All of us have suffered loss. All of us have felt those experiences where life has not gone the right way, whether it was by our choices or by external circumstances outside of our control. Things will come our way, and we may not be exiled, like literally exiled, but we can be in bondage. We can be in captivity. This is how God explains what sin is to us. Sin is a bondage. Sin is a snare. Sin is an obstacle. Sin is something that separates us from God. That's being exiled from God, so to speak.
[00:51:15]
Sometimes God will turn us over to our sin. Sometimes God will turn us over to the choices we make. And sometimes we will have to pay consequences. And that's what will happen to Jerusalem. But God doesn't want you to stay defeated. God doesn't want you to stay deflated. You know, God is not a cruel God. He wants goodness for you. But He wants you to follow Him. He wants you to keep His ways.
[00:56:32]
If you follow Him, even though bad things may happen, He's with you. When we step outside of that, sometimes we have to pay consequences that could have been avoided. Said no one in this room has never experienced that stupidity. Right? Now imagine this on steroids. An entire nation, an entire people that are called by God's name, they choose this path for themselves. That's where we're at right now in this.
[00:57:24]
Church, we need to make sure we're right with God. We need to make sure that we're right with each other. They had not done that. And God's bringing this to a past and saying, there's no godly counsel. There's no king that can guide you through this. In fact, your pain is so great, it's like a woman giving birth in the last moments of labor. Now look, there's no epidural. There's no shunning this pain. This pain is coming, and that's his whole point.
[00:59:33]
Maybe you feel that way now in life. Maybe things are just overwhelming to you. Every week, I went home this week to Sean and I said, you just don't know what all is going on in people's life. You think somebody's got it together, and then you hear this story, and you're just right there with them, and you feel their pain. So many hurting people. So many people that have so much going on. You know what? You're at the right place. Do you know church is for the sick? Church is for the hurting. Church is not for the people that got it all together. Right?
[01:00:33]
So the next thing I want you to see is that exile will always follow. God will always want to have a plan of redemption. He always has. Listen, from the very beginning, the scriptures in Genesis tell us that he would bring someone that would bear the seed of a woman and that that birth, that person that would be birthed, would stomp on the serpent's head. This is what we call the pre-evangelical. It's a pre-evangelical gospel of Jesus to come.
[01:01:55]
What Jesus would do, he would come through human seed but be God himself, but he would crush the works of Satan and sin so that you could be delivered. Amen? That's redemption. What are we redeemed from us? Sin. What ensnares us and bondages us? Sin. When we get in those situations where we become captive, we become exiled from God. God doesn't want us exiled. He wants us in relationship. Amen?
[01:02:21]
By the way, there's no ritual. There's no anything that you can do to get that but Jesus Christ alone. Only Jesus.
[01:02:51]
So remember, God does have a plan for redemption but sometimes that plan is God lets you reap what you have sown. Exile is part of God's plan to thresh us so that we can have triumph. Now notice I said thresh not thrash. All right, threshing floor—we don't do that. Nobody in here is a farmer that gets the sheaves out and has a threshing floor with this big either it'd be a stone or you would have oxen come in and tromple it all down until the seed would come out and then you have to get a winnowing fan and you have to fan it and up and down and let the chaff blow away with the wind and the good seed is left.
[01:07:25]
The threshing would be painful. The threshing takes all this stompling and trampling and stone to get out the good seed and the winnowing is the refining work of God. And so God will use this analogy a lot in scripture so you need to be thinking what would the stalks look like… They would go through all this to thresh it out, to winnow it out so that they would have this pure seed. God is now going to describe his plan for them in the same way.
[01:08:13]
But they do not know the Lord's intentions and understand his plan. God's ways are not our ways. I don't always understand why God lets things happen, but I do know this, that I'm not God—thank God—and I don't have to have it all figured out, but I know he's got a plan that's grander than mine sometimes and sometimes the things that I'm asked or I think are right don't always happen and God is saying here, listen, they don't know me, they don't know my intention nor do you even fully understand what I'm about to do with you.
[01:09:59]
Sometimes God's got to thresh things in our life so that he can bring triumph to us. He had to do that. He said, listen, I'm going to thresh you. I'm going to thresh you. I'm going to then refine you. We're going to learn in verse 13. But then I'm going to thresh your enemies and I'm not going to winnow them. I'm going to defeat them. So God does not want enemies of God to succeed. Sometimes they do. But in the end, God wants his people to be victorious.
[01:12:08]
God will always do this with his people. Even though nations may assemble against us, even though people may be against us, you may go to work and they hear you're a Christian that's really actually a Christian, they may mock you. They may call you a Bible thumper. They may say, I don't need that Jesus stuff. They may actually be mean to you. I don't know what you're facing. But whatever that is, trust me, they faced worse here. So whatever you may go through, just trust God in those moments. Let him thresh you and let him thresh them.
[01:12:39]
God wants to rise us up and thresh, purify us, let us become more like Jesus. It's called sanctification. God calls his people to his actions. Now look, he says he'll give us horns of iron, horns of iron, and hooves of bronze. See, God equips people. God bless you. but he equips them with supernatural. I'm sorry, I don't see in here, I don't see anybody with horns of iron or hooves of bronze. Sometimes it might feel like it, but I don't see that. But God raises them up and says, I'm gonna do something supernatural. I'm gonna defeat your enemies in a way you can not only imagine.
[01:16:06]
God doesn't want to prosper you. God wants to be glorified through you. So if there's anything good in your life, it's for God's glory. That doesn't make us feel important, I know. That doesn't make us feel good about our accolades, I know. But whatever you do, you're supposed to do for the glory of God. If you're doing it for any other reason, it's wrong. However God has blessed you, glory to God. What struggle he's taking you through, from victim to victor, or from defeat to triumph, glory to God. It's for him.
[01:17:31]
God's promise though is greater than our plans and our understanding. Never forget that for your life. God is greater than your biggest defeat. God is greater than your biggest mistake. Listen, your mistakes do not define you. God does. And if God says you're a child of God and you're his people, and you're his people, and you're his people, even though he may let you go into exile, you're still his child. You're still his people.
[01:21:01]
Sometimes we may have to go to the threshing floor. Sometimes God's got to work some serious mojo out in your life because you've got some serious problems. All right, and sometimes we've got to go to the winnowing fan and let God refine us and let him get those impurities out so that we can be more like Jesus. Because ultimately he wants to thresh you so that you can be triumphant. He wants you to move from defeat to deliverance and he wants you to move from victim to victor. Why does he want all this? Yes, because he cares for you and loves you, but for his namesake.
[01:21:33]
If you have a victim mentality, you will never be a victor. All right, if you have a victim mentality, you'll never be a victor. You have to believe that your God is greater than your circumstances, and you have to believe that God wants to triumph in your life, and God wants to be victorious in your life because he loves you, but for his glory's sake.
[01:24:47]
Let me tell you what. There's one thing if you read Scripture. God does not mess around with his glory. It's his alone. So if he says he wants to do these things for his glory, let him. Because guess what? When God is glorified, God's people benefit. They didn't learn that lesson. They learned it the hard way. Why don't we learn it the right way?
[01:25:08]
And how do we do that? We surrender. We surrender to God. We trust God. We place our faith in God. Maybe you're in here today, and you've never received Christ as your Lord and Savior. Then you have not received the cross, which is the permanent way of victory. On the cross, Christ defeated every sin, every sickness, every ailment. The entire aspect of the fall is defeated on the cross. If you can accept the cross, it becomes victory for you because on the other side of the cross is an empty grave that brings life.
[01:25:32]
But the biggest thing is, let's turn it to God. Whatever you got right now that's going on in your life, give it to God. You can give it to God in your seat, you can give it to God at the altar, whatever you need to do, but don't walk out of here with a victim mentality. Walk out of here today victorious in Christ Jesus.
[01:26:44]
