Do You Seek Great Things for Your Self?

Hello again. Thank you, Mr. Uranus. You know, sometimes the reality of our lives and our expectations about what our lives were going to be can be disconnected. There can be a little bit of a mismatch. Like, I thought maybe I would not be doing this right now. Or I thought by this point in my life I would be here. Or I would have this. Or I would have done something else. When a girl is young, she may dream of a dashing man on a white horse. Right? It comes to scoop her up and live in a beautiful castle. A young man might think about playing for the NBA or the NFL. Right? We all have these dreams. They're beautiful, right? And as we get older, our dreams mature and we desire fulfilling careers, free time to do fun things, and plenty of money to meet our needs. The white horse in the castle turns into a loving man with a job. Right? And a house. And we become a little bit more sophisticated in some of our dreams. But often as we get older, the reality of life hits us. That car gets a little bit older, but that car loan doesn't quite seem to go away.

And that career required a lot more work than we thought. Maybe it was not as interesting as we thought. And that loving man, well, unfortunately sometimes that man may not be as loving or as kind as we thought. And we can become very disappointed. When I was 18 years old, I had to give a speech during my high school graduation. And so I decided to look back at the class that had graduated from my high school 10 years before. I thought, you know, what kind of lessons can I learn from these 28-year-olds, right? These wise people who had spent 10 years out of high school. You know, what could I learn from their graduating class? So I went and interviewed several of the class. I found some of the class officers and I asked them, tell me about your friends and the ones you graduated with. Where are they now? What are they doing? It was shocking. It was stunning. I just, you know, the divorces, right? And these are 28-year-olds.

You know, the sort of the start and the stop and the depression and all sorts of things. Now, not to say that there weren't successful people in that class, but for an 18-year-old who's going to start his adult life, it was very sobering to realize, wow, you know, that could happen to me. That could happen to my friends, all my friends here in high school. You know, we have all these dreams and plans. And wow, could that actually happen to us?

I mean, I really asked that question. Now it's kind of silly to think about, well, yes, of course it will happen to you, right? Because that's kind of the way things sometimes turn out. It was a sobering lesson for me at that age to consider as I began my adult life. I wondered what was in store for me. How could I avoid the pitfalls and traps that the people who had gone before me had fallen into? And in my 33 years since I graduated from high school, I have seen many positive and inspiring examples of men and women who have overcome great odds in their life to achieve wonderful and beautiful things. But I've also seen the divorces, and I've seen the suicides, and I've seen the disillusionment. And that sometimes befalls us. How can we navigate? How can we connect our life expectations, those dreams and hopes that we have with the reality of our backgrounds, our education, our environments, where we come from? The hand, as it was said famously by President Eisenhower, the hand that we were dealt. And still live in a fulfilling and meaningful way.

Many times people, as I said, will look at their lives and they'll say, well, when I was 30, I thought I would be, and then you could fill in the blank, right? I thought I would be married, or I thought I would have a house, or I thought I would be, you know, this title, or I would have this much money in my, you know, my salary and so forth.

And we hit these milestones, right? You know, 30, 40. I was speaking with somebody who was going to be turning 60, and she said, 60 is the age when you just can't say you're not old anymore. You know, she's like, no, 60 is not old. Well, you know what? It's hard to deny that.

There's this, you know, what is the age when a woman can't wear stiletto heels anymore, right? Apparently that's age 50, if you didn't know that. Right? There's certain ages where it's just a little, you're just, you're kind of beyond where people think it's okay. So when you, you know, she was telling me, well, I'm turning 60, and how do I deal with this, and, you know, what does my life mean? And these things tend to come to our mind.

Today I want to examine this topic by looking at an example in Scripture of a man who struggled with mismatched expectations for his life, and the desire that he had to achieve certain things in his life that, as it turned out, he didn't achieve, or he couldn't achieve.

His story, his raw emotion of his life is recorded in Scripture, and I can, I believe it can provide some insight for us as we ask questions about where we are in our lives, and what our purpose and intent is for our life as we strive to, as we strive towards the kingdom of God.

You see, our views of material success, prosperity, body image, health, all these things are shaped by our environment, and sometimes we may not realize that we've been so influenced by society that our expectations may not be based on godly principles.

So today's message is titled, Do You Seek Great Things for Yourself?

Do you seek great things for yourself? And that's a quote from Scripture that we'll read here in a moment. Do you seek great things for yourself?

The 44th President of the United States was a man named Barack Obama. Probably heard of him. But I'll bet that 10 years ago, if I had said to you, oh, do you know what Barack means, or have you ever met somebody named Barack, you probably would say, I don't know what you're talking about. Because the word Barack is not a word that was really in our vocabulary until the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. The word Barack is a name that's derived from an Arabic word which means blessed.

And 2,600 years before the 44th President of the United States, there was another man whose name in Hebrew means blessed, but it's not pronounced Barak, it's pronounced Baruch. Why don't we look at Baruch in Jeremiah 45?

Jeremiah 45. We're going to read the story of Baruch.

The story of Baruch is a very interesting story.

And there's a specific chapter just devoted to Baruch and his feelings and emotions as he was struggling with something very, very difficult in his life. We're going to read Chapter 45, verses 1 through 5 together here.

It said, So this is verse 1, and actually there's a lot of really good information contained in verse 1. I know we tend to go through it very quickly, but we'll come back and look at all that great information that we just received in verse 1.

Oh, Baruch! Blessed.

And there's an exclamation point. Woe is me! This is not good!

He was depressed. He was upset. He was struggling. He had said God had even piled on to his difficulty.

And then it says, verse 4, This is what God says.

The title of the message today.

And that's the end of the chapter. And we just read that and go, what is he talking about? What is going on here? Why? You know, it's like we walked into the middle of the movie and there's a body on the floor and there's like somebody just closed the door and you're like, what happened? What's going on here? Well, let's examine this in a little bit of detail. Who was this Baruch person that we're referring to?

Turn a few pages over to Jeremiah 51, verse 59.

Let's try and get some context on who Baruch was. Jeremiah 51, verse 59 gives us a little bit about his family.

It says, Now, this is where that previous verse was very helpful. So, Sariah was Baruch's brother.

So, we're going to learn about Baruch's brother here.

The son of Mesiah. Now, there's another reference in 2 Chronicles 34a. You can write that down. There's a slight difference in the spelling.

There's some speculation that that may have been Baruch's.

That this Mesiah here may have been the governor of Judea. I'm not going to go into that, but the point is we're going to look at Sariah. We'll see that when he went with Zedekiah, the king of Judah, to Babylon in the fourth year of his reign, and Sariah was the quartermaster. So, Sariah had a very high position in the government of the time. So, Sariah had a high position. If we look at this family, what we see is this was a prominent family of Judea.

Baruch came from a prominent family of Judea, very well connected to the government. Jeremiah himself was very likely the son of Hilkaidiah, who had actually found the book of the law, buried in the temple somewhere, and brought it to Josiah. The fact that Baruch was Jeremiah's secretary, the fact that his brother was quartermaster, meant that Baruch was a man who came from a certain prominent family, and probably had certain expectations about his life. He was a scribe. That's what we learned from Jeremiah 45. And now, you know, a scribe, you think, well, you know, being a scribe, that's kind of a boring job. You sit there and you write things down. But at that time, if you were a scribe, that meant that you were a literate person. That means you could read and you could write. And that was a pretty significant thing. Not everybody could read or write, necessarily. And so, being a literate man from a prominent family, he probably had a lot of opportunities in front of him in his life. And yet, if we go back to Jeremiah 45 for a second, we understand that in the fourth year, as it says here, and the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim, Baruch is having some difficulties. Now, what's significant, as it says in verse 1, about the fourth year of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah? Well, the fourth year of Jehoiakim was a tumultuous time in the history of Judea. We won't turn there, but if you compare Daniel 1-1, you'll see that this is one year after Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, conquered Jerusalem the first time. And he set up this vast whole kingdom. So, you can imagine the United States is kind of going along, and then suddenly, we're conquered. And the president of the United States is removed, and a new person is brought in that the conquering country says, okay, that's now going to be your president. We're going to decide how your government is going to work. You can continue to operate as you were, but we're in charge now. So, this was one year after this had happened. It was a very difficult time. And if you can imagine, Daniel and his friends, they were actually taken from the royal court, and they were taken away. So, Baruch could have been in that same position. He might have been taken away as well. So, this was a very difficult time for Judea, and Baruch and his life expectations had probably been quite changed. In terms of what he thought might be going on. The war with the nation was engulfed in war previously. Certain members of the royal family and members of the government had been taken into captivity. And his life was not exactly going the way that he thought it would go. So, that's a little bit of context out of verse one. Now, the second question is, why was he suffering so much angst?

Was it just what I described to me? That would be enough, right? Most of us would be like, I need to calm down, right? I need to meditate. I need to pray. I need to trust in God. If our nation was taken over, and our government was removed, and our freedoms were removed, and people were deported into other countries, that might be enough stress for us. But there was more stress going on for him. And we can see this in Jeremiah 36. So, go over to Jeremiah 36, and let's see why he was so distressed. We can get an indication here from Jeremiah 36. We're going to read verses 1-8. Now, it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, that this word came to Jeremiah, the Lord. Okay, this is the same time. This is the same time period. We just read about the fourth year of Jehoiakim. Now we're here reading about the fourth year of Jehoiakim. So this is that same period of time. Verse 2, take a scroll of a book and write on it all the words that I've spoken to you against Israel, against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah, even to this day. Now, you've got to imagine here, you've got Jeremiah and Josiah. They are contemporaries. These are two young men. If you remember, Josiah was eight years old, right, when he became king. And Jeremiah and Josiah were contemporaries going through this. What is being described here in verse 2 would have been 13 years into the reign of Josiah. So Josiah would have now been 21 years old. And Jeremiah had been called to preach 24 years before that. So Jeremiah has been preaching now for these 24 years. And now what is being revealed is that Jeremiah is being told to write down all those prophecies. He's going to write them down. It may be, verse 3, that the house of Judah will hear all the adversities which I purpose to bring upon them, and that everyone may turn from his evil way, that I may forgive their iniquity, and their sin. And then Jeremiah called Baruch, the son of Neria. And Baruch wrote on a scroll of book, at the instruction of Jeremiah, all the words of the Lord which he had spoken to him. So Baruch, the scribe now, is going to take, and he's going to write down every one of these prophecies, this whole prophecy. And this prophecy, by the way, we're reading it, right? Baruch wrote this down. That's what we're reading what he wrote, at least a version we'll see in a moment.

Okay, that's his job. That's fine. He's been with Jeremiah for a long time. We're not sure exactly how long. Again, Jeremiah's been preaching for about 24 years by this time. But now, notice what it says in verse 5. And Jeremiah commanded Baruch, saying, I am confined. I cannot go into the house of the Lord. I can't go and actually read this.

You go, therefore, and read from the scroll, which you have written at my instruction, the words of the Lord, and the hearing of the people, and the Lord's house on the day of fasting, and you shall also read them in the hearing of all Judah who come from their cities. Now we get a little bit of an idea of what's going on. Now, some commentators will say that what we see in Jeremiah 45 with Baruch is that he is just sort of the weight of these prophecies and the terrible things that are going to befall the country.

If you had heard that, if you had heard all the terrible things that were going to happen in this country, you would be depressed. You would be upset. And so some commentators will point to that. But there's also this aspect that this is not necessarily what he thought his life would be.

Because if he thinks that he's going to continue along with his prominent role in the government and so forth, and as a scribe, and... Well, this is gone now, because now what he's going to do is he's going to speak truth to power. And when you speak truth to power, even today, you generally get your head cut off, right? And you definitely got your head cut off 2,600 years ago, because they didn't want to hear treasonous things.

And he's going to speak treasonous things. He's going to say the country is going to be destroyed, and God is not with the country. And if you're in charge, you don't want people saying that, because that undermines your authority.

So you kill those people. So Baruch is now going to be put in a very, very difficult situation. Not only is he going to have to write it, which he did, but now he's going to have to speak it. And so it says here in verse 7, It may be that they will present their supplication before the Lord, and everyone will turn from his evil way. For great is the anger and the fury that the Lord has pronounced against his people.

And Baruch, the son of Neria, did according to all that Jeremiah the prophet commanded him, reading from the book the words of the Lord and the Lord's house. Now, verse 9 gives us a really interesting indication of what actually happened, because that kind of concluded. Baruch did what he was supposed to do. He fulfilled his mission. But notice verse 9, Now it came to pass in the fifth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month that they proclaimed a fast before the Lord to all the people in Jerusalem, to all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem.

And then Baruch read from the book the words of Jeremiah, in the house of the Lord, in the chamber of Gomeria, the son of Shapen, the scribe, in the upper court at the entry of the new gate of the Lord's house, in the hearing of all the people. You see, there was a gap of time between when Jeremiah told him what he had to do and when he actually did it. Jeremiah 45, what we hear and what we see about woe is me, that's in that gap.

That's during that gap. So he has a mission, and that mission is not what he thought his mission was going to be. And he is wrestling with that mission. He's wrestling with the words themselves and the grief that he feels for his nation.

But he's also probably dealing with his own concerns about going up, because after he reads this, that likely was going to be the end for him. That was going to be the end. But that's why we see in Jeremiah 45 that his life would be given to him as a prize. His life would be spared. God assured him, I will spare your life. Go and do what you need to do. Verse 11, When Micaiah, the son of Gomeriah, the son of Shapen, heard all the words of the Lord from the book, he then went down to the king's house.

So basically what was happening was they were reading into the temple. The king is kind of up in another place. He's reading it in the temple. And so this person hears it, and he goes down to the king's house, into the scribe's chamber, and there all the princes were sitting. Elishima, the scribe, Deliah, the son of Sharmiah, Elnethon, the son of Akbar, Gomorrah, the son of Shapen, Zedekiah, the son of Haniah, and all the princes.

So this is basically the rulers of the country. They're all there. And then Micaiah declared to them all the words that he had heard when Baruch read the book and the hearing of the people. Therefore, all the princes sent Jehudi, the son of Nathania, the son of Shelmia, the son of Khushi to Baruch, saying, Take in your hand the scroll from which you have read in the hearing of the people and come. And so Baruch, the son of Neria, took the scroll in his hand, and he carried it to them.

And they said to him, Sit down now and read it in our hearing. So not only did he have to stand up in front of all the people, probably quite worried of what would happen, now he's going to take it and he's going to read it again in the hearing of the princes. Now it happened when they had heard all the words, they looked in fear from one to another and said to Baruch, We will surely tell the king all these words.

And they asked Baruch, saying, Tell us now, how did you write all these words at his instruction?

And so Baruch answered, he proclaimed with his mouth all these words to me, and I wrote them with ink in the book. And then the princes said to Baruch, Go and hide you and Jeremiah and let no one know where you are.

This is amazing! Baruch actually read it twice, and the princes, instead of killing him, said, You know what? You go hide.

Because as soon as the king finds out about this, and we have an obligation to tell the king, he's going to come after you.

And so in verse 20, they went to the king and into the court and they stored the scroll in the chamber of Elisha, by the scribe, and told all the words in the hearing of the king. And so the king sent Jehudi to bring the scroll and he took it from Elisha by the scribe's chamber. And Jehudi read it in the hearing of the king and in the hearing of all the princes who stood beside the king.

And now the king was sitting in the winter house in the ninth month with a fire burning on the hearth before him.

This would have been December. Jerusalem at that time is kind of like here. It's not particularly cold, but it does get cold. It can get 30s and 40s at night. And so he's sitting there in the month of December and he's got a fire to kind of keep him warm. And it happened when Jehudi had read three or four columns that the king cut it with the scribe's knife and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth.

And so all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth. And yet they were not afraid, nor did they tear their garments, the king nor any of the servants who heard all these words.

Nevertheless, Elnethondelia Gomerry implored the king not to burn the scroll, but he would not listen to them. And the king commanded Jermiel the king's son, Saria the son of Eziel, and Chelmia the son of Abdell, to seize Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet. But the Lord hid them.

So now we have a little bit of context why he was suffering so much angst. He was suffering so much angst because he knew that what he was doing was, as they say, a career-ending move. This was it. This is the end of the line. He was either going to run, he was going to become traitorous and say, No, I can't do this. Or he was going to do what God had asked him to do, which was to write this down and to read it before everyone. So how does this apply to us? Let's go back to Jeremiah 45.

Jeremiah 45. And let's look in verse 3.

He says, Woe is me now! For the Lord has added grief to my sorrow, I fainted in my sighting, and I find no rest. So let me ask you, now that you know why Baruch said this, what was going on in his life, what was behind these emotions, woe is me.

You know, do we sometimes say the same thing about our lives? Do we sometimes say woe is me, God? Why have you allowed this to happen in my life? Why is this happening to me? God, why have you brought these things on to me? Aren't I serving you the way that you want me to serve you? What's happening? What's going on? I think yes. And very likely Baruch's life was not going the way he had anticipated.

His nation had gone into captivity. You know, all the dreams that he had growing up had probably been changed or dashed in some way. And he just wasn't going the way that he wanted. Now, there's nothing wrong with making plans. There's nothing wrong with having dreams, with having desires for good things. That's why it's interesting that it actually says, do you seek great things for yourself? Well, of course he did. We all do. We all have great things. We have great desires for our lives. There's nothing wrong with that. We have to make those plans. But the question is, is it just about us? Is it just about our own desires? Because that's what's really going on here in this discussion. Because Baruch had these desires and God says, do not seek them. Don't seek them.

Because I have something bigger for you. That's what's implied in here. I have something bigger and more important for you to do. And I'll take care of you. And it says here in verse 5, I will bring adversity on all flesh, but I will give you your life to you as a prize. Now, you might have a translation that says, pray. That's an Old English word, which means a spoil of war. That is to say, you're going to go through a great deal of difficulty and tribulation, and you're going to move around, and you're going to go places you never thought. But I'm going to give you your life like a king takes a spoil of war. Right? The king musters an army, goes out to battle, conquers a city, and in that city there's gold. And there's great things of value, and there's art. You know, what do the Nazis do when they plundered Europe? They stole all the art. That was a pray. It was a prize of war. And they stole that art, and they're still finding that art all over Europe, found in caves, and they find in museums and people's homes. He said, I'm going to give you your life like a king takes a spoil of war. It's a precious thing that they're going to take, and they're going to put in a place of honor. That's what I'm going to do for you. Your life is going to be like that. So there's nothing wrong with seeking that. It's just that God had something bigger in mind for Him. He had something more important for Him to do. What are God's plans for your life? What are God's plans for your life? What is driving your decision-making? Is it great things for yourself or great things for God? Are you asking for the right job at the right time, at the right salary, in the right place? Or are you going after what feels good and looks good right now? Are you staying in a job that's not right for you because you're afraid of change? In other words, could fear be driving your decision? For those married, are you taking your marriage to another level of understanding and depth through self-examination against God's Word and the power of the Holy Spirit? Or do you say, well, you can't teach an old dog new tricks? He's not going to change. It's been X number of years. So it's kind of the way it is. Levelless marriage. Are we willing and committed to discover our part in the problem? Going deeper into our own self-examination, asking God to reveal to us, not the other person, what we have to change. For those who are single, you'd be moaning the lack of good prospects.

How does it go? The odds, the goods are odd. The odds are good, but the goods are odd, I think, is something like that. Right? Yeah, there's people out there, but strange. They're not for me. Are we bemoaning that? Or are we making ourselves ready? Are we making ourselves ready so that when that right person comes along, you'll be ready? I often joke with my wife. My wife is almost six years older. I said, you know, when you were 22, I was 16. I wasn't ready. God had to make you wait a little longer. Right? Who knows? Who knows? Are you serving in the congregation? Are you looking for God to guide every step of your life, including service to the church, service to community, how you serve at work and what you do at work? Are you taking personal responsibility for your decisions? I believe Jeremiah 45 shares a portrait of a man who was coming face to face with the reality of his life. He was coming face to face with it. This is the way it's going to be. What you thought it was going to be in the past, that's not the way it's going to be. This is the way it's going to be. And I'm going to lead you from here. And I'm going to take care of you. And he stood up to that test and he did the right thing. Let's go over in Jeremiah 42 and just see that. Let's see kind of an indication that he did the right thing. We read about how he read this over and over and so forth to the princes. But look in Jeremiah 42 verse 11. Jeremiah 42 verse 11, what's going on in Jeremiah 42 is that after all this has taken place, there's a remnant of the people of Judah. And the leaders are saying, what are we going to do? And they said, we're going to flee to Egypt. We're going to go down to Egypt. Because the king in Egypt is going to take care of us. We're going to take refuge with the king of Egypt.

Now, you know, it had been 900 years since God had taken them out of Egypt. God didn't want them to go back down to Egypt. God had a different plan. And so in Jeremiah 42 verse 11, it says, do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, of whom you are afraid. Do not be afraid of him, says the Lord, for I am with you to save you and deliver you from his hand. And in verse 13 it says, but if you say we will not dwell in this land, disobeying the voice of the Lord your God, saying, no, but we will go to the land of Egypt where we shall see no war, nor hear the sound of the trumpet, nor be hungry for bread. And there we will dwell. And then he goes on to describe what's going to happen. They were not supposed to go to Egypt. That's what Jeremiah told them. But of course, what did they do? They went to Egypt. They went down to Egypt. And so we see in chapter 43 verse 1, Now it happened when Jeremiah had stopped speaking to all the people, all the words of the Lord their God, for which the Lord their God had sent him to them, all these words, that Azariah, the son of Hosea, Jonah and the son of Kara, and all the proud men spoke, saying to Jeremiah, you speak falsely. We don't believe you. We're going to Egypt. We don't care what you say. You speak falsely.

The Lord our God has not sent you to say, do not go to Egypt to sojourn there. Verse 3, But Baruch, the son of Neria, has set you against us to deliver us into the land of the Chaldeans, that they may put us to death or carry us away captive to Babylon. You see, Baruch by that point had reached a certain stature. Jeremiah was an older man by this point, and Baruch was probably younger. And so they said, this is not you. You're being influenced by your secretary, Baruch. You're being influenced by him. He's inciting you to say this because we know this is what Baruch wants. That tells you the kind of stature that Baruch had reached by that point. This was many years later. So Baruch had been successful. He had earned a reputation as a man who was faithful to Jeremiah and a man who had some stature and influence. Baruch took ownership for his life. He took ownership for the words that he said, and he earned a reputation because of it. The question then, this is the final question, will you be successful in fulfilling God's purpose for your life? Will you be able to follow this example that we see here of Baruch? The question is, are you ready to listen to God and go beyond what you think is right for your life? Because we have dreams. But are they the right dreams? We have hopes, but are they the right hopes? We have expectations, but are they the right expectations? Go over to Judges 21 verse 25 and let's read something that I think is so applicable to our time. Judges 21-25. Judges 21-25 is the final verse of the book of Judges, a terrible time in the history of the nation of Israel. It says, In those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. You know, that's the spirit of our times. That's the zeitgeist that we live in right now. Do we seek advice and counsel when we make decisions? I've observed over the years that many people do not. Many people will kind of talk a good talk. They'll say, yes, yes, we'll do that. But when the time comes and the excitement is there and the emotion is there, people just make decisions. You're like, why did you do that? What seemed like a good thing to do at the time? And I'm not talking about talking to the ministry, per se. Right? This is not like, why didn't you talk to a minister? This is just talking to anybody who's got some good knowledge of what that decision is about. I've heard it said, it's my life, it's my decision. Right? That's the zeitgeist of the time. It's my life, it's my decision. Well, that's true. It is your life, it is your decision. You have to take ownership for it. But making good decisions requires a multitude of counsel. Financial decisions? Probably ask a financial expert. Maybe a couple. Career decisions? Go talk to people who are experts in that field. I was encouraged to see at the Ambassador Bible College, they're now offering classes on career choices. And that's actually part of what they're building. And during the Winter Family Weekend, there's more discussion and there's networking opportunities as people build out their careers.

Because as we truly seek God's plan for us, we show Him and we reveal to Him that we have an open mind. That we're not just going to go do what we've always wanted to do, what we thought about was a good idea at the time. We're going to really objectively look at that decision from all angles. And even if we're emotionally connected to that, we're going to step back from that.

Anybody ever bought a new car before? Walk on that lot? What's that salesperson going to do? That salesperson wants to emotionally connect you to that car. They're going to emotionally connect you to that car. And how do they do it? They're going to make sure you spend as much time on that lot as they can get away with. The longer you're on that lot, the better chance they have of selling you that car because that's more emotional connection.

That car's going to be so nice. You look at your other car. You're just emotionally connected to that car and that's what they want. Is that the best decision? Who are you talking to? The guy who wants to sell you the car. Do you think that person is objective? No. They're not objective. Do they want you to go home and think about it? No. If you go home and think about it, you're like, that's a big payment. That's more car than I want. That's more expensive than my budget.

So you've got to step back from that emotional connection that we have, or that we have, that we can build. Baruch did not do what was right in his own eyes. We know that because what was right in his own eyes would have been to be sort of a quartermaster, like his brother, of a vassal Judean state of Babylon.

That would have been just fine. He didn't have to prove anything. He could have just gone along. But instead, he stepped out in faith and spoke truth to power. He put his life at risk to do it. I think it's time for us as the Church of God to stop doing what looks right in our own eyes and exercise the mighty power of God's Spirit to actually make some decisions that might be contrary to that emotional connection we might have to some thing or some action or some decision.

Look over in Luke 11, verse 2-4. Luke 11 tells us how to pray. Luke 11, verse 2 says, So he said to them, When you pray, say, and we know this, right? But let's read it just again. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us day by day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. When do we get to ask for what we want?

Where does that fit here? Okay, our Father in heaven, I have something that I need to talk to you about. I really think I need to get married. It doesn't say that. He says, Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. You just, you really got to kind of shoehorn it in, right? What we typically say is, give us this day our daily bread.

So we say, okay, guide me today to do the things that I should be doing, and I've got some decisions that I've got to make, and I've got a big presentation, and tonight I'm going to be having this special event. So we kind of talk through our day with God. That's good. So there's nothing wrong with that. But there really isn't sort of that special moment that Jesus gives us in this model of prayer, where we say, Father, please give me X.

It doesn't really kind of fit. It's, your will be done. It's your kingdom come. It's, give us this day our daily bread, and help us to forgive others that hurt us, because, you know, you forgive us ours. That's what prayer is about. Instead, why don't we say, I have hopes and dreams, God, but your word says that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And so what I want is probably influenced by inappropriate social media I consume, my parents' experiences, and my own insecurities and fears, and I'm probably just going to make a mess of my life if I don't have you guiding me.

So let's start by forgetting all the things that I think about, and I want to follow your instructions and pray that your will would be done in my life.

That's probably a better place to start with what we want. How powerful would that be? You know, some people think that being in God's church is a hindrance to their aspirations in life. I've heard this over the years, you know, it's kind of, you know, it's that Sabbath, and you can't work, you know, and you've got to take the feast off, and you know, you've got to pay this tithe, and it just gets in the way, and it's a big time commitment, right? And, you know, all of us, we're not kind of connected people, you know, like the kind of people I want to be. And so, you know, people do that. But I just, I think that is so misguided.

I'll tell you that God says that He's going to take the weak of the world, and He's going to blow their minds. Okay, you look at 1 Corinthians 1, verse 27, that's what I'm quoting. That's a different translation, okay? You won't find, blow their minds in there.

But if you look at 1 Corinthians 1, 27, it says the word, He's going to shame. Now that word in Greek can actually mean put to utter confusion. That's actually in Strong's. Put to utter confusion. So when I think about put to utter confusion, I read blow their minds, right? They're like, what's going on? This person? How did this person get to do that? That's what they said about the disciples and the apostles. Who are these men? These are not learned men, right? That's what God is going to do with us. Instead, when people leave the church, I think they remove the appropriate boundaries of resting one day in seven. You can find all sorts of consultants who say you got to drive, derive boundaries.

You got to set boundaries for your life. If you don't set boundaries for your life, people are going to run over you. You're going to burn out one day in seven rest. It's a boundary in our life.

Taking a break once a year from a 24-7 world. You know, I talked to people at work before. They would never take vacation, right? I'm going to cash out my vacation. That is a recipe for burnout. That's a recipe for an early death. People need to take some time off. From practicing sound financial management, saving, and planning, it's built into God's plan.

From having an objective benchmark for behavior, as provided by this book. Imagine, like, a book that tells you, kind of like, how you should speak. You know, I'm not going to swear. I just need to have my word be my word, right? Having an objective benchmark for our behavior that we can judge our behavior against. By having a community of believers, right? You go talk to some psychologist and say, well, you know, do you have a community that you're in?

You know, of support? Well, no, I don't. Why not? Well, because I left them, right? We have a community here that is loving and encouraging and supports us. And we can talk to people in a safe place. People want to blame the church. They want to blame the ministry for their own inability to fundamentally rise to the challenge of living in a modern world.

It's hard. It's hard out there. Am I perfect? Is the church perfect? No. Mistakes have been made, certainly. But that doesn't mean the church is to blame for our inability to meet certain expectations we had in our life, about our life. It takes time to understand the total picture. Are we going to blame, shame, and disclaim God's word and church because of these things? Because we're disappointed with our lives? I've heard this.

I've heard it. It's like, yeah, this, you know, and it was the church. Well, no, it wasn't the church. That's an easy blame game. Or are we going to claim and reclaim the promises that God gives to us that He will never leave us? He just may have had a different plan for you than what you had for you. That's all. Just like Baruch, He maybe just had a different plan for you. It's time to step up and get involved and take responsibility and start making changes that are consistent with God's will, as we just read in Luke 11, with God's kingdom, with God's daily bread for us, with forgiving those people that might have hurt us in the past and moving on.

That's what Luke 11 says. Our lives are very likely not the way we expected because we too live at the end time. We live in a time very similar. Things don't necessarily go the same way as we might have thought. You know, the Scripture doesn't tell us what happened to Baruch. We were in Jeremiah 43-44. They did go down to Egypt. Jerome, you probably heard the name Jerome, a famous scholar of the 4th century, a Catholic scholar translated the Scriptures into Latin.

He speculated that he died in Egypt, but he didn't have any more information than we have. There's an apocryphal that is a disputed book called the Book of Baruch. In the Book of Baruch, it says that he died in Babylon. That he went back to Babylon and he died in Babylon.

So we're not sure. Yet many, including the Church of God, believe that this promise that we read in Jeremiah 45, this promise of being a prize, a spoil of war, would mean that he could not have lived his entire life in captivity. That his life was given to him as a prize, which means he would be given his freedom. And he would not be killed because of the actions that he had taken there.

The Church of God is historically taught that Jeremiah and Baruch, along with the daughters of the royal line of David, mentioned in Jeremiah 41.10, you can write that down if you want to see the daughters are mentioned there, were granted their freedom by Nebuchadnezzar when Nebuchadnezzar came and took that part of Egypt, where they had fled to. And they sailed to Spain, and then Ireland, transplanting the Davidic dynasty to Ireland.

And of course, the Irish legends and the discussion of the prophecies of modern day Israel is not my message. I just mention it because God had different plans for Baruch. I don't think Baruch could have possibly imagined that he would end up sailing through the Mediterranean to Spain and Ireland when he grew up growing up in the Middle East.

And that's a very interesting discussion that we could have later. Very likely Baruch was blessed, because that's what his name means, with freedom, with long life, and with purpose as he yielded to God, not seeking great things for himself, but great things in furtherance to God's plan. I hope we can learn from his example.

Thank you.