All right. Good morning, church. So glad you're here today. I'm very thankful for you. We are continuing a series that we've got just a few more weeks left in called the Story.

And we're going through the Bible from Creation all the way to Revelation very quickly. So I'll admit there's a lot we cannot cover in that time span. But we're hitting highlights before I get into that today. You'll notice when you sat down, there's one of these in your seats. Again, this is a simple tool for you.

You might have got one of these last week, maybe you need an extra one, but this is for you to use on your one that you've been praying about. Maybe it's a workplace co worker, maybe it's a family member, but this will give them everything they need to know to get here. And so use this tool this week over the next few weeks. But Easter is just right around the corner. We're doing Palm Sunday together next week.

We bring our kids in with palm branches. We do a whole lot of fun stuff on Palm Sunday. And so you can go ahead and invite them this coming Sunday. You don't have to wait, but certainly use tool. And if you haven't filled one of these out yet, I just want to remind you, myself and our staff, we're praying for these every week.

It's a real privilege, really, for us to get to pray for the people that you are praying for. Your loved ones, your co workers, whoever it is that you believe the Lord is stirring your heart to pray for. So if you haven't filled one out yet, please do so and put it in the buckets, or as you're leaving. And we want to be praying for you. But here we are, we're approaching Easter, and this is an opportunity for people to hear the gospel and an opportunity for them to come to church when most people are more willing to come.

And so use these invitations. But here we go. We're digging into the story, Part eight, and we've talked about a lot of things so far. Today, we're really concluding the Old Testament. And as you well know, there's no way we got through the whole Old Testament in eight weeks.

It's because we skipped a lot, but we got some of the bulk of it. We talked about the creation story. We talked about the flood, the catastrophe story. We talked about the covenant with Abraham. Last week, we.

We talked about the crown, talked about King David. And now we come to a story that of all the ones we've done, this One challenges us the most in a way because the way the Old Testament ends is a cliffhanger. It's really a cliffhanger. It ends with them coming back to a broken city. They've been exiled, they've been in captivity for 70 years.

And God has essentially disciplined them for a long term disobedience of the people. Now they're coming home and they're awaiting a king. They're awaiting someone to restore them. And if you know your history, you know they wait for quite a while. There are many, many years in between the book of Malachi or today the book of Second Chronicles and the book of Matthew.

There are a couple hundred years. In fact, some people have called those the silent years. That's not technically true. There are many other writings in that time period. But they're awaiting the Savior.

And this is a hard word. This is a hard word to them and church. In some ways this is going to be a hard word today. But I also think it will be a very encouraging word if you would hear the voice of God today. Because that's what this whole thing is going to be about.

Whether you've shown up today as a believer in Christ, walking faithfully in Christ, or a non believer and someone drug you in here. I'm thankful you're here. There's a reason you're here. I pray, if nothing else, you get a good cup of coffee and maybe somebody smiles at you. That might be more than you get in your day to day, but I do pray more than that.

Today you hear this great news that God loves you. God has always, and he has a great plan for your life and he has already done everything necessary for you to be made right and free. That's all true. At the same time, believers and non believers alike, we have a tendency to ignore God. We do this in our life, period.

We do this with our bosses, we do this with our friends, we do this with our family members when they speak truth. We're like, eh, not for me. We ignore it. Whatever. Maybe it causes us to go to an uncomfortable place.

And so we say, ah, not now. This is what the people of God have done for hundreds of years in our story here. And God at this juncture, the story we're going to read today, God sped up. God's done. His wrath has boiled over is the way the text will put it.

And it's a pretty challenging piece of scripture, but it's going to be encouraging if you'll overcome this common tendency, you have to ignore the voice of God. To put him off, to drift further. The case is this Christian today, church today, you don't drift closer to God, you drift away. That's just true. That's true of human nature.

So if you want to know what it means, you want, it looks like, to follow God. It means a diligent pursuit of him for life. It never gets. You never get over this. We say this a lot around here.

The gospel doesn't just save you, it sustains you. And so you don't get over this, you don't. I've gotten to the place in my life now where I don't need to hear the good news of Jesus. No, I need to say it to myself every single day. I never get tired of this.

And it's important for me to remember that my obedience to him is not based on earnings, but it's based on his goodness to me and his calling on my life. And so we say this a lot here, but I want to remind you of this, and this is a big part of what we're going to talk about today, is that salvation doesn't come by earning. It doesn't come by you being holy. Salvation comes by grace alone and in faith alone. That's true, but it doesn't stop there.

That's not where the story ends. Now, the grace in you, the salvation given to you, begins to change. You believers in the room, some of you need to hear this today. If you look the same as you looked 10 years ago in your faith, something's off. Something's off.

Perhaps you've been in rebellion against things God has told you to do. Perhaps there are things where you are ignoring the voice of God. Some of you have come here today and you've been ignoring his voice your whole life. Perhaps at another church, at another time, you heard the preacher or you heard someone say, hey, come to Jesus. As Jesus famously said, come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest.

There's an invitation of faith that you would come to him and say, I believe you died on the cross for me. You rose from the grave, and that gives me confidence and salvation. Some of you have been ignoring that. Today I pray all of us would stop our rebellion and say yes to Jesus. Stop putting him off.

So here's the question. Where have you been rebelling? Where have you not been responding? In what places have you said no to God when He was clearly speaking? He's not done in any of those spots.

Because God loves you and he's a good father. Look, a good father even on this side of heaven. A good father on this earth loves you enough to say, that's not good. You. This is.

I need you to go there. That's what a good dad does. He's far better than this. And so there are going to be many times where he says, I need you to cut this out and come with me. I'm heading this way.

And there may have been seasons in your life where you've said, not for me, not now. He's not done. And he's very patient. That's what we're going to see in our story today. I would imagine when we first read it.

You're not going to have patience being the big thing that jumps off your mind. But we're going to explain it as we dig into two Chronicles. We're going to see here God dealing with his people and how much it reveals his character. This whole thing is really about the Lord and his response. And so we're going to see three truths about his character here.

Let's read 2 Chronicles, chapter 36, verse 15. To the end of that book, it says, the Lord, the God of their fathers, and sent persistently to them by his messengers because he had compassion on his people. Don't miss that, church. He had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people and until there was no remedy.

That's a scary thing to hear. Verse 17. Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or aged. He gave them all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his princes.

All these. All these he brought to Babylon. And they burned the house of God. They broke down the wall of Jerusalem, they burned all the palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels. He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword.

And they became servants to him and to his sons and the establishment, until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate, it kept the sabbath to fulfill. 70 years. Now here's how it ends. Church.

This is so fascinating. Now, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. The Lord stirred up. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it into writing. He said, thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

Whoever is among you of all of his people, may the Lord his God be with him. Let him go up. This is God's word. Amen. The scripture ends today not with the voice of the Lord or even the voice of God's people.

It ends with the voice of a pagan king saying, hey, people of God, go home, go back, Let him go up. This is a powerful story. This is like. Man, this seems kind of dark. Jonathan, why are we even talking about this?

You could have picked something else. And I had a lot of options to pick from, and I chose this one. What in the world? I want you to see something right away. There's a truth that jumps out on the pages for me in verses 15 and 16, and that is that God has a persistent compassion.

He has a persistent compassion, like Jonathan, I just read that with you. I'm not seeing that. Let me tell you a little something about this Lord here. Eight times we see the voice of the Lord. Eight times the words the Lord appear.

This is that Yehovah, that Yahweh word, his covenantal name. This is all about him speaking his work. This is about God. And God right away in verse 15, says, I sent persistently because of what? Because of my compassion.

And it was no small amount of time. Church, this is where we get a little sidetracked. Sometimes I hear people say. I see it online, people saying, hey, God seems like he's angry. He seems like a kid on an ant hill with a magnifying glass.

This is the kind of God that you Christians worship. And I want to tell you something. That ain't it. That ain't the God of the Bible. In fact, every time I read about this God, he seems way more patient than I would ever be.

I can tell you right now, this amount of time that God is talking about is somewhere over 400 years.

The reason I know this is because there's a principle within the Levitical law that every seventh year, they were supposed to let the land have a Sabbath. So six years, they could plant, they could harvest. On the seventh year, they were supposed to sow no seed. And the Lord was Going to provide. In fact, if I remember right, the Bible Sundays on the sixth year the Lord would provide basically a triple harvest so that they could eat on the 7th and have enough to plant the next group of seven.

And God promised this, and God would have fulfilled it, but he just kept planting on the seventh. They just kept doing it. Among a longer, much longer list, you're thinking, well, that's pretty petty. Trust me. That was just an indication of all the many ways they were in idolatry and worshiping other gods.

They were a hot mess. And so God says, I'm going to let the land rest. You won't do it. I'll do it. And I'm going to do it for 70 years.

Now do the math, friend. Every seven years they were supposed to do it. 70 years go by that the God let it rest. That's 490 years. That goes somewhere back, if you do the math.

Somewhere around the time between the prophet Samuel and King David, somewhere in there, the people stopped being obedient to this rule, to this law. So God let the land rest. So when you ask me, hey, are you sure God's patient? God waited for 400 plus years. How patient are you, my friend?

If someone wrongs you, will you give them 400 years? You're not even going to make it. Will you give them four months? I might not give them four months.

You get me enough times, I might not give you four hours. It's like, dude, I'm done. 400 years. Oh, God's not patient. Good Lord, what do you want?

He's incredibly patient. I don't understand his compassion, actually. I don't understand a God who for 400 plus years will send messages, send prophets, send messengers, and all they ever get is mocked, despised, and half of them get killed. God keeps trying.

Believers in the room. This is the God you serve. He loves you. His patience for you is beyond. It's beyond us, in fact, that the Bible would say he loved us and he planned to die for us even before, long before we ever came to faith.

It says that God loves us and sacrificed himself even while we were yet sinners. Christ died for us. Amazing news says he sent persistently messengers. He had compassion. But the people kept mocking them, despising his words, his men, his prophets.

This is who they were. This is who we are. We're not different than these people. You don't get to step back and say, well, I'm a lot better than them. No, you're a big mess too.

Every time you say no to The Lord, every time you ignore his word, you're just like them. And so am I. And so am I. God, it's a no today. I mean, I hear you, I hear you.

But, God, you're in that touchy spot in my life again. And I thought we talked about this. I'm not doing it. You want me to clean up this addiction. You want me to restore this relationship.

You want me to work at work like I'm supposed to. I'm cutting corners at work, God, because if I. If I don't, I won't make enough. Who doesn't trust God in this situation? This is the problem of the people.

If we don't plan on the seventh year, we're going to die. Did you hear him? You're going to have a triple harvest on the sixth year. But they never experienced it because they were never faithful.

Oh, boy. This is going to be a good one. I can see it on your faces. This is going to be a good one. He says, you kept mocking my people.

God's warnings are about his compassion. They're about his long suffering. This is what he says in Peter, second Peter, chapter three. One of my favorite verses in all of scripture shows his patience. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some count slackness.

He's not lazy. He's not purposely waiting. No, he has a long suffering towards us. Peter writes, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. This has been the story of the Old Testament.

This is who God is. He's been patient from creation all the way to consummation. He loves us. He had a plan of salvation for us. Even to Abraham.

He says in the covenant, hey, I'm not going to do all this right away because the time for the punishment or judgment on the ammonites has not yet come. Why not? There's occasion after occasion where God says, no, I'm not. I'm going to wait. I'm going to be patient with him here.

He's talking about all of humanity. I don't want people to perish and not know me. You know, God's desire is that heaven would be full and hell would be empty. That's our desire. Christian church.

It's God's desire. And he's being patient with people way beyond what you would allow. In fact, there's some people right now you're thinking, hey, I'm good. If God's not as patient with them. You know who I'm talking about.

They're in your head. And yet he shows them such favor in spite of the fact that prophet after prophet. Here's the last prophet that this verse talks about. It talks about the prophet Jeremiah, who gets incredibly mistreated. In fact, God gives him a word that is not a helpful word.

It wouldn't have been to me. God basically tells Jeremiah, hey, I'm sending you to teach them and preach to them and prophesy for them, and no one's going to listen to you. Like, hallelujah, God. Thank you for that calling. Praise God.

Every time I open my mouth, everybody's going to go, you're an idiot. We don't hear you. And that's what they did to Jeremiah. His whole life, his whole book, is them despising him and pushing him and mocking him and trying to kill him. There's many occasions.

Jeremiah, chapter 20, there's a priest over the temple that has him beaten and putting in prison and putting in stocks. In chapter 37, he's imprisoned again. In chapter 38, they leave him in this cistern, this pit, this well, if you will, for water. They're going to leave him there to die. Guess who saves him?

Not the people of God. The Babylonians who are coming to destroy the city. They come and look in there and go, well, this is kind of messed up. Imagine being the people coming to wipe out a nation. And even you were like, that's not a way to treat somebody.

How crazy is that? They look in there, you're a prophet of God. We've heard about you. And they're just doing you like this. Yeah, there's a legend even that Isaiah himself was sawn into the great, the prince of the prophets, if you will.

One of the most fascinating prophecies of all of Scripture, the book of Isaiah, Jewish tradition, is that he was put in a tree stump and sawn in two with the tree. Crazy. God doesn't even mention that. He said, they mocked and despised, let alone they killed half of them. Jeremiah writes in Jeremiah 25, he says, neither you have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, although the Lord persistently sent to you all his servants, the prophets.

Look, God's been speaking. Here's what I know, I believe to be true. People come to me at times and they say, I don't know what God wants. I've heard people say to me, I'm not sure what God's will is for my life. You may have heard this.

You may have thought this. Not sure what God desires or what his will is. If I could spend enough time with you when I say these crazy things. If I could spend enough time, I think I'd find out that somewhere in the journey you said, yeah, God did say that that one time, but I didn't like that one. And so now I'm begging him, hey, God, speak.

Hey, God, speak. Hey, God, what's your will? And there's that little. There's a little memory back there that said, yeah, we kind of talked about this back in the day. Remember that?

You're like, yeah, I still don't want to talk about that. God, I still don't want to reconcile. I still don't want to. Yeah, well, I'm not really gonna move on. This is who God is.

I'm not really gonna move on until we deal with that. The famous pastoral thing that I heard even as a young boy was, either he is Lord of all, or he's not Lord at all. And this is who God is. He desires to come in and change behavior, change attitudes, to affect your life in such an impactful and powerful way that you look wholly different when people come to you and they complain, hey, if I come to Christ, I'm scared to do it because he's gonna change me. He's gonna.

Yes, he is. He's going to change stuff. And for some reason, you've forgotten. The whole reason you were seeking him to begin with was your life is an absolute headache. It's a wreck.

Oh, I wish somebody would help me. I wish there was a God who had mercy. Well, there is. And he wants to undo all the chaos of your life that's killing you. But I like all those things.

I like these habits I have. They keep me alive. If I don't have my creature comforts, I'm not going to make it. And it's the very things that are killing you. Our addictions, our broken behaviors, our big mess.

It reminds me of what Jesus says as he's entering Jerusalem. Sounds a lot like Jeremiah. There's a lot of reasons for that, because he was there speaking to Jeremiah to begin with. But as he's approaching Jerusalem and we're going to talk next week, I have great news. We're going to enter the New Testament together.

We're going to be doing Palm Sunday together. We're going to be talking about the cross and the Resurrection together, which ought to be your favorite story. And here we have Jesus approaching in the season of passion week in Matthew 23. He says, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones, those who are sent to it.

How often would I have gathered Your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. But you were not willing. What about you, friend? The Lord is patient, absolutely. He's persistently compassionate on you, but he is speaking, and he doesn't like to be ignored.

And I think, honestly, what God does with believers, perhaps non believers, too, but with believers, he certainly does things from time to time. If you're running this way, he wants you that way. He's going to do some things to get you back over there. The exile is not just God saying, hey, I want to punish you. The exile is about him changing the hearts of his people.

Because after the exile, they are different. They aren't really given to false gods anymore. Now they start creating new problems, more like legalism. They go from having problems with false gods and idolatry to legalism, and that's what Jesus shows up to. But this is where we run as believers.

We run from God. We hear his voice and we ignore it. Sometimes we do our own thing. We're not playing the part that God has created us. And so guess what he'll do sometimes.

And that don't feel real good. That doesn't feel real good. Sometimes it means, yeah, that job you're on, I'm going to go ahead and end that. Like, why did I lose my job? Because God didn't tell you to do that.

He told you to do that, and you said, nah, But I'm not going to make enough doing this. I don't trust.

This is why sometimes I have an internal battle when people come to me with prayers and they're like, hey, you know, I just lost this job, or this, and that happened. And the more you unpack your story, I start to internally go, I never say this to y', all, but internally I'm thinking, I probably would have fired you, too.

Oh, I don't. I probably shouldn't say that out loud, though. Don't you agree? I don't know if I should. It's like, hey, if you show up late all the time, you don't work hard, you're kind of a stinker to work with.

And God does something to redirect you, because guess what he doesn't want you to do? He doesn't want you to represent Christ and be an absolute scumbag of an employee. So there's things that the Lord does to discipline his people. What about you, friend? Are you willing, don't ignore his voice anymore.

Because then you get the second truth about God. Yes, he's persistently compassionate. He's also passionately holy.

He's passionately holy. He's not just a little bit holy. He's all holy. He always has been, he always will be. The coming of Christ is not an indication that God's holiness has changed, but rather that his holiness has actually been fulfilled.

Because now in Christ Jesus, a sacrifice has come that was enough to fulfill the wrath of God. I know it's a passionate holiness because verse 16 tells us that the wrath of the Lord rose against his people. That word in Hebrew means fire. It has to do with heat. So he's not just a little bit mad.

He's a lot a bit mad. 400 and some years you guys have been disobeying me and turning to other gods. There's nothing about you that even looks like my people. You might as well be someone else. And I'm done.

I'm done. And so guess what he does? He allows another nation to take them into captivity. Not because he hates them, but because he loves them. Because it would be the thing that would turn their hearts towards him.

And it works. A lot of people lose their lives over this. There's a lot of pain about this. And God's wording towards them really changes in this. In verse 17, we see a change in the tone of God.

Verses 15 and 16, he's saying, My people, his people, my people, they're mine. Verse 17, he says, their young men and their sanctuary. He doesn't even claim the sanctuary as his own anymore. Never go to a church where the presence of God is not on it. If you experience that, pick another church.

Never go there. This is what's happened here. Ezekiel sees it. One of the others in exile, he literally sees in a dream the story, spirit of the Lord, leave the temple and not return. And not return.

This is what God says. Their sanctuary, their people. I'm going to use the king of the Chaldeans. This is another name for the Babylonians. These are the same people here.

And this king, you know him. Those of you who have read your Bible even a little bit, or grew up in church a little bit, you know this guy? His name's King Nebuchadnezzar, which is a crazy name to spell. I mean, even as a pastor, I'm like, how do you spell that name again? There's a D in there.

Why Nebuchadnezzar? I mean, it's a mess. Don't name your kids that. That's evil, all right? Your kid will never learn how to write his name.

And it's not a great name anyway. He's kind of a messed up character in the Bible. And man, he shows up on the scene God uses. He uses non people, the ones he had not chosen to come and discipline his people.

This is wild. And in verse 21 he tells us, this is all to fulfill something. You guys wouldn't be obedient. You wouldn't do what I told you. So in verse 21 he says, I'm going to let the land enjoy those Sabbaths.

This goes back to Leviticus 25. You haven't probably spent a great deal of time studying Leviticus. It is a challenging read. It's a very important read. I would encourage every believer to read it.

But there we see really the bulk of the sacrificial system, which brings such light to why we needed JEs. There's such value there. But in Leviticus 25 we see God telling Moses that they were not allowed to plant on the seventh year and that God would provide. But for 400 and some years they didn't do it. And this is just one little thing on a long rap sheet that Jeremiah read the book of Jeremiah.

He talks about all of this idolatry. But the Lord is slow to punish. He's slow. The prophet Nahum, in chapter one he says, the Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. It's not that he's putting it off as if he's not just.

He's just patient and he's compassionate. Ezekiel 36 says, Thus says the Lord God. It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations. I will vindicate the holiness of my great name and the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. This is what's real church.

Those of you in Christ today, if you're representing him poorly out there, there's discipline in front of you. It's a fact. Because his holy name matters to him. You profane his name in public, then there's something coming. There's some New Testament stories here that actually scare me to death.

They're not normative. I don't think they happen very often, but they're certainly there and they're post resurrection. So sometimes we think, oh, we're good because we're on this side of the cross. But let's not forget that this is a holy God who's way big and way he really cares about his mission and his name. There's this amazing story where the people of God are selling their possessions, they're giving to one another, and the church is really being a good.

They're being the church. The church at its very best. They're being it. They're taking care of each other and the poor are able to sustain. And this is what the church was doing.

And this couple shows up, Ananias and Sapphira, say, hey, we sold our stuff and gave it. But they lied. They'd only given a small portion of it.

I hope this never happens at Eastgate Church because Ananias and Sapphira just die right in the middle of their worship service. That's publicity I don't need, man. It's getting crazy over it. East Gate 2020 oatmeal. Man, it's getting wild down there.

I don't really. I'm not longing for that, but God does. That happens post resurrection. I gotta be honest with you, that kind of story, it humbles me a little bit because I know this much. Like recently I've probably said something that wasn't fully true, like, oh, well, good grief, Pastor, I can't believe.

Come on, you have to. So many of us like little things too. Like, I can tell you right now, if my mom comes and visits me and says, do you like my hair? And I don't like it. I'm not going to tell her that.

I don't think the Lord's ever going to strike me down for that. But let's be honest, there are little moments every day where I'm making decisions that are up and down and I'm trying to walk with God. But man, if we got to be that, it's a scary story because God cares about his name. They profaned his name in that moment. They lied to the church and God holds them to a high standard.

God is passionately holy. And the longer that we decide to disregard him and run from him, the deeper and darker it gets. Jesus, there's this fascinating story. We think about Jesus meek and mild, and everybody's like, I kind of like Jesus. Jesus is cool.

They don't believe in him for salvation, but like, yeah, he seems like a nice guy. He healed people. He was for the poor. I get this a lot lately. Jesus was for the poor, like Jesus was for all mankind.

I don't know what we're on about here. He's for people. He loves us. But he also is holy and perfectly holy. And there's a moment where People often read the story and go, well, wow, he got out of control there.

He had, like, an unbridled anger. But that's not the case. He's passionately holy for the house of God. And this is in Luke, chapter 19. It's in some of the other gospels, too.

He comes in with a whip and drives the people out of the temple because they're in there selling stuff and exchanging money. It's not even a place for worship. They're in there doing a market, and he gets mad and drives them out. This is God. This is Christ.

This is what he thinks about his church. It's a holy place, not a place for robbers. This is what he says in Luke 19:46. He says, this my house will be a house of prayer, not a den of robbers. I want that for this church, Lord.

I want that for this church. But I want it for my house, too. I want my home to be a house of prayer and not a den of robbers. You know, you can rob from each other in your own family. I'm not talking monetarily.

I'm talking about the way we get so selfish with each other. We don't have time. We don't have relationships with our very family. We don't eat together. We don't take care of each other.

It's no longer a house of prayer. It's become a den of robbers. The disciples quote David's Psalms, Psalm 69, when they say, In John chapter 2, his disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me when Jesus drives them out with the whip. This isn't him losing his temper. This is the passionate holiness of God.

Friend, today I want you to hear this. This isn't meant to be, like, accusational and make you have fear. Because the Bible does explicitly say, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but has given unto us a spirit of love, of faith, of hope. So it's not about fear. It's about coming to faith and saying, God, I will be obedient because you have done everything necessary for me to be free.

I'm not going to live as if I don't know you. This is the craziness and insanity of what it is to be a Christian in modern American culture that you look nothing like. I mean, you look everything like the rest of the world. You look nothing like Jesus. And this happens for years and years.

At what point do you have to say, I'm in rebellion against His Word? At what point do you have to say, I should be changing, not out of the sense of earning, but out of the sense of look what God has done. His love drives me. In fact, the Bible says his kindness leads us to repentance.

So when you look at the face of Jesus, when you see him on the cross for your behalf, doesn't that drive you to go, okay, Lord, you can have all of me, not just some of me. At the end of the day, I know you made me not for my own, but you made me for you. You made me for yourself. What would you like me to be and do and say and think? I want to walk with you.

That's what it means to be a believer, to walk in Christ. Here's the third. And all of you are thankful. Here's good news. I'm gonna let off, alright.

Like, goodness gracious, I'm exhausted. I'm sorry. It's good. Cause guess what? There's a little bit of rebel in every one of us.

Little bit of rebel. I have a rebellion every morning. Did you know that? Y' all can leave and never come back. That's okay.

Like the pastor, every single morning I wake up and go. I hate the mornings, Lord, people tell me you get older and get over this. It's not happened yet. I love the night. I'm a man of the night, like Batman.

But guess what? I don't accomplish anything of any value at night. I've been for my whole life, ever since I really started walking with Christ and trying to be serious about prayer and in his word, I've been saying for 30 some years, I'm going to have good Bible studies and devotion at night. Guess how many times that's happened. About maybe 5 in 30 years.

Guess when I have incredible prayers and devotion and time with God in the morning. I hate the morning. But man, some of you needed to hear that tonight. Stop staying up, go to bed. Your discipline is simple.

Go to bed, get up, spend time with the Lord. It will change your life. It'll change your life. But has it gotten easier? Not really.

And yet this is the craziness that Paul, I think is talking about. He says I have to beat my body daily and make it my slave. Otherwise I just start being old Paul again. I'm the same way every single day. I thought you were going to let off of us.

I'm going to let off you now. Okay, here's the third truth. This one's so good. His promised restoration. It's in view even here.

Even here. In Second Chronicles, it's obvious that God is going to restore. He's going to restore you. Some of you are in the midst of his discipline right now, and maybe you're aware of it. You've been running from him, and he's done with it, and he's moving you back into alignment with him, and it hurts.

Some of you are there. There's a promise of restoration every time. And he keeps his promises. The good news begins right at verse 21. It doesn't wait until 22, in fact.

Really, in verse 20, he says, until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia. That's meant to cue you, that something is going to change. And then in verse 22, we get God working through a pagan king to restore his people and to rebuild. Look, this is wild. This would be like the city of Rocky Mount coming in and saying, we're going to build on an extension to all the churches in town.

I promise you that will never happen. It'll never. You know what? For the rest of the tenure of your church's life, you will never have to pay utilities. That will never happen.

And yet that's what happens here. Cyrus not only sends the people back to rebuild the walls in the temple, he funds it. Wow. Because it says the Bible stirred him up. God stirred him up.

God fulfills his promises in the most wild ways. Cyrus here, he's even talked about all the way back from the prophet Isaiah, years before Cyrus was even born. We have God Speaking of Cyrus, Isaiah 44, it says, I am the Lord who says of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, he shall fulfill all my purpose, saying, of Jerusalem, he shall be built, she shall be built. And of the temple, your foundation shall be laid. Prophecies about this coming Persian years before it ever happened.

God always keeps his promises. Numbers, chapter 23. God is not a man that he should lie, or a son of man that he should change his mind. He has, he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

They've even found archeological discoveries of the Cyrus. They call it the Cyrus Cylinder. You could pop up this image. This was in the late 1800s. They discovered this.

And we have evidence now of this guy's existence, of some of the things he did. I've said this before. I'll have the luxury of getting to say it over and over again. Every time we do archaeological finds, we just end up finding out the Bible's true. That will always be the case.

And so here we have this Cyrus doing this thing, and God has been restoring them. But I want to finish with this idea as I come to A close right now, because some of you are in the midst of some trials right now. Some of you are probably in the midst, right in this moment of God redirecting you because he loves you, he's trying to restore you. And you might be feeling the pruning, the discipline, if you will. I want to remind you of something here.

God exiles his people. Yes. God sends them to Babylon and has Babylon wipe out the city, the temple, the walls, all of it, scorch the earth. And he brings them back. He steals all their stuff.

It's all gone. Guess what, though God does not remain in the house, as Ezekiel saw, he instead moves with the people.

Because guess what you see in the exile. You get the Book of Daniel, you get the book of Ezekiel. You get these guys seeing some of the most important information in all of scripture about God's plan, like end times plan. You get wonderful information about what God's up to, and you get miracles that I would argue will not happen. Apart from this time of testing, the people do change.

They turn from idolatry. That's true. But not only that, you get some of your favorite kid stories here. We used to play this game when I was a kid with my family. We called it Bible Quiz.

We still play it in my house sometimes. Not as much as we should, because my kids, they need to work. They need to work on this. I'm stumping them a lot with Bible Quiz. But my dad, my brother, my sister, we used to play this game a lot.

And we would begin to ask these questions. And if we got a question right, we would get a whopping penny. And whoever got to five pennies or ten pennies, whatever we were playing to, would win. And it was a competition between me and my brother. My sister was talking to my mom about who knows what.

That's just what they did. My sister's very brilliant, very smart girl. Very, very faithful to the Lord at that point in her life, could care less about Bible Quiz. So it was me and my brother. We're gonna win this thing.

And we had a story that was asked almost every time. I'm gonna ask you now you can earn a penny. Who were the three Hebrew children who were thrown in the fiery furnace?

I owe some pennies. I owe a lot of pennies. All right. I don't have any on me. We'll get you pennies later.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. That doesn't happen outside of the exile. That happens in it. That shows that God is with them. Guess what?

God is truly with them in that moment. I love this story. It's one of my favorite stories in all the Bible. Because they come, they're supposed to be worshiping Nebuchadnezzar, who acts like he's a God king and the people are worshiping him and they say, we won't do it. Well, then you're going to burn.

And here's. I might be paraphrased, this is Jonathan's paraphrase. But they say something like, hey, perhaps God will show up. But even if not, let us burn. I love that faith.

That is my kind of faith right there. Hey, even if God doesn't show up, we're not worshiping Nebuchadnezzar. Let us burn. If God wants us to burn, we'll burn. And guess what?

A fourth man shows up in the fiery furnace with them and protects them. That most theologians think this is what we call a christophany and a pre incarnate appearance of Christ with them. Oh, you can't tell me God's not with them in the exile. God doesn't just leave the temple because he's mad. He leaves because.

Because he's going with them and he loves them and he's restoring them. And you get this story, you get this other fascinating story where Daniel, he keeps praying to God the Father, even though the people and the prophets have all said, no, we pray to Nebuchadnezzar. Now we pray. No, at this point, it's Darius. We don't pray to God, we pray to the king.

And Daniel does what Daniel always does. He has his daily quiet time and he prays and he gets caught. They throw him in a den of lions. You grew up with this story that doesn't happen outside of the exile.

Those faithful moments where the people of God are changing and being restored. And Daniel sits down there overnight with the. I don't imagine he slept. Maybe he did. That's the kind of patience and calm that I would have been sitting there like, everybody cool, like, no quick movements from the lions.

But nobody ate him that night. God is with him. Shut their mouths, friends. Some of you are going to get stories like that as you walk your way back to faith, walk your way back in Christ. Some of you for a long time have been saying, if I say yes to him, if I stop doing the things that he's called me to stop.

Sometimes he does obedience. Sometimes. Looks like I can't do this anymore. If I keep talking to my wife this way, it's going to kill me and kill us. If I keep drinking, it's going to be over for me.

If I keep spending my money like this, I'm going to ruin everything. If I keep working this way, I'm going to not only lose my job, I'm going to lose my testimony. There's a litany of dangers in every one of our lives, and some of us are choosing comfort over the words of God. And he has clearly spoken to you, perhaps in the past, maybe clearly today.

Return to me, he says. Return to me. Today's the day, and it's going to be a little bit painful to come out of exile and say, all right, Lord, I'm yours. I'm walking with you. Those are the moments where you get the lion's den.

Those are the moments where you get the fiery furnace, where God gets incredible glory and you get to be a part of it. You're not the star of the story. That's okay. Neither am I. There's one star.

His name's Jesus. The Bible's about him. We make a big mistake when we say this is a book about humanity. No, this is a book about Christ. It's about God who's expressed himself in the person of Jesus.

And it's a thrill to just get to be a part of Him. Showing off. I'm good with this church. I'm praying for you that you'd be good with it. I just want to be a part of God showing off.

I want to be a part of a church where we see God's glory fall. I want to be a part of a church where we see people come to faith and see God move. I don't need praise. I don't want it. It's not good for me.

It'll destroy me. But He, I pray, gets it all.

So today, friends, where have you not been? Listening to the Lord, he will restore you fully. And he has a plan for you that you can't imagine. The people did not trust God that on the seventh year he would provide. So they disobeyed him for hundreds of years.

Do you trust him? If I give God this thing, I trust him. I pray you will. As we close right now, I want to just bring to light one interesting fact. God is certainly compassionate and persistent.

He's passionately holy. He's promised a restoration. What's really fascinating about Two Chronicles that you don't necessarily see in your English Bible is that in the Hebrew Bible, which they would have been reading, which Jesus would have been reading, the Tanakh is what it's called. It doesn't end where we end. We end with the book of Malachi, right?

It's not where the Hebrew Bible ends. Guess where it ends. Second Chronicles 36. The end of the Hebrew text says these words, may the Lord his God be with him. Let him go up.

The Hebrew Bible ends with this cliffhanger of, hey, from not even from God. Not even from God's people. From Cyrus saying, hey, if you're the people of God, go ahead and go home. And they go home and they rebuild the temple and they rebuild the walls, and there's this season of waiting. This wonderful thing happens.

If you had a Hebrew Bible in front of where when you turn the page, if you could, because it won't have this. The Hebrew Bible obviously doesn't have the New Testament, but if it did, you turn the page of the very first words you would read of the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. The son of David, the son of Abraham. Okay, here's that guy. Here's that guy we've been waiting on for hundreds of years.

The son of David, the son of Abraham. Both the covenants, this guy's going to fulfill them. So, friends, today, when you hear these words, let us go up. I want you to know something. We're not going up to a place anymore.

We don't come to church. We are the church. We don't have to meet in this place to experience the presence of God. We don't. We do this because he's called us to do it.

Don't forsake the assembling of yourselves. Be together, fellowship, give, be generous, worship. That's why we do this. But not because the presence of God is only here. The presence of God is here.

So when he says, go up, here's what he's talking about. Now, John, chapter one. Right away in John's Gospel, he says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Greek there means tabernacle. The word became flesh and tabernacled among us.

Christ has become our temple, and his presence is upon us. So now I want you to hear these as we close. The Old Testament ends with go up, but the New Testament begins where we're going to start next week with God came down. This is the great news of the gospel. I pray you would know it, that your friends and family would know it.

Let's pray now. Heavenly Father, thank you so much that you are a good God who is immensely compassionate. Your patience is so far beyond my understanding, I could barely fathom it that you would be patient with me. I Know my message. I know who I am.

God. And yet you still love me. And you still died for me, and you still care for me. And you still seem to be at work in my life. I can't believe it.

It's amazing that you would show me that level of care. That's who your people are, Lord. We come in here broken, we come in here a mess. That's who we are. And yet you love us.

And yet you're for us. And you have a plan that's beyond us. I know there's perhaps someone who's come in today and they've been ignoring your voice for a long time. And not just in the things you're. But even in the basics of salvation, they've been ignoring it.

Maybe they've heard other preachers in the past. Maybe they grew up at church. Dear friend, if that's you today, it's time. It's time to say yes. He's calling.

He's been calling. He's calling you clearly today. Please don't say no, because tomorrow is not guaranteed. It never was. Not for any of us.

Don't put this off even another moment. The Lord is calling. Come to me, all who are weary. I will give you rest. Come to me.

Come to faith today that in Christ Jesus you might have eternal life that begins now. If that's you, my friend, you're ready to stop ignoring his voice. Would you pray simply with me? Lord Jesus, I believe today. I believe you died on the cross for me, for my sin, for my mess.

You paid for it. And God, I believe you raised Christ Jesus from the dead.

Your death and resurrection, they give me hope that not only have you defeated my mistakes, my sin, but you've also planned and prepared for an eternal future for me. Lord, I put my confidence in that today. And I'm asking. I'm asking boldly today, Lord, help me to hear your voice when you speak to me. Prayer in your word, even when you speak to me through others.

At times that I would hear you and I wouldn't ignore your voice anymore. I wouldn't ignore you anymore. Not another moment that I would hand over my baggage, my mess, lay it at the feet of the cross, and that you would begin to make me into the new creation you promised and give me a future that's beyond what I could have imagined. Dear friend, if you prayed with me that that prayer. You're now a child of God.

Welcome to the family. We're all there with you. All of us struggle with ignoring the voice of God. I pray God that we would have ears to hear as Jesus so famously often said that you would have ears to hear. We ignore you so much, Lord, I pray that you would speak to us in your word this week, maybe even this evening as we go to lay our heads down in prayer, lay our heads down in one last Bible reading, one last devotion as we wake up tomorrow morning that you would speak to us, that we would hear your voice and it would move us, it would stir us to live for you.

Guide us. We pray Lord Jesus help that person in here today who's been ignoring you and saying no to you for so long and it has, it has brought them such grief. God, I pray today would be the day that they hear your voice and repent and that God you would so bless them as they begin to walk with you again. I pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen.