Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Today on Telling the Truth, Stuart Briscoe talks about what happens when we attempt to fix deep-rooted heart issues superficially. "When God Speaks to a Nation" is the title of Stuart's message today, and he begins in just a moment.

When life's storms suddenly come your way, how do you respond? Do you doubt God's presence, questioning His concern for you? Or do you see storms as part of God's plan for your life and rest assured He cares for you and is in control of all things?

We want to help you trust in God's care and control in all the storms you face by sending you Jill Briscoe's message, "Weathering the Storms of Life," as well as a set of 12 beautifully designed scripture cards to encourage you in troubled times.

"Weathering the Storms of Life" and the set of 12 scripture cards are our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth. So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388 or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, with more from his series, "Truth for Troubled Times," here's Stuart Briscoe.

Stuart Briscoe: I want to continue looking into the book of Jeremiah. We're not going to try and cover all of it. There are 52 chapters, and it's pretty heavy going, but there are things in Jeremiah that I think will be very, very relevant to the days in which we live.

When we think about Jeremiah's call, we noticed that it was very obvious that God was trying to convey to this young man—and he was in his late teens or early 20s, remember—that He did have a plan for this young man's life. It was incumbent upon him being willing to respond to the plan that God had for him.

Jeremiah embraced that plan. It was that he should become a prophet. Now, to become a prophet in those days was no easy task. Walter Brueggemann, the theologian, says that the task of a prophet is basically to address the culture in which he or she lives and present to it an alternative perception, an alternative sense of direction.

Given the fact that none of us likes to be told we're wrong, and that we're not terribly interested in being corrected, and that not infrequently, if somebody does come with a message of that kind, our reaction is not to respond to the message but rather to shoot the messenger. That was the lot of many of the prophets in the days of the Old Testament. They didn't shoot them, of course; they stoned them.

That did not happen to Jeremiah. In fact, for more than 40 years, he continued faithfully executing his ministry, but quite frankly, he was a thorn in the side of the people most of that time, and they did not give him an easy time. As a young man in his late teens or early 20s, Jeremiah accepts the call to be a prophet to Judah.

Interestingly enough, at the same time that this young prophet was coming to the fore, a young king was coming to the throne of Judah as well. And his name was Josiah. Josiah actually came to the throne when he was only eight years of age. The reason for that was that his father, Amon, who was the king, was assassinated after he had reigned for only two years.

He had done little to have a big impact on Judah at that particular time. However, Manasseh, who was the grandfather of Josiah, had reigned for 55 years in Judah. That was the longest reign of any king in Judah, and the records say that it was not only the longest reign; it was the worst reign as well.

Manasseh was a man who was committed to unbelievable wickedness and evil. The scriptures tell us that he led Judah and the people of Jerusalem astray so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites. That's an amazing statement.

When it says the evil that the nations did that the Lord destroyed before the Israelites, you remember that God had brought the children of Israel into what we call the Promised Land. But it was inhabited by people called the Canaanites. God felt that it was perfectly legitimate to get them out of the land and bring the people of Israel in for the very simple reason that these Canaanites were so unbelievably, incorrigibly corrupt.

They were utterly, intrinsically, deep-dyed evil, and the judgment of God came upon them. Amazingly, it says of Manasseh that as one of Judah's kings in the Promised Land, he was worse than the nations whom God had kicked out, the Canaanites. He was an unbelievably wicked, evil king.

When Josiah as an eight-year-old comes to the throne, he inherits a nation that is utterly sold in evil and wickedness. That was the situation of Judah when he came to reign. Eight years later, when he was 16, Josiah has a deep spiritual experience. We read that as a 16-year-old teenager, he determines to seek the Lord.

Listen to me, teenagers. Teenage is not a time when you goof off until you have to get serious about being a person. Teenage is a time when you make decisions that will either be the source of untold blessing for the rest of your life, or it's a time when you can make decisions that will have a negative impact for the rest of your days.

Teenage is the time to seek after the Lord. Hear me. And that is precisely what Josiah did at the age of 16. When he was 20, he attained his majority, which meant, among other things, that he probably didn't have a regent overseeing his reign, and he could now take the nation in the direction that he thought correct.

He embarked on a process of reform. In other words, he looked at the nation that he'd inherited from his father and his grandfather, and he said, "This is wrong. Things have to be changed." He set about making the changes. If you read in the end of 2 Chronicles and the end of 2 Kings, you will find many more pieces of information concerning what Manasseh and Amon did that resulted in the wicked nation that Josiah inherited.

It was these things that Josiah now sets about overthrowing. We read that he went first of all to the high places. The high places were flat areas on the top of prominent mountains where people would set up a worship center. It wasn't anything particularly good or bad about the place; it was just what it was used for. And what it was used for was, quite simply, idolatry.

You will remember that in the Ten Commandments that God had given Judah, the first two commandments had to do with the fact that they were to worship the Lord their God and not worship anybody else. The second one was that under no circumstances were they to make any idols.

Judah had blatantly ignored commandment number one and commandment number two. They had started to worship the Canaanite gods. Let me explain to you why they had done this. When the children of Israel arrived in the Promised Land, they came from a background of being nomadic shepherds. They were sheep herders.

They would simply travel around and find where the grass was and then move on when there was no more grass. When they moved into the Promised Land, those days were gone, and they had to learn to be farmers. They hadn't a clue how to do it. They looked at the way the Canaanites were doing it, and this was a fundamental error.

The big key to farming in the Middle East in those days, and in these days, is the rain. You don't have the rain, nothing happens in the Middle East. It just reverts to desert. But God had promised the children of Israel that if they loved Him and honored Him and served Him, He would send the early and the latter rains, the spring and the fall rains.

If they disobeyed Him, the rains would be withdrawn. The children of Israel ignored that promise of the Lord, and they looked to see what the Canaanites did. The Canaanites said that the key to a fertile crop and the key to the rains was that they worshiped the gods of fertility and the Baal, the god of thunder and lightning and the rains.

The children of Israel ignored Jehovah, and they began to focus their attention on worshiping the Baals and worshiping the idols and looking to them to provide the means of fertility so that their crops would grow. Israel turns its back on the Lord. Idolatry.

Guest (Male): More powerful teaching from the Briscoes is headed your way, so don't go anywhere. We've made a wide array of resources and content available to you online for free at tellingthetruth.org and on the Telling the Truth app.

There you can listen, read, and watch powerful teaching from Stuart and Jill on relevant topics, like the sovereignty of God, the importance of the church, and how to grow closer with Jesus Christ. You can also request this month's featured resource as thanks for your gift of support to help share the abundant life Jesus offers with more people around the world. Visit us online or download the app today and experience life with Telling the Truth. Here's Stuart Briscoe with more of his message, "When God Speaks to a Nation."

Stuart Briscoe: What is it that's so fundamentally wrong about idolatry? Well, the first thing that's obviously wrong about idolatry is that it is a fundamental rejection of the one Lord and putting in the place of the one God other gods who are no gods at all. But that's not all.

To engage in idolatry is to put your trust in things that are created rather than the Creator. It is to prefer that which the Creator has given over the one who has been gracious in the giving of it. But not only that, when a person creates an idol, they are simply remaking God according to their own imagination.

They are making God in their image rather than worshiping the God who has revealed Himself. Now we may say to ourselves, what possible relevance does this have to us today? Well, let me ask you a question. Would it be true to say that we, in many instances, are more interested in that which is material than that which is spiritual?

Or let me put it to you this way. Would it be true to say there is no shortage of people who are not interested in finding who God is according to His self-revelation; they have decided what God is like? Do you ever hear people say, "Well, I wouldn't believe in a God who would do such and such"? They are remaking God in their own image.

Would it be true to say that it is possible for us in our approach to life to simply say that we are not willing to trust God to be all that we need in life, but we need as a substitute for God to put our trust in all kinds of other things? I think the answer to all those questions is yes. And that is idolatry.

We are told not to bear false witness. Business schools are finally getting around to talking about ethics, but which ethics they're talking about is up for grabs. We are told that we should honor our father and mother. In actual fact, through much modern psychology, we now spend more time blaming our father and mother than we do honoring them.

We are told, "Thou shalt not covet," but the whole of our system is operating on the principle that we've got to go on producing more. To produce more, we've got to buy more, and to buy more, we've got to want more. In order to want more, we'll buy more, and we'll produce more, and then the standard of living will go up. The whole capitalistic system is leading us into an attitude where coveting is normative.

We ask ourselves what happened? Look at the kind of things that Jeremiah says has happened to Judah, and make application of these things. He said that there's been a great drift into apostasy. We've ceased to seek the Lord. We are fascinated with worthless things. It is unthinkable, but we've actually changed our gods.

We've forsaken the fountain of living waters and have dug leaky cisterns as a substitute. We have made all kinds of critical miscalculations and made the wrong alliances. We have lost our sense of awe. We refuse to serve the Lord. We have not realized our potential. We cannot assuage our feelings of guilt.

We deny outright that we've done anything wrong. We blame our behavior on circumstances outside ourselves. This is all in Jeremiah's sermon. Then he says, "You have turned your backs on the Lord, but not your faces." One of the interesting expressions in the Bible that the prophets often used was that we are stiff-necked people.

Have you ever wondered how you get to be a stiff-necked person? It tells you here: you turn your back on the Lord, but not your face. What that means is that you keep smiling at the Lord and you keep saying all the right things and you keep making all the right noises, but in actual fact, you're working in your own way away from Him all the time.

In the end, Jeremiah says to the people, "You have even lost your ability to blush. You've even lost your ability to blush." Ruth Graham, on one occasion, read a manuscript of one of Billy's books. I forget which one it was, but when she had finished reading it, she looked up and said, "If God does not judge America, He will need to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah."

What does Jeremiah say? You look at the rest of his sermon and you'll find two words that keep on recurring there: turn and return. They are very similar in English; they're very similar in Hebrew. What Jeremiah is saying is this: the reform that Josiah is doing is skin deep. What we need is deep-down repentance.

Deep-down repentance is turning from what is contrary to God and returning to the Lord in a right attitude. Sisters and brothers, we need repentance—deep repentance—in order that we might not have reformation, but in order that we might have revival.

The two levels of repentance are the individual level of repentance, in the individuals who constitute the church, so that the church can go and be a prophetic voice to the culture in order that we might see our culture brought back to repentance. This is the message of Jeremiah to Judah. I believe it's the message of the prophetic church to America in these troubled times.

Guest (Male): Stuart, Josiah saw a nation in need of change. Sounds familiar. And he set about making changes. How can Christians today take a stand for what is right without hurting the message of Jesus? Too often, it seems that we, in our quest to be right, forget to be kind.

Stuart Briscoe: I love the way this question is phrased with the idea of we want to change things, but how can we do it in such a way that we don't hurt the message of Jesus? That really hits the nail on the head. Many people are somewhat embarrassed about some aspects of the Christian gospel, and they soft-pedal some parts of that.

The important thing to realize is that Jesus was described as somebody who was full of grace and truth. He didn't major on grace so that he backed off on the truth, and he didn't major on truth in such a way that he delivered it in an ungracious way.

The thing to do is this: stick with the truth, but be sensitive to the fact that people will react to it, and help them to work through what may be a negative reaction. Don't alter the truth, but be sensitive to how people will respond to it and help them with that.

Guest (Male): How can a person adjust their focus from what is material back onto what is spiritual?

Stuart Briscoe: We are both material and spiritual, so it's perfectly understandable that we think in both materialistic and in spiritual categories. Having said that, we are probably more inclined to think of the material because the material world is so very, very obvious. It is so visible and so tangible.

All our senses are attuned to it, and we spend every moment of our lives as a material person in a material world. It's not surprising that many people are much more materialistically oriented than spiritually oriented. How do we get a spiritual orientation?

One way we can start is by talking to people about their interest in material things and then ask them questions about how did they come by these material things. Paul asked this question, and it's a wonderful question: what do you have that you did not receive? That's a very simple way of beginning to get people moving away from thinking materialistically and starting to think spiritually.

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us today here on Telling the Truth. We pray today's message has helped you to experience life in all its fullness through Jesus Christ. When life's storms suddenly come your way, how do you respond? Do you doubt God's presence, questioning His concern for you?

Or do you see storms as part of God's plan for your life and rest assured He cares for you and is in control of all things? We want to help you trust in God's care and control in all the storms you face by sending you Jill Briscoe's message, "Weathering the Storms of Life," as well as a set of 12 beautifully designed scripture cards to encourage you in troubled times.

In "Weathering the Storms of Life," Jill teaches from the Gospel of Mark, examining the disciples' experience in a sudden storm to address the issues of suffering and faith, challenging you to examine your belief in God in the midst of trouble. Her teaching and the scripture cards will encourage you as you discover how you can be sure of God's love for you and His control over every circumstance, no matter how sudden, severe, or unexpected.

"Weathering the Storms of Life" and the set of 12 scripture cards are our thanks for your gift to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth. So request your copy when you give today. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388 or give online at tellingthetruth.org. Next time on Telling the Truth, it's more from the Briscoes about how you can experience abundant life in Christ when you open your life to be changed by God. We hope you'll listen then.