Episode Transcript
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Our scripture today comes from the book
of Jeremiah. We're going to be looking
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at near the beginning of this book, in Chapter Two, versus for through
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thirteen. Here know it comes word
here, the word of the Lord the
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House of Jacob and all the clans
of the House of Israel. Thus says
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the Lord. What wrong do your
father's find any that they went far from
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me and went after worthlessness and became
worthless. They did not say, where's
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the Lord who brought us up from
the land of Egypt, who let us
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in the Wilderness and a land of
deserts and pits and a land of drought
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in deep darkness and a land of
none passes through, where no man's wells,
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and I brought you into a plentiful
lands, who enjoy his fruits and
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it's good at things. But when
he came in, you defile my land
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and may my heritage and abomination,
but the priest and not say where's The
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Lord? Those who had able law
did not know me. The shepherds transgress
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against me, the prophets prophesied by
bail and went after things that do not
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prophet. Therefore, I still contend
with you to Clare's Lord and with your
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children's children. I will contend for
a cross of these the Cyperus and see
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or sends hey are an examine with
care, see if there has been such
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a thing. Has An Asian changed? It's God's even though they are no
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gods. But my people have changed
their glory for that which does not profit.
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Be Appalled. Has It this be
shocked the utterly desolate? It clears
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the Lord, for my people have
committed to evils. They have forsaken need,
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the found in a living waters and
hut out cisterns from themselves, broken
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cisterns that can hold no water.
That's our reading God's word. Confrontation is
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never a fun thing. When I
think about my life, going all the
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way backs kindergartens, sitting in the
principal's office, this is kind of a
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hypothetical question when you think about the
history of Israel, when you think about
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how well the Lord treated the Israelites, how much he lavished his blessings upon
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them. The question here is what
wrong or in Hebrew, what injustice or
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unrighteousness did your father's find in me? That's they had to go far away
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from me to other gods. Now, if you see somebody who's in an
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abusive relationship, a relationship where they're
being harmed or perhaps even their life is
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at stake, you want them to
get free from that relationship if the abuser
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does not have their heart changed.
And even in the meantime, while we're
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waiting for that change to happen,
you want that person who is the victim
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to be safe, you want them
to be out of a dangerous environment and
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you take joy that a person may
break free from a situation where they are
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being horribly abused or even their life
maybe at stake. And so God is
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basically asking them, what is it
that I did to you? What abuse
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were you suffering that you felt you
had to leave and escape from being faithful
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to me? We see even in
the verses six and seven, the history
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of how God had lavishly blessed Israel, how he had taken them out of
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slavery from Egypt, how he had
powerfully worked in the midst and before Pharaoh
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to convinced Pharaoh to let the people
go. In such a dread and an
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awe fell upon the Egyptian people that
they were giving their jewelry as Israel left,
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when they were escaping, they they
were giving their their possessions to the
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Israelites, so that the Israelites left
rich even when they left Egypt. And
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after that, God powerfully saved them
from Pharaoh's army when Pharaoh changed his mind
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and came after the Israelites, and
Israel saw what their own eyes the deliverance
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of God as he crushed the armies
of Pharaoh. Israel itself to not have
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to do anything. They did not
have to fight that battle, but God
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fought for them and crushed those Egyptians. And as Israel wandered about in the
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Wilderness, God took care of them
every step of the way. He Fed
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them, he gave them water,
He protected them from their enemies, even
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down to the details of miraculously causing
their clothing not to wear out. When
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they wandered for forty years in the
Wilderness, their clothing never wore out.
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That level of care, down to
the details, is what God provided for
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Israel. And then when they were
brought into the land, he again did
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their fighting for them. They just
had to march around Jericho for seven days
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in the walls came down. God, so often in the past, had
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fought for them. He had lavished
His grace upon them. And then when
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they got into the land, he
he gave them a land that even they
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described as one that was flowing with
milk and honey, that one that was
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blessed, that at all the riches
and all the the pleasures that you could
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once in a promised land. And
God had promised them, in the covenant
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that he made with them during the
time of Moses, that that if they
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obeyed the stipulations of that covenant,
they would have even more blessings and that
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they would have those indefinitely, that
they would have life, that they would
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have protection against whatever enemies came upon
them. He said, your enemies will
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come against you one way, but
they will flee from you seven ways.
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There will be chaos if anyone tries
to oppose you. He promised them health,
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he promised them wealth, that they
would have reign upon their land,
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that they would have crops, that
they would have children, that they would
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be spared of the diseases in the
plagues that they had seen other people suffer.
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God lavished his blessings upon them and
promised them even more. And the
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law that he commanded them to keep
was not a wicked law. He was
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not commanding them to degrade themselves or
do anything wicked or unseemly. He was
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commanding them to love him and to
love their neighbor. He was commanding them
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to be holy. There really was
no reason for them to try to escape,
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to get away from his authority.
If there was any injustice on the
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part of God, it was that
he gave them more grace than they deserved.
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He gave them more riches than what
justice demanded. That was the injustice.
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He was so merciful to them.
But yet they injured is is his
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reputation and wronged him by a going
after other gods. And to add insult
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to injury, what he says and
the end of verse five is that they
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win not simply after other gods but
after worthlessness. In the Hebrew this this
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word means a breath or vanity,
something that's here one minute and gone the
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next, and is often a word
that is used to describe the other gods,
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because other gods simply do not exist. And so not only did the
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people abandoned God, but they went
after things that were worthless, things that
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were figments of their imagination. And
this is insulting. If you think about
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this. Imagine if you're married to
someone and your spouse cheats on you,
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not simply with another person, but
with the most ugly, detestable, poor,
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uneligible, whatever negative characteristic you want
to describe to them, with that
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kind of a person, your spouse
cheats. That's kind of insulting. It's
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kind of like saying, was I
that bad that this was the improvement.
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You went after that person. I
mean, was I that terrible of a
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spouse? So you had, this
was your leg up, was to go
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after that person. That's the kind
of thing God is saying here to Israel.
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What did I do that? You
went far from me and instead,
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when after things that are worthless,
and you yourselves became worthless. For he
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says in verse six, they did
not say where is the Lord, even
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though God was in their midst,
even though they had direct access to God
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any time they wanted. Even then, though they had the glories of the
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Real God, the true God,
dwelling among them, which no other nation
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had, and they could have had
the answer to anything that they'd wanted to
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know, even down to the details. Who Should we fight today? Where
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should we go today? They could
have had those answers, but they simply
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did not seek the Lord, they
stopped seeking after him. They did not
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say where's the Lord who brought us
up from Egypt all these things that they
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knew God had done for them.
They stopped inquiring of the true God,
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but rather, he says in verse
seven, when you came into this plentiful
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land, you defiled my land and
made my heritage and abomination. They set
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up on every high place altars and
idols to the bales or the gods of
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the peoples that have been there before, and they started worshiping them. The
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seductiveness of the flesh was so strong
that even though God had done real things
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for them, even though he had
given them lavish, true blessings that no
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one could deny, they preferred to
satisfy their sensual desires by worshiping gods that
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they could see and touch and make
and control and do all the other acts
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of sensuality that went along with that
idol worship. That's what they preferred,
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rather than the true God who could
give them real blessings. And sadly,
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this is not something that was just
done by a fringe of the people,
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by people on the outside edges who
were, you know, the Rabbel rousers
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of the day, but rather this
sin, this apostasy, reached even even
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to the centers of religious life.
Verse Aid. The Lord says the very
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same thing about the priest. The
priest did not say where's The Lord?
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Those who ministered in the temple daily, those who saw with their own eyes
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the symbols of the Gospel, who
pronounced atone and who pronounced cleanliness, who
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saw the shedding of blood, who
were close to God in his presence in
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that temple, they, for all
their closeness, did not ask where's the
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Lord? And he goes on.
Those who handle the law did not know
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me. Isn't that a remarkable thing? Those who were litter at, those
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who could read, those who had
access to the stories of God's care all
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the way from the beginning, those
who are close to the means of grace
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and those who knew the law and
the Covenant and exactly what God promised to
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them. He says they did not
know me. They were strangers to God.
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The shepherds, the rulers, he
says, transgressed against me in the
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prophets prophesied by bail and when after
things that do not profit, imagine that
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they had an open cannon at the
time, they were still able to receive
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more and more revelation if they had
questions, and certain righteous leaders like Moses
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or David did inquire of the Lord
for various things, whether it was how
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to apply the law or or who
they should attack, or you know,
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questions that any nation would need to
have answered. And yet, instead of
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going to the God within their midst, who could give them the right answers
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and could even fight their battles for
them, these prophets started prophesying by these
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figments of their imagination, these bails
that did not really exist, things that
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do not profit. Therefore, the
Lord says in Verse Nine, I still
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contend with you and with your children's
children. I will contend now recall that
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in verse five he started out by
asking about their fathers. He said,
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what wrong did your father's find in
me that they went far from me?
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This is a sin that Israel had
been doing perennially. But the attack,
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the precise attack here, is against
the fathers of this generation that he is
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writing to. Nevertheless, he says, per the Covenant, that the punishment
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is not just going to be for
one generation, but is going to extend
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even to the fourth generation. And
when he says this, this is nothing
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new. This is something that he
had he had talked about even in the
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days of Moses, when he had
entered into covenant with him in the first
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place. If he turned back to
Exitus, Chapter Twenty, and specifically in
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Verse Five, which is, interestingly, the passage that talks about idolatry,
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he says, starting in Verse Five, you shall not bow down to them,
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meeting idols or serve them, for
I, the Lord your God,
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am a jealous God, visiting the
Iniquity of the fathers on the children,
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to the third and fourth generation of
those who hate me, but showing steadfast
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love to thousands of those who love
me and keep my commands. Even though
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it was the generation before then that
primarily had was bearing the brunts of this
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prophecy, because they were part of
Israel and because the sin that they committed
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was so great, the punishments against
that nation was going to be long enough
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that it was going to extend across
generations. It was not simply a generation
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that entered into covenant with God,
but it was the nation as a whole
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that entered into covenant with God.
And so when even one generation sending against
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God in such a blatant way,
the punishment for it would have to be
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great enough to be just, and
therefore sometimes that punishment extended across generations.
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And the the key illustration of that, as we see even in this prophecy,
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is the exile. God exiled Israel
for seventy years because of their sins,
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and that's that punishment on the nation
necessarily extended across more than one generation.
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But it was the nation again,
that God was punishing, and therefore
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it was even with the children's children
that he was going to contend. Now,
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of course, the other side of
this, as we saw also in
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exidus twenty, is that the love
of God extends over thousands of generations.
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His punishment, even though it may
seem severe to include several generations, is
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actually like considering the great awful sins
that they were committing. He could have
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smote them out completely, he could
have destroyed all future generations by destroying that
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nation, all of those who are
then living. But as punishment, too
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severe as it was, was tempered
by grace and, as we see as
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we continue in this book, there's
even more grace that he is going to
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promise to them and to lavish upon
them, despite the fact of their sins.
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Well, in verse ten, he
continues to to talk about the sin
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that they are involved in and to
confront them for it. And if you've
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ever talked with somebody about sin,
whether you know it's in the context of
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a court case or in the context
of talking with their children or maybe a
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you know, counseling somebody professionally,
there's different ways that you can talk about
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a sinful behavior. You can talk
about it from a moral perspective, you
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can talk about it from a practical
perspective, from a rationality perspective. You
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can talk about how stupid a certain
act is, like when we see somebody
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try to rob a bank and they
accidentally lock themselves in or something and get
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caught, you know, or something
like that, we can say, well,
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not only was it wrong to row
that bank, but it was stupid
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and by the way, oh,
look at the consequences that that person has
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to suffer. Well, that's kind
of like what God is doing in this
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passage. He is he is looking
at this sin of there's for many different
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angles and he's talked already about the
unreasonableness of them betraying him, but he
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talks here about just how strange it
is, even in light of other nations,
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for them to betray their God.
And so he says to them,
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okay, you want to be like
the other nations, you want to worship
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the gods of foreigners. Well,
let's talk about how foreigners worship. Go
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across the to the coast of Cyprus
and see, or send to cad are
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and examine and see if any of
these other nations have changed their gods,
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even though their gods are simply figments
of their imagination, even though their gods
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are something that they created with their
own hands, that they are worshiping,
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they are more faithful to their gods
than you are to me. So,
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if you want to be like the
other nations, why couldn't you at least
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be like them in terms of faithfulness? Why couldn't you at least be faithful
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to me and worship me only?
But even the peoples of the world do
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not treat their gods this way.
On top of that, he says,
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my people have it changed their glory
for that which Does Not Prophet. Not
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only have they done something strange and
scandalous and different than the other nations,
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but they've done something that is very
tragic and very hurtful to them. They've
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exchanged their glory for that which does
not profit. This is another way sometimes
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that we can look at sin.
When you talk to somebody about their sinful
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lifestyle, of their behavior, you
know sometimes there's a tragic dimension to it
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as well. Somebody who has their
whole life ahead of them some but he
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was all this promise and then maybe
they get involved with drugs or with the
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wrong crowd or something like that and
they throw it all away. We don't
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just think about the abstract moral essence
of that, but we think about the
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tragedy of that. Look what you've
thrown away. Your whole life was ahead
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of you and now it's gone because
of these decisions, and that is well
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was the case with Israel. They
change their glory for that which does not
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profit. The God who is in
their midst was glorious. He was not
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only powerful, he was not only
able, he was not only real,
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but he was more glorious than anything
that the nations could have invented or imagined.
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When Solomon dedicated to Temple, the
glory cloud filled it to such an
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extent that the priests were not even
able to minister in it. They were
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not even even able to do their
temple service because that cloud was so palpable,
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it was so intimidating that they had
to wait until it diminished enough that
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they could go outside. And when
Moses earlier had met with God in the
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tens of meeting, when he came
out, his face shown with the glory
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of God and the people were afraid
of that and they asked him to put
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a veil in front of his face. God revealed his glory to the people
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in many different ways regularly, and
yet they exchange that tragically for that which
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does not profit. And we see
the tragedy of that. For example,
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and easykiels prophecy where he has a
vision of the glory of God coming up
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from the temple and slowly leaving.
It goes up and he has this,
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you know, this huge vision and
it's got wheels and Cherubim and all these
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other things and it goes out the
east gate and it keeps on going up
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the Mount of Olives and it just
goes. God was symbolizing there that he
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was leaving from within the midst of
his people. He was leaving them desolate,
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he was leaving them abandoned because of
their covenant breaking. And so he
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says, Be Appalled, Oh heavens, at this, be shocked, be
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utterly desolate, declares the Lord Israel, and not simply sinned against another nation
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or against, you know people,
against other people, but they had sinned
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against the god of the universe,
something that is so appalling, something that
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is so unjust so unjustified, that
even the heavens are called here to be
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appalled and to be shocked at what
has happened, because God himself has been
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insulted to his face, after all
the graciousness that they is shown to this
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people. He has been abandoned,
he has been betrayed, and that is
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a wicked crime. It is a
crime in the universe, not just in
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the land. And he says in
verse thirteen, for my people have committed
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two evils. And here he continues
with the tragedy of all of this.
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He says they have forsaken me,
the fountain of Living Waters, and hut
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out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns
that can hold no water. Now,
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if you have a fountain, a
fountain as a source of water, it
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is something that keeps giving water.
The cistern is simply a container that you
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can put water in and, when
it's empty, attempting. But this is
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even worse. These are not simply
cisterns that they have, but broken ones.
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They cannot even hold water. So
they've exchanged the fountain of life for
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something that cannot even hold any water. In this image of living waters would
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have been should have been poignant,
especially to those in the Old Testament,
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as they thought back of their wanderings
in the wilderness, how God literally saved
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their lies when they were parched,
by giving them water in strange places and
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in strange ways. Three days after
they crossed the Red Sea, they were
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wandering in the Wilderness and they came
upon a place in maraw where there was
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water, but it was too bitter
for them to drink, and so they
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complained about that and God told Moses, take this tree and throw it into
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the the water, and when he
did, those bitter waters became sweet and
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the people were able to drink of
it. And later on is the people
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were wandering around further, they came
to a place that had no water and
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they grumbled again against Moses, and
God told Moses, Take Your staff and
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strike the Rock and water will come
out, and it did, and it
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was able to give drink to the
nation. And this clearly was God who
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is doing this, who is providing
this life stream for the people so that
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they can continue their wilderness wandering.
I mean, try this in Arizona,
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especially this dry desert he plays.
Go out and take a stick, go
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find a rock somewhere and hit it
and see if any water comes out.
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or go up by seven falls or
someplace and when the water gets brackish and
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throw a stick in the water and
see if it becomes sweet and drinkable,
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because he threw a stick in.
Clearly, God himself was working for his
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people. He was bringing water to
them out of a place that had no
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business giving water, and he blessed
them and he provided for them, and
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yet they for forsook him, and
therefore he brings this charge against them.
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He brings the somber, unpleasant,
difficult to hear charge, because they need
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to hear it as members of the
Covenant, is those who are bonded to
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him, as those who have made
pledges to him. He is confronting them
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for their sins. Yeah, we
see here that even though what they did
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was so tragic and so unjust,
considering how God lavished his graces upon them,
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that even as he confronts them for
his sins, he does not utterly
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smite them and wipe them off the
face of the Earth, he does not
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utterly destroy them from among the earth, even though he promises, as this
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book goes on, that he will
discipline them through an exile. They will
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be taken away to land far from
Palestine. And yet even there, even
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in that discipline, he's still calls
tenderly to Israel and remembers the earlier promises
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that he had made to their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to
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bless them and through them, to
bless the entire earth. Very See,
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God's judgment was not going to take
away his love. Though Israel gave God
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away, though they betrayed him and
were faithless to him, he was not
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going to be faithless to his covenants, his promises that he had made long
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before to their forefathers and even all
the way back in the garden to Adam
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and Eve, when he told them
that their seed would crush the serpent's head.
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He was not going to abandon his
plans and promises, even though his
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people had abandoned him, but rather
he was going to do something else that
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also could well have made the heavens
shocked. That also could have made people
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wonder what on Earth is going on. He was going to take this people
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who deserve nothing but to be snuffed
out, and he was going to lavish
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them with even more graces. Imagine
that he was going to be even more
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merciful, he was going to give
them even more than what they deserved on
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the good side in the future.
And that also is the message that Jeremiah
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brings. In Jeremiah thirty one,
he talks about a new covenant that he
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is going to make and he says
behold, the days are coming, declares
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the Lord, when I will make
a new covenant with the House of Israel
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and the House of Judah, not
like the Covenant that I made with their
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fathers on the day when I took
them by the hand to bring them out
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of the land of Egypt, my
covenant that they broke, though I was
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their husband, declares the Lord.
But this is the covenant that I will
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make with the House of Israel after
those days, declares the Lord. I
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will put my law within them and
I will write it on their hearts,
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and I will be their God and
they shall be my people, and no
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longer so. Each one teaches neighbor
and each his brother, saying know the
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Lord, for they all shall know
me, from the least of them to
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the greatest, declares the Lord,
for I will forgive their iniquity and I
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will remember their sin no more.
You See, when God put Israel under
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the law again, he was not
putting them under a wicked law, he
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was putting them under a righteous law, and they were fully responsible for the
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fact that they broke his law,
the fact that they were sinful. It
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was their own decisions to violate that
covenant. Any human being who's created in
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the image of God is responsible to
be righteous, and they certainly were.
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In addition to being part of this
great covenant with the Lord, they had
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these responsibilities. But don't you see, they were still fleshly people who were
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spiritually dead, even though they were
called to be righteous, even though they
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were supposed to be righteous, even
though there was no reason for them to
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be unrighteous. Like in a bad
horror movie where somebody gets infected and becomes
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a Zombie, they had no choice. They were dead and enslaved in trespasses
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and sins, and no matter how
glorious the works of God, no matter
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how powerfully God worked, they were
always going to go back, like a
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dog to its vomit, to these
idols that cannot provide for them. They
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were always going to go back to
the seductiveness of their flesh rather than the
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God who had life. They were
always going to reject him. And if
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you look back through the Old Testament, you see that cycle repeating itself again
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and again and again. God rescues
Israel and for a little while they obey
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him and then they fall into sin
and so God brings a nation against them
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in judgment. They cry out to
God, he rescues them again and for
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a little while they are righteous and
then they fall back into sin. And
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if you read the judges, you
see that or thirteen times just in that
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book. The whole purpose of those
judges was to rescue them when they had
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fallen into sin. They could not
in their hearts do any differently than they
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had done, and that illustrates the
true need that they had, which was
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not ultimately liberation from a pharaoh or
a land with milk and honey or live
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ration from a military enemy, but
rather their true need, like all of
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our true needs, was liberation from
enslavement to sin and death. For without
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that and for without the new life, the spiritual life of the Holy Spirit,
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they would continue to do things which
would lead to their eternal damn nation
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rather than their eternal glorification. But
God promises them, and yet another act
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of grace, that he will provide
what they need to be righteous. You
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will forgive their sins, he will
send that promised son of David, but
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he will also send us Holy Spirit
into their very hearts and write his law
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upon their hearts so that they obey
it. Ezekiel gives and talking about the
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same thing, he gives a slightly
different metaphor. Their God says, I
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will take out your heart of stone
and give you a heart of flesh.
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I will put my spirit within you
and cause you to obey my statutes.
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What is describing there is what we
in the New Testament called being born again,
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that through his Holy Spirit we will
be made a new creation. These
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are the blessings of the new covenants. These are the blessings that God was
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promising his people way back there in
Jeremiah's Day, and beloved, these are
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the blessings that we you and I
today, this blessing we have received,
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this lavishness of grace, even eternal
life, because God kept his promises that
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he may way back then, because
in the fullness of time, he did
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send his son, that son of
David, who did live a perfect life
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with a fully human nature. He
did what no other human being had ever
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done. He perfectly obeyed God's law
and then he offered himself as a sacrifice
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for sins. He merited us,
he earned us, he bought us and
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for that reason we are able to
come into the inheritance that was the result
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of his righteousness. Beloved, when
we take communion this this is illustrated even
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in the words of institution. Jesus
said this is the blood of the new
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covenant. When he was instituting the
Lord's supper, he was saying that New
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Covenant is here, it is here
and and you are able to enter into
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it. And the promise of that
is that we, even now can have
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the new life of the Holy Spirit
that we had. Cycle of dependence and
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slavery to the flesh can be broken
because God has sent his Holy Spirit to
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the whole Church and so beloved.
If you were here today and you don't
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yet know the Lord, if you've
not yet experienced being born again, let
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me tell you that, according to
God's promises, which he has kept,
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he's kept all his promises. But
let me tell you, according to his
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word, that this Gospel is full
and free and available for you today.
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God is just as lavish as you
was ever, and eternal life is even
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more lavish than all the blessings that
he gave to Israel. And these lavish
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blessings of eternal life for yours today, and they come through Jesus Christ.
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The scripture says, if you believe
upon the Lord Jesus Christ, you will
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be saved. Jesus said in me
you will bear much food. Apart from
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you can do nothing. Do not
trust in the strength of your own flesh
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to be righteous enough, but trust
in Christ, who is righteous enough for
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you and who can take away all
of your sins. For those of us
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who are already born again, who
are already Christians, who already confess Christ,
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the question maybe, well, how
then shall we live? We know
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in this world that we are surrounded
by people who are spiritually dead, who
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are surprised that we do not run
after the same sins that they do,
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who have very different values, very
different priorities than we do and who seek
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a very different kingdom than we do. They seek things that are of the
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world, well beloved. Our privilege, as well as our duty, is
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to remind ourselves constantly, with the
eyes of faith, not being distracted by
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00:32:29.400 --> 00:32:31.750
the things of the world, are
the desires of the world, but to
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00:32:31.829 --> 00:32:36.430
remember what God has done for us
and in us. If you're a Christian,
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if you've been a Christian for any
length of time, you know the
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experience of being a new creation.
Just as Paul says, we are new
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creatures in Christ. You know what
it means, especially if you were converted
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as an adult, what it means
to go from being a hardhearted, rebellious
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God hitting person to somebody who believes
in to some somebody who has changed and
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converted. That life did not come
from yourself, it came from above.
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It came from Christ through his Holy
Spirit. We are calling now, as
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Christians, to walk after that Holy
Spirit, to walk according to that new
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life that we have and no matter
how seductive the things of the world might
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seem, we are called to seek
first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,
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and then all the things of the
world that we need, our food
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and our clothing, our health.
Jesus said those things will be added to
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you, for your father in heaven
already knows that you need them. But
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we are called to seek first those
things that are that are eternal, because
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we've been given those things that are
eternal. We are already participating an eternal
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life. You know, it's almost
like, you know, we as Christians
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look forward to Christ coming back and
remaking the world and remaking our bodies and
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the new heavens and the new Earth
And the vision that John Sees and revelation
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twenty one. But beloved the fact
that we already bear the spirit and the
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fact that we are already born again, it's as if we've already stepped into
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revelation twenty one, at least partially. We are already partaking in and tasting
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the next world. We are already
tasting of the new creation which is already
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within us, and you us that
will be completed and consummated when Christ returns.
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But you know, we already experience
the power of that in our own
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lives, and so we are called
to rejoice in that we are called to
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esteem that which is greater than anything
that the world can offer and to follow
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after that work that the Lord is
done within us. Let us keep that
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perspective, let us keep that encouragements
as we face the days ahead, as
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we face the sins that remain in
our own hearts, as we face the
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temptations of the world. It can
be frustrating at times and it can be
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tempting at times to be fixated on, you know, one or another of
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our short failings, but let us
not allow that to obscure the largeness and
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the lavishness of God's grace and the
power that he has already worked within us
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through his Holy Spirit. For greater
is he that is in you than he
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that is in the world, and
our faith will overcome the world, and
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no sin that you can commit will
separate you from the love of God,
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for we are under the blood.
So be thankful for the Lord's work and
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walk in the light of that newness
of life. And let us do that
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regardless of what the world does or
what they tempt us to do or what
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we see with our eyes, or
rather, let us look with the eyes
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of faith to the coming of Christ
Kingdom. Let us pray
