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TITLE: “IS AMERICA’S END DRAWING NEAR?”
TEXT: JEREMIAH 1:1-4; 5:9; 8:20
{“The Eerie Similarities Between The End Days of The Nation of Judah and Today in America!”}
AUTHOR: JACK WOODARD
SERMON OUTLINE:
Introduction:
I. A Nation Divided
II. A Nation in Decline
III. A Nation in Defiance
IV. A Nation in Depravity
V. A Nation in Derision
VI. A Nation in Denial
VII. A Nation Destroyed
VIII. Major Difference
Epilogue
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INTRODUCTION:
Jeremiah was Judah’s last prophet before going into Babylonian Captivity. He was called by the Lord to begin his ministry during the reign of Judah’s boy king, King Josiah. In [2 Kings 22:1-23:30] we are given the record of Josiah’s reign. Josiah’s father (Amon) and grandfather (Manasseh) were evil men whose love for sin and wickedness led them to forsake the True God of Israel and attempt to replace Him with false gods who accepted and even encouraged sin and wickedness in the lives of their followers. (That is the kind of god America has now adopted.) We have “… changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man …” [Romans 1:23] they would also lead the Nation of Judah into forsaking the Lord for pagan gods and to live wickedly as well.
They were not only seduced but they became the seducers of the nation. They were not the servants of Jehovah God, but the servants of the Evil One, doing his bidding for him. From the highest office in the land you had sin and wickedness practiced and encouraged among the people and the worship of the True God purged from the land and new pagan gods established in His place. (Sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?) After the death of Amon, his son Josiah ascended to the throne at the tender young age of 8 years old. Josiah was just the opposite of his father and grandfather, in that he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, [2Kings22:3] and used his authority as King to purge Judah and Jerusalem of these pagan gods and their worship. To rid Judah of any reminders of these pagan gods his nation had worshiped during the reigns of his father and grandfather, [2Chronicles 34:3-5] he had all their shrines and altars completely destroyed. He would later repair and reopen the Temple that had been closed for years, (during which time it was turned into a storage site).
Once the Temple was reopened he restored the worship of Jehovah (the One and Only True God), the sacrifices and the celebrating of the Passover Feast. In addition, he reintroduced the nation to the Word of God after discovering the nation’s sole copy of the Law in the House of God while they were in the process of repairing it. The nation’s sole copy of the Law had been lost in the House of God while it set abandoned and defiled for years. Here was a nation that was “. . . being destroyed for lack of knowledge . . .” [Hosea 4:6].
Many of the people had not had a Word from the Lord in their lifetime.
Without the Word of God they had no idea who the Lord was, nor what He expected of them as His people. It was left up to the imaginations of their darkened minds and hearts (and the lies of the false prophets who were just as profane and as much in the dark as were the people) [Jeremiah 23:11] to create an image of God for the nation. The image they created was one in which their God was as corrupt as they were. [Romans 1:22, 23]
America has done the same, for decades we have not wanted “… to retain God in our knowledge…” [Romans 1:28], so we have done our best to rid our society of the Word of God, beginning at the school house where the minds and beliefs of our children are just beginning to be shaped for life.
The Church has even lost the Word of God in the Lord’s own House. It would be next to impossible in most churches in America for a person to see the pastor stand before his people and read the Bible text and then to preach, “THUS SAITH THE LORD.” Most pastors have abandoned preaching the Word of God in favor of sharing the latest goings on as reported by some godless News Magazine, or the latest heresy that is fashionable among the people. (Every man who calls himself a Preacher, a Servant of the Lord, ought to read and heed the Lord’s CHARGE to us in [2 Timothy 4:1-5], for such times as these.)
With the Truth of the Word of God now all but eliminated from our society, we too have created from our darkened minds a corrupt image of God. We no longer have a God who is Holy, but now our God is one who creates some men and women as homosexuals and lesbians and sees homosexuality as a normal and acceptable life style. America now has an image of God as one who sees nothing wrong with slaughtering 1.2 million babies a year in abortion mills (to escape the discovery and consequences of their sin and not have their selfish lifestyles curtailed by the burden of an unwanted baby.) A corrupt people create a corrupt god. Judah was living under this delusion and corruption.
All of that was about to change with the coming of the Prophet Jeremiah. They were soon to learn that their God was a Holy God who expected His people to be Holy as well [1Peter 1:14-19] or experience His terrible displeasure. Josiah’s reforms and revival were well-intentioned, but they were merely pretense, superficial and ritual for the people and not the result of a changed heart towards the Lord. [Jeremiah 3:6,10; 4:1-2] Even though the people had been legislated to return to their religion, they did not return to the Lord Himself. [Hosea 7:16] “They return, but not to the Most High.” Their life of idolatry, injustice and immorality continued on as before. The only difference now was that they were claiming to be a follower of Judah’s ancestral God. They lived the same life of sin as usual –the only difference being that they had changed the name of their god and the place of their worship. But they were the same old sinners that they had always been. Jesus encountered the very same people during His ministry. They called themselves Pharisees, but Jesus called them: “Hypocrites –people who drew near unto Him with their mouth and honoreth Him with their lips, but their heart was far from Him.”[Matthew 15:7, 8]
It would be in the midst of this superficial revival of religion that the Lord called Jeremiah to warn his nation of impending judgment from the Lord, if they did not quickly amend their ways, repent and return to their Lord. The Lord is looking for some Jeremiah’s in America today. We have enough Benny Hinns and Joel Osteens today who, like the false prophets in Jeremiah’s day, are white-washing sin and tickling the itching ears of H-E-L-L -bound church attendees with their fables and feel good psycho-babble. This H-E-L-L -bound society and church needs a Jeremiah who will; “Be not afraid of their faces…and speak unto them all that I command thee…”[Jeremiah 1:8, 17], a prophet who is willing to “… root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and plant” [Jeremiah 1:10]
You can imagine how unnecessary, unappreciated and out of step Jeremiah and his message must have seemed to the nation and to the religious establishment in particular. They had stopped going to the pagan altars to worship their pagan gods. They were now going to the Temple, making their sacrifices and giving their offerings. The false prophets, who claimed to be speaking for the Lord, were telling them that they were good people deserving of health and prosperity from the Lord and that Jeremiah was just a nut not to be taken seriously.
I can hear them say; “How dare Jeremiah say we are worthy of the Lord’s Judgment, God is a good and loving God and we are doing our best!!” Most people who deny the message of judgment usually tell us they do so because they believe that God is too good to judge anyone. But what they really mean is that they think “they are too good for God to judge.” That is how the people of Judah felt -self-righteous, smug and comfortable in their religion. They were to find out, as with America, that God is too good not to judge and we are too evil not to be judged by a thrice-Holy God.
Thus was the beginning of Jeremiah’s ministry, and for the next 40 years (a generation) he would continue to preach the same warning while the end of the nation kept drawing nearer and nearer. Jeremiah would become very irritating to the people who saw no need for change. They would become more hostile towards him. The persecution from his people grew worse and worse with no visible evidence that he was getting through or making any difference upon his nation.
In [Jeremiah 8 verses 20-22], Jeremiah gives voice to the horror and despair that he is feeling for the fate of his doomed nation. As the passing of a Harvest Season that failed to produce fruit, gives rise to despair for a future without the availability of food, so the days the Lord had given them the opportunity to repent and return to Him failed to produce repentance and now the Lord had shut the door for the opportunity to repent and judgment is now their inevitable future. The end was now upon them.
Could the same be true for America as well? Could the Lord’s judgment of us be inevitable? Is the door of opportunity for repentance and revival closing or is it already closed? I realize that there are many people going to Church in America (not as many as you would hope, probably only around 20 percent of our population on any given Sunday, and many of those 20 percent go to Churches that are liberal, dead or cults). I also realize that there are many so-called preachers who are telling the nation how good we are and how that a good God wants them to be healthy and prosperous, without ever addressing the moral free fall that we are seeing in our nation and in our pews; never saying a word about the Idolatry and Immorality that is rampant amongst the people who call themselves Christian; never rebuking the unfaithfulness, the indifference, and the high treason that is being committed daily against our Lord by the majority within the Church.
It is evident to me that the moral and spiritual free fall that America has been experiencing for years necessitates, in the absence of our Lord’s Return, either Revival or Judgment, the status-quo cannot and will not continue much longer. Like Judah in the days of Jeremiah, the option and opportunity for America to repent and return to the Lord, and averting judgment, is quickly passing us by. It is my intention to prove that fact in this message.
I am going to show several comparisons between our Nation as it is today, to the nation of Judah as it was when she was at her very end, just days from her final judgment. We will see some eerie similarities between America and Judah that make it very clear that the END OF AMERICA may very well be upon us. When I say “the end” I am not saying that we will cease to be a nation or that some enemy will annihilate us with a nuclear weapon, even though the Lord could very well cause that to happen. What I am talking about –which is just as disturbing –is that we could see the Lord’s judgment very well come in the form of the following:
We could become so crippled financially that we be like the slums of Calcutta –people starving, babies dying of starvation on the dry breasts of their mothers, and people being mugged and murdered for the change that is in their pockets. The pestilence of AIDS will be just one of many incurable diseases we will face. To compound the poverty, droughts will rob the market places of basic food staples. Food will become as scarce and as expensive as gold. The education system in our nation will be shut down. We could not afford to keep them open under such poverty, and our hungry children will be unable to comprehend and learn while is such a state of hunger. Our automobiles will be parked or abandoned because of the fuel shortages, shortages that will be so severe that there will not be enough fuel to even keep the Police or Emergency Vehicles running, leaving crime and death unchecked.
We will walk wherever we must go, eventually becoming so weak from hunger that we will become unable to walk from one place to another, people just lie where we fall. People will be living in squalor, scrounging for anything to make a roof over their heads to keep out of the cold, heat, rain and snow. Our loved ones will die all around us and we will be helpless to save them. We would also see chaos and derision created by the collapse of all of our institutions that hold us together as a nation.
We will see social unrest with riots and carnage in our streets. Communication will become next to impossible. You will not be able to communicate through the Internet, telephone, or mail with your loved ones that live away from you. We will see a tyrannical government headed by a despot that would certainly strip us of all the freedoms we now cherish and enjoy, and enslave us to serve him and his government. That and worse is soon to be the fate of America if we do not return to the Lord. (If this sounds far fetched and radical, remember that is what Judah thought of Jeremiah’s warnings)
Let me say a word of warning to Christians. If America falls under the Lord’s judgment, those who will suffer the most will be those who call themselves a Christian. We will be blamed for the fall as sure as King Ahab blamed the judgment of God his nation was experiencing upon the prophet Elijah. [1Kings 18:17,18] The Lord will see to it that judgment will begin with His own, [1Peter 4:17] especially severe will be the Lord’s judgment upon those that have been unfaithful to Him. His judgment will be double for the sins they have committed against Him, [Jeremiah 16:18] and they will be severe enough to finally break us or make us into the people He would have us to be.
A dark and foreboding cloud of judgment is looming over our nation, and it is getting larger and darker with every passing day that we fail to see Genuine Revival among the people of God. It is getting ready to burst asunder allowing the full wrath of God to fall upon this beloved land we call home.
[The Hovering Cloud Of Judgment Over Our Land]
I. SIMILARITY NUMBER ONE: JUDAH WAS A NATION DIVIDED
King David had united the nation under his rule and that unity continued throughout the reign of David’s son and successor, King Solomon. During his reign, King Solomon began a massive government expansion, with a huge building program of cities and buildings throughout the land. To construct these cities and buildings Solomon enslaved the children from the pagan nations that were left in the land after Israel had conquered it. [1Kings 9:15-21] These people became what we would call, Government Employees, on the Government Pay Roll. To pay for his extravagant spending and expanding government Solomon taxed his own people. As the government spending grew so did the tax burden upon his people. The people had less and less of their hard earned money to keep for themselves as uncle Solomon took more and more for his government. [1Kings 12:4]
Now that he had his labor force and his money source, Solomon then needed a military force to protect his expanding wealth and Kingdom. To have a standing army Solomon instituted a military draft among Israel’s young men, and now there is an added tax burden upon the people to pay for the Defense Budget. You can imagine the unwanted and unappreciated intrusion that Solomon and his big government were making into the lives and families of Judah.
[SOLOMON’S GREAT BUILDING PROGRAM]
Upon the death of Solomon, his son, Rehoboam, succeeded him to the throne. At the inauguration of Rehoboam [1Kings 12:1] the people of Israel pleaded with him not to continue the massive growth of government and the heavy tax burden that his father had started, but Rehoboam and his advisers were tone deaf and indifferent to the voice and wishes of the people and chose to continue to expand and increase the burden upon the people. In response the people formed their own Tea Party and revolted, breaking away from Rehoboam’s rule and established a new nation made up of 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel. They became known as Israel with their own capital at Samaria. The tribe of Judah and Benjamin became the Nation of Judah with Jerusalem being its capital – the people to which Jeremiah is called of the Lord to prophecy to.
Does not that sound eerie similar to America today? America is a fractured Nation. Many in America are products of Divided Families that have been divided by a 50% divorce rate. Homes that have been divided by Drugs, Violence, Incest, Adultery,etc. We now have in America several generations whose lives have been robbed of the foundation that only a solid Christian Home can provide.
Many of these same people are also products of Divided Faiths. Many parents are of different Faiths, (if any Faith)and to find unity they have either abandoned their Faith or settled on a Faith that they can share, which usually means they choose a Church and a Faith that stands for nothing, leaving their children with No Real Faith to build their lives and hopes upon.
There is a great divide between our Government and It’s People.We have seen an unprecedented expansion of government and government employees and their intrusion into our lives. We have seen the massive spending of government increasing the tax burden upon its people and a national debt that is robbing our posterity of their future. We have seen also the rise and revolt of the Tea Party and others demanding that Government stop the spending, cut the budget, live within its means and stop the massive expansion of government. Its massive spending is leaving people with less and less of own money and uncle Sam intruding more and more into lives and families –robbing our posterity and threatening our future. And what have we seen from our President and Congress? They too are TONE DEAF and indifferent to the wishes and voices of the people. And they too continue to want to spend more and more.
On top of these divisions we must admit that there may be more issues that are dividing us today than at any other time in our history. There are Moral Issues like abortion, with the pro-life on one side and pro-choice on the other, both unyielding in their stand. There is the Marriage Issue with traditionalists demanding it remain between one man and one woman and on the other side there are those who are trying to institute gay marriage as the Law of the land and both are unyielding in their demands. There are Capitalists and Socialists –the Capitalists believing in the small government and the Free Enterprise system and individual responsibility, and the Socialists who believe in big government and fewer personal freedoms and responsibilities, both unrelenting in their beliefs. There is the Union Movement in America along with the Socialists and other Anti-American groups who will create such anarchy in our streets in the near future that the Civil Rights marches and the War Protestors of the 1960′s will look tame in contrast to. There will be such chaos created by Union thugs and these other groups during the next Presidential Race that it will be next to impossible for Republicans and Conservatives to campaign in public. It will be a dangerous time for Conservatives to campaign. America has never seen what we are about to see in our streets in the next 2 or 3 years.
On and on we could go, but it is clear that never in the History or our Republic have we had so many issues that divide us and never since the Civil War has this nation been so divided and polarized as we are today! [Luke 11:17] “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house (itself) falleth!”
II. SIMILARITY NUMBER TWO: JUDAH WAS A NATION IN DECLINE
Judah was not only a Nation Divided, it was also a Nation in Decline. It was no longer the envy of the world. No longer was it the World’s Sole Super-Power, militarily or monetarily as it had once been under the reigns of King David and King Solomon. No longer where they so blessed of the Lord that they could loan to other nations and reign as the world’s sole super-power, as the Lord had promised them they would be if they were faithful in their obedience to Him. [Deuteronomy 15:6]
Judah was just a shell of its former self. Other nations, nations unfriendly to Judah, nations who wished ill to Judah were rising to Super-Power status. The nations were being re-aligned. National power and prosperity were changing hands during the end days of Judah.
Today, America too, is a Nation in Decline. We are no longer the world’s sole Super-Power, militarily or monetarily. We too see the rise of other nations to challenge our Super-Power status. These too are nations that are not our friends and would wish us ill, as well.
UPDATE: (4/26/2011) Fox News reported this morning that the INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF) stated this week that the “AGE OF AMERICA” will come to an end by 2016. They are predicting that within 5 years CHINA will surpass America as the World’s Greatest Economy, making America a second rate nation. This will change our Nation dramatically, we will eventually become like a Third World Nation. Fox also reported on 4/26/2011 that most American’s believe America’s Best Days are behind us, and the future just is going to be one of constant decline. Without a National Revival our fears will certainly become reality.
UPDATE: On 8/5/2011 America for the first time in her history saw her Credit Rating downgraded by the S&P.
As I am writing this, I am watching the riots in the streets of Egypt. Many believe this unrest and toppling of governments throughout the Middle East will sweep through the Arab world, creating a Radical Islamic Kingdom and leaving Israel vulnerable to her enemies, and America facing an unfriendly Arab world that is more solidified than ever.
There is China’s rise to Super-Power status, which may pose a greater threat to the United States than the Arab world does. We are borrowing from China to just stay afloat. How our fortunes have reversed in the decade.[Proverbs 22:7] “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” That is just as true of nations as it is of individuals!
In the Bible we see that when the morals of God’s people plummeted you would also see the military power of their enemies on the rise until the Lord would see the time was right for them to be unleashed as His rod of judgment upon His apostate people. That may very well be what we are watching take place in the world today. The possibility (probability) that the Lord is dealing with us as He did Judah cannot be discounted.
If China were to shut their pocket book to America and the Arabs would shut off the oil valves at the same time, America would be just a memory of her former self overnight. Regardless, no one can deny that as Judah was in Decline in her End Days, we too, are a Nation in Decline. Is that a sign that our end is near as it was for Judah?
III. SIMILARITY NUMBER THREE: JUDAH WAS A NATION IN DEFIANCE
Judah was a nation in defiance to their covenant God. Jeremiah is told by the Lord to rebuke them on His behalf for Forsaking Him, [Jeremiah 2:13, 17] for Forgetting Him days without end, [Jeremiah 2:32] and for doing something that no other nation had ever done, and that was Changing Their Nation’s God. What made it so appalling and horrible for Judah was the fact that they were the only nation whose God was the True and Living God. They exchanged Him for many false and meaningless gods. [Jeremiah2:10, 11], We are told that they had gone from worshiping the One True God, to having as many gods as they had cities. [Jeremiah 11:13] In Judah’s case, more was certainly not better.
America has always been a pluralistic nation, offering the freedom of religion to its people, but from our very founding it has also been a nation in which Christianity has always been the dominate Faith of our people. That is no longer true in reality. We have become like Judah of old, our nation now tolerates all gods except the Christians God, Jesus Christ, the God of our ancestors and of our history. We too are abandoning Him and opening our doors to any and all of the false gods of the world. In every city in America there stands houses of worship for every faith known unto man, and on top of that, America like Judah has made the works of our own hands our gods as well. [Jeremiah1:16]
The decades of carnality and apostasy in the Christian Church has weakened our faith and allowed our society to believe that all faiths are equal, that Salvation is not exclusively in Jesus, and to say so, is to be intolerant. Toleration of differing Faiths in America has become such a virtue that it will no longer tolerate the Christian Faith and her God, because we do not believe in many gods but One God, we do not believe in many ways to salvation, but one way, through Jesus and Jesus alone. [John 14:6] Now America is tolerant of all faiths and gods except the Christian Faith and the Christians God.
We have added many gods to our society and as we have been adding the many new gods into our society, we have at the same time been systematically Eliminating the God of our history, the one and true God, the Lord Jesus Christ from our society. That was the state of religion in Judah when she fell under the judgment of God.
Judah paid a high price for defying their God. We are told in [Jeremiah 5:3] “O Lord, are not thine eyes upon the truth? Thou hast Stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast Consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction. They have made their faces Harder than a rock; they have refused to return.”
Does not that sound like America today? Look at the public (GOVERNMENT) school system in America. In 1962 the Supreme Court struck down school prayer as “unconstitutional.” This is the prayer that was deemed as unconstitutional:
[“Almighty God, We Acknowledge Our Dependence On You And Beg Your Blessings On US, Our TEACHERS, and Our PARENTS, And upon Our COUNTRY!”]
Look at what has happened to our children, our teachers, our families and marriages, and our country since outlawing our Children from being able to ask God’s blessing upon them. Since America decided to defy our God and kick the Bible and Prayer from our schools, our schools have been stricken and consumed with violence, vice, lower test scores, higher dropout rate and teacher incompetence. And everything we have tried to rectify the problems has done nothing but worsen the problems. Our Families have been torn asunder by abuse and divorce. My mother and father were divorced when I was 5 years old. In my class at school I was the only student from a divorced home, but today you would find the situation reversed. In many classes you would be hard pressed to find one student whose parents have not divorced. The state of our nation has steadily deteriorated since 1962.
The inner rot of our nation has so weakened us that we are in a greater danger of collapsing from within than we are of collapsing at the hand of any outside force. All the Lord would have to do to bring us down in judgment is to just do nothing. Left to ourselves we are soon to fall from within. The termites of sin, greed, corruption, selfishness, drugs, alcoholism, (I consider alcohol to be a drug and the number one drug problem in America) immorality, and sexual perversion has so ate away the core of America that it would be impossible for us to remain standing for another decade without a God sent revival.
We have been stricken in our land over the past few years with hurricanes, floods, droughts, earthquakes and blizzards –all of Biblical proportion. We have seen Financial Collapses, Oil Spills, and Social Ills unheard of before in our history and yet we refuse to return to the Lord. We are getting harder and harder and more defiant than ever. With each passing judgment from the Lord we refuse to repent and become more calloused towards the Lord. And His judgments continue to get more severe. America can be likened to Pharaoh in the days before the Exodus. Just as the passing of each plague found Pharaoh rebellious, unrepentant, and harder towards the Lord than ever until the plagues had to be so intensified they eventually shattered the most powerful nation upon the earth.[Exodus 7-14] That seems to be the course we are taking.
Our forefathers could never have imagined how godless we would become as a nation. An America in which homosexuality is deemed normal and the homosexual is treated with more respect than Christians, and with more rights than the saints. An America where mothers kill 1.2 million babies in their own wombs each and every year. An America, where pornography is protected and the Bible is outlawed. An America where the Lord’s Name can be used in vain on public TV, but may not be used in His Honor to invoke His blessings at the end of a public prayer. All of this and much more speak of our continued and growing Defiance against the Lord and the sure hastening of our overdue judgment.[Psalms 9:17] “The wicked shall be turned into H-E-L-L, (sheol-the grave) and ALL the NATIONS that forget God.”
According to this verse, America is headed to the graveyard of the nations if we fail to repent and return to the Lord. In returning we must not be like Judah in Jeremiah’s day, who is best described by the prophet Hosea in [Hosea 7:16] “They return, but not to the Most High” We do not need a return to religion in America. Many think that religion is man at his best but as we see in [Romans 1:21-32], religion is man at his worst. We must have a return to Jesus Himself, with a whole heart.
Nothing less will avert the judgment the Lord has prepared for America, and nothing more is needed to move the heart of the Lord to forgive us and heal us as a nation!
IV. SIMILARITY NUMBER FOUR: JUDAH WAS A NATION IN DEPRAVITY
Judah was in such a moral free fall that the Lord could only compare them to animals in heat. [Jeremiah 5:7-9] “How shall I pardon thee for this? Thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods; when I fed them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots’ house. They were like fed horses in the morning; every one neighed after his neighbor’s wife. Shall not I punish for these things? saith the Lord; and shall not my soul be avenged on Such a Nation As This?” Like America, they were a sex-crazed society guilty of every abomination imaginable and without guilt or shame for being so. [Jeremiah 6:15] “Were they Ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they Blush; therefore they shall fall among them that fall; at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the Lord”
Marriage was not seen as sacred. Immorality and sexual perversion was rampant and condoned as a normal way of life. Look at the ugly picture the Lord painted of them. He said they were like a horse in heat that satisfies its lust with anyone willing and at any place they so happen to be at any time that is opportune.
A horse has no shame and has no problem with having sex with the whole world watching. That was a picture of Judah and of America as well. Today you can turn your television on at almost any time of the day and night and see people unashamedly having sex before the whole world without ever blushing. We have gotten so used to watching public sex in America that we do not even blush at it anymore. It is the norm today. You push the buttons on your remote control and purchase and watch the vilest and perverted sex acts by people who have no shame or guilt for doing so. They even glory in their shame.
We are a pornographic society, so much so that there are reports that tell us that Americans spend more of their money each year on pornography than groceries. That tells us that like Judah, Americans must feed their lusts before their stomachs.
The Lord spoke about the godlessness and immorality of their younger generation in [Jeremiah 5:7] “… Thy children …” Today in America our younger generation have been raised in a society where every sort of immorality and perversion is accepted as normal and proper. Saving themselves for their wedding night is scoffed at. They see the abomination of homosexuality as normal and not sinful. They can swing either way. Today’s younger generation of boys and girls have become so sexually permissive and immoral that if the same Biblical standards and terminology were applied today that was applied to my generation when we were youths, they would be classified and called W-H-O-R-E-S and W-H-O-R-E- MONGERS!
That is strong language, but that is the language the Lord used for them in [Jeremiah 3:3] “… and thou hadst a W-H-O-R-E-S’s forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed” We need to use the strong language of the Bible on sin to make sin look like sin. (By the way, that is why many people do not like the King James Bible –not because they cannot understand it, but because they do understand it. It speaks so plain on sin that it makes the carnal bunch uncomfortable. It kicks like a Missouri Mule and they want a meowing, kitty cat translation). We have so toned down our language so we will not offend anyone that in the process we have made sin seem normal and acceptable to our children. We MUST again begin to call sin “sin” if we are ever going to get people to see themselves as sinners and their wicked deeds for what they really are –SIN . Without seeing themselves as sinners and their deeds as sin they will never see the need to repent and turn to the Lord Jesus for cleansing and forgiveness.
No nation will ever experience revival without repentance of their sin and unbelief in the Lord Jesus. And no nation in the state of depravity as was Judah and is America, will ever see themselves sinners under the wrath of God without first having prophets that, like Jeremiah, boldly lift up their voice and call sin sin (no matter where it is found) and sinners to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Preacher, your willingness to be persecuted for preaching the Word as it is to people as they are, is America’s only hope for revival and averting the full force of God’s judgment that we already see upon us! Let me warn all you that call yourselves preachers, if you refuse to be bold enough to rebuke sin in your people, you will be the one at fault for letting our nation fall, and the Lord will deal with you more severely than with anyone else. You either PREACH or get your sorry, hypocritical self out of the ministry and go make an honest living. Quit taking the peoples’ money under the false pretense that you are a servant of the Lord and a preacher of the Word. You are neither. You are a spineless hypocrite, deserving of the sorest punishment that the Lord can bring upon a human. And you can be sure if America falls without the Lord finding you standing in the gap that will be your fate!
The thrice Holy Lord made it perfectly clear to Judah through the prophet Jeremiah that it would be judged and cast down for the sexual immorality and perversion of which they had defiled the land. The Lord swore that [Jeremiah 5:9] “…he would be avenged on Such a Nation as This!” America elects perverts to Congress. Perverts in Congress decree evil decrees, making perversion legal and the perverted a protected group in our land. America may try to change God’s decrees and protect the wicked, but as sure as the sun rises in the eastern sky each morning, they, nor this nation will not escape the vengeful judgment of the Lord upon them for such vile wickedness. No law of man can protect them from the vengeance of a Holy God. If Judah, God’s covenant people, the apple of God’s eye, were not spared the judgment of their Lord, do not deceive yourselves into thinking we will be the exception. The Law of God remains steadfast; [Hebrews 13:4] “whoremongers (fornicators) and adulterers God will judge!”
[Ephesians 5:3,5,6] “But fornication, and all uncleanness…let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints. For this ye know, that NO whoremonger (fornicator) nor unclean person … hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words; for because of these things cometh the WRATH of GOD upon the children of disobedience!!”
Our generation has been deceived by vain talkers telling us that sin is not sin, and no matter, for there is no God who would judge you for it anyway. It is the same old lie that Satan used to deceive Eve in the Garden of Eden, [Genesis 3:4] but what the Lord calls sin in the Bible has always been sin and will always be sin, and no matter how many laws we pass to make it legal and no matter how many marches they march to try to make it acceptable with the masses, and no matter how much they try to intimidate others into accepting them and their perverted lifestyle, the Lord will never accept sin as normal, nor will he be intimidated by them nor will He be timid when it comes the proper time to pour out His judgment upon them, as surely He must!! No Depraved Nation can escape the sure and severe judgment of God!! No other nation has and America will not be the first to do so!!
V. SIMILARITY NUMBER FIVE: JUDAH WAS A NATION IN DERISION
The years of defying the Lord had taken a toll upon the nation. They had so many unsolvable problems and many more on the way. They were asking: [Jeremiah 13:22] “Why come these things upon me?” Things had gotten so bad that they came to Jeremiah asking: [Jeremiah 17:15] “Where is the Word of the Lord? Let it come now!!” The Word of the Lord had already spoken to the fact that their sins and iniquities were withholding the goodness of the Lord that they had been used to enjoying. [Jeremiah 5:25] “Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withheld good things from you.”] The good life was all but gone in Judah. They were now facing financial problems, family problems, health problems, social problems; as a matter of fact you would have been hard pressed to find any area of their lives that were not in trouble. That is the sure future for those who forsake the Lord. Anyone of these problems in themselves would have been enough to have had a devastating effect upon the nation, but with all of them at one time and no answers for any of them meant sure destruction.
America, like all nations, have always had her share of problems that seemed insurmountable; educational crisis, incurable diseases, an economic depression, social unrest, etc., but we have always discovered the solutions in time to spare us of unthinkable horrors. A man with the answer has always come through. But never in the history of our nation have we had so many problems at the same time, and never have they been so complicated.
Our financial problem is a case in point. The wisest minds in our nation have no clue or consensus of how to get America out of the financial mess we find ourselves in. They are just taking shots in the dark and in the end we are finding our debt is just larger, and we have just thrown good money after bad, the unemployment rate remains the same with no relief in sight, and the wisest minds are just left more confused than ever. You can see the same results in our fight against AIDS, in our struggle to curtail the illegal drug problem, in our struggle to deal with the illegal immigration crisis, our educational crisis, etc., etc. No nation can survive long without finding a solution to these problems.
Judah should not have been surprised by the state of derision they found themselves in. Early in Jeremiah’s ministry the Lord had told him to warn them that: [Jeremiah 2:19] “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee…” Consequences have a way of reproving us and forcing us to correct our course. When your head down a dead end road sooner or later you are forced to turn around or remain stalled on a dead end road going nowhere. That is where Judah was at, they had come to the end of the road, with so many negative consequences as a result of their backsliding from the Lord, they could go nowhere but down without turning around and returning to the Lord, and they were not willing to do that, so their end was inevitable.
America is where Judah was at in her end days. In such derision from so many complicated problems, making it is impossible for us to move forward as a nation. That is where the Lord wants us, now is the time for America to listen to what the Lord had to say to Judah at this point in their history, listen: [Jeremiah 6:16] “Thus saith the Lord, Stand in the ways, and see, and ask for the Old Paths, where is the good way, and walk in it, and ye shall find Rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk in it.”
Go back to the Old Paths laid out in the Word of God, that is all the Lord said they had to do to find a way out of the maze of problems, and to find rest from the weariness they were experiencing from the toils of trying to solve all of their problems, but they refused to do so, and were eventually lost to the judgment of God. In Washington D.C. many of the greatest minds are resigning their positions and returning home, exhausted from trying to find solutions for our many derision’s. Jeremiah realized the Lord was: [Jeremiah 17:13] “The Hope of Israel…” and “…all who forsake thee shall be ashamed.” (i.e. they will be disgraced. they will be buried in the dust of the earth…) These verses apply for America today as well. Without the Lord we are without hope and our future can only be one of disgrace and dust, a shameful death as a nation. That was the fate of rebellious and unrepentant Judah that will be the fate of America if we remain unrepentant in these days of DERISION our nation is going through!!
[Psalms 2:4] “He who sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision.”
The Lord shall always have the last laugh!!
VI. SIMILARITY NUMBER SIX: JUDAH WAS A NATION IN DENIAL
In the midst of their division, defiance, decline, depravity, and derision the nation remained in a state of DENIAL. They couldn’t believe it was their sins that had brought such devastation upon their land. [Jeremiah 16:10] “Why hath the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? Or what is our iniquity? Or what is our sin that we have committed against the Lord?” They refused to believe that the Lord could prove a case against them for which they deserved His judgment and the false prophets in the land were eager to tell them that everything was alright and the problems would work themselves out as they always had.
Their future was bright, they said. [Jeremiah 14:13] “Then said I, Ah, Lord God! Behold, the prophets say unto them, Ye shall not see the sword, neither shall ye have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place!”
Jeremiah spent 40 plus years warning his nation, but no one took him seriously, the nation as a whole remained in the state of Denial. The same was true of Noah’s society, God had determined judgment for their wickedness and like he did Jeremiah, He called out Noah to warn his society of pending judgment, but they too remained in a state of Denial, and we are told in [Matthew 24:38, 39] “For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark. And KNEW NOT until the flood came, and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son on Man be!”
“By Faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house…” Hebrews 11:7
Did you notice what the people were doing while Noah was preaching and preparing the Ark for a refuge from the judgment to come? They were paying him no attention, they were in a state of Denial, and went on with life as usual. That was a disastrous mistake and it turned out to be a drastic mistake for Judah as well, and it will be a deadly mistake for America as well. Yet I must say that as I see the end drawing nearer for our nation I see indifference and unbelief among the Lord’s people like I have never seen in my 32 years as a pastor. It is the Days of Noah, where the people seem to be frozen in a state of Denial, but that must not keep the Prophet from continuing to preach and warn his people. Our job is to preach, the peoples responsibility is to hear and heed and the Lord with be faithful to fulfill His role of either Savior or Judge.
I must move on but before I do I would like to ask you a question to ponder. What if your doctor told you that you had a deadly virus and you needed to return to him and let him treat you and cure you or face a sure death? What would happen if you refused to accept his diagnosis, and just choose to go into a state of denial, thinking that if you didn’t face it, that it would sooner or later go away? The answer is simple, you would eventually die and nobody would be more surprised than you!! That is what happened to Judah; they refused to accept the Lord’s diagnosis and return to Him for their healing, and eventually died as a nation.
That is where America is headed as sure as did Judah, as sure as did Noah’s generation, as sure as did Sodom and Lot’s wife. The Fear of God is our salvation. The Fear of God is to simply begin to take Him and his Word seriously enough to believe it and act upon it. [Hebrews 11:7] “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, Moved With Fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”
America, the dark cloud of judgment looms over our land, and it is certain that it is soon to be raining the judgment of the Lord down upon us. Take the Lord seriously, run for the ark of refuge that is in Jesus and Jesus alone.
Do not believe the lie that just because you attend church you are immune from judgment, [Jeremiah 7:4] or that America is special and beyond the reach of God’s judgment. That is playing the fool and the hypocrite. [Romans 2:11] “For there is no respect of persons with God” Nor does He play favorites with nations, allowing some nations to live wickedly and some not to do so.
Judah was [Zechariah 2:7] “…the apple of His eye” , yet that did not spare them from the judgment of God, as a matter of fact “…judgment Must Begin at the House of God…” [1 Peter 4:17]
There is no hope for the hypocrite. [Job 8:13-15] “… and the hypocrite’s hope shall perish. Whose confidence (hope) shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider’s web. He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand; he shall hold it fast, but it shall not endure.” O, you who hold fast to your Denial, you shall find your house will fall around you and great will be the fall thereof! Don’t say, “It couldn’t happen to us.” That is what the people in Noah’s days were saying until the waters where running into their nostrils.
VII. SIMILARITY NUMBER SEVEN: JUDAH WAS A NATION DESTROYED
[Jeremiah 39:1, 2] “…came Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, and all his army against Jerusalem, and besieged it….the city was broken up.”
[Babylonian Army Destroys Jerusalem and Carries the Jews Away Captive]
Thus, the unbelievable happened, the end came just as Jeremiah had warned it would for 40 plus years. Many would be led away captive to Babylon, many would flee to Egypt, but many lay in the dust of the earth, dead, just as their beloved nation now was. America surely awaits a similar fate if we continue in our unrepentant state. No one can look at the similarities between our two nations and then expect our ends to be different.
1. Who God Is Assures Judgment:
A. He Is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords [1Timothy 6:15]
B. He Is Holy [1Peter 1:16]
The ruler of the universe is holy and His holiness demands that He must judge sin. The Lord judges nations as well as individuals.
2. What God Has Said Assures Judgment:
A. [Psalms 9:17] “The wicked shall be turned into H-E-L-L and ALL the Nations that forget God.”
B. [John 10:35] “… the scripture cannot be broken.”
3. What God Has Done Assures Judgment:
A. [2Peter 2:4] “…God spared not the angels that sinned …”
B. [2Peter 2:5] “And spared not the old world, but saved Noah …”
C. [2Peter 2:6] “And. turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes”
D. [1Corinthians 10:5] “… for they were overthrown in the wilderness.” (Speaking of the generation of Israelites that Moses led out of Egypt.)
If a man or a nation wants to know what they can expect from the Lord in the future all they need to do is to look and see what He has done in the past. This foretells a dark future for America.
*[Psalms 9:16, 17] “The Lord is known by the judgment which He executeth; the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. The wicked shall be turned into H-E-L-L, and ALL the NATIONS that forget God.”
*[Proverbs14:34] ”Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”
VIII. THE MAJOR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OUR NATIONS
Though there are many eerie similarities between our two nations there is one eerie difference between the two of us. Judah had a Covenant Relationship with the Lord. [Jeremiah 11:2, 6] The Lord had created the Nation for Himself and for His purposes. He had made them unbreakable promises. They would be the Nation through which the Messiah would come; the Messiah and His Kingdom would rule the world one day from Jerusalem, upon the Throne of David.
To have a Kingdom there must be a Land and a Throne from which to reign. Abraham and his seed were promised the land of Israel as an everlasting possession, and King David was promised that his descendent would set upon his throne and reign from Jerusalem forever. That is why we see the Lord promising Judah that even though they would be carried away captive and their nation devastated, that in 70 years He would restore them to the land after His judgment had broken them of their idolatry. [Jeremiah 25:11; 27:32; 29:10; 30:17]
America has no such covenant relationship with the Lord, He has made us no promise to continue us as a nation, and as a matter of fact most Bible scholars do not believe that America is even mentioned in End Time Prophecies. How could the America of today not even be important enough to mention in the world events at the end of time? That in itself may tell us volumes about what is in store for America. What is not said, may say it all! There is one thing that is for certain, when it comes to the subject of our future, and that is, we have no promises from the Lord to continue us as a nation in His Word, and the only hope for our future is that we continue to be pleasing in His sight and fit to be used for His glory. [Jeremiah 18:1-3; 19:1-11]
As we stand today we can safely assume that we meet neither one of those criterion. The criterion we do meet, as we have seen in our similarities between America and Judah, is the criterion which the Lord looks for in a nation who is worthy of His judgment.
[Jeremiah 5:9] “Shall I not punish for these things? saith the Lord; and shall not my soul be avenged on Such a Nation As This?”
[Jeremiah 17:12-14] “A glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary. O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who forsake thee shall be Ashamed, and they who depart from me shall be Written In The Earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters. Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved; for thou art my praise!”
All who have eyes to see and ears to hear can see through this message that certain judgment awaits our nation, there is no question IF the Lord is soon to judge us in a severe fashion, the only question is to what degree will He judge us and do we still have an opportunity to repent and return to Him, averting judgment and experiencing His healing of our land.
There is more certainty for the individual. No matter what our nation chooses to do, you can choose to repent and rededicate your life to the Lord and know His sure love and favor no matter what the future may hold for our nation. If you are reading this message and realize that you are a lost soul, you too can be assured that if you hear Him knocking at the door of your heart and are willing to open the door of your heart and invite Him in, He gives you the certain promise that He will have mercy upon you and save you. You must first realize that you are a sinner [Romans 3:23] and that as a sinner you owe a sin debt, a debt that you cannot pay without going to H-E-L-L for eternity. [Romans 6:23]
But Jesus in His great love for you was willing to die upon the Cross and shed His blood that your sins may be paid for. [Romans 5:8] And His promise is sure, that if you will repent and call upon Jesus and Jesus alone to save you that He will hear the cry of your heart and honor His Word and save you in an instant. [Romans 10:13] But I must warn you, that you too may wait too long to reach out to Jesus for forgiveness and eternal life. You run the chance of His Return and you being left behind for the judgment to follow, you may have death catch you unaware and die in your sins and be doomed to H-E-L-L for eternity. You may, in putting off your salvation when the Lord speaks to you encouraging you to come to Him, so offend the Lord that you may sin away your day of grace –meaning the Lord would never bother you about your salvation ever again.
Too many awful things could happen to you if you put off your salvation for another day. I have spoken to several people about their salvation, only to have them put it off until tomorrow and tomorrow never came. Today if you hear His Voice harden not your hearts, but open it and let Jesus come in. You will never regret that you did, but you can be sure that all who do reject Him will live to regret that fateful decision. Please pray for our country, that the Lord would do for us what we cannot do for ourselves and give to us what we do not deserve, but what we certainly need and that is Revival. O Lord, we need Thy Mercy and Thy Grace in this dark hour in our nation.
Be merciful and Revive Thy Work, and in Wrath remember Mercy.[Habakkuk 3:2] “O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was AFRAID; O Lord, REVIVE thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; In Wrath Remember Mercy!!”
Epilogue:
Jeremiah was about five years into his ministry when the Lord gives him a strange command. He was to stop praying for his nation, [Jeremiah 7:16] even though the Lord ordered him to continue his preaching to the nation, warning them of the Lord’s coming judgment at the hand of the Babylonian invasion. [Jeremiah 7:27] This would have certainly left Jeremiah without any expectation that his nation would ever listen to him and obey his command to repent and return the the Lord.
In other words, the Lord was telling Jeremiah to, “Stop praying Jeremiah, but keep on preaching.” Most of us would have thought if the people were not listening to his preaching then that would have been the time for him to begin to pray like never before. And that would have been right except for the fact that the Lord now sees that they will never repent and there is no use to continue to pray for them. They are hardened in their sin, rebellion and unbelief. They are married to it and no amount of praying is going to change them. Prayer is what had withheld the Lord’s judgment, but his preaching would now hasten and enhance the Lord’s inevitable judgment.
At the same time all the other preachers in the land were preaching to the people, “pay no attention to the traitor, this was God’s land and we are His people, God has always blessed us, fought for us, and delivered us, and He will always continue to do so.”
The people found it next to impossible to believe that the Lord would be so severe with them, as to bring upon them the evils Jeremiah was Prophesying to them about. But eventually The Lord would make good on His Threats, and the Nation would lie in shambles for more than a century. Thousands would die from the sword (war), famine, and diseases. Thousands would flee their land for shelter in Egypt. Thousands more would be forced marched to Babylon, where they would hang their harps in the trees, never again in their life time to have a song to sing from their broken hearts.
Many people in America feel immune from the Lord’s Judgment, just as did Jeremiah’s generation, and many so called preachers, like the false prophets in Jeremiah’s day, are whitewashing the sins of the nation and falsely predicting continued peace, prosperity, and safety. Sadly, our Nation is also choosing to believe this lie and continue in it’s rebellion, showing no signs that we will ever truly repent and return to the Lord Jesus.
We are left to wonder if the full cup of God’s Wrath tarries to overflow upon America because the Lord is still giving us time to Repent and to Return to Him, or is it because, like Judah, He is waiting for us to fill our cup of sin to the brim, making us truly worthy of the terrible wrath He has already prepared for America. We may have gone past the point of no return, or at the least we are coming very close to crossing the line that separates a nation from the Lord’s Grace or His Wrath.
The final TWO acts America could commit that would assure our demise would be to add to our list of CRIMES against the Lord, the HIGH CRIMES of Fully Embracing the Evil of Homosexuality, and the Turning of Our Back On the Nation of Israel.
The Pro-Homosexual, Pro-Muslim, Pro-Arab, Anti-Christian, Anti-Israel, Anti-American President Obama, and the Radical Left that holds sway in America today, almost assure that this day will come, it is just a matter of time, and then our Cup of Crimes against the Lord will be filled to the brim, the end will be upon us, and there will be no turning back.
(The Re-Election of Obama would assure that this would be the course America will take!!)
That God would Judge our Nation is impossible for the average citizen to believe, even those who profess to be Christians, but I remind you, that was the feelings of the majority in Jeremiah’s day as well, but they were dead wrong and so are those who hold to such false hopes today in America.
Action Point:
After looking at these eerie similarities between America and Judah – America now and Judah when she was in her End Days as a Nation –I want to ask you to be honest with yourselves and with the Lord, and to allow Him to examine your heart to see if there is any wicked way in you. If there is, I am also asking you to REPENT of it, lay it at the foot of the Cross and ask Jesus for His forgiveness on the basis of the Blood He shed at Calvary for you and I.
Then I am asking you to begin to pray as never before for a genuine revival among the people of God –a revival whose fire would sweep through our nation destroying the works of the evil one, purging sin from lives and setting our souls on fire for Jesus.
May the Lord Bless and Revive You and our Nation!!!
~Jack Woodard
1Corinthians 2:2; 2Corinthians 4:5,7
Jack Woodard's Blog 
“”IS AMERICA ‘S END DRAWING NEAR?”
TITLE: “IS AMERICA’S END DRAWING NEAR?”
TEXT: JEREMIAH 1:1-4; 5:9; 8:20
AUTHOR: JACK WOODARD
SERMON OUTLINE:
Introduction:
I. A Nation Divided
II. A Nation in Decline
III. A Nation in Defiance
IV. A Nation in Depravity
V. A Nation in Derision
VI. A Nation in Denial
VII. A Nation Destroyed
VIII. Major Difference
Epilogue
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INTRODUCTION:
Jeremiah was Judah’s last prophet before going into Babylonian Captivity. He was called by the Lord to begin his ministry during the reign of Judah’s boy king, King Josiah. In we are given the record of Josiah’s reign. Josiah’s father (Amon) and grandfather (Manasseh) were evil men whose love for sin and wickedness led them to forsake the True God of Israel and attempt to replace Him with false gods who accepted and even encouraged sin and wickedness in the lives of their followers. (That is the kind of god America has now…
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