so But in his defense, J. Vernon McGee's and numerous other teachers, I'm sure, would say the same thing, that it eventually did become something that the nations, not at that time, but in future generations, and even now, anybody who picks up a Bible and reads this is a witness to the controversy. So I believe this is, as I said, hear ye, hear ye, court is now in session. Please rise. No, don't. Just kidding. So again in verse 1, when the people won't listen, the Lord turns to the earth, mountains, and hills, and rocks. Remember Jesus said if you didn't cry out, then the rocks would cry out. You know, that's one example of that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of like though he's saying talking to you is like talking to a brick wall. And they're not listening, so I'm going to cry out to the hills, cry out to the mountains. I may as well be talking to that lamp. Where is it? Right over there. That's one my dad used on me. So, Ezekiel 6, 1 to 7. Turn over there. Backwards to your left there in your Bible. Ezekiel 6, 1 through 7. Just to give you a couple of examples here. Verse 6, it starts, And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Now read verse 2, Son of man, set thy face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them. The mountains. And it tells him what to say here in verse 3, read that. And say, ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God. Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys. Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places. I just think about that. He's telling Ezekiel to go out and prophesy to the mountains, and the hills, and the rivers, and the valleys. My mom said when I was five I used to preach to my stuffed animals. Not the same, but you have to admit that's a cute thought. Verse four, and your altar shall be desolate, and your images shall be broken. And I will cast down your slain men before your idols. So obviously, in speaking to the mountains, and the hills, and the valleys, there are people there. But it's as though Ezekiel, it's kind of like street preaching here. If you have done any street preaching, there's different ways of doing it. But one way you can do street preaching is to go stand on the street corner, and when the cars park, You yell, repent! And you preach the gospel. Christ died for your sins, was buried and after three days rose again. Repent toward God with faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm actually preaching to a bunch of cars. But there are people in most of those cars that are sober. And sometimes they'll roll the window down. Other times they roll the window up. But you know, that's on them. God just called me to be out there doing the preaching, amen? There's other ways you can do street preaching, but in that case, that's an example. I've gone out and just preached to a bunch of cars, and sometimes there'll be six or seven line up behind the red light, and they all got their windows up, and you can see them turning their music up. God knows I'm out there preaching to them. That's all I care about. But then there's always that time where they'll roll the window down, and sometimes it'll be a Christian. There's, yeah, good job, that kind of thing. That's rare. Other times I get a different finger. And, you know, cussing and that kind of thing. I don't take it personal. They're not saying it to me. They're saying it to the Lord. And that's the sad thing as far as they're concerned if they don't repent. They'll answer one day for that. But that's what Ezekiel, you can picture him doing that. I got us going down through verse 7, but it's more of the same, so let's move on. I just want to show you this real quick. Ezekiel 36. And verse 1, Also thou son of man, prophesy unto the mountains of Israel, and say, Ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord. See that? Look at verse 4. Therefore, ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord God. Thus saith the Lord God to the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes. You know what? We're doing this every Saturday. This church is doing this as a church body. Every Saturday, the radio program goes out and that radio signal hits mountains, hills, rivers, valleys. And only people who want to hear it turn it on. So there's a lot of areas, a lot of times that signal just going out and hitting nothing of any consequence. But we're doing what God's called us to do by getting the word out. And if people know it's there and they choose not to listen to it and they die and go to hell, we will have clean hands. Amen? So of course the people live on and around those mountains and hills. So back to our text in verse 2. Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth. For the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel. So the controversy is in Israel's rebellion against God's mercy. Do you realize that when people are in rebellion against God, when they will not believe the gospel, and when they will not, you know, Christians even can get a rebellious and bitterness in them and go turn against God for a while, or turn against God's people, and the Bible says he'll chastise them as a father, a good father does his children. And if there be no chastisement, then that means they're not child of God. They're a bastard, as the Bible uses the word. And so you have these people who claim to be Christians and aren't. And then you have those who are Christians, but God's gonna chastise them, they'll come back. And then there are some who are Christians, and God chastises them, and they refuse to repent. And 1 Corinthians 3.16-17 says that God will destroy them. They're Christians. So all of that's true, all of the above. And in Israel right now, the whole nation, with few exceptions, is in rebellion against God. Some of them may be believers. A lot of them aren't. The ones that are believers, I believe you're going to mostly see them come to the Lord. And then when Jeremiah calls and says, this is what you've got to do. You've got to surrender. Let Nebuchadnezzar come and take you away. If you run, if you fight, you'll die. That's, I think, how we found out who the believers were. I mean, and some of them were young men like Daniel. and Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. As Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were the believers who went into Babylon and didn't fight and didn't run. And that's how you got to see who the real deal was when it comes to this time that we're talking about. Noah Webster, in his dictionary, says that a controversy is a dispute, a debate, agitation of contrary opinions. And that's what's going on now. And God's saying, let's debate. How many of you read Isaiah 118? Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Where'd it start? It started with come let us reason together. That's an amazing thing that the God of all creation will say that to you. And I did. For a number of months, I debated. And I didn't realize at the time, but I was debating with the Lord. I was in a room and I'd be talking to myself. I wasn't really talking to myself. I was talking to God. And one thing after another, He just kept opening my eyes and showing me and brought me Two repentants. So the Lord will not lay down accusations in this case. He's going to condescend. Look at verse 3 where we see the controversy. Oh my people, what have I done unto thee? And wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me. You ever been in that situation where you look at somebody who said, they didn't even say anything, they're just standoffish. treating you like a stranger, don't want to be around you anymore, you're supposed to be friends, and you're like, well, what did I do? Tell me. That's what God's doing with His people here. What did I do? Tell me. We watch a program, even Christian television, where they will totally misrepresent what's going on. And the person on the show will get mad at God, and their friend will say, well, sometimes we just can't explain what's going on. There are explanations. We were watching a show where, this is some time back, we were watching one recently, that sort of thing was going on too. But, well, I'll just use that one. We were watching one where there's a church shooting. And a woman, her was visiting from out of town, and just happened to be there that day, and he gets shot and killed. And then there's all this hubbub, and I won't get into all of the questions and things, but one of the questions was, why would God allow that to happen? Well, folks, it's a real easy answer. It's sad, but it's called the fall. That's your answer. The whole world is caught up in wickedness. We sing about it. Wicked, wicked world. 1 John 5, 19. And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. We should be surprised there's not more of that. We should be surprised there's not even more wickedness. And so when something like that happens, you know, We've talked about it. And I love my wife. But if we're going to celebrate our 19th anniversary this year, something could have happened the day we got married. We could have said, I do. And we were heading down to Tennessee. And some drunk could have hit us and killed her. And I'd only had one day with her. And it's sad, I know people, I'm not telling you, I would say this to a person going through that, but there are people in that and they say, why God? I wouldn't have been asking that question because I've already wrestled with these questions and that's what I'm trying to tell you. Don't wait. Get the answers from God's Word and be prepared because things are going to happen. Josh can tell you that with Rachel. And I think she might be going home, but she had a, she was, yeah, go to rehab. Josh's wife, hit by a car. And for a while, they didn't know what was gonna happen. Was she gonna even survive? But to his credit, you didn't see him out on social media saying, why God? Why would you allow this? Why? I believe he's already wrestled with these questions. He knows why. And that's what we have to face with life and with the people we love. Bad things are gonna happen if we're in this life. But we have been given this amazing truth that God is in control and when it's all said and done, we're gonna be with him forever in a place where there'll be no more of that. But there's going to be a little bit of time here for as long as you're on Earth, which is a really little amount of time, even if you just go 6,000 years of human history. Our lives are, you know, tiny little spaces. Then if you think in terms of eternity, it's like not even a speck of sand by comparison. And he's just asked you to endure those trials now. And in exchange, you get an entire eternity without that stuff. So he's saying, what did I do to you to excuse your rebellion against me? The answer, God's been nothing but good to them and to us. We always say, if you start right, you end right. If you start with the fact that you should be in hell right this second, everybody in this room who has sinned knowingly has earned death. The wages of sin is death. What death? Second death, hell. And He continually allows you to live in long-suffering and mercy until the time you got saved. And He has now saved you from eternal hell. Everything good after that is icing on your cake. You don't deserve one bit of it. I think of all that God has done for me, and I didn't deserve the first thing. Psalm 34, eight, oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that trusteth in him. I love this then, Hebrews 2, nine says, but we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, should taste death. for every man. He tasted death for you, and we're told to taste and see how good he is. Who got the better end of that taste test? But he did it lovingly and willingly. He tasted death for us. The Bible says, but God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The Lord now reminds Israel of his mercy and longsuffering as we close this up there in verses four and five with God's mercy back in our text. Look at verse four. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. Anybody here not know this story? Could you imagine these people? They, we know it. They know it. And so that's why he's just like, for I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt and redeemed thee out of the house of servants. And I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. Hey ladies, did you notice that? Yeah. He didn't just say Moses and Aaron, he added Miriam in there. That's pretty nice. The Lord sent leaders and then delivered the children of Israel. I mean, how good is he? They could still as a nation be in Egypt as slaves, but he delivered them. Johnny? That's a family, brother, brother, sister. Yeah, the one that went to leprosy. I was going to say, that's why she needed such a punishment. She is one of their leaders. I'm not going to get into all that for time's sake, but she was in rebellion when that happened against Moses as leader. So we get back to that. Every Jew was raised to be thoroughly informed about the Exodus. You think you know about the Exodus? Every year at this time, coming up here in the next few days, they're gonna have a Passover. They're still talking about it. Sadly, they missed the point. The point is that Jesus is the Passover lamb, so they're missing that point. But they're still, even to this day, the Jews are looking back to the Exodus. And so verse 5 begins, All my people remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal. So the Lord restrained Balaam from cursing Israel even though Balaam wanted to curse them. And Israel didn't even know it was happening. And God is behind the scenes taking care of them. with this false prophet. It turned out to be a false prophet. If you look on the maps, over to the far right is the full map. The middle one shows where Shittim is, and then over here to the left shows Gilgal, and for some reason it was hard, I could not find a map that had both of them on there. But Gilgal's like between the Jordan River and Jericho. is where Gilgal is on this map to the left. And so that's where that took place. It's just to the north of the Dead Sea where that whole scene took place. It's numbers 22 through 26. I'm looking out the window and there are deer walking. I hope they don't try to come in here. I saw deer looking at me. They're moving on. That was funny. So then verse five closes, that ye may know the righteousness of the Lord. He points to the events of the Egypt exodus. He points to the events of Balaam. Of course, there's a lot more to that story, too, just like there is to Miriam. But the Lord Jesus here is speaking, by the way, through Micah, and he is telling them to remember those particular points about their past and how the Lord has taken care of them. Angerness, bitterness, and rebellion against God is insanity. But there are people not here with us tonight because of angerness and bitterness. There are people in your life who probably have nothing to do with you right now because of anger and bitterness. There are people who I've known to be what I thought were committed Christians who became angry and bitter and now they're totally away from the Lord. Not just Greg. You can be not right with me and live your life and be saved. Of course, if you're unforgiving, that puts a real problem in your relationship with the Lord, but that's another thing we've talked about many times. But as I've said, if people don't want to be around me and they're not around me, I don't believe that makes them go to hell. But when you become angry and bitter at the Lord for the fact that you live in a world that man has caused to be filled with sin, man is the problem, God is not the problem. And when you're living in a world where man has caused all this sin and death and sickness, accidents, illness, tragedy, trial, tribulation, whatever, and you blame God for it. It's insanity. The Lord's every act of mercy and patience toward us would take a lifetime to recount. Why? Why is it? Because every moment of every day, He is good to us. I'll just talk about our little family here, these little babies. Every heartbeat and every breath we have and we get to spend with them is one example of the goodness of God. But then Jeannie and I look at the older kids, they're still our babies. And we still feel the same way. Every minute, every heartbeat is a blessing. And yeah, you may be surprised I'm gonna say this, but I'm not lying, I'm in church, I feel the same way about all of you. Every time we get together at church, every moment we're a family, we are able to pray for one another, love one another, do for one another, fellowship with one another. It's all, and I'm just getting started, we could be here for at least a day, just going around and giving all the blessings of God. He's been so good to us. So let's close by reading Psalm 136. Turn there if you will. We'll read it the way they would have read it 3,000 years ago. No, we're not going to read it in Hebrew. But we're going to read it in English. But go there and you'll see Psalm 136. And there's 36 verses, but they're short little verses. And I'm going to read it, and then I want you to respond with, For His mercy endureth forever. This is how they're supposed to have done it in the synagogues. Starting verse 1, Give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good. For His mercy endureth forever. O give thanks unto the God of gods. For His mercy endureth forever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords. For His mercy endureth forever. To Him who alone doeth great wonders. to Him that by wisdom made the heavens, to Him that stretched out the earth above the waters, to Him that made great lights, the sun to rule by day, the moon and stars to rule by night, to Him that smote Egypt in their firstborn, and brought out Israel from among them, with a strong hand and with a stretched out arm, to him which divided the Red Sea into parts, and made Israel to pass through the midst of it, but overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, to him which led his people through the wilderness, to him which spoke great kings, and slew famous kings, Sihon king of the Amorites, and Og the king of Bashan, and gave their land for an heritage, even an heritage unto Israel his servant, who remembered us in our low estate, and hath redeemed us from our enemies, whose mercy endures forever, who giveth food to all flesh, whose mercy endures forever, O give thanks unto the God of heaven, whose mercy endures forever. And there are only 26 verses, amen. Amen. For your mercy endures forever. For your mercy endures forever. Lord, we love you so much. And we thank you. We thank you for what you've taught us tonight in the first five verses of Micah 6, and then comparing Scripture with Scripture, and then that wonderful psalm, which just as our text, referred God's people back to the wonderful miracles in Egypt, and in the entrance into the promised land, all of your goodness to your people. and we truly do experience it and know, and now through our Lord Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, that your mercy endureth forever. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. All right, let's stand and sing. Oh, how He loves you and me. Oh, how he loves you and me. He gave his life, what more could he give? Oh, how he loves you and me. Oh, how he loves me. Oh, how he loves you and me. Jesus, to Calvary did go. His death for sinners to show. He shed his blood, a prodigal from this Oh, how He loves you. Oh, how He loves me. Oh, how He loves you and me. Up from the grave He arose, in victory for sinners to show. That's why we sing, death has lost its sting. Oh, how he loves you. Oh, how he loves me. Oh, how he loves you and me. Oh, how he loved you and me. Oh, how he loved you and me. He gave his life, what more could he give? Oh, how he loves you. Oh, how he loves me. Oh, how he loves you and me. All God's people say amen.