Before we get to today's episode, I want to invite you to Ligonier's 2026 National Conference

happening on April 9th through 11th. Gather with thousands in Orlando, Florida to hear gifted

Bible teachers address fundamental questions facing Christians today, questions about God,

our identity, and life in an increasingly hostile society.

Go to Ligonier.org slash 2026 to register and learn more.

Jeremiah lived on the basis of the Word of God in the midst of the moment where his own land was being destroyed.

People that know me know that one of my all-time favorite paintings is the painting that hangs

in the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam, painted by Rembrandt von Rhein, entitled Jeremiah Lamenting

the Destruction of Jerusalem, where it's one of those typical Rembrandt paintings

of a very dark background with light coming out suddenly from an unknown source.

But if one is to see what is going on in this painting, you have to stand almost right up so close to it

that your face is only inches away from the canvas

so that you can perceive the Holocaust

that Rembrandt painted into the background

of a city in flames.

You know, when a painter is going to paint a scene from history or a sculptor is going to make a piece of sculpture in these frozen material arts, they seek what the German philosopher heard or described as the Fraud Barra Augenblik, that is, the fruitful moment that they were trying to capture in one freeze frame of action

from history the whole dynamic of a man's life or of a dramatic incident in world history,

a series of events or so on. And so what artists would do customarily would be make 30, 40, 50 sketches of various moments

in a person's life and try to find that one moment where the crystallization of the essence

of the person, the pregnant significance of that person or that event could be captured.

Like Michelangelo's David, when he's picking up the stone, and he has the stone,

and he's poised there for that moment of action that is decisive for his entire life.

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