all the power that you have in your position, your title, in your situation, in your relationships, you begin to now realize that the power that you wanted and now that you're wielding is actually too much for you to handle and you find yourself perpetually stressed out because God never wanted you to have that much power.

He wanted you to trust him.

Not alone.

We all have that.

And whatever else that I did not say is there.

Now how do we know if this is in our life?

Good question.

Because God, just because God raises up the Babylonians and uses them to dominate and wreak havoc on Judah, the people of God, just because God does that, it does not mean that God has sided with the babylonians no god is true to god and god is true to his covenant and his covenant people he is faithful i will be your god and you will be my people But what happens is we sometimes find ourselves in a dilemma.

We find ourselves sometimes, even in the name of good, conquered by things that are more evil and unjust as we are.

We are all sinful human beings who have been created in the image and likeness of God with some goodness, and yet that goodness can get real perverted real fast when we turn away from God's law.

So in Jeremiah, I think it's funny.

Jeremiah writes, never mind.

Jeremiah writes in Jeremiah 36, 28, there's a passage where it's Baruch and Jeremiah burns the scrolls.

I mean not Jeremiah, Jehoiakim burns the scrolls.

In Jeremiah 36, 28, that king that I was talking about that Habakkuk is also talking about, he burns the law.

He burns the scrolls.

And Jeremiah is the prophet who's a contemporary of Habakkuk.

He writes and there's this guy by the name of Baruch who is like Jeremiah's right hand man and God tells him to write a new scroll.

Jehoiakim got rid of it but Jeremiah says that this is actually the way to return.

And so then what happens is it creates this evil and injustice this and then we get to verse number four where, well actually two, where the prophet says, I will stand on my guard post and station myself on the rampart and I will keep watch to see what he will speak to me and how I may reply when I am reproved.

So Habakkuk now is in a place where he's saying, okay, God allowed this stuff to happen.

I don't fully understand it, but I'm going to trust you and you're saying something and I'm going to just try to figure out how you're going to do this and I'm going to listen.

I'm going I'm going to stand on the rampart.

I'm going to be in a place of watching and listening, right?

I'm going to be in a posture in where I can hear your voice.

I'm going to humble myself and not think that I got it all figured out, that I got it all together, and I know what you're doing.

I want to hear what it is, God, that in the midst of this evil and injustice, I want to hear what it is that you're going to do.

What do we do when we're living in evil and chaos?

What do you do in anxiety?

And fear, temptation.

Do you wait for the Lord?

Or do you make impulsive decisions and then say it's the Lord?

I want to be clear.

Habakkuk's faithful.

Even in the midst of his questioning, he is faithful.

And he never gave up the Torah this is why he's able to be differentiated here even from Judah and from Babylon because he realizes that Judah who are God's people are rebellious and sinful and they've gone the wrong way and he's able to be differentiated from Judah and also differentiated from Babylon which is the total extreme right he's able to differentiate himself where he can remain true to who Yahweh is and who he is and yet remain true to rebellious and unrepentant Judah and the Babylonian who care nothing about Yahweh.

And we find ourselves in this dilemma.

Jehoiakim burns the scroll.

Oftentimes, we as believers, we've already burned the scroll.

You might not set it on fire.

but you might as well because it has no meaning in your life.

God tells you to forget this.

You hold a grudge.

You can do that.

But then you've got to take what comes with that grudge.

Take the stress that comes with that, the anxiety, the fear, some of the bodily things that happen in our bodies at times.

Yeah, take that.

Because that's what comes with disobedience.

And so here he says, record the vision and inscribe it on tablets that the one who reads it may run for the vision is yet for the appointed time, it hastens toward the goal, and it will not fail.

Though it tarries, wait for it, for it will certainly come.

It will not delay.

Part of the challenge sometimes when we're waiting for God to come through, when we're waiting for God's salvation, when we're waiting for God to show up in our country, in our world, in our community, in our city, in our home, in our neighborhood, part of the time when we're waiting for something, we're waiting for our marriage, we're waiting for somebody, we're waiting for something, we're waiting for some money to come through.

Sometimes what we do is we quit tarrying, we quit waiting, and then we begin to act according to the flesh and do what we think is best, even when it's contrary to the will and way of God.

It always starts with just a little disobedience.

Just a little bit.

Just a little bit.

You can't make it if you try.

Just a little bit of sin.

You and I.

Just a little bit of sin.

Just a little bit.

A little bit of disobedience.

And so then...

Habakkuk says that I'm going to wait and stand at the guard post.

I'm going to station myself.

I'm going to keep watch of what God will speak to me.

God says, wait.

Though it tarries, wait for it.

For it will certainly come and it will not delay.

This is about God's timing and not yours.

One of our biggest challenges is that we cannot wait for God, and so then we move on behalf of God, and God never seconded that motion.

And then you use God's name to do what you wanted to do, and you need God to justify it.

We've done this throughout history in America, history in the world, where we've done things and said, well, you know, this is God's blessing.

You know, let's go from one continent to another.

Let's go take this people over here because we believe this is of God.

We're Christians.

We have the papal bull to tell us that we can do it.

The Pope has signed off on it.

So let's go to Turtle Island, which is America.

Let's go to the Americas.

Let's go to Hispaniola.

And anybody there who's not a Christian, they are to be subjected and captured.

And if They will not repent and believe they are to become slaves in the name of God.

God bless who?

I don't think God ever seconded that motion.

It ain't just with that.

It's any place in the world where people have done things in the name of God because it's not just an American thing.

It's a human issue.

They were having this issue back then where the people of God were allowing corruption to take place in the name of God.

This has always been the history of humanity.

When we get away from God, we can do a lot of crazy stuff.

But he says to wait.

And part of the challenge is we have a hard time waiting.

I know I have a hard time waiting.

I'm somebody who wants to do something, to move.

I see a vision, and I want to begin to move in that direction.

And I've done things in my life.

I've started things.

I've done things that as I go back and look, I'm honest with myself.

God didn't tell me to do that.

I told myself that God wanted me to do it, and I did it.

But there's mercy.

It was one of those relationships in my life.

I said, it was God.

No, it wasn't.

That's why I experienced Sheol in those relationships.

It's another word for hell.

Some of the decisions that I made in my own life, I experienced some shield in my own life because of my own decisions.

Nobody else's.

I can't blame nobody.

I can't blame God.

I can't blame my parents.

I can't blame my grandparents.

I can't blame people who weren't.

It was me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

But what's interesting here is after he says, wait, I wonder if the only instruction that he writes is verse four.

Verse two and three, he says to write, record the vision and inscribe it on tablets.

And then he goes on to talk about the vision some more.

He said, for the vision is yet for the appointed time.

It hastens towards the goal and it will not fall, though it tarries, wait for it, for it will certainly come.

It will not delay.

But then verse four says something unique.

It does something unique.

He says, behold.

as for the proud one his soul is not right within him but the righteous will live by faith see the virgin says i the lord refused to accept anyone who is proud only those who live by faith are acceptable to me Paul says this a few times in the New Testament, where he talks about the ones who are righteous are those who live by faith.

even in the midst of the babylonians taking over judah and capturing them even in the midst of captivity god is still reminding his people through a tablet that would be public he's still reminding his people hey those who live by faith are acceptable to me because those who live by faith are to be found faithful.

Faith is not something that's just abstract out there somewhere.

Faith in God is something that is lived out in every decision of our lives, even when it doesn't make sense.

It's about being faithful and trusting the Lord.

No matter what you see in chapter 1 early on last week, he's complaining.

He's complaining about the injustice and evil in the world.

And he's saying, God, this ain't right.

This is jacked up.

His focus, his perspective is on what is around him.

But then he stays at the table with God.

This is why it's important to stay in conversation with God and listen to God.

He stays in conversation and then all of a sudden his perspective begins to shift only to God in the midst of evil, injustice, chaos in his life, in his community, in his neighborhood, in his world, in his people who are called God's chosen and God's beloved.

In the midst of this, he just says, you know what?

I'm going to only look to God right now.

I am only looking to God.

I ain't looking around nowhere else.

I am looking to you, God.

I am fixing myself towards you.

Yes, there's evil that exists in the world, and we ought to see it, but we have to glance at it.

And we have to gaze upon God.

Because if not, everything about the eyes is important to where our bodies follow.

What we look at, what we look at is an indicator of where we will go.

What do you spend your time looking at?

Tick-tock,

tick-tock.

What do you spend your time looking at?

Other people's success.

What do you spend your time looking at?

What you don't have.

What do you spend your time looking at if it's not God?

Right now, I'm gonna ask you to share that with your neighbor.

One minute.

30 seconds, 30 seconds.

Ten seconds, ten seconds.

Alright.

One of the things that I can find myself looking at is social media.

I can start out with a TikTok video or a Facebook post or an Instagram reel and all of a sudden I'm an hour and a half to two hours in to scrolling and I don't even know how I got there.

And then I wonder why I'm anxious and depressed.

I wonder why I'm confused.

I wonder why all of a sudden I'm tired.

So since we began this fast, I want you to One of the things I gave up was my access to this stuff.

I've posted two times over the last two weeks, and I've only logged in two times because of that.

And all of a sudden, I feel better.

Can you imagine?

All of a sudden, I've got more time to be present with people.

Can you imagine that?

I've had some really good conversations over the last two weeks with people because I've been able to be more present.

What about some of you?

Somebody share, maybe two or three people just share what your thing is.

This is not for condemnation.

This is like corporate confession and just truth and grace together as a church body.

You're not alone.

What have you found yourself beholding?

Behold, it means to...

be captivated by.

It means to fix yourself on something, pay attention to something for a long period of time.

He goes on to say, behold, for as the proud man, the proud one, his soul is not right within, but the righteous will live by faith.

Why?

Because they're beholding God.

what are the things that you have been beholding?

Feel free to share.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What else is something that you have been beholding other than God?

Yeah.

Yeah.

One more.

Can we get one more?

what

happens when we don't behold Yahweh God we behold other things that then we become proud of and then that very same thing that we become proud of is the thing that we begin to worship.

It can happen with jobs.

It can happen with people, relationships, money.

As a pastor, it can be ministry, non-profit organizations, the cause in which they're serving, college students, whatever it is, professors.

It can be whatever it is, and that becomes the thing that you behold.

It can be work.

It can be fear.

Some of us behold fear and anxiety more than we behold God.

And when we do that, we slowly begin to create injustice.

As much as I want to say, look at King Joachim.

He got away from God.

As much as I want to say, I mean, he even goes on to talk about the five woes.

I mean, throughout this next few verses, I'm not going to read them all for the sake of time, but he begins to talk about these woes.

This is God talking by the way this is God talking about woes there's five woes that God begins to speak about whoa whoa and whenever God says whoa whoa we better pay attention because what it does is something demonic to the image of God and humanity and other people he says woe to him who increases what is not his He says woe to him who gets evil gain for his house.

He says woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed.

He says woe to you who make your neighbors drink.

who mix in your venom even to make them drink so as to look on their nakedness.

The fifth woe is woe.

He goes on to say, woe to him who says to a piece of wood, awaken.

What is he talking about?

Ultimately, I can tell you, he's talking about unjust economics.

Anytime that we are beholding something else other than God, it creates unjust economics.

Unjust economics will always impact humanity.

and it will always impact the environment two times within these verses.

He says, because you have looted many nations, all the remainder of the people will loot you.

Because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, uh-oh, you hear this?

He says it again.

Because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, to the town and all its inhabitants, he even uses the word plundered.

I have a friend coming out with a book in a few weeks called Plundered.

And it's exactly about this idea that racial justice and environmental justice go hand in hand, baby.

Any sin against humanity will reflect also in the way we treat the earth.

You cannot disconnect things that were always meant to be whole.

Heavy taxation.

If you want to look at what happens when people aren't beholding God, they begin to create heavy taxation.

This is King Joachim.

What else do you do?

You disregard the law and the teachings of divine instruction.

All of a sudden, I live the life I want to live, and I don't care what the Bible says.

Matter of fact, I don't even need the Bible, but I love Jesus.

I don't even need the Word of God.

Farmer, I don't need the Word of God.

But I love Jesus.

Really.

Switching alliances.

You're always looking for an alliance that will appease you.

Jehoiakim went from Egypt to Babylon.

Why?

As long as he could profit, as long as he could assimilate into this Babylonian system.

Babylon throughout all of history and time.

Egypt, Babylon, Rome, America, Israel.

You want to go there?

We can go anywhere you want to go on the planet, baby.

And it will show up the very same way, even in the name of God.

Drunkenness and sexual immorality, prostitution, Joachim was getting drunk and getting other people drunk, getting women drunk, and they were just having all the sex that they wanted to have.

Oh my goodness.

These are the ways this stuff shows up in a system.

It's not an either or.

We have to have an allegiance that's only for Yahweh and there is no other.

But at the end of this, verse number 20, this begins with holiness.

And it ends with holiness.

Verse 12, he says, Are you not from everlasting?

O Lord, my God, my Holy One.

Verse 20, before the transition takes place, he goes into a prayer.

In verse 2, he says, Verse 20, But the Lord is in His holy temple.

Let all the earth be silent before Him.

Verse 20,

Silence has many different meanings in Scripture.

Silence is to behold the holiness, the otherness, the set-apartness of God who is other, who is sovereign, who is Lord, who is King, who sits on top of all of creation, who is the Creator, who is completely other than sinful humanity.

Holiness or silence is also time to lament.

When you see silence in Scripture, it's also a time to be silent and to lament the brokenness that exists in our lives, in the world, the sinfulness.

This is why in Revelation chapter 8, he pauses the worship service in heaven.

Revelation 8 · chapter mention

There's this multi-ethnic worship service that we love to quote.

Revelation 7-9, multi-ethnic, multi, you know, whatever you want.

It's there, and all of a sudden, he shuts down the worship service.

He shuts down the singing.

He shuts down the singing.

to cause us to lament, to cause those who are in heaven who are worshiping me for the throne to lament the brokenness that exists on earth.

Silence is a time to revere the holiness of God and be reminded of whose temple we're in.

And the temple is wherever we're at.

Are we faithfully representing the God that we say we serve or are we serving another God and that God is evident in our lives?

As we just looked at contemporary woes in this season, I want to ask us to be silent for a moment and just reflect on the images that will shortly appear on the screen.

Here are the contemporary woes.

Brandon, can you get that for me?

This is a picture of the Trail of Tears.

The indigenous people of this land who were forced westward go back.

Their land was taken from them.

This is something worthy for us to lament.

In the name of God, land was taken from them.

This is a contemporary woe in our time.

Another one, the transatlantic slave trade.

You'll always find labor and materials and goods in injustice.

Slave labor.

people who were taken from their place and their home and brought to another land to work for free.

And this is happening all over the world.

Next slide.

I want to be clear.

Injustice and caste don't see color.

Here are mine in Kentucky and you see white folks there and you see a black man there.

The history of the Scottish and the Irish and German folks who were sent to America to pay off debt because of political corruption.

and black folks working in the same minds.

Next slide.

Immigration.

Migration.

Immigrant workers, migrant workers, people who come here for opportunity and jobs.

who are being treated unfairly and have always been treated unfairly.

Next slide.

This is the Congo.

Every time you grab your smartphone or you grab your iPad or you drive that Tesla, that cobalt has to come from somewhere.

The blood of the Congo is powering our lives.

Seven different mining fields in Africa that are owned by the Chinese.

I want to be clear that this is a human problem.

Next slide.

And it impacts the most vulnerable.

Women, children, mental health, even different abilities or disabilities, we can say.

The most vulnerable are always impacted the worst.

Next slide.

corrupt rulers, dictators.

This is a worldwide problem.

A couple of weeks ago I showed you a picture of two of the Venezuelan women who work in our preschool.

Mariel and Mariluz, and they have shared their story with me of immigration and why they had to come here.

There was a political leader who was corrupt, and then there came another political leader who was even more corrupt with the first one.

And this one's name is Nicolas Maduro.

I told you the story of one of our preschool workers who was taken at ransom.

Her brother, her husband, and her son, taken at ransom by the police.

Political corruption is all over the world.

Next slide.

Idols.

The wood are these idols that we begin to create and worship.

We all have idols.

In America, there's an idol called Christian nationalism, where somehow America is the mecca of Christianity.

What part of God being global who cares about the nations don't we understand?

What part of God who created everything don't we understand?

And yet many people still have a hard time separating their allegiance to America from their allegiance to Jesus.

Sisters and brothers, this is called idolatry.

Next slide.

There's some more I'd like to read for you.

Somehow America and Israel have this bond.

You know what the bond is about?

Plunder.

The bonds are always about plunder.

This might not sit well with some of you because you've been told your whole life that America and Israel are like, you know, these are God's people, right?

The nation was never a state.

The people of Israel in Scripture was never about a state.

It was about the people of God who were scattered throughout all of the earth, who were faithful to Yahweh.

That's something we created.

And then we have a hard time repenting out of it.

If you cannot appropriately critique Israel and Hamas at the same time, it's because you bowed down to one of them.

You're worshiping an idol.

Next slide.

Oh boy, I'm getting in some of your business now.

I'm getting in some of your business now and I am intentionally wanting to get into your business because we need God to get into our business.

And allegiance to either party is an idol.

Pro-life is not splitting hairs.

God does not split hairs about pro-life.

Whether it's babies, whether it's black lives, whether it's immigrants, whether it's the way women and children and people with various disabilities are treated in this country, God does not split hairs about justice and injustice.

God sees all injustice from the same lens.

He's not divided on this stuff.

And yet we find ourselves divided.

Next slide.

Yeah.

Maybe some of the Christians who vote Democrat, laugh now.

Laugh.

Laugh.

Laugh.

Laugh.

Because, next slide please.

There's also some repentance for you.

there's repentance for all people involved who call themselves Christians and have an allegiance to a particular party not saying that neither party over its history in time has not done some good throughout history but to have a blind allegiance just because it's a donkey or whatever else it is.

The mascot of the church is the lamb that was slain.

I was at the border, Tijuana and Mexico, Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, sitting there listening to the stories of people who have been sent back, deported back to Mexico, who served in the US military, Vietnam veterans.

Here you see to the right, we are on the border, listening to the challenges at the border.

These are American law enforcement officers who work border patrol.

And these are people called border angels in Mexico who do water drops and provide legal counsel for people who get caught crossing the border.

And both of them were in agreement that this is not a party issue that both parties are complicit in the problem at the border.

One party profits.

It's all about money and profits off of these migrant workers that come here, go to Chicago, go to a window facility, window factory, and you'll go in there and you'll see people who work there that have no documentation, but they have a job from an American-owned business that's profiting hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

And then right next to the factory, you have a migrant community where people live that are undocumented who are being paid cheap labor.

while at the same time you have another party who promises justice and never delivers because part of the way in which they benefit is to continue to hold something over your head that you actually never get so with that church next slide there's a reason why Yahweh told Israel do not worship any god Accept me.

As a matter of fact, in another place in Exodus, is it there?

Is there another slide there?

I demand your complete loyalty.

You must not worship any other god.

Don't make trees with the people there or you will soon find yourself worshiping their gods and taking part in their sacrificial meals.

Church, where is God calling you to repent to today?

What is God calling you to repent from today?

Father, we just thank you and love you.

We thank you that even now, God, even now, as we look at the woes throughout human history and even the more contemporary woes of our day, that you are calling us to be set apart for your purposes.

not your purposes and our agenda, not your purposes and the sinful desires of our heart, not your purposes and the power that we seek to thwart and hold, not your purposes and a political party.

You are calling us out of Babylon and you're calling us to a place of complete surrender and repentance of you and your will would you help us now god in the midst of waiting for your second advent and your second return to make all things new may we not grow tired But may we be found righteous and faithful by the way we place our faith in you in the midst of a broken world.

Help us to have whole and devoted allegiance to Jesus and the priorities of his kingdom only.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.