Jacob's Trouble

Observing the Feast of Trumpets, and on that day we'll be talking about the meaning of that day in God's plan. We'll be talking about the return, the triumphant return, of Jesus Christ to this earth who establishes Kingdom. We'll be talking about the resurrection of the dead and the victory over death that Jesus Christ made possible. And we'll be talking about things that the heavens have been waiting for from the foundation of the world, for the time that Jesus Christ would return and the age of man would be over, and the Kingdom of God would be established on earth forever and ever and ever. But leading up to that time, we know that there is a time of trouble that is going to be be befall the nations of Israel, the nations and really all the whole world before the return of Christ. A time of chaos, a time of confusion, a time of violence that the world has not seen the likes of.

You know the history of the world. They have seen some pretty amazing things in the wrong sense of the word as far as what people can do and what dictators can do to people. We have people like Adolf Hitler, Angus Kahn, Stalin over in Russia who are just merciless with people and had no regard for human life at all. And yet the Bible says, and Christ himself prophesies, that before his return, the world is going to descend into that same type situation but even worse. Let's go over to Matthew 24. Matthew 24. And of course this is the Olivet prophecy. And as you progress through chapter 24, Jesus Christ lets us know the type of things that are going to befall the earth and route to his return. In verse 12, for instance, he says, because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will wax cold. It's going to be a time, a good time, as far as economically and maybe even peacefully. There will be a time when people say peace and safety, but lawlessness will abound. And people will depart from the norms of morality, norms of laws that seem even natural, and gravitate toward the unnatural in a time where it will just become apathetic and complacent and allow those things to happen to them. So he warns us not to do that. In verse 14, he says, the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. So we live in an age for the first time in man's history that the gospel really can be preached in all the nations, literally all the nations, around the world through the internet and through cable TV setups that we have today. And it is preached, and it is available to everyone through that.

And then he talks about the abomination of desolation, fleeing, and the things that we should do. And down in verse 21 of Matthew 24, he says, for then there will be great tribulation, great tribulation, such has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, known or ever shall be. Everything that you've seen, everything that you've witnessed, everything you've read about in history books that you've seen movies about, worse than that, a worse time than what we have seen, as the world sinks into depravity, sinks into violence, sinks into a state of unnatural, or not even natural affection for one another. And unless those days were shortened, Christ says, no flesh would be saved, but for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened. So he says that there's a time coming, a tough time, before his return, a time unlike any that we have experienced, or that any generation of mankind has experienced. Daniel prophesied the same thing if we turn back to the book of Daniel, and in chapter 12, Daniel 12 and verse 1, as you read through chapter 11, you know at the end of the chapter there, it talks about the king of the north, the kings and the powers that will be at that time, and what they will be doing as they enter a time of war. In verse 12, verse 1, it says, At that time Michael shall stand up, the great prince, who stands watch over the sons of your people, and there will be a time of trouble, a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation, even to that time. The very same words that Jesus Christ said, there will be a time of trouble coming, but he says, at that time Daniel, your people will be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. It's for the end time. Down in verse 4, it says, Daniel, shut up the word, seal the book until the time of the end, and then he tells us what the time of the end will be like. Many will run to and fro, knowledge will be increased, and we all know that we live in that age. We can go anywhere we want. We can hop in a plane and be on the other side of the world in less than a day. We can hop in a car and be literally hundreds of miles away in no time at all, comparatively. We can go wherever we want. We can hit on the internet, and we can find references, and we can find information that we didn't even know was available 20-25 years ago. We certainly live in a time that the Bible would describe as the time of the end. Don't know exactly when Jesus Christ is returning. Don't know exactly when the Great Tribulation will begin, but we certainly live in a time that is defined here in the Bible. Down in verse 7, Daniel writes, I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the river when he held up his right hand and his left hand to heaven, and he swore by him who lives forever that it shall be for a time, times, and half a time, three and a half years, length for Great Tribulation, and when the power of the Holy People has been completely shattered, all these things shall be finished. When the power of the Holy People has been completely shattered, nothing left for them to look at, know where they can look and say, we have power left here, or we can do this, or we can do that, completely shattered. Now, we know the word holy means set apart. People who are set apart for God's purpose, usually holy, means who are these people? Who are these people that are going to endure a time of trouble, a time of trouble worse than anything the world has ever seen? We can back up to Jeremiah's prophecy in Jeremiah 30.

And as we are turning to Jeremiah 30, I'll remind you that Jeremiah prophesied after the ancient kingdom of Israel was captive. They had been long gone by the time he was prophesying. So when we read in Jeremiah's prophecies about Israel and Judah, I mean he was prophesying to Judah, but when he was talking about Israel, they were already gone. So his prophecies are for another time, but let's look at verse 3 of chapter 30 here. It says, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that I will bring back from captivity my people Israel and Judah. Well, that's never happened. Israel was taken captive. They've never come back to their promised land. In fact, they've lost their identity. They lost everything. But it says, but the prophecy is the days are coming, they're going to be brought back. So we know it's not a time, something that's been fulfilled already. It hasn't happened, but it will happen in the future. I'll bring back my people Israel and I will cause them to return to the land that I gave to their fathers and they shall possess it. Now these are the words that the eternal spoke concerning Israel and Judah. Both nations, one already gone, one already part of history, one already carried off captive, and someone else was inhabiting the land that God had given them. Thus says the Lord, we have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of pace. Dread. Something's going on. It's not a peaceful time. It's an awful time. It's an awful time, further defined by, see, look and see whether a man is ever in labor with child. Why do I see every man with his hands on his loins like a woman in labor and all faces turn pale? When I look and see what's going on with them, when they see what's going on, all the color drains out of their face. It's a horrible time. It's something that's ahead of you and me, whether we stay in the church or not. It's not just upon the spiritual people of God because God has two people we see that he will be working with. We've got a physical nation of Israel that God still loves and that God says he will bring back to the place that he would that the land that he gave them. And we have spiritual Israel. You and me, the people that God has called, that we've received his Holy Spirit and that he's working with as well, both special to God, both set apart to God. Why do I see every man with his hands on the lanes like a woman in labor and all faces turn pale for that day is great so that none is like it? And it is the time of Jacob's trouble. Daniel talked about a coming time of trouble. It's the time of Jacob's trouble, but he will be saved out of it. A time of Jacob's trouble. Well, let's go back to the beginning of the Bible and let's look at this people that are called Jacob for just a moment because, you know, before the world was ever formed, God knew what the history of the earth was going to be. Jesus Christ was going to come. He was going to die for our sins. He knew that Jesus Christ would return. We knew that he knew that there would be a kingdom set up. Jesus Christ prophesied there would be a great tribulation. He knew what the pattern of man would be under the sway of Satan. And back in Genesis, I'm going to actually go to Deuteronomy 33, but I'm just going to remind you in Genesis 49, when Israel, Jacob, was blessing his sons, he said, this is what will befall you in the latter days. Moses also talked about the prophecies for Jacob's sons. Let's look at Deuteronomy 33.

Deuteronomy 33. We'll pick it up in verse 13.

He goes through all of them here, but let's pick up on Joseph because Joseph is different than the rest of the sons here. Of Joseph, he said, blessed of the Lord is his land. With the precious things of heaven, with the dew, and the deep lying beneath, with the precious fruits of the sun, with the precious produce of the months, with the best things of the ancient mountains, with the precious things of the everlasting hills, with the precious things of the earth and its fullness.

You have a picture here of the nations that will descend from Joseph of a beautiful land, a land that is richly blessed, a land that has everything that they could possibly want. The riches of heaven, the riches of the earth, they have wealth, they have food, they have plenty. It all comes from God's hand. A nice place to live, a pleasant place to live, much like where we live today.

They have one more thing that is crucial to their well-being. They have the favor of him who dwelt in the bush. And you know who it is who dwelt in the bush? It was Jesus Christ. He dwelt in the bush, and this nation, this people, Joseph, have the favor of God. He has rained down their blessing, his blessings on them. He has made their country possible. He has given them a rich and full life. Let the blessing come on the head of Joseph and on the crown of the head of him who was separate from his brothers, set apart. He was the one who was sold into slavery. He was the one who was separated from his family. He's the one who served quite a purpose, and God was watching him and blessed him. His glory is like a firstborn bull, his horns like the horns of the wild ox. Together with them, he shall push the peoples to the ends of the earth. They are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh. They will be a force on earth. They will be a power on earth. They will be someone, nations, that the world looks up into, up to, in the latter days. And they will have God's blessing, which will be the main reason that they are so blessed or so well regarded. Go back to Genesis 48.

Genesis 48. Here we have the occasion where Jacob, Israel, is going to bless Joseph's sons. And you remember the story, so I'm not going to go into the details of it, but let's look at verse 14 of Genesis 48. It says, Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh's head, guiding his head knowingly for Manasseh was the first born. And he blessed Joseph and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has fed me all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads. Let my name be named upon them. Call them Israel. Call them Jacob, these descendants of Joseph, Ephraim, and Manasseh. And let the name of my fathers also Abraham and Isaac be on them, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. Let them become a great people. If we drop down to verse 19, after Joseph tries to correct Israel with the hands that are going on, and Jacob knew what he was doing, in verse 19, his father refused to move his hands from one head to the other.

Excuse me.

But his father refused and said, I know my son, I know, he also will become a people, and he also shall be great, but truly his brother will be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.

So when you read the blessings on the sons of Joseph and on the ones whose Jacob's name was put on, when you read what the prophecy would be, that they would be a great nation in the end time, and they would be a great company of nations, it's like reading the history of America and the British Empire. In the last few centuries, the world has been dominated by the British Empire and America. No nation ever greater, ever greater in might than America or wealth, they say. No empire greater than the British Empire.

God's blessing would be on these lands in the end time, and those those lads that Jacob blessed, they would endure a time of trouble, a time of trouble. There would come a time when he would take the great blessings that he wanted them to have, great blessings that you and I enjoy now, and they would disappear. Let's go to the book of Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy 4, as Moses is counseling, if you will, the people of Israel as they're about to cross over into the Promised Land, he has some stern warnings for them. He reminds them of what God has done for them. He reminds them to be mindful of the statues, the commandments, the ordinances that God has given them. He tells them to be careful to observe them all, and he tells them that God is going to bless them. He's leading them to a land of milk and honey, a place that is going to be a great land. But there is a warning to themselves, and let's pick it up in in verse 23. He says, Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God which he made with you, and you make for yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which the Lord your God has forbidden you. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. He wants you to only see him as God. He wants there to be only one God in your life, and that's him. Not the chief God with other little gods, one God in your life. When you beget children and grandchildren and have grown old in the land and act corruptly and make a carved image in the form of anything and do evil and decide of the Lord your God to provoke him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day that you will soon utterly perish from the land which you cross over the Jordan to possess. You will not prolong your days in it, but you will be utterly destroyed, and the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. He's being very specific. If you go away from him, if you transgress against him, if you forsake him, if you forget him, this is what's going to happen, Israel. This is what's going to happen. People who I have richly blessed, people who I have separated out and called a holy people and want them to be a people special to the world around them and an example to the people of the world around them. I will scatter you, I will make you few in number, and there you will serve God's the work of men's hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. You'll be scattered. You'll lose it all. All your power, all your wealth, all your advantages. In a strange land, many of you dead, but you will still be there. But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things that come upon you, notice, in the latter days. When all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the Lord your God and obey his voice, he won't forsake you or destroy you nor forget the covenant of your fathers which he swore to them.

Even back in Deuteronomy, God was instructing Moses what was going to happen to Israel even in the latter days. These things were going to happen to them intermittently, the nation of Israel, because they forsook God and they were taken into captivity. But in the latter days, the same things would happen. They'd be left few in number. But when they turned to God with all their heart and all their mind, not just in words but with their heart, all of it, they'd find him and he would bring him back. Go forward to Deuteronomy 32. It's called the Song of Moses and it has quite a message for Israel then, as Moses said it. Quite a message for us today because what God says for one generation, he says for all of us. Let's look at verse 13 of Deuteronomy 32. Speaking of Israel, it says, verse 15 another name for Israel Jacob When he became comfortable, when he became just living life, he forgot God.

You know, sometimes we talk about our trials.

We do have trials that confront us, trials of health, trials of finance, trials of relationships, trials, whatever they may be. And in those trials, it drives us to God, drives us to God, and we realize how much we need Him because some of them we just cannot fix at all.

But you know what I think the greatest trial of all is? Good times. Good times. When we have plenty, when our jobs are going well, when we have resources at our disposal, when we have food aplenty, we can go anywhere we want, do whatever we want, life is good. We're at peace.

We have no one that's challenging us, no one that's watching what we're doing. We're not getting accosted when we go to Sabbath services or the Holy Days. People don't persecute us because of what we believe. When times are good, it's easy to forget God and just go with the punch, go with the flow, and forget about Him. And that's what's happened to Israel here. I gave you all these things, but you forsook me. When lawlessness abounded, you just kind of went with it. You just kind of thought, hey, times are good, and you weren't paying attention to what was going on. Verse 16, they provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods. They had other things they began to worship. With abominations, they provoked Him to anger. They sacrificed to demons, not to God. To gods they did not know. To new gods, new arrivals, that your fathers didn't fear. Of the rock who begot you, you are unmindful, and you have forgotten the God who fathered you. We drop down to verse 28. God goes on through Moses and says, They are a nation void of counsel. There isn't any understanding in them. Oh, that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end. If they would pay attention to what is going to happen to them later and in the latter end. How could one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their rock had sold them, and the Lord had surrendered them? How could one chase a thousand? How could two put ten thousand to flight? Well, we've kind of seen that in some cases today, haven't we? It just takes one man in a seat of 50,000 people, or 100,000 people that are watching a football game. Let someone pull something out and start firing, and you will see how many thousands of people are running because of one man who is there firing a gun.

How many would be there if two were there? We see it on around us, somewhere along the line, when a nation forgets God, forsakes him. He withdraws his blessings and terror. Terror begins to be part of what is going on in that country. God says, be mindful of what will befall you in the latter end.

Well, Jacob, the people of Jacob, have been a success story a few times. They were successful and wealthy during the days of the ancient kingdom of Israel. They did exactly what God warned them not to do. They forsook God, and they had to go into captivity, and they lost it all. And then in the latter days, the blessings that he said would come upon Jacob again have come.

And the company of nations and the nations have become the greatest, the greatest that the world has ever seen. But he says, there's a time coming of Jacob's trouble. Jacob's trouble. Trouble on those nations, not the whole world initially. On those nations, on those people who have forsaken God.

Let's talk about Jacob's trouble. Let's talk about Jacob's trouble. Some of the things we talk about may be a little bit disturbing, but why would we even talk about this?

Well, there's a reason that God gives us prophecy in the Bible. There's a reason he lets us know why things are going to be the way they are, and it's pretty graphic in the details of what he provides for us. He wants us. He wants us to remember, to continue to follow him. He wants us to be aware of what is going to come upon the lands of Jacob. And he wants us to enjoy the times we have now, but always remember what is going to happen. You know, the man Noah, he was on earth during a time similar to ours. The world was violent, it was corrupt in all ways, and there was one man Noah who was righteous in God's sight. And God told him, you build an ark. You build an ark, there's going to be a flood come, I'm going to destroy this entire world. This entire earth is going to be flooded, everyone's going to be wiped out except you. And it took Noah a hundred some years to build that ark. And people jeered at him, people mocked at him. He kept building and nothing happened. And he watched what went around with them. He saw people partying, he saw people getting married, being given in marriage. He saw all those things that were happening around him. It was good times. But you know, Noah had total faith and knew that God was going to do exactly what he said he was going to do. He would bring that flood. And I believe that motivated Noah to have faith and to continue to look to God and be even more committed to him. Even more closely watch how he was living. Even more closely and carefully observing the way of life that God had called him to. Not letting down his defenses, not becoming apathetic, not thinking, oh, it's far, far off. I've got a long way to go before the ark is finished. But he was even more careful to observe. Even more careful of what was going on. And so today we could look at what the time of Jacob's trouble is. And I hope that it makes us think we need to even be more careful. We need to be even more aware that we need to stay close to God. We need to even be more diligent in what we do. So let's go back to this time Ezekiel. Ezekiel 7.

And remember, as you turn to Ezekiel, he's like Jeremiah. He prophesied to Judah and he prophesied to Israel. And when he said that Israel was long gone by the time that Ezekiel was alive, the ancient kingdom of Israel was gone. And so when he speaks to Israel, it is to Israel of another time, not the nation that had already passed. Ezekiel 7 and verse 1. The word of the eternal came to me, saying, You, son of man, thus says the Lord God to the land of Israel. An end. The end has come upon the four corners of the land. Now the end has come upon you. And I will send my anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways. And I will repay you for all your abominations. My eye will not spare, nor will I have pity. But I will repay your ways, and your abominations will be in your midst. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. You'll know that what I said stands. You will know eventually that I am God. Thus says the Lord God. A disaster. A singular disaster. Something that just happens. That kind of changes the course of history. Kind of the type of thing that we might look back in our history and say, 9-11-2001 changed the course of singular disaster. Similar thing happened to ancient Israel. We'll talk about it in a little bit. A disaster. A singular disaster. Behold, it's come. An end has come. The end has come. It has dawned for you. Behold, it has come. Doom has come to you, you who dwell in the land. The time has come. A day of trouble is near. A day of trouble is near, and not of rejoicing in the mountains. Now upon you I will soon pour out my fury and spend my anger upon you. I will judge you according to your ways, and I will repay you for all your abominations. There's coming a time to pay the price for the choices that the nation has made and that we personally have made. The time is coming and God says there's a disaster, and there will be more disasters. A day of trouble, a day of trouble is near. Let's go back to Jeremiah 30. I'm going to read about Jacob's trouble in that verse and see some of the things that God says is going to happen to Jacob during this time of trouble.

Jeremiah 30 and verse 8, we just read in verse 7 that it's the time of Jacob's trouble. There will be no time like it, but he will be saved out of it. In verse 8 it says, "'For it shall come to pass in that day,' says the Lord of hosts, that I will break his yoke from your neck, and I will burst your bonds. Foreigners shall no more enslave them." So in the future, Jacob will be in captivity. Foreign powers will have control of the land. And God says when Christ returns, he'll break those bonds. Israel will be free again. Jacob will be free again. But in the meantime, their freedom is gone.

The land that they cherished is no longer theirs. It belongs to someone else. They've lost it because of their actions, their choices, the things that they decided to do, the way they lived their lives, and the way they have forgotten God.

But then in verse 9, if you have any doubt that that's a future thing, it says, "'But they shall serve the Lord their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.'" Other than the time when Jesus Christ returns, the first foods will be resurrected. David will be resurrected. He'll be king over Israel in that day, in that day when God breaks the yoke off of Jacob, when foreigners no longer will enslave them.

"'Therefore don't fear, O my servant Jacob,' says the Lord. Don't be dismayed, O Israel. For behold, I will save you from afar. And your seed from the land of their captivity, Jacob shall return, have rest, and be quiet, and no one will make him afraid.'" Well, there will be plenty of fear. There will be plenty of dread. There will be plenty of quaking of minds and bodies as what happens to a land that is departed God happens.

But he says, "'Don't fear. Know that in the end it's going to be terrible during the time, but know that God is there. He will not forsake. He will not put an end to all. And he will bring the people back.' Now when he brings them back, they will enjoy peace and quiet in his kingdom.

Verse 11, "'For I am with you,' says the Lord, to save you. Though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you,' No, they won't be in the land that they grew up in. They will be taken away, just like in the old times, when the power and power conquered a nation and then took the people and moved them to another place.

I am with you, though I make a full end of all nations where I have scattered you, yet I will not make a complete end of you.' Oh, there will be casualties. There will be a lot of casualties. But I won't make a complete end of you, but I will correct you in justice, and I will not let you go altogether unpunished.

You will pay. You will pay the price for what you do and what you've chosen in the way you have lived and the way you have allowed the nation and responded to God in the face of the blessings that He has given us. Verse 12, for us as the Lord, your affliction is incurable. It can't be cured. There is nothing you can do.

You know, if we get a health diagnosis and the doctor says it's incurable, that would be a daunting thing to hear, wouldn't it? It's incurable. There is absolutely nothing we can do.

God says to Jacob, your affliction is incurable. There is nothing you can do. And He goes on and explains, your wound is severe. There's no one to plead your cause. No one is interested. No one cares.

That you may be bound up. You have no healing medicines.

There's nothing you can look at. You can't even go to the medicine cabinet and say, make this go away. Can I take this? Can I do that? Can I look back to the things I've done? God says, no, there's nothing. You are completely alone. You are completely helpless. You are completely incurable.

There is nothing that you can look to, except one thing, that can get you out of the mess that you've put yourself into. Verse 14, all your lovers have forgotten you. You thought they were your friends. We thought you thought they were your allies. They don't care about you. They kind of laugh. Look what happened to them.

What a silly group of people. They had everything, and look what happened to them. They don't seek you, for I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for the multitude of your iniquities, because your sins have increased.

I'm chastising you, and I'm using others to do that. There is no one that can help you. No one except God. No one except God can deliver Israel.

There's something to be said about a time in our lives when there's just no hope, nowhere to look. We can't go to our bank account. We can't go to our boss. We can't go to the government. We can't go to an attorney. We can't go to a doctor. Only God. And have faith in Him. Total faith in Him. That He will provide and that He will deliver. That's what Jacob is going to feel. That's what Jacob is going to endure during the time of Jacob's trouble. And they will learn a powerful, powerful lesson during that time.

A powerful lesson. And a good lesson that you and I would do well to learn, too. To don't look here and there and everywhere, but to learn to look to God, who is the only one who can ultimately deliver us.

You know, talks here about He will punish them at the hands of a cruel one. And there was a time in ancient Israel's history that they were punished by the hands of a cruel one. Let's go back to 2 Kings. 2 Kings 18. The Assyrian Empire is largely touted to be one of the most cruel and brutal group of people that ever walked the earth. When they conquered people, they abused them terribly. They made sport of how much they could make people suffer and the things they did were unimaginable.

And the history books are full of them. Back in 2 Kings 18, Israel fell prey to Assyria. And they conquered the land and Israel was taken off to another place.

And the king of Judah sees the Assyrians begin to look their way. And you can kind of see the fear in Hezekiah, good King Hezekiah's manners here, when he's confronted with this. Let's look at 2 Kings 18, verse 11.

Why? Because they didn't obey the voice of the Lord their God, but transgressed his covenant and all that Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded. And they would neither hear nor do them. Isn't that interesting? They wouldn't even listen. When Moses and the prophets would tell him, you need to do this, they just kind of closed their ears. You know what? We've heard it all before. We won't do it. Life is good. How has our life changed? They wouldn't hear it. They wouldn't do it. So, you know, God said, you won't hear or do, then I'll do what I said I would. And in the 14th year, King Hezekiah, the Nacorab king of Assyria, came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Leishish, saying, I've done wrong. Turn away from me. Whatever you impose on me, I will pay. There's only a reason we would say that, right? I don't care. I'm scared. I'm terrified of what you can do. You name your price, just go away. I don't want you in my life. I don't want you in my land. I don't want to deal with you. I'll give you whatever you want. And the king of Assyria assessed Hezekiah, king of Judah, 300 talents of silver, 30 talents of gold. So Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king's house. And at that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, from the pillars which Hezekiah, king of Judah, had overlaid, and he gave it to the king of Assyria. Here you can have it all. Everything that God has given us, you can have it all. Just go away. We know the history of Israel. We know what you did to them. We can't have that happen to us. Well, Sennacherib took it all, but he didn't go away. He was right back there at his doorstep, this time threatening him and saying, you know, what happened to these other cities? It's going to happen to you. And he taunted Israel, or Judah. And he taunted Hezekiah. And finally, he gave him a letter. But before I talk about the letter that Hezekiah received, let me read to you something from a website called HopeChannel.com that talks about the history of Assyria, what kind of people they were, and some of the lands that they conquered. And this is from the part that has to do with ancient Israel. It talks about King Sennacherib, who we just read about, who ruled from 705 to 681 B.C. It says, during his reign, he campaigned in Palestine to put down a rebellion by Hezekiah, king of Judah. This campaign is described in great detail in the Bible, which specifically mentions his capture of the fortified cities of Judah, including his attack on Lachish. The biblical account has been confirmed by archaeology in every detail. The Lachish Wall reliefs from Sennacherib's palace in Nineveh portray the Battle of Lachish as do the excavations of the city. According to Austin Henry Layard, the excavator of Nineveh, the wall reliefs of Sennacherib's palace would stretch more than two miles if lined in a row. Included among those reliefs are those depicting the barbaric flaying—you know what flaying is, right?—skinning alive. Can you imagine that, being skinned alive? It includes the barbaric skinning alive and impaling of Israelite captives of Lachish. But Sennacherib's wall reliefs and inscriptions also demonstrate that he surpassed his predecessors in the grisly detail of his descriptions, an indication, no doubt, that he literally took Assyrian ruthless cruelty to a new level if that were possible. And here's actually an inscription they found.

And then he goes on with things that are more descriptive and too graphic to read here. But he can go online and you can kind of see the accounts, and they say the Assyrian people, they were just a terrible, cruel people. It was just in their blood. And Christ says, at the time of the end, it's going to be worse than that. We all know well Adolph Hitler. Christ says, at the time of the end, it's going to be worse than what he did. We all know Joseph Stalin. We all have heard of Genghis Khan. It's going to be worse than what they did.

A time of Jacob's trouble. Well, here in Hezekiah's case, an acrob didn't back off. As evil people do, they'll take your money, they'll take your riches, but they don't go away. They just toy with you. In chapter 19, we find that a letter comes to Hezekiah, and he knows what the king of Assyria has in mind. He will do to Judah exactly what he did to Israel, and probably even worse, because his game seemed to be, as all the Assyrian kings, how can I even make it worse than it was before? And Hezekiah knows he's no match. His army's no match for the anacarab. No one has been a match for them. They just marched through the area back there, and Hezekiah gets this letter. Verse 14 of 2 Kings 19. Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and he read it. And Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before God, and he prayed before the Lord and said, O Lord God of Israel, the one who dwells between the cherubim, you are God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear. Open your eyes and see. And hear the words of the anacarab which he has sent to reproach the living God. Truly, Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations in their lands. They've cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. Therefore, they destroyed them. Now, therefore, O Lord our God, I pray, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you are the eternal God. You alone. And as you read on, you see that God honored Hezekiah's request. Here, his back was up against the wall. He had nowhere to turn. He couldn't look at his warriors and say, well, we can battle them and have a chance. He couldn't look at his treasury. He'd already given it all away, and that hadn't worked. There was nothing left. He was all by himself, and he had nowhere to turn except to God. And that was the one place he needed to turn. And God decimated the Assyrians at that time. You know, when we look at the Assyrians and we can see, and you read some of the things on the Internet, when you read, even of Hezekiah, you can see the fear in the people that are there.

And up until recently, maybe in our lifetimes, we hadn't seen that fear. But as this website was talking about, today we've seen. We've seen some of what the Assyrians were able to do to invest fear into their people. When we look at what's going on in Syria, when we look at what was happening with ISIS, when ISIS was a power on Earth, people would pale in fear. They would use their heinous acts of terrorism to scare people, to make, to petrify them. And it worked. You could read the stories of Iraq back at the time that ISIS was going, and the people just fled.

They weren't even going to do there because they were such heinous and heartless people and barbaric people, they weren't even going to stand in them. And so we can see, we can see in the Earth today, some of these things that are beginning to develop, and that are out there. You know, ISIS has been a little quiet lately, but they're still there, and certainly the spirit of the Assyrian is still there. Let's go back to Ezekiel. Ezekiel 6. I remember Ezekiel, when he's speaking to Israel, is talking to the future because the ancient nature in Israel is long gone by the time he's alive.

Chapter 6, verse 1, the Word of the Eternal came to me saying, Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them, and say, O mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God.

Thus says the Lord God to the mountains, to the hills, to the ravines, and to the valleys. Indeed, I, even I, will bring a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places. Well, they have their high places, the places they would look to. Today we have our high places, too. We might not call them high places, but there are cities that we look to.

We have Washington, D.C. That's a place that people look to. What is the government going to do? How are they going to bail us out? How are they going to make this right? We might look to New York City and see a financial center, see the stock market. Oh, that's a high place. And today we have our own idols that may not have names or carved in stone, but they are certainly there. God says, I will bring a sword against you, and I will destroy your high places.

Your altars will be desolate. Your incense altars will be broken. And I will cast down your slain men before your idols. They're going to lay right there in the streets. They're going to be right there. The things that you counted on, the things that you thought would save you and deliver you.

Your slain men will be laying right there before them. In all your dwelling places, verse 6, the cities will be laid waste, and the high places will be desolate, so that your altars may be laid waste and made desolate. You know, in ancient Israel, the cities weren't laid waste. They weren't laid waste. If you go back to 2 Kings 17, you see that when Assyria conquered Israel, he didn't lay waste to cities. He took the Israelites out, but he brought his own people in, people from Babylon, people from other cities.

He wanted to inhabit that land. It was a land that was very rich in resources, a land that produced well. It was the land of milk and honey. And he wanted them to live there, and you can see how they settled and how they combined religion at that place to somewhat appease the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and also serve their own gods. So in ancient Israel, this never happened. In the future, this will happen. And we live in a world that we know that today, cities can be laid waste.

We know that from World War II. There were cities that were laid waste there, that won the war. How much more powerful today? How much more powerful today are the weapons that we have? Why do even these small nations want those weapons? Because they know if they can lay waste a city, if they can have just one, the enormous havoc that they can wreak on a nation.

Your idols, he goes on to say, may be broken and made to cease. Your incense altars may be cut down and your works may be abolished. The slain will fall in your midst, and you will know that I am the Lord. Yet, he says, I will leave a remnant, so that you may have some who escape the sword among the nations when you are scattered through the countries. Then those of you who escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, because I was crushed by their adulterous heart which has departed from me, and by their eyes which play the harlot after their idols.

They will loathe themselves for the evils which they committed in all their abominations, and they shall know that I am the Eternal. I have not said in vain that I would bring this calamity upon them. I was crushed if they responded to my kindness and my generosity in that way. They'll be destroyed. They'll pay a price. But I won't completely destroy them. Let's go back to the book of Amos. Amos did live during the time of the ancient nation of Israel, and he prophesied to that nation. They didn't listen to him either. They turned to deaf ear, just went on their own ways, and didn't think what Amos was saying made any difference, just like Judah turned to deaf ear to Jeremiah.

Let's look at Amos 1, verse 1. The words of Amos, who was among the sheep-breeders of Tychoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.

A singular disaster that was coming upon the ancient nation of Israel. A singular disaster, just like the process that we saw in Ezekiel 7. And he said, the Lord roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem. The pastures of the shepherds mourn and the top of Carmel withers. Are you going to pay attention?

Are you listening to what is going on? Are you paying attention to what is going on? A lion roars. Will you heed? Chapter 3, verse 1. Hear this word that the eternal has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only, you only, have I known of all the families of the earth.

You're the holy people. You're the holy people. And your power is going to be completely shattered. Therefore, I will punish you for all your iniquities. But God warns first. He just doesn't bring it on as a surprise without any warning. In verse 7, he says, The Lord God does nothing, unless he reveals his secret to his servants the prophets. A lion has roared. Who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken, who can but prophesy. He's spoken. He's roared. Pay attention, just like you would if a lion was walking the streets. Moving over to chapter 5. Leading up to chapter 5, we have chapter 4, where over and over God sent calamities to various areas of Israel. And he repeats over and over again, I did this, but you didn't return to me. I did this in this area, but you didn't return to me. This area befell that. This area had this disaster upon it, but you didn't return to me. You just kept doing the things that you kept doing. And here in chapter 5, he talks about the thing that is kind of daunting when you look at it. Verse 5, chapter 5, verse 1 says, Hear the sword which I take up against you, a lamentation, O house of Israel, the virgin of Israel has fallen. She will rise no more. She lies forsaken on her land. There is no one to raise her up. For thus says the Lord God, The city that goes out by a thousand shall have a hundred left. And that which goes out by a hundred will have ten left to the house of Israel.

There's going to be a great price to pay. Ninety percent of your people are going to die. Only ten percent are going to survive. That remnant, that remnant that I will not completely destroy you, but you will pay the price for what you have done, ninety percent. Those are staggering numbers, aren't they?

And ahead of us, ahead of us is a time of Jacob's trouble, where the numbers will be staggering in a land that prides itself on everything that it has today, that forsakes God, that fums their nose at him, that welcomes the foreign gods, the new arrivals more than honoring the God who blessed them and gave them the riches that they have. A land that continually departs and is becoming very much a world of violence and corruption and hatred and division and everything that God doesn't stand for. Ninety percent. You can mark down Ezekiel 5, I think it's verses 3 and 4 in there, that talks about the same thing. It says Israel. Israel in the future, a third of you are going to die by pestilence, a third are going to die by famine, a third are going to be taken captive, or die by the sword, or taken captive, but I'm going to send the sword out after them. So there will only be a few left. That's what happens. That's the time of Jacob's trouble. That's the time of Jacob's trouble, but God says, I'll save you out of it. I'll save you out of it. Again, why do we talk about these things? Why did God send Amos to ancient Israel to warn them? Why did he send Jeremiah to Judah? Why did he send Ezekiel? Or have him write those prophecies? Because he wants us to turn to him. He wants us to see the error of our ways. He doesn't want those things to happen. He wants his holy people. He knows what's going to deal with the physical nation of Israel, but his holy people, you and me, he doesn't want to see that happen to us. And so he warns, don't become part of the world. Don't become like them. Keep your attention on what it should be on. In Amos 6, we kind of see a picture of the people that the ancient Israel, the ancient nation of Israel was like at the time their disaster or their end came. Chapter 6, verse 1. And this may seem eerily similar as we read through this. True to the land we live in today. Woe to you, verse 1, who are at ease in Zion. Woe to you who take it easy and have such wonderful lives. Nothing wrong with having a wonderful life. Nothing wrong with having ease. But you kind of let it go to your head. Kind of let it tamper with your mind. Woe to you who are at ease in Zion, who trust in Mount Samaria, notable persons in the chief nation to whom the house of Israel comes. You trust in these things more than me. You come to your cities, you come to your notable persons, and you look to them. But you don't look to me at all. Go over to Calendon Sea, go to Hamath, go down to Gath. Are you better than these kingdoms, or is their territory greater than your territory? God can bring them all low. Woe to you, verse 3, who put far off the day of doom. Well, there's many today that might say, you know, Christ delays his coming. I look at the world around me, and I just don't think he's coming right now. He got time. There's another ten years. These things can't develop as quickly as that. Peter said the same thing was going on in his day. People said, you know, Jesus Christ delays his coming. I don't think it'll happen in my lifetime. And they give them an excuse to kind of lay back and develop a complacent and an apathetic attitude. To just kind of go through life and think, you know what, when I see these things happening, when I see these things happening, then I'll get close to God. Then I'll do what's right. The problem is, the problem is Christ says, the day of the Lord, when all happens, it happens suddenly. There's no time for that. He expects us to be watching, and he expects us to be paying attention now.

What do you who put off the day of doom? Who caused the seed of violence to come near? Who lie on beds of ivory, stretch out on your couches, eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the midst of the stall? Who sing idly to the sound of stringed instruments and invent for yourselves musical instruments like David? You've got all this time, you've got all these nice things, all these luxuries and comforts of life, in addition to all the necessities. Who drink wine from bowls and anoint yourselves with the best ointments.

But you're not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. You're not mourning for what you see going on around you. You're not sighing and crying, as Ezekiel said in chapter 8, for the sins of the nation around you. You're just kind of going along with it. You're just kind of enjoying life and just not really paying attention to what's going on. And not sighing and crying, and not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.

Therefore they shall now go captive, as the first of the captives, and those who recline at banquets shall be removed.

God says, I've seen enough of it. I've seen enough of it. The heart of this people is far from me. The Lord God is sworn by himself, verse 8. The Lord God of hosts says, I abhor, I abhor the pride of Jacob, and I hate his palaces.

Those are some harrowing words that you read about what God says is going to happen. Because of the sins of the people, times that you and I may well live through when we see things that could change oh so suddenly.

And it all happens before what we'll picture on the Feast of Trumpets, the return of Jesus Christ, to save mankind from himself. As we live with the realization that this will occur, and that we have a responsibility. You know, in Revelation 12, it tells us that Satan will be cast down to the earth at some time. Maybe he's already been cast down. Now, when you look at what's gone on in the nation and the world in the last three or four years, maybe he's already at work. We don't know exactly when he's going to be cast down. And God says woe to the inhabitants of the earth, woe to you people. When he comes down, because he's come down with great wrath, he's going to wreak fury on everyone. But you need to be strong. You need to overcome him. You need to overcome the world by the blood of the Lamb.

With his Holy Spirit giving you the strength, the patient endurance to continue on in the face of all these horrible things that we may see. That we wouldn't forsake God, but instead we would draw closer to him. And be ready to do that because we've been doing that even now. That we don't become complacent. We don't become apathetic. We don't think, I got time.

That we don't let our ears become dull of hearing as Christ says so many times. That we listen and we pay attention. And unlike the ancient peoples of Judah and Israel, we hear the Word of God. We pay attention to what is going on.

You know how I wrote the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Amos, the minor prophets, Christ's prophecy? What God says is, turn to me. Turn to me. Turn to me and be aware. And as we head into the fall Holy Days, let's all turn to God fully and completely.