Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church

Guest (Male): You are now listening to an inspirational message from Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church where Dr. Michael W. Wesley Sr. is the pastor. Please join the service in progress.

Dr. Michael W. Wesley Sr.: Better get to the sermon, amen. Amen. Pray with me now. Father, we thank You for this time in Your presence. Thank You for songs, thank You for scriptures, thank You for prayers. And we pray now for Your Word as Your Word will come. Open our hearts and minds. Give clarity and understanding of divine truth. Bless now the words that are in our mouth and the meditations on our hearts, that it may be acceptable in Your sight. Oh Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. We ask it now in Jesus' name. Amen.

Won't you turn now, if you will, in your Bibles to the book of Jeremiah, Old Testament. Jeremiah. We're going to talk about him today, use him as an example to speak to us. Jeremiah chapter 33 is the text. We'll look at several passages in the book, but I want to read verse 3 in your hearing as a focal point of what I want to speak to us about. "Call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not." This is the Word of God for the people of God.

I want to talk today about an encouragement to pray. An encouragement to pray. We've talked about a New Year's warning, we've talked about the irrefutable law of sowing and reaping, and now I want to talk to you about praying. We've begun the year as a church family with a campaign: 21 days of prayer. The whole idea is to teach and to encourage us to begin the year with God at the forefront. And that should always be our desire.

And so I think now more than ever, with what I see on the horizon, what I see in the foreground, in the background, in the backdrop, and landscape of what's going on in our nation and in our community, if ever we were going to pray, this is the time where we need to pray. We could very well be on the brink of a third World War. And with the foolishness and with the egotism that we are seeing, we need to know that we, the people of God, need to pray.

And why I chose Jeremiah because, one, the leading of God was that way, and secondly, because he and his times were an exact replica or mirror of the times in which we're living in now. And Jeremiah was the prototype of who we need to be in these difficult times. We need to have some boldness. Somebody needs to have boldness because people in Congress don't have it. People on the Supreme Court don't have it. They have been flayed. Backbones have been removed. And consequently, we are seeing the result of all kinds of crazy stuff. Never before in the 250 years we've been a nation, never has anyone behaved in a way quite like this.

And what's worse is people are silent. And the Church is silent. And we're on the brink of celebrating the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, who would not be silent. And so if we're going to understand, if we're going to recognize where we are and what we're doing, then we need to understand what's before us. So Jeremiah's days were contemporary to ours. God has always been the same. There's nothing new under the sun. There have been other leaders in the past who have risen and who have asserted themselves and who have wanted to be someone that they are not, but we see the biblical record that they ultimately have vanished away.

And so we don't have to be alarmed, we just need to know what to do. We don't have to be worried, we need to understand how we need to respond. And we don't need to take the bait, as the people in California were saying to the people in Minnesota. I spoke the other day at UAB and I was talking about this King Day and all of that and what it means and things like that. And the role of the Church today is still to be the upholder of the truth. You have been made the custodians of the truth, and if you refuse to hold it up, some other body will come, a rock or somebody will cry for you.

And so it's not just the beat of the song, it's the message in the song that we've got to understand this morning. Jeremiah was somebody. God has always used the imagination, and people have always thought that it was just the imagination of religious people. You have only two kinds of people in the world today. You have naturalists, people who believe in science, and you have religious people, people who believe in God. And what I'm saying to us this morning is this country was a country that was founded on Christianity. It's in the preamble of the Constitution, it's in the song "America", one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

So if it's to be that way, and what I'm saying is we have moved away from that. What part of it have we moved away from? We have moved away from being a nation under God. And now we're more into being naturalists, and we believe that the religion is just for a few folk and it's just the imagination of their mind. Even recently when they were talking about bringing the astronauts back home—I referenced that last week from one of them being sick—one man a week even earlier had written that when he was out of space and he was orbiting around the world, it strengthened his faith. He knew that this universe could not be put together by anybody but a God. And he got heavily criticized because the naturalists wanted to remind him of the science that's behind that. I don't care what science says. In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth.

But people have moved away from that. And that's what happened in Jeremiah's day. And that's what God was critical about them. Let me read verse 5. Sheila, can you put this on the screen please? Chapter 5, verses 21, 22 in particular, if you can. I really would like for people to see this because I don't want you to think I'm making this up. In Jeremiah's day—and Jeremiah, I'm going to talk about who he was and when he lived and all those things like that—but listen at what he says. This is one of his sermons that God gave him. Chapter 5, verse 21: "Hear now this, oh foolish people and without understanding, which have eyes and see not, which have ears and hear not. Fear ye not me, saith the Lord? Will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it? And though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail, though they roar, yet can they not pass over it? But this people hath a revolting and rebellious heart. They are revolted and gone. They have left me."

God is saying, "How in the world, what's wrong with y'all? You got eyes but can't see. You got ears but can't hear. I mean, everybody and everything that I made is obedient and reverencing me, but the human being." This happened in Jeremiah's day. Now Jeremiah was a prophet to the people of Judah. The people of Judah were God's people. Now Jeremiah lived about 80 to 90 years after the prophet Isaiah. They were contemporaries in terms of the themes that they worked with. Isaiah was shown that the Babylonians were going to come and take Israel captive. Jeremiah lived during the time when the Babylonians did come and take the southern kingdom, Judah, into captivity. As a matter of fact, Jeremiah lived through the last five Judean kings. He started with Josiah. Josiah was a young boy, he was eight years old when he came. And Josiah led a reform, and he tore down the high places and all of those things like that. And he reestablished the worship of Jehovah.

But there was a prophetess whose name was Huldah. And she said to Josiah, "Josiah, you have done well. But this revival is not going to last. It's going to last during your lifetime, but once you're gone, the people going to go right back to doing what they were doing." Oh, y'all don't hear me. I'm coming your way. I'm saying something here. There was a time when we ran the church, when we worshiped the Lord, but there was a superficial revival. People have gone right back out and they're doing whatever it is they want to do. Not only did Jeremiah live during Josiah, but then there was Jehoahaz. And after Jehoahaz, there was Jehoiakim. And after Jehoiakim, there was Jehoiachin. And after Jehoiachin, there was Zedekiah. And so those were the last of the Judean kings. And Jeremiah prophesied, preached to the people, warned them to return unto God. But you know what? They didn't. They went away.

Listen at this, what Jeremiah is saying here in chapter 5. He said, "Listen, God said, I put the sea, the ocean out there. And all I did was put just a little strip of sand to bind and keep the ocean obedient. And the ocean knows that it doesn't challenge its God. It stays in its place. And all I put was a little strip of sand. Sand don't hurt nobody. You've never seen nobody go to war picking up sand and throwing it and think they can defeat somebody. Sand dribbles through your hands. So sand has no threat, opposes no threat. And all God does is put a little band of sand around the ocean. And the ocean roar. And the waves dump and dash. But they don't cross over the strip of sand that God has put."

But God says, "But my people, who I've given all kinds of restraints. I've given my laws, I've sent my prophets, I've given them my covenant, I've given them my word, I've given them my warnings, I've threatened them, and yet they are still rebellious." Now that's Jeremiah's time. And I promise you, that's the same stuff that we're seeing today. Man, we're running all over everybody. We don't want to follow no laws. The laws are just for us. When it comes to these people, they don't recognize the law. Supreme Court has said, "Okay, turn loose the Epstein files," just one example. Congress has said, "Turn it loose." Ain't been turned loose yet. This boy around here talking about, "Well, I don't know if I'm going to have a midterm election or not." Oh, that shooting y'all saw? Oh, that was all right. That was just fine. Shot a woman in the face. Every other police officer is saying, "Wait a minute, hold up. If that was me, I would be in deep trouble." And they're saying no investigation? Come on now.

I'm just giving just a few little minor examples. But what I want to help you understand is that was Jeremiah's time. But who is this boy, Jeremiah? And what is it about him? Jeremiah was a prophet of the Lord. He's a preacher. James, I'm coming somewhere over the next few weeks on building up to what your responsibility got to be and what you got to know and what the churches got to know. So I want to say this morning, first and foremost, Jeremiah had a divine sense of mission. God said to him, "Boy, before I formed you in your mother's womb, I knew you. And I had ordained you to be a prophet unto the nations."

Man, it helps all these men that came up here today and all of us who are here to understand that this may have happened today, but this was something that God had prepared before the eons of time. And every Christian here needs to understand that your ministry, your life, the call on you is a divine mission that had been predetermined by God. Ever before your mama met your daddy and before your grandmama met your granddaddy on the back of a truck, God knew. God decided. You didn't decide, I didn't decide. All we did was recognize what God is already doing.

God decides. God is the one who calls. Jeremiah, you need to come for such a time as this. And every one of us need to understand that it is no accident that you are here. You've been brought to the forefront, like Esther of old, for such a time as this. And if you've been brought to the forefront, then you've been brought to the forefront because there is a sense of divine mission that God has in mind that He wants you to fulfill. And man, I know it can be intimidating. And I know for many people, to step forward into leadership, areas of responsibility, and to step forward in ministry roles in particular can be intimidating because Jeremiah felt the same way when God called him. Now, although God knew before time began when Jeremiah would be born and at the point in which He would call him and summon him and bring him to the forefront, but the day Jeremiah recognized God's voice and heard Him, Jeremiah said, "Wait, wait, I'm but a child. I can't speak."

And God said, "Don't worry about that because the second thing you need to know when you're under divine mission is that there's going to be divine provision. God's going to give you what you need. God's going to give you what you need. Don't worry. I know, man, you know, who feels worthy? No one. Every the 12 disciples of Jesus, when Jesus came by the seashore and He said, 'Come follow me and I'll make you to become a fisher of men,' none of those boys were ready. None of those men were ready. God doesn't choose the qualified. He takes people and then He qualifies the one He calls."

Don't worry about it, how young you are. Don't worry about what stage you're in. Don't worry about who by your side or who not by your side. This is by God. And if God chooses, then God doesn't make mistakes. God knows what He's doing. And what we've got to learn to do is to get out of God's way and let God help you become equipped to do the things God wants you to do. And that's what Jeremiah. Jeremiah had a divine sense of mission. God said it, before I formed you. He's preordained, predetermined. And then God said, "Don't you say you're a child. And don't you worry about what you're going to say. I'll put my word in you. I'm going to provide you with what you need." And then He told Jeremiah, He said, "And don't be afraid either. Don't be afraid of their faces." Don't be afraid when you stand before the folk, man. Don't look them in the face, don't be afraid of faces because some people going to look like 'Take it back. How dare you say that?' Man, they're going to have frowns, they're going to have scowls. Some people going to act like they ain't paying you no attention, that they sleep, that they don't want to hear this, like "Hurry up, shut up." You keep preaching. You say what the Lord gives you to say.

You got to understand what this is. This ain't about other folk. It's about divine mission. When you stand to teach, teach the Word. Whatever God gives you to do, do it with your might, do it with your heart, because this is divine. Remember what Jeremiah's problem was, what the people's problem was? They became naturalized, and they moved away from God. But God called a man who would stand up in the middle of the culture. And that's what we've got to be. That's who we are. We've got to stand up in the middle of this culture. Somebody's got to stand. And you don't have to worry about what you're going to say. God will give you the words. God will protect you. Don't worry about ice and all these other folk. God got that too. God got some heat. And heat melts ice. Because what that is, is the fourth thing that Jeremiah had was access to God's power. And you got access to God's power. God has all power in this earth. The earth is the Lord's. It's who? Lord's. Greenly belongs to who? The Lord. America belongs to who? The Lord. Venezuela belongs to who? The Lord. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world.

I mean, come on, let me give you a little time now. Trump, 79 years old. Give him 20 years. You think he's going still be here? No, but the earth will still be here because the earth belongs to who? God. All right. Put things in the right perspective. Don't get lost on who think. And I'm not, this ain't no message on that man, this is a message on God. I'm just using the contemporary illustrations of the time to help you understand what I'm saying. Okay, so first, there's a divine sense of mission that is needed by all of us in these times where people are going away from God. God is still calling men into the work that He has set apart for them. And He has set apart a work for the Christian community. And we can't be moved, okay? The second thing that He gives to Jeremiah, not only a sense of divine mission, but He gave Jeremiah a direct message. A direct message. Jeremiah was called to stand up in the face of all of the evil, all of the backbiting, all of the sexual perversion, all of the political wrangling, all of the untruths, everything that was going on. God called that man and gave him a direct "in your face" message.

Now you can't preach like that unless God calls you. Now you know, when I was a boy, and everybody was talking, I used to want to know how you know when God's called you to preach. And they'd just tell me, "Oh, you'd know." Well, I didn't know. And I kept asking people. But one day I did know because God wouldn't let go. It was an idea that began in my mind and I tried to shake it. I tried to do everything I could. I was a fishhooked and didn't know I was hooked. But when I recognized that a hook was in my mouth, I tried to spit it out. I tried to wiggle my tail. I tried to do everything I could to get away. But the Lord was a master fisherman. All He did was just raise up on the rod and let me wear my fool self out. And then He reeled me on in and put me in the boat.

Do you understand that? God knows who you are. You can say what you ain't going to do, you can say what you're not ready to do, other people can tell you who you are and what you're not qualified for and all that. Don't listen to that. Listen to what thus saith the Lord. God needs men and women who will stand flat-footed and tell the truth. What happened to our home today? We lost our direct message. I grew up in a house with a mom and dad, I did. And that dad that I had, man, well, he didn't play. He had a direct message: "No." And that wasn't no question about it. Who you going to appeal to? You going to go to your mama and say what, and she says what your daddy say. End of it. What you going to do? You going to tell somebody else? You going to go outside the house and tell somebody else? No, what he said was it. That was the message.

And that's what I value, that's what we must value about Martin Luther King. He had a direct message. Yes, he understood that Black people came to America in the hulls of slave ships. And then once slavery was over, there was still 100 years of Jim Crowism. Segregation was the law of the land. But the man read the Constitution and he said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." And he held into the consciousness of America a direct message that said, "What y'all doing? You treating these people wrong."

Now, let me tell you what happened after King. After they put a bullet in King and took him out, yeah, the other Black preachers stood up. They wanted to sound like him, but they didn't want to be him. They wanted to say, "And I've been to the mountaintop. And I've seen the promised land." They wanted to sound like him. But they didn't want to do what was necessary. King was a scholar. He was a Morehouse trained graduate. And the messages that he wrote were theologically sound. It was a direct word from God. That letter that he wrote from the Birmingham jail was a message to call out the Black preacher. I'm just telling you what it is. And he wasn't, he didn't bite his tongue, he didn't back away. And I tell you what, that is what's needed in this America today. Needs somebody who got a direct message who's not afraid to say.

Man, it just broke my heart. I'm not talking about nobody but there's a man in North Carolina named Tim Scott. Tim bowed and twisted all kind of ways every way he could. And then when Mr. Trump was ready to put his cabinet together, Mr. Scott was nowhere to be found. And nobody else that looked like Mr. Scott. Mr. Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, I remember when he was being confirmed. I remember when Anita Hill and all of the stuff that went on with the confirmation hearing. And we all felt sorry for Clarence Thomas and felt that surely he's going to represent God's people. We had known of Thurgood Marshall. We had known of others who had fought and held up the banner. But Mr. Thomas got in here. And he showed you. I won't bother nobody.

But I'm just saying today, God raise up a generation who has a direct word from you. A prophet, see. The reason the prophetic order came into being is because at first God spoke through the kings. You know, when First King was David, well, should I say Saul? And Saul went against what God said. When Samuel told him, "God's gave you an assignment to go and utterly destroy Amalek," and Samuel came back to see Saul, and Saul had spared the king Agag and had brought all of these sheep and things. And Samuel said, "Well, what is this? Don't you understand that obedience is better than sacrifice?" He whacked up the king, he got rid of the sheep, and then the Holy Spirit was removed from Saul.

So God had to raise up a new order. And that order was prophets. The last, the first of the prophets was Samuel, who was the last of the judges, but he became the first of the prophets. And after that, they were men who were not political, but they were men who would speak what thus saith the Lord without compromise. And that's what's needed. Who's speaking for God? Certainly the President is not. Certainly the Congress is not. Certainly the Supreme Court is not. Certainly the legislators are not, certainly governors and mayors and city councilmen and all those people are not necessarily speaking for God. And the church is silent. So where are the people going to get God's word from?

There's a need today. But you got to, in order to speak God's word direct, you got to have that divine sense that you're on mission for Him. This is not a paid political announcement. We refused government money because we did not want to make this be a controlled area. Yeah, I'll be clear, we had received millions of dollars from the federal government. But when that money ran out, we ain't going to get no more of that because we're not going to have our chain jerked because we speak the truth to power. And I'm just saying to you, you got to have somebody. Man, listen, I'm not tired yet, but it's time for me to move into another arena. And so whoever comes, and if you're coming, come on up here because this is God's business. And you got to understand you're here to conduct God's business. And it doesn't matter what people think, what people feel, what people look like. Say what God says.

God will take care of you, He'll protect you. He will. Then thirdly, about Jeremiah is Jeremiah had not only a direct message, but he mourned deeply. The situation broke his heart. When he looked around at his nation, when he looked at how the wrongs were being done and nobody was saying anything, it broke his heart. And Jeremiah is known now in biblical history and throughout human history as being the weeping prophet. Why was he known as the weeping prophet? Because it hurt. That's why he wrote Lamentations, to lament, to cry over Israel, to cry about what was happening.

Man, it made him so mad one time he just said, "Look, I can't do this no more." He said, "God," he said, "I tell you what," he said, "I just quit. I hate the day that it was said that a man had been born." This Jeremiah, this very prophet. And he says, "So I'm just not going to go back over there to that church no more. And I'm not going to preach no more in your name." But come on, use your mind with me. It was Monday and he passed by the church and he knew the deacons were meeting. So he walked on the other side. He came back and it was Wednesday and he knew Bible study was supposed to be going on. And he got a little itching and little knees start knocking. He came back by the church and it was Thursday and he knew the choir was in there rehearsing. And then Sunday came and he passed by the church, he saw the people going in, and it just tore him up. He said, "I can't help myself." He said, "It's like fire shut up in my bones."

When you've been called, it may break your heart to see some things. How many parents have had a heartbreak? Sometimes our children don't do what we want them to do. Sometimes they don't turn out the way we had hoped, sometimes they make their own decision, a decision that we would not make. But we can't help that. It will break our heart but that doesn't stop you from doing what you need to do. It broke Jeremiah's heart, but it did not stop him from doing what he needed to do, from continually telling people because there was a fire raging on the inside to deliver. You don't know what it is to can't sleep on Saturday night because that word is rolling around in you. You don't know what it is to sit in a restaurant and you're trying to eat but you can't eat because God is speaking. And all of a sudden you look like you stand in the space and other people think something's wrong with you. You may not know what it's like to be driving down the road and the tears just meeting under your eye because the Word of God is beginning to bubble over in your soul. Maybe you don't know what it's like to be trying to cut grass and you end up going over the same row again because you're so lost in what God is saying that you forget about where you are. It becomes fire on the inside.

It's also becoming like a woman pregnant and you can't help but wait till Sunday morning to come to the church to deliver that baby. And sometimes people have to see you squirm and holler, "Oh," and "Ah," and all of those things because you're trying to deliver what God has put on the inside. It'll make you cry sometimes and nobody's bothering you. It'll make you run sometimes and nobody's chasing you. It'll make you scratch your head and nothing is itching. That's because God is moving on the inside. And so therefore, if you're going to be comforted, the encouragement is to learn to pray. Listen at what Jeremiah says in the text for the morning. Chapter 33: "Call on me." See, this is God's word, this is God's invitation to the prophet. "Call on me."

Now the captivity has fallen by this time. The children of Israel have gone into captivity. The false prophets were saying, "Oh y'all, the captivity's not going to last but two years." Jeremiah is hearing God and God is now tell the people settle down. Tell the people to get jobs, tell the people go ahead get wives and have a family because they're going to be in Babylon 70 years. But at the end of 70 years, I'm going to turn them loose. And He goes on to say, "See, I know the plans I have for you, plans for good and not evil, to give you a future and to give you a hope. So call on me." Man, when God give that invitation, call on me even even when you don't know what you know, call on me.

If you're ignorant about the circumstances, God says what? "Call on me." If you feel helpless, sometimes you have to hear God say what? "Call on me." And I've been helpless, man, I'm telling you. You can be in this position, but you can stand on the sideline and watch loved ones and watch other people's loved ones pass off the scene and there's nothing you can do but call on the name of the Lord. Sometimes in your own life you can't help yourself. And all you can do is call on the name of the Lord. But when you do, God will give you a glimpse. He'll give you a fresh revelation of what you don't know, what you don't see, what you don't understand. What is that? God will show you Himself.

He'll show you His divine sovereign power to come through. Anybody ever seen God show you that? Won't He show you? He said, "I haven't shown up yet, but don't you worry, I'm coming. That I got the power and when I come, I'm going to wipe it out, I'm going to clean it up, I'm going to move." God has the power to move mountains. Isn't that what Jesus said? What He said? "If you have faith the size of a grain of a mustard seed, you can speak to this mountain and you can say be moved, and the mountain will have to get out of the way because of the power of God." Jesus was able to speak to dead men and they got up out of the grave because of the power of God. You know, other folk couldn't see it, but when Jesus called on the name of the Lord.

And I just want you to know when you call on the name of the Lord, you don't have to worry. Sometimes you're going through a problem. I don't have to ask you, I know you've gone through problems. But when you go through problems you sometimes ask yourself, "Lord, why?" Sometimes you talk to God, "God, why am I going through this? Why am I suffering so?" But then you pray and God will show you why you're going through it. And He'll show you what He wants you to learn as a result of having gone through it. And even if He don't, just keep on going through it because the storm will pass. And once you arrive on the other side of the storm, sometimes you have to get on that side before you can see what God has done.

Pray, my brothers, pray, my sisters. The Lord is calling. He said, "Call on me." Yes, I know I've given you a divine sense of mission. And I know I'm going to put and I am putting in you a divine direct message. And I know when you look around and you see all of the troublesome things, it can break your heart. And it will break your heart. But call on me. Pray to me. And I'll show you great and mighty things that you have never even seen yet. Now look, there's a text that's going around on the internet. And people are saying that the meme or the text says Trump has been arrested and the warning is when you see that, don't open it because it's a virus that's designed to attack your financial information.

See, that's false stuff. But God will take care of him, God will take care of them. God will take care of you. How many know, this ain't your first rodeo. God will make your enemies your footstool. Is there anybody in here who ever had the Lord to make your enemies your footstool? God will make them have to sit and watch you eat, listen to you belch, and then watch you take a nap because that's the kind of God we have. But when you call on Him, you can come. That's what He say, "Come to me. Come to Jesus while you have time." This is a great moment, this is an invitational moment. God is inviting you, come closer. You've been out there in the world, other people have used you, but now it's my time. Come unto Jesus, come unto Jesus while you have time. No one knows what the future will hold. No one knows how long the world will last. Not even the Son of Man knows the day nor the hour when God will come. But here's the moment. Listen at this invitation. We offer Christ, the doors open. What a great moment, life-changing moment. Why don't you come? Come on to Jesus.

And I want you to know that invitation is always ongoing. God has a divine mission. And He's calling men and women in this generation to be a part of that. It's something He's already preordained that you need to do, that you should do. And now is the time. And He will give you what you need. And He will protect you. And He will direct you. He will give you His direct word. It may break your heart to see some of the stuff, but that's what will keep it fresh and keep you coming back because the need will always be greater than what you're able to solve. But that's where the encouragement to pray is. So call on Him. And He will show you things that you have not yet seen. Service ends now. We're going to praise God from whom all blessings flow. We're going to celebrate this day.

Guest (Male): Hope you enjoyed the broadcast. You have been listening to a message from the Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church where we are reaching the world for Christ. Located at 2135 Jefferson Avenue Southwest, Birmingham, Alabama, 35211. For a copy of this message, you can reach us at 205-925-9750 or 9751, or visit us on the web at www.greatershiloh.org. For another uplifting message, we invite you to join us for our next broadcast.