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Listen carefully. You’ll hear a cry among evangelical Christians for revival, calling us to prayer and fasting, reminding us of our responsibility to share the gospel so our hands might not be guilty of the blood of any man. There’s a cry in the land. Unless we hear and heed it, it will be our ruin.

Kay believes, with all that’s been going on in the USA—the floods, tornadoes, and cataclysmic events that are not Mother Nature but Father God—that His judgment is coming to pass on this nation. It has to come because our cup of iniquity is full and running over. Kay talks to people and holds them in her arms. She wishes she could do that with everyone, to weep with you and pat you, grieve with you, because she knows that the pain is so incredible. Sometimes it seems almost unbearable. You think, “If this is life, I don’t want any part of it because I never thought it would be this way.” Kay is 64 [when this was taped] and never has she seen such pain, distress, and wounds as she sees now.

Jeremiah

It reminds her of the book of Jeremiah. This is the message God laid on her heart for us. It’s a hard message, but delivered in love and obedience so that it might soften our hearts and bring the revival that God so longs to bring in our lives, if we would just listen to Him and His Spirit.

In Jeremiah 8 we see the setting of the children of Israel:

Jeremiah 8:18-19 My sorrow is beyond healing, My heart is faint within me! Behold, listen! The cry of the daughter of my people from a distant land:… “From a distant land” because they are going into captivity, bondage, servitude and he knows what awaits them: the curses of Deuteronomy when God tells them that He has set before them life and death, blessing and cursing. Jeremiah knows the pain that is about to come upon them; horrific pain.

Jeremiah 8:19-22 …“Why have they provoked Me with their graven images, with foreign idols? Harvest is past, summer is ended, and we are not saved.” For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken; I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored? Why all this sickness? Why all these wounds? Why all this pain? There is a balm in Gilead. It is the Word of God. There is a Great Physician. It is God Himself: Jehovah Raphah, the Lord God who heals.

The condition of the people in the book of Jeremiah parallels the condition today in the United States of America. Romans 15:4 and 1 Corinthians 10:11 both tell us, in essence, that the things written beforehand in the Old Testament were written for our encouragement and our instruction so that we might have perseverance and hope. The things God laid down in the Old Testament are very relevant for today. When looking at the condition of the people in Jeremiah’s time, we see why they were in this condition and how painful this was to Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 9:1-3 Oh, that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! O that I had in the desert a wayfarer’s lodging place; that I might leave my people, and go from them! For all of them are adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. “And they bend their tongue like their bow; lies and not truth prevail in the land; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know Me,” declares the LORD.

Why were they in this terrible condition?

Jeremiah 2:13 “For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. For My people have committed two evils: [See next page for Kay’s instructions on marking this.]

1. They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, “I’m the fountain of living waters. I’m the wellspring of life. You’re to drink of Me. But you’ve forsaken Me and turned your back on Me. And what have you done?”

2. To hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”

àMark ‘1’ and ‘2’ next to the first and second evils in this passage so that you see them.

àParticipate in the act of marking your Bible because, when you do, you look at the text and interact with the text. It becomes a learning device to put it in your mind and in your heart so that it can’t be taken away. All the way through Jeremiah, mark every reference to sin, evil, and iniquity in brown so you can see every time he talks about evil or iniquity.

“What you have done is to turn from the fountain of living waters—Me—that can satisfy your every longing, to dig broken cisterns where water does come in, but seeps away, then you’re not satisfied.” That’s what’s happened in America. If you go back and trace our history you’ll see that children were taught to read the Word of God. From Scriptural principles and the Ten Commandments there was a fear of God before our eyes. You read the Constitution and the other early documents written by our founding fathers of this nation, and God was mentioned. There was a fear of God, a respect for God. God was on our coins and our bills “In God we trust”, but that’s no longer true. We, like Israel, have forsaken the fountain of living waters and have hewn out broken cisterns that cannot hold water. We are perishing because of a lack of the living water that alone can satisfy us.

In Jeremiah 2, the condition that the Israelites were in they had done to themselves.

Jeremiah 2:17-18 “Have you not done this to yourself, by your forsaking the LORD you God, when He led you in the way?” But now what are you doing on the road to Egypt, to drink the waters of the Nile? “Here I am. I am the One to satisfy your thirst, yet you’re running down to Egypt to drink the waters of the Nile.” Or what are you doing on the road to Assyria, to drink the waters of the Euphrates? “You’re turning to other nations for help instead of turning to Me. You’re turning to the arm of flesh but it’s going to destroy you. You are to turn to Me.”

Jeremiah 2:19 “Your own wickedness will correct you, and your apostasies will reprove you; “Apostasy”: At one time you hold to something. You embrace that. To “apostasize” means to let it go, that you turn your back on it. …Know therefore and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the LORD your God, and the dread of Me is not in you,” declares the Lord GOD of hosts.

When He says, “The dread of Me is not in you,” He’s talking about the fear of God. Fear of God is a reverential trust, an awesome respect. If you just listen in our society to how the name of God is used, how the name of Jesus Christ is used, and the jokes about God, you see that there is no fear of God before our eyes. The dread of Him is not in us, yet it needs to be because to fear God is to depart from evil. To fear God is to get to know God and walk in His ways. It is to know that what He says, He means, and we can trust Him and know that what He says will come to pass.

This was their state but ours also. They had done it to themselves. Here is what they had done:

  1. They had lost the fear of God. Jeremiah 2:19

Jeremiah 2:4-5 Hear the word of the LORD, O house of Jacob, Hear the word of the LORD, America, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the LORD, “What injustice did you fathers find in Me, that they went far from Me and walked after emptiness and became empty? Do you know how empty life is for so many in our nation? It’s so full of emptiness! We have more than any other nation on the face of this earth. We not only have more materially, but we have more spiritually, yet we are empty because we are getting chaff instead of the wheat of God’s word.

Jeremiah 2:6 “And they did not say, ‘Where is the LORD who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and pits, through a land of drought and of deep darkness, through a land that no one crossed and where no man dwelt.’” We don’t say, “Where is the Lord who brought us this far as a nation and took us from our humble beginnings to make us one of the greatest nations on the face of this earth?” Instead, we act as if God had nothing to do with where we are.

Jeremiah 2:7-8 “And I brought you into the fruitful land, to eat its fruit and its good things, but you came and defiled My land, and My inheritance you made an abomination. The priests did not say, ‘Where is the LORD?’ And those who handle the law did not know Me;

That’s so true today when you see all that’s happening in the churches, all that’s being condoned, sanctioned: homosexuality, lesbianism, abortion, divorce—all these things hidden, covered up, or even embraced. And we’re saying we know the Lord and we’re walking in His way? No. But the priests handling the law said that because they did not know Him. …The rulers also transgressed against Me, You see this in Washington D.C. right now in all quarters of our government …and the prophets prophesied by Baal and walked after things that did not profit. Many times you turn on television and the things you see and hear, that are being proclaimed, are not what God’s Word says and people are being deluded. They have lost the fear of God and have turned to other ways and they have not done it with fear and trembling.

  1. They are being deluded. Jeremiah 2:23-24

Jeremiah 2:23-24 “How can you say, ‘I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Baals’? Look at your way in the valley! Know what you have done! You are a swift young camel entangling her ways, a wild donkey accustomed to the wilderness, that sniffs the wind in her passion. In the time of her heat who can turn her away? All who seek her will not become weary; in her month they will find her.” You’re just running after your own lusts.

The other day Kay was on a flight talking to a flight attendant about attitude. The flight attendant agreed that attitude does make a difference. She said that her boyfriend’s kids were sick all night and when she got to work she was grumpy. The people on her regular flight saw it. Kay asked her what her ambitions and desires of life were. She said that she wanted to get married. Kay said, “That’s very good because God says that you’re living in adultery. You’re committing adultery.” She looked at Kay and said, “You know, I don’t know what God says.” That’s true. We have walked our own way. We are deluded.

Jeremiah 3:2-3 “Life up your eyes to the bare heights and see; where have you not been violated? By the roads you have sat for them like an Arab in the desert, and you have polluted a land with your harlotry and with your wickedness. “Therefore the showers have been withheld, and there is no spring rain. Yet you had a harlot’s forehead; you refused to be ashamed.” That’s what’s happening. We are living in harlotry yet we don’t see it as that.

Jeremiah 6:7, 15 “As a well keeps its waters fresh so she keeps fresh her wickedness. Violence and destruction are heard in her; Sickness and wounds are ever before Me… Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done? They were not even ashamed at all; they did not even know how to blush.

A woman was telling Kay about the “father of her child”. She wasn’t embarrassed at all to tell Kay that she’d had a child out of wedlock. It’s not embarrassing anymore for Hollywood stars to say who they’re living with or to walk around with their pregnant live-in mates. We don’t know how to blush. We tell dirty jokes and no one blushes anymore. We are deluded, deceived. We are sick and immoral and don’t know it. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be cast down,” says the LORD. God must judge sin. He is a holy God, a righteous God, and He must judge sin.

  1. They played the harlot. They played the harlot spiritually first, then physically. That same pattern is seen in Romans 1. In Jeremiah 3, “harlot” is a key word.

Jeremiah 3:1b, 2b, 3b“You are a harlot with many lovers; yet you turn to Me,” declares the LORD. “…With your harlotry and with your wickedness.” “Yet you had a harlot’s forehead;”

Jeremiah 3:6 Then the LORD said to me in the days of Josiah the king, (That’s when this prophecy began, when Jeremiah began his ministry, in the days of Josiah the king,)“Have you seen what faithlessness Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there.” They would take the trees and shape them into phallic or sexual symbols. That’s where they would go and worship their gods.

That’s what’s happened to us. We have played the harlot spiritually, so consequently, we have played the harlot physically.

When people turn away from the true knowledge of God, when they really don’t know God as He is, when they have their own figment of their imagination of who God is, their own reasoning, their own distortion, then you’ll find them worshiping others. And when you go into idolatry, adultery always follows. That’s the pattern in Romans 1.

Jeremiah 5:7-8 “Why should I pardon you? Your sons have forsaken Me and sworn by those who are not gods. When I had fed them to the full, they committed adultery and trooped to the harlot’s house. They were well-fed lusty horses, each one neighing after his neighbor’s wife.” Isn’t that true today? So much infidelity; so many homes destroyed, and Kay was one of those. [See the last page for Kay’s story.]

These people had committed spiritual and physical adultery. They had played the harlot.

Lamentations was written when they’re sitting in captivity in this terrible state where their whole city and country has been destroyed. This so describes us today.