We The Kings Disoriented Are (Jeremiah 22v1-30)

It’s possible that King Tut was ‘buried with his donkey.’

Archaeologists tell us that animals are often found in Egyptian tombs.  Most commonly they are pets like dogs, cats and monkeys.  These animals were carefully mummified along with their owners.

The only real evidence, however, that King Tut was buried with his donkey are the lyrics to a now ancient song.  A fragment of it reads,

Buried with a donkey (funky Tut)
He’s my favorite honkey!
Born in Arizona,
Moved to Babylonia (King Tut)

Tut may not have been buried with his donkey, but there is in our text this morning a king of Judah who received a donkey’s burial.  Concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, we read “he shall be buried with the burial of a donkey” (v19).

It wasn’t going to be an elaborate funeral, however.  The verse goes on to state he would be “dragged and cast out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.”

The final four kings of Judah are lamented and condemned by the prophet Jeremiah.  We will see that as kings it was their duty to show compassion on especially their most disadvantaged subjects but they were, instead, compassionless.

Although these verses are definitely about kings and the standard God holds them to, I think we’d all agree that compassion, or the lack of it, is important in our walk with the Lord.

As we discuss these failed kings I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 You Should Expect Yourself To Be Compassionate, and #2 You Should Inspect Yourself For Being Compassionless.

#1    You Should Expect Yourself
    To Be Compassionate
    (v1-5)

Upon the death of godly King Josiah his youngest son, Shallum, was put on the throne.  His name was changed to Jehoahaz.  At the time of Jehoahaz’s reign Judah was oppressed by Egypt.  The Pharaoh took Jehoahaz to Egypt as a prisoner.

The Pharaoh placed Eliakim, the oldest brother of Jehoahaz, on Judah’s throne.  He took the name Jehoiakim.

When Egypt fell to Babylon Judah and Jehoiakim came under the control of Babylon.  Jehoiakim tried to rebel against Babylon.  In about 606BC Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon sent an army to besiege Jerusalem.  Jehoiakim was carried away in chains.

The next king of Judah was Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, who took the name Jehoiachin.  Again the Babylonian army came against Jerusalem.  Jehoiachin surrendered in 597BC and was carried away captive to Babylon along with a large number of other Jews.

Nebuchadnezzar placed Mattaniah on the throne; he took for himself the throne-name Zedekiah.  Zedekiah tried to ally himself with a new Pharaoh against Babylon.  Bad move.

The Babylonians came the third time with vengeance.  They besieged Jerusalem.  The Jews held out for more than a year but finally a breach was made in the walls and the enemy poured into the city.  Jerusalem was destroyed.

Zedekiah and his family escaped, but only temporarily.  He was overtaken and seized.  His sons and seventy others were slain as he looked on; and then, with this sight fresh in his mind, he was blinded and taken in chains to Babylon.

Our text in chapter twenty-two is a review of the administrations of these four kings.  We first see what God required of them as kings – what His standard was.  It was that they be compassionate.

Jeremiah 22:1-3
1 Thus says the Lord: “Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and there speak this word,
2 and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, you who sit on the throne of David, you and your servants and your people who enter these gates!
3 Thus says the Lord: “Execute judgment and righteousness, and deliver the plundered out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong and do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, or the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.

The things mentioned in verse three are not exhaustive.  They are meant to be a summary of God’s Law regarding the governing of His people.  The emphasis is clearly on showing compassion upon the less fortunate members of society who could not represent or help themselves.

The word ‘compassion’ expresses a deep emotion, a striving of the innermost being, to pity others and their situation.  Itʼs a strong emotional reaction to someone elseʼs situation that causes actual physical responses that ʻmoveʼ you to do something.  You might go so far as to say it isn’t compassion if you aren’t moved to action.

Jeremiah 22:4-5
4 For if you indeed do this thing, then shall enter the gates of this house, riding on horses and in chariots, accompanied by servants and people, kings who sit on the throne of David.
5 But if you will not hear these words, I swear by Myself,” says the Lord, “that this house shall become a desolation.” ‘ ”

Pretty straightforward, really.  Show compassion and your throne will be blessed by God.  Be compassionless and your throne will be left desolate.

Think of all the many qualities you look for in a leader.  There’s a bunch that come to mind.  Compassion may not be our first thought but it is God’s measuring stick.

What’s so important about compassion?  It is Christ-like.  Jesus was often moved with compassion.  You read that He was “moved with compassion” at least seven times in the Gospel accounts of His ministry.  You don’t have to read it to know it was always a motivation as the Lord looked out upon hurting human beings.

In every example where Jesus felt compassion for someone or for a group of people, there was such a movement of compassion from within Him that it surged out of Him to meet their needs.  In some cases that movement of compassion caused Him to provide food, to raise the dead, to deliver the demon-possessed, to heal the sick, and to provide teaching for those who were like sheep without a shepherd.

Jesus was moved with compassion even before He walked on the earth as He saw the lost condition of the human race and was so affected that He determined to come in the flesh to die on the Cross in order to save us.
It should be obvious that a king, as a steward over God’s people and a representative of God to them, would be tasked with being compassionate.  It is just as obvious that each and every believer in Jesus Christ is tasked with being compassionate.

We live in a time when it’s easy to see the needs of others.  When we do, we should expect our reaction to be one of being moved to help them.

You aren’t tasked with meeting everyone’s needs, but you are tasked with responding to the needs you are shown.  It’s a joy to do so because you are never more like Jesus than when you are moved to action by compassion.

#2    You Should Inspect Yourself
    For Being Compassionless
    (v6-30)

Were the last kings of Judah compassionate?  Hardly.

Jeremiah 22:6-10
6 For thus says the Lord to the house of the king of Judah: “You are Gilead to Me, The head of Lebanon; Yet I surely will make you a wilderness, Cities which are not inhabited.
7 I will prepare destroyers against you, Everyone with his weapons; They shall cut down your choice cedars And cast them into the fire.
8 And many nations will pass by this city; and everyone will say to his neighbor, ‘Why has the Lord done so to this great city?’
9 Then they will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God, and worshiped other gods and served them.’ ”
10 Weep not for the dead, nor bemoan him; Weep bitterly for him who goes away, For he shall return no more, Nor see his native country.

No king is named in these verses but since the context is the final judgment of Judah it indicates Judah’s final ‘king,’  Zedekiah, is their subject.

What can we learn from Zedekiah about being compassionless? Upon close inspection you see that during the time of Zedekiah the people had “forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God, and worshipped other gods and served them.”  You could say that they tried to serve two masters.

If its been a while since you were moved with compassion and actually acted upon it then chances are your heart is divided.  You’re trying to serve God and something or someone else.

You can’t ever serve two masters.  God must be your only master.

Zedekiah was the last king of Judah.  Beginning with verse eleven Jeremiah looks back and describes the compassionless reigns of the three kings who preceded him.

Jeremiah 22:11-12
11 For thus says the Lord concerning Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned instead of Josiah his father, who went from this place: “He shall not return here anymore,
12 but he shall die in the place where they have led him captive, and shall see this land no more.

Shallum’s throne-name was Jehoahaz.  We’re not told in these verses where he went wrong but it was no secret.  He reversed the spiritual progress his father had made and did evil instead in the sight of the Lord.  It didn’t take him very long, either; he was only king for about 100 days.

Do we ever reverse our spiritual progress?  Let me ask you this.  Or, better yet, ask yourself.  Are you more sensitive to sin than you were a year ago?  Or are you desensitized to sin?

It might take the form of thinking you have new liberties to do and pursue things that previously you believed to be less than spiritual, unedifying, and distracting – if not downright sin.

We are constantly being pressured to move the boundaries when it comes to personal holiness.  The world around us is conspiring to say that was is immoral is moral, and that what is wrong is right.

Becoming desensitized to sin is a surefire way of becoming compassionless.

The next long section, verses thirteen through twenty-three, describe Jehoiakim.

Jeremiah 22:13-23
13 “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness And his chambers by injustice, Who uses his neighbor’s service without wages And gives him nothing for his work,
14 Who says, ‘I will build myself a wide house with spacious chambers, And cut out windows for it, Paneling it with cedar And painting it with vermilion.’
15 “Shall you reign because you enclose yourself in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink, And do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him.
16 He judged the cause of the poor and needy; Then it was well. Was not this knowing Me?” says the Lord.
17 “Yet your eyes and your heart are for nothing but your covetousness, For shedding innocent blood, And practicing oppression and violence.”
18 Therefore thus says the Lord concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: “They shall not lament for him, Saying, ‘Alas, my brother!’ or ‘Alas, my sister!’ They shall not lament for him, Saying, ‘Alas, master!’ or ‘Alas, his glory!’
19 He shall be buried with the burial of a donkey, Dragged and cast out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.
20 “Go up to Lebanon, and cry out, And lift up your voice in Bashan; Cry from Abarim, For all your lovers are destroyed.
21 I spoke to you in your prosperity, But you said, ‘I will not hear.’ This has been your manner from your youth, That you did not obey My voice.
22 The wind shall eat up all your rulers, And your lovers shall go into captivity; Surely then you will be ashamed and humiliated For all your wickedness.
23 O inhabitant of Lebanon, Making your nest in the cedars, How gracious will you be when pangs come upon you, Like the pain of a woman in labor?

Jehoiakim wanted a big, red, cedar palace.  What’s worse, he wanted it during a time when Judah was clearly in decline.  To accomplish his personal building project he oppressed his subjects.

This is probably the ‘biggie’ when it comes to killing compassion.  It’s materialism and the coveting of the things in the world.
Showing Christ’s compassion requires generosity and sacrifice of material things.  If you’re covetous you’re not going to be moved with compassion.  Or, when you are, you’re going to bottle it up. That’s one reason why the apostle John can say, “whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (First John 3:17).

Jeremiah 22:24-30
24 “As I live,” says the Lord, “though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the signet on My right hand, yet I would pluck you off;
25 and I will give you into the hand of those who seek your life, and into the hand of those whose face you fear – the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the hand of the Chaldeans.
26 So I will cast you out, and your mother who bore you, into another country where you were not born; and there you shall die.
27 But to the land to which they desire to return, there they shall not return.
28 “Is this man Coniah a despised, broken idol – A vessel in which is no pleasure? Why are they cast out, he and his descendants, And cast into a land which they do not know?
29 O earth, earth, earth, Hear the word of the Lord!
30 Thus says the Lord: ‘Write this man down as childless, A man who shall not prosper in his days; For none of his descendants shall prosper, Sitting on the throne of David, And ruling anymore in Judah.’ ”

Coinah is Jehoiachin.  This account of him is fairly positive. There’s a kind of sadness to the phrase “though Coniah… were the signet on My right hand, yet I would pluck you off.”  It reads as though Jehoiachin was a victim of the actions of others.
It was too late for him to have much of an effect because judgment had already been decreed and God must remove the “signet,” meaning that the nation would lose its sovereignty and have no king but be exiled.

Same with verse twenty-eight.  He was not “a vessel in which [God took] no pleasure.”  He was king at a time when the throne had become defiled by compassionless predecessors who had set in motion the events of the destruction of Jerusalem and it was too late for Jehoiachin to turn things around.

We learn from the experience of Jehoiachin that being compassionless can become a way of life for the entire community or country.  Although God holds the leaders responsible the actions of the led are not without consequences.

This preaches to us to be a compassionate community as a church – Compassion Chapel of Hanford.

We should be excited about our work with Gospel for Asia and in Peru.  We should be excited about our support locally of the Crossroads Pregnancy Center and about our Deacons Fund that helps folks in need.

We should be excited about any and every need presented to us as an opportunity to be moved with compassion.

Currently we’ve been praying that God would show us a way to disciple certain disadvantaged individuals, e.g., the homeless, who really want to turn their lives around.  To give us a place to nurture and house some people.

Compassion costs and our initial response can be, “I just don’t have the resources, otherwise I’d help.”

When Jesus was on the earth He had, in one sense, almost no resources by which to help anyone.  At one point He explained that He was poorer than a bird because even a bird has a nest to sleep in.  He had less than a fox who at least had a hole in the ground.  When among crowds needing food the inventory of what Jesus had on hand was meager, e.g., a few loaves and fishes.

Jesus had at His disposal, however, all the resources of His heavenly Father.  When Jesus was moved with compassion He did what His Father told Him to and needs were met.

We, too, have at our disposal all spiritual blessings in heavenly places.  And for sure we have a lot more physical resources than Jesus had when He was on the earth.

Don’t overlook that spiritual needs were met as the priority. There’s a lot of talk today about how the church is blowing it because we aren’t meeting the physical needs of people.

Part of our duty as Christians is to show compassion in tangible ways.  But to do so without bringing people the Gospel is to leave them better off in their sins, more comfortable on their way to a Christless eternity.

The greatest compassion we can show is the sharing of the Good News that God is not willing that any should perish but that all would come to eternal life through Jesus Christ.

Compassionate Christianity ought to be our platform; “Be Moved,” our slogan.

Now You Siege Me, Now You Don’t (Jeremiah 21v1-14)

The title of the article was How to Fight Monkeys.  You might laugh but monkey attacks are on the rise.  In 2007 the deputy mayor of New Delhi, India, fell off his balcony to his death after being attacked by monkeys.  In June of this year an American graduate student working as a wildlife ranger at Jane Goodall’s famous animal sanctuary in South Africa was dragged for almost a half-mile in a “frenzied” attack.

I, for one, intend to be ready!

How do you fight monkeys?  You can try to appease them with food.  You can try to chase them off by shaking a stick at them; but they might get violent if cornered.  If they don’t budge, bop ’em on the head; visitors to temples in India sometimes carry a stick for just this reason.

Primatologists will sometimes send a warning signal called the open-mouth threat.  Basically, form an “O” with your mouth, lean toward them with your body and head, and raise your eyebrows.

Female victims might seek protection in a group of men since monkeys are somewhat afraid of males.

Whatever you do, don’t freak out; those who scream, wave their arms, and run away are only going to make the monkeys even more aggressive.

In the sixth century BC Jerusalem would find itself surrounded.  Not by monkeys; by the brutal Babylonian armies of King Nebuchadnezzar.  It was a military siege.

A siege is a blockade of a city or fortress.  Sieges involve surrounding the target and blocking the reinforcement or escape of troops or provision of supplies, typically coupled with attempts to reduce the fortifications by means of siege engines or other instruments of destruction.

Failing a military outcome, sieges can often be decided by starvation, thirst or disease, which can afflict either the attacker or the defender.

Our verses are set against another historic siege, that of Jerusalem by the Babylonian armies of King Nebuchadnezzar.
They are, however, about something more than an ancient army besieging an ancient city.  They are about us, as disciples of the Lord, often being blockaded, beset, and besieged as we seek to serve the Lord.

And they are about what can happen to those who turn away from the Lord, who need His discipline in their lives.

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 When You Are Besieged As A Disciple Your Proper Response Is To Endure, and #2 When You Are Besieged As A Discipline Your Proper Response Is To Surrender.

#1    When You Are Besieged As A Disciple
    Your Proper Response Is To Endure
    (v1-2)

This chapter leaps ahead to about 588BC.

Why put it here, out of chronological order?  To emphasize a spiritual truth.

When we last saw Jeremiah he had been brutally flogged for preaching in the Temple.  He’d been put overnight in the stocks.
Although he went on preaching with boldness, he was discouraged, disheartened, despairing of life itself.
The people were mocking him because his predictions of Babylon coming against them, to destroy their city, were not coming to pass.

The very next thing you read, that God wants you to know, is that Jeremiah was right all along.

Jeremiah 21:1-2
1 The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord when King Zedekiah sent to him Pashhur the son of Melchiah, and Zephaniah the son of Maaseiah, the priest, saying,
2 “Please inquire of the Lord for us, for Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon makes war against us. Perhaps the Lord will deal with us according to all His wonderful works, that the king may go away from us.”

Babylon came against Judah in three waves.  The first group of captives to be led away to Babylon included the prophet Daniel in 605BC.  A few years later in 597BC ten thousand captives, including the prophet Ezekiel, followed.

Our verses are set in 588BC, eighteen months before the siege in which the city and the Temple would be burned to the ground.  The Babylonians were forming a distant blockade but had not yet besieged the city.

Zedekiah was not the king; not really.  He was a governor that Nebuchadnezzar had appointed to run things.  Zedekiah, however, thought he could ally with Egypt and rebel against Nebuchadnezzar.  His rebellion led to the destruction of the city.

One more quick note.  The Pashhur of these verses is a different Pashhur than the chief of the Temple police who had Jeremiah flogged and put in the stocks.

At the end of chapter twenty Jeremiah cursed the day he was born.  He was so discouraged he tried to quit.  Chapter twenty-one testifies that the things Jeremiah had been predicting had now arrived.  It was real; it was true.  His mockers and persecutors now sought him out as perhaps the only one who could intercede on their behalf.

You might say that Jeremiah had been besieged long before Jerusalem ever was.  For many decades his own people had besieged him.  He had been cut-off and made to suffer.  Surrounded on all sides by mockers.  But he endured to the end.

You are a disciple of Jesus Christ.  During your time on earth, walking with the Lord, you will face enemy blockades.  You will be beset on every side.  You might be besieged for your entire life on the earth.

Second Corinthians 4:8 says, “we are hard pressed on every side…”  The apostle Paul described his trials in Ephesus as fighting against “wild beasts.”  To the Thessalonians he said that Satan had broken-up the road ahead of him, hindering his progress.  In Second Timothy 4:16 Paul described a time when “no one stood with me.”  We could go on and on but I think you get the idea.

You will want to quit.  Don’t.

When the enemy blocks and besets and besieges you the only reasonable strategy is to endure because you are walking with the Lord of all the earth in His truth which must come to pass exactly as He has said.

Learn from Jeremiah that God is worthy of your enduring to the end.

#2    When You Are Besieged As A Discipline
    Your Proper Response Is To Surrender
    (v3-14)

Almost 200 years earlier the Assyrian armies had surrounded Jerusalem.  King Hezekiah consulted the prophet Isaiah.  Hezekiah prayed.  The next morning he awoke to find that 185,000 Assyrian troops did not awaken.  The angel of the Lord had been dispatched from Heaven to kill them overnight.  The rest of the Assyrians withdrew; Jerusalem was spared.

That is essentially what Zedekiah was thinking would happen when he consulted Jeremiah.  The Jews figured God would never allow His city and His Temple to fall.

They had quite a surprise in store.

Jeremiah 21:3-7
3 Then Jeremiah said to them, “Thus you shall say to Zedekiah,
4 ‘Thus says the Lord God of Israel: “Behold, I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, with which you fight against the king of Babylon and the Chaldeans who besiege you outside the walls; and I will assemble them in the midst of this city.
5 I Myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger and fury and great wrath.
6 I will strike the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast; they shall die of a great pestilence.
7 And afterward,” says the Lord, “I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, his servants and the people, and such as are left in this city from the pestilence and the sword and the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those who seek their life; and he shall strike them with the edge of the sword. He shall not spare them, or have pity or mercy.” ‘

They be overcome by the siege because God Himself was fighting against them.  He was fighting against them in the sense that He was the one who had brought the invaders as a discipline for their idolatries and their refusal to repent.

The difference in Hezekiah’s day was that he had led the people in spiritual reforms.  He destroyed foreign altars and idols.  The Jews in Zedekiah’s time were steeped in idolatry of the most wicked kind and rudely refused to repent.

The stories we have in the Bible are not so much about God’s works as they are His ways.  By that I mean we’re not looking for God to repeat Himself the way Zedekiah was.  No, we’re learning God will be Himself and act according to His nature and character.  Zedekiah found a Bible story that was sort of like the predicament he was in and was counting on God to act mechanically, the way He’d acted before.  Something much deeper was going on.  God wanted to act mercifully but it required repentance.

You are therefore watching as God, who had given fair warning, was disciplining His people.  What should they do?

Jeremiah 21:8-10
8 “Now you shall say to this people, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Behold, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.
9 He who remains in this city shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence; but he who goes out and defects to the Chaldeans who besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be as a prize to him.
10 For I have set My face against this city for adversity and not for good,” says the Lord. “It shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.” ‘

The term “Chaldeans” is sometimes used to refer to Babylon after they had defeated the Assyrians and grew to a world-dominating empire.

Jeremiah told them to surrender and he did so using an illustration we miss but that they would understand.  He said, “he who goes out and defects… he shall live, and his life shall be a prize to him.”  When soldiers came back from battle they brought back with them the prizes, the spoils, of their victory.  If they came back with nothing it signified they had been defeated and the only ‘prize’ was that they were still alive.

Jeremiah was depicting the citizens of Jerusalem as an army that had already lost.  Though the final destruction was still eighteen months in their future, it was over because God had determined the outcome.  They may as well agree with God and surrender – admit defeat and have their lives as a prize – otherwise they’d be killed.

The commentators get sidetracked here talking about patriotism and whether Jeremiah was a traitor or committing treason.  He wasn’t.

It reminds me of that soul-stirring scene in Chariots of Fire where the politico’s are trying to force Eric Liddle to deny his beliefs and run in the Olympics on what he considered the Sabbath.  He said to them, “God made countries, God makes kings, and the rules by which they govern.  And those rules say that the Sabbath is His.  And I for one intend to keep it that way.”

The truly patriotic thing for the Jews to do would have been to unconditionally surrender.  They’d be surrendering to God.

This was a case in which God was besieging them as a discipline.  They had refused to repent of their sin.  Worse, they assumed God must deliver them from destruction in order to preserve His name and His glory.  They were therefore spiritually blackmailing God – doing whatever immoral, idolatrous thing they wanted to all the while thinking He must defend them for His own sake.

Christians still do this today – blackmail God – or at least think they can.  They know exactly what His Word says but they defy it, they go their own way according to their own desires, thinking God has forgiven them in advance so what’s the big deal.  I can’t say how or when God will deal with each person but I know that as a loving Father He won’t ignore disciplining them for their own good.

God disciplines His children.  He did it then; He does it now.  If you are pursuing sin, thinking God will defend and deliver you because He’ll be embarrassed if you fall, watch out.  He’s more likely to discipline you openly.

When God disciplines you, the truly spiritual thing to do, the only reasonable thing, is to unconditionally surrender to Him.  Endure His discipline because He is your Father who loves you.

Before you get to that, why not repent?  God always gives you space to repent.  Get back on track with the Lord.

The chapter ends hopefully.

Jeremiah 21:11-14
11 “And concerning the house of the king of Judah, say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord,
12 O house of David! Thus says the Lord: “Execute judgment in the morning; And deliver him who is plundered Out of the hand of the oppressor, Lest My fury go forth like fire And burn so that no one can quench it, Because of the evil of your doings.
13 “Behold, I am against you, O inhabitant of the valley, And rock of the plain,” says the Lord, “Who say, ‘Who shall come down against us? Or who shall enter our dwellings?’
14 But I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings,” says the Lord; “I will kindle a fire in its forest, And it shall devour all things around it.” ‘ ”

Why exhort the “house of David,” seeing that they were about to be taken captive and exiled to Babylon?

It’s a promise that God would restore them to their land, to their city, to their Temple – and to Himself.  When He did, they should return to walking in ways befitting kings and the citizens of their great God and Savior and thereby avoid future discipline.

It also served as a warning that should they fail He would again, and again, and again, bring discipline upon them.
Rather than wonder if God is disciplining you, just repent of any known sin or sins.  If you know that He is disciplining you, surrender yourself to Him and watch Him restore you.

Meantime remember that you will be blocked, beset, and besieged as you walk with the Lord and seek to serve Him.  It goes with the territory of discipleship.

Writing about endurance Charles Spurgeon said,

[endurance] SHOULD BE THE GREAT CARE OF EVERY CHRISTIAN – his daily and his nightly care.  O beloved!  I conjure you by the love of God, and by the love of your own souls, be faithful unto death. Have you difficulties?  You must conquer them… But ye cannot persevere except by much watchfulness in the closet, much carefulness over every action, much dependance upon the strong hand of the Holy Spirit who alone can make you stand.  Walk and live as in the sight of God, knowing where your great strength lieth, and depend upon it you shall yet sing that sweet doxology in Jude, “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever…

Endure to the end.  You can endure because you know the end and you have all the help you need to get there in the Person of Jesus Christ, in the indwelling Holy Spirit, and by the inspired Word of God.

The Bone Fire Of The Prophecies (Jeremiah 19v14-20v18)

I remember our Sega Genesis system, back in the stone ages of video game consoles, playing NBA Jam.  When you really got going and were about to dunk over the head of your opponent the announcer would exclaim, “he’s on fire!”

Christians are sometimes described as being “on fire for the Lord.”  It means they are totally committed, sold-out, going for it in their walk with the Lord.

Jeremiah was on fire for the Lord.  He said of himself, “His word was in my heart like a burning fire Shut up in my bones…” (20:9).
Publicly he was on fire in the traditional sense, proclaiming God’s Word with boldness.  Privately, however, he was experiencing fire in a very different sense.

When he spoke of the fire in his heart and bones it was during a time in which he was trying hard to quit serving the Lord.  He went on to say, “I was weary of holding it back,” indicating he was exerting a great deal of effort trying to quench the internal fire.

There are, then, these two ways to be on fire:

The first is the public way in which you are advancing the kingdom of God.
The second is the private way in which you wrestle with doubts and fears and can despair even of life itself.

I’m so thankful for Jeremiah’s honesty; otherwise I might think I’m the only one who sometimes feels that way in private.

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 You Have A Mission To Speak Forcefully To Men, and #2 You Have Permission To Speak Freely With God.

#1    You Have A Mission
To Speak Forcefully To Men
(19:14-20:6)

By “forcefully” I mean with authority.  It’s the Word of God you are speaking by which men can have their sins forgiven and be saved or by which they remain condemned in their sins.

Jeremiah spoke with authority in the Temple at Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 19:14-15
14 Then Jeremiah came from Tophet, where the Lord had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the Lord’s house and said to all the people,
15 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Behold, I will bring on this city and on all her towns all the doom that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their necks that they might not hear My words.’ ”

This message wasn’t recorded for us – only the usual theme that Judah was inevitably to be humbled by an invading nation.

Jeremiah did introduce a new illustration.  When he called them ‘stiff-necked’ the people would have understood him to be comparing them to disobedient oxen who would not take direction from the master plowing with them.

At least one person in the audience had heard enough.

Jeremiah 20:1-2
1 Now Pashhur the son of Immer, the priest who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things.
2 Then Pashhur struck Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the Lord.

Pashhur was the chief of the Temple police force tasked with maintaining order.  Although he was not posing any real threat, Pashhur determined to punish Jeremiah.  When it says he “struck” him it most likely means he had Jeremiah flogged with the usual thirty-nine lashes.
Afterwards he locked him in the stocks – an incredibly painful, contorted position for your body to maintain.  This marked the first, but not the last, physical persecution of God’s prophet.

Jeremiah 20:3-6
3 And it happened on the next day that Pashhur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then Jeremiah said to him, “The Lord has not called your name Pashhur, but Magor-Missabib.
4 For thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and your eyes shall see it. I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them captive to Babylon and slay them with the sword.
5 Moreover I will deliver all the wealth of this city, all its produce, and all its precious things; all the treasures of the kings of Judah I will give into the hand of their enemies, who will plunder them, seize them, and carry them to Babylon.
6 And you, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house, shall go into captivity. You shall go to Babylon, and there you shall die, and be buried there, you and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied lies.’ ”

A night spent in the stocks after a brutal beating did nothing to dampen Jeremiah’s fire for the Word of God.  He boldly proclaimed Pashhur’s new name to be fear on every side.  It was a prediction of what Pashhur could expect to happen to him.  The name change was accompanied by a prophecy in which Babylon was named as the invader for the first time.

Talk about being on fire.  Jeremiah came through the persecution with a holy boldness and he, without hesitation, continued his preaching.

Like Jeremiah we have a message to share, the Gospel, and an audience to share it with – family, friends, and everyone we might come into contact with.  The same power that emboldened Jeremiah, even after a beating and imprisonment, indwells us.

Be encouraged… but understand if you serve the Lord you will also come face-to-face with tremendous discouragement.

#2    You Have Permission
To Speak Freely With God
(20:7-18)

We are going to wonder if these verses describe the same guy we just saw boldly rebuke the chief of police.  They do, and that is why they are so meaningful to us in our own private times of despair.

Jeremiah 20:7-8
7 O Lord, You induced me, and I was persuaded; You are stronger than I, and have prevailed. I am in derision daily; Everyone mocks me.
8 For when I spoke, I cried out; I shouted, “Violence and plunder!” Because the word of the Lord was made to me A reproach and a derision daily.

You might recall that Jeremiah was initially reluctant to answer God’s call.  Looking back on it he was now of the opinion that God had persuaded him to answer the call by overpowering him.

Jeremiah’s recollections were not entirely true.  The Lord told him from the start that his ministry would be difficult.  Following the Lord IS always going to be difficult.  Jesus made no excuses for the fact that since the world hated Him, it will hate you.  In the world you WILL have tribulation was His promise.  Discipleship is carrying a Cross daily.

Jeremiah 20:9
9 Then I said, “I will not make mention of Him, Nor speak anymore in His name.” But His word was in my heart like a burning fire Shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, And I could not.

Jeremiah tried to write a letter of resignation.  He couldn’t do it.  He couldn’t contain God’s Word.  He got “weary” trying.

Truth is, you can quit if you really want to.  We all know believers who are no longer really serving the Lord.  They don’t seem to have any internal fire upsetting them, nor are they weary from resisting.

That’s because they have succeeded where Jeremiah failed  They have pressed through and quenched the fire of the Holy Spirit.  They have resisted the Lord.  You’re seeing them after the fact, settled in to a mediocre spiritual life.

Is that what you want?  Mediocrity?  I think not.

Jeremiah 20:10
10 For I heard many mocking: “Fear on every side!” “Report,” they say, “and we will report it!” All my acquaintances watched for my stumbling, saying, “Perhaps he can be induced; Then we will prevail against him, And we will take our revenge on him.”
Jeremiah had renamed Pashhur “fear on every side” predicting the Babylonian invasion.  Nothing had happened; not yet, so they mocked him.  All eyes were on him – to see him fall and fail.  The whole world seemed against him.

Jeremiah had a breakthrough in the next set of verses.

Jeremiah 20:11-13
11 But the Lord is with me as a mighty, awesome One. Therefore my persecutors will stumble, and will not prevail. They will be greatly ashamed, for they will not prosper. Their everlasting confusion will never be forgotten.
12 But, O Lord of hosts, You who test the righteous, And see the mind and heart, Let me see Your vengeance on them; For I have pleaded my cause before You.
13 Sing to the Lord! Praise the Lord! For He has delivered the life of the poor From the hand of evildoers.

Jeremiah realized all things were working together for the good.  He remembered that he was being tested through his troubles.  He reckoned that everything was going to unfold according to God’s plan.

His heart began to sing praises to the Lord.  The song, however, didn’t last long.

Jeremiah 20:14-18
14 Cursed be the day in which I was born! Let the day not be blessed in which my mother bore me!
15 Let the man be cursed Who brought news to my father, saying, “A male child has been born to you!” Making him very glad.
16 And let that man be like the cities Which the Lord overthrew, and did not relent; Let him hear the cry in the morning And the shouting at noon,
17 Because he did not kill me from the womb, That my mother might have been my grave, And her womb always enlarged with me.
18 Why did I come forth from the womb to see labor and sorrow, That my days should be consumed with shame?

Jeremiah wished he’d never been born.  He wished that he had died in the womb – that his mother’s womb had been his grave.

I want you to notice that this chapter ends here.  It ends abruptly.  There’s no response from the Lord.  Neither a rebuke nor an encouragement.  It’s so stunning that commentators rearrange the chapter to end with the praise section.

What we do see is this.  Chapter twenty-one opens by saying, “the word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord…”  God kept speaking to Jeremiah; Jeremiah kept boldly proclaiming the prophetic word.

In earlier confessions like this, when Jeremiah poured out his heart, God answered him in various ways.  If you look at the confessions of David and Paul you’ll see God answer them in various ways.  Sometimes He spoke to them, either encouragement or rebuke.  Sometimes He gave them Scripture, or a vision.  Other times He was silent – at least as far as what is recorded for us in the Word.

But all the time the understanding was that your help would come directly from Him.

In the private confessions of Jeremiah we encounter “the entire spectrum of human, emotional distress: fear of shame, fear of failure, loss of strength, doubting of faith, loneliness, pity, disappointment turning to hostility towards God.”

I think some of us – maybe a lot of us – have been there.  Maybe you’re there right now.  If you are, you’re in good company.

Jeremiah was discouraged.  David was often discouraged. The apostle Paul described the care of the churches as an anxiety.

The prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon, was given to fits of discouragement. He would often break out into uncontrollable crying for no apparent reason.

What did these men do about their discouragement?  They spoke freely to the Lord about it.

Behind the scenes, in private, Jeremiah spoke freely to the Lord.  He poured out his heart and in it were doubts and fears and regrets and disappointments and discouragement.  At times he despaired of life itself.

God brought him through it.  We want to know how.

I don’t know how, exactly, because we’re not told “how”; not here.  What we are shown is “Who,” not “how.” All we know is that Jeremiah talked with the Lord and then went on serving Him.

Think of it like this.  People often find a group to try to identify with, to be among people similarly struggling.  The very fact there are others who have the same struggles helps them tremendously, as does talking it out.  There’s always a facilitator, a counselor, who can fully relate to them.

Well, if you are broken, discouraged, desperate – then you have a ‘group.’  It’s been attended by Jeremiah, and David, and Paul, and many other servants of God.  There are a great cloud of witnesses that have gone before you.

It’s facilitated by Jesus Christ, who is called in the Bible “Wonderful Counselor.”  He knows your every thought.  He was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.  He sweat great drops of blood for you one night in a garden on His way to die on the Cross.

If you can find someone, another saint, to talk to, that’s great.  It’s actually quite rare because, on the one hand you might stumble them with your honesty; and on the other hand they may give you cliche answers that make you feel even worse.

Jeremiah had no one else to talk with, nowhere else to go.  There was no group meeting for reproached prophets.  Mean time society was crumbling around him as the people sunk further into idolatry and immorality.  Everything he knew and loved was going to be destroyed and he, too, would be exiled.

His plight preaches to us that Jesus is our sufficiency; He is always enough.  While we may have greater resources at our disposal to aid us in our discouragement, they must eventually point to Him as our sole sufficiency.

If talking to the Lord isn’t enough, we will gladly talk to you until it is.  But it will always be Jesus we point you to.

One commentator wrote, “From Jeremiah’s confessions we learn that God does not call only those who have purged themselves from all weaknesses and who have achieved a high degree of perfection.  He does not extend his call only to the brave, to those who never have doubts or problems.  But he entrusts his treasures to earthen vessels, frail creatures of dust.”

You have a friend closer than any brother in Jesus who is ready to hear you pour out your heart.

Maybe you’ve quenched the fire, resisted His promptings.  Repent of it and rededicate yourself to picking up the Cross.

If you are in the throes of some discouragement, let Him be your Wonderful Counselor.  Keep pouring out your heart until He reveals something of Himself to you that puts everything into perspective.  It may be a word or Scripture or a vision; or it may be the silent ministry of His presence made known to your heart.  It may take time; be patient knowing that He who began a good work in you will perform it until you see Him face-to-face.

Pour out your heart to Him.  You have permission to speak freely. Then get up on fire.

Jar-Jar Breaks (Jeremiah 19v1-13)

Ever ask the question, “Why, Russell Stover?  Why?”

I’m pretty sure it’s Russell Stover who markets boxes of chocolates that don’t label the individual pieces.  You never know what you’re biting into.  The filling could be something you really like – caramel, for example.  Seems I always chose the one with coconut.  You may like chocolate-covered coconut but it’s disgusting to me.  Same with nouget; it even sounds disgusting!

When I was a kid those boxes of candy would eventually be filled with chocolates that had one small bite taken out of them as myself or one of my brothers tried to discover the filling, then put it back if we didn’t like what we found.  Yucch!
“Filling” is going to be our theme this morning as we work through chapter nineteen of Jeremiah.  The prophet was told to take a water jar, made on the potter’s wheel, to Tophet in the Valley of Hinnom and break it as a symbol of the coming destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple at the hands of the Babylonians.  Before Jeremiah breaks the jar it was full and he pours out its contents.

It gives us opportunity to think about ourselves, as God’s vessels or jars, and what it is we are filled with.

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 You Must Choose Your Filling, and #2 God Will Choose Your Spilling.

#1    You Are God’s Precious Jar:
    You Must Choose Your Filling
    (v1-2)

Another day, another drama.

Earlier in his prophetic career Jeremiah had used a linen belt to illustrate God’s relationship with the nation of Judah.  Then he was sent down to the potter’s house to compare God’s work with nations to that of a potter working with clay.

He is once again sent to act-out a dramatic illustration.

Jeremiah 19:1 Thus says the Lord: “Go and get a potter’s earthen flask, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests.
Jeremiah 19:2 And go out to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the Potsherd Gate; and proclaim there the words that I will tell you,
Jeremiah was told by the Lord to purchase what the NKJV calls a “flask.“  It’s a potter’s earthenware jar.  Scholars say it was of a particular style made to hold several ounces of water with a narrow neck for pouring out.

It strikes me that God didn’t give Jeremiah the message until he went to the location with the jar.  One of the things we’ve been learning from Jeremiah is that sometimes you need to go somewhere, to be somewhere, in order for God to give you a message.  He can speak to you anywhere and at anytime.  But He delights to invite you places and then reveal Himself to you there in new and exciting ways.

I think our gatherings together as the church are like that.  You don’t have to be at a meeting of the church in order for God to speak to you.  He has, however, encouraged us to not forsake meeting together but rather do so all the more as we see we are living in the last days.  He wants to speak to His church and He does it in various ways as we gather.

Something else to encourage us in Jeremiah’s assignment is that the Lord really can give us things to say spontaneously.  Don’t get me wrong; I think we need to be prepared, especially when we are called upon to preach or teach God’s Word.  No matter our preparation we need to be open to His immediate leading.  We need to believe by faith God will give us the words to say.

We’re going to see, in verse seven, a play on words that tells us the jar was filled with liquid (we assume water, but that’s not important).  Before he breaks the jar he will pour-out its contents.

While these verses are about the specific judgment that was coming upon Judah, the imagery of a jar filled with water is applicable to believers at all times.  We don’t want to press it too far but we can make application to ourselves from the general imagery.

If we are jars of clay, and like this narrow-necked water jar, we are meant to be filled.

The question to ask, then, is this: “What am I filled with?”

There’s an insightful verse in the New Testament that tells me what I am supposed to be filled with.  At the very end of Ephesians 3:19 it says, “… that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Right away my mind goes to thinking about what I must do to “be filled with all the fullness of God.”  That’s not a bad thing to think.  A little later in the Book of Ephesians you read “be filled with the Spirit” (5:18).  It literally means, “go on being filled with the Spirit,” and it definitely indicates a choice on our part.  We are to choose those things that are consistent with obedience to God that will contribute to being spiritual and not carnal.

For example.  There is a parallel passage in the Book of Colossians that indicates if I want to go on being filled with the Spirit I need to fill-up on God’s Word.

The filling of God’s Spirit is negatively compared to being drunk on alcohol.  We’re told not to be drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but rather to be filled with the Holy Spirit.  We are to actively, daily, moment-by-moment choose thoughts and activities that contribute to being Spirit-filled and to be influenced by the indwelling Holy Spirit.  We are not to quench the Spirit or resist Him or grieve Him but rather to yield to Him.

There’s something else I want to say about our being filled.  It’s right there ahead of the words “… that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”  The verse reads like this:

Ephesians 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The Amplified Bible translates the first part of that verse as “[That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience].”

I think most importantly, being filled with all the fullness of God comes from a genuine realization of His love for you.  You are deeply loved by God Who, while you were yet a sinner, came as God in human flesh to give His life for you.

You can do all the devotions you want; you can pray all the time; you can attend every meeting of the church.  But unless you are certain of the passionate, extravagant love God has for you, your own efforts cannot guarantee you will be filled with all His fullness.  You must also have an experiential knowledge of His love.

What’s the first thing we question when some trouble comes our way?  We question the love of God.  It’s certainly the first thing nonbelievers question after every tragedy.

It is precisely at the point of affliction or suffering or trial that we immediately question God’s love.  It’s hard to understand how He loves us when something terrible has happened to us or around us.

But it is then that we can, in fact, “really come to know practically through experience for ourselves” the love of Christ.  It is then He can become our refuge and strength, our shield and exceeding great reward.  It is then that we learn He will never leave us or forsake us.  It is then His presence is made known in power.

O how He loves you and me!  All I can say is, let His love fill you that you may be filled with His fullness as His jar.  Do everything your are supposed to do as a child of God remembering never to leave your first love.

#2    You Are God’s Precious Jar:
    He Will Choose Your Spilling
    (v3-13)

Back to the sixth century!  Jeremiah had a drama to act out.

Jeremiah 19:3 and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will bring such a catastrophe on this place, that whoever hears of it, his ears will tingle.
Jeremiah 19:4 “Because they have forsaken Me and made this an alien place, because they have burned incense in it to other gods whom neither they, their fathers, nor the kings of Judah have known, and have filled this place with the blood of the innocents
Jeremiah 19:5 (they have also built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or speak, nor did it come into My mind),

Jeremiah was despised by these people but there was still an authority about him that compelled them to follow him to Tophet.

Among the many reasons God was going to judge them was the fact they had adopted the practice of child sacrifice.  It was in that very place that children were sacrificed.

Jeremiah 19:6 therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that this place shall no more be called Tophet or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.

It seems that Tophet was a particular site in that valley.  Some of the language guys suggest the meaning of Tophet is drum and that the site was called that because drums would be beaten loudly as part of the ritual sacrifice of children – presumably to help drown out their screams.

When King Josiah discovered God’s law and forced reforms upon the people he turned Tophet and the Valley of Hinnom into a garbage dump.  We recognize this place in the New Testament by its Greek name, Gehenna.  Since it was a garbage dump with fires constantly burning it became a symbol of the eternal fires of Hell.

Jeremiah was at the Potsherd Gate, so-called because the potters would use it to enter Hinnom to dump their shards of clay from broken vessels – their trash, as it were.

Jeremiah tells the people it will be renamed “the Valley of Slaughter” because multitudes would be slaughtered there when the Babylonian armies invaded.

Jeremiah 19:7 And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place, and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hands of those who seek their lives; their corpses I will give as meat for the birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth.

There is a pivotal play on words we miss in the English translation.  The Hebrew word translated flask or jar is baqbua.  The word in verse seven translated “make void” is baqaq.  It literally means to empty or to pour out.  The idea being conveyed by this careful use of words is that, at this point in his message, Jeremiah poured-out the contents of the jar onto the ground to symbolize Judah being poured-out.

He would break the jar, but only after this symbolic pouring-out.

Notice what it was he poured-out.  He poured-out “the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem.”  That’s an unusual filling, is it not?  He revealed, as it were, the true contents of the jar of Judah as a people.  While they ought to have been filled with the things of God, they were filled with their own counsel, their own wisdom, the designs, desires and devices of their own wicked hearts.

Jeremiah spilled them out.  Hold onto that thought for a little later.

Jeremiah 19:8 I will make this city desolate and a hissing; everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its plagues.
Jeremiah 19:9 And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the desperation with which their enemies and those who seek their lives shall drive them to despair.” ‘

Siege warfare was horrific.  The surrounding enemy armies cut-off all supplies.  After months or years stores of supplies within the city would run out.  Once your supplies were gone you were desperate.  People often resorted to cannibalism – which meant eating the flesh of the deceased.

Remember God was still warning them.  It was too late for the nation to be spared.  Individual Jews, however, could yet repent and return to the Lord.

Jeremiah 19:10 “Then you shall break the flask in the sight of the men who go with you,

This was the final movement of this dramatic illustration.  Timing was everything as Jeremiah now brought home the conclusion.
Jeremiah 19:11 and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Even so I will break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, which cannot be made whole again; and they shall bury them in Tophet till there is no place to bury.
Jeremiah 19:12 Thus I will do to this place,” says the Lord, “and to its inhabitants, and make this city like Tophet.
Jeremiah 19:13 And the houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be defiled like the place of Tophet, because of all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to all the host of heaven, and poured out drink offerings to other gods.” ‘ ”

The people would not turn from their idolatry, including child sacrifice at Tophet.  So God would allow them to be killed at Tophet.  Justice would prevail.

I’d rather not get the justice I deserve!  Thank God for His mercy!

Verses fourteen and fifteen introduce a different illustration at a different location.  Jeremiah will return to the Temple to tell the people they are stiff necked, which is a comparison with disobedient oxen.  We’ll deal with all that along with chapter twenty where his message earns him his first physical persecution.

God was going to break Judah as a nation the way Jeremiah broke the jar.  They were useless as His vessel, holding only their own heart’s evil counsels and desires instead of His love and grace.  In Babylon they would repent and return to the Lord.

I asked you to hold a thought from verse seven.  It was the fact they were poured-out.  We could say spilled, but remembering it was done on purpose, at God’s command.

Does God ever spill you?  All the time!  The apostle Paul said in Second Timothy “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure.”

Of course he was talking about his impending beheading at the hands of Caesar Nero.  But Paul had already poured out his life several times: he’d been beaten, stoned, left for dead, shipwrecked, and imprisoned.  He’d been poured-out emotionally as well.  In verse sixteen of this same chapter he said, “At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me.”

His entire ministry was like a drink offering (being poured-out) to the Lord.  In Philippians 2:17 Paul said, “If I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.”

Jeremiah was not pouring out a drink offering.  I don’t want to be guilty of misusing his illustration.  But in a broad sense, God pours in so that we can be poured out.

Titus 3:6 describes God as pouring out His Spirit upon us.  In Romans 5:5 we are told that God “has poured out His love into our hearts.”  So there is a pouring in by God and a pouring out as we walk with Him.

Two questions come to mind.  First, Are you willing to be poured-out for God?  We’re definitely talking sacrifice.  Since you are a vessel made by God, you were made to contain something in order to pour it out ministering to others.  There is to be an outflow.

I came across the following quote.  It puts what I’m saying about outflow into a modern illustration we can relate to.

There is a saying in sports that says leave it all on the field or court, meaning give the game all of yourself or every bit of your strength and effort.  This is how we must treat the Lords work. Don t leave this life full of strength, substance and unused potential; rather leave it on the [spiritual] battlefield.  Pour your life out now.

Second, If God were to spill you, what would pour out from you?  We saw that the people of Judah were filled with their own ungodly wisdom, the things of the world.  The pouring out revealed what they were filling-up on and it was junk.

In the documentary, Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock ate only McDonalds for a month – breakfast, lunch and dinner.  He gained nearly 25lbs., experienced a 13% body mass increase, his cholesterol level ballooned to 230, and he experienced mood swings, sexual dysfunction, and fat accumulation in his liver.  It took Spurlock fourteen months to lose the weight gained from his experiment.

My favorite parts are when he would barf trying to eat the supersize meals.

What we take in matters even more spiritually.  I’m not just talking about things like TV and movies and other entertainments.  I’m talking more about the subtle ways the world and its system seek to influence our thinking, to alter our worldview to be more secular and less Christ centered.

Christians – at least those who profess to know the risen Lord – have all manner of crazy ideas about what is godly and what is not.  In many cases they’ve lost the fear of God and you see it because they sin openly then either act like it’s not really sin or that God will forgive them anyway, so what’s the big deal?

Eventually our circumstances, whether blessings or buffetings, cause us to be spilled and, when we are, everyone sees what it is we’ve been filling-up on.

Look back at the spills in your life.  Maybe you’re in one right now.  What is being poured-out?  Is it carnal, fleshly, worldly?

Or is it godliness with contentment, trusting the Lord to keep on pouring-out His love into your heart?

You Can’t Handle The Trial (Jeremiah 18v18-23)

The Rev. Wiley Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, told Fox News Radio earlier this month that he was practicing “imprecatory prayer” that would bring about President Obama’s death.

“So you’re praying for his death?” asked the show’s host, Alan Colmes.

“Yes.”

“So you’re praying for the death of the president of the United States?”

“Yes.”

A district court judge in Dallas ruled it legal for people to pray curses on others as long as there is no threat or harm caused to the cursed person.

Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, sued former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt who had invoked curses upon him.  Weinstein claimed the imprecatory prayers caused various threats and damages to his family and property.

Should Christians ever invoke curses by praying imprecatory prayers for their enemies?

To ‘imprecate’ means to invoke evil upon or curse one’s enemies.  It is a real type of prayer as there are numerous examples of it in the Bible.  King David, in the psalms, often used phrases like, “may their path be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them” (Psalm 35:6) and “O God, break the teeth in their mouths; tear out the fangs of the young lions, O LORD!” (Psalm 58:6).

More to the point, Jeremiah prays an imprecatory prayer in our text.  In verses twenty-one through twenty-three he asks God to allow terrible things to happen the people of Judah, including the women and children.

We’re going to talk about if and when you can imprecate.  Along the way we are going to see something else, something that I think will be of far greater personal spiritual impact.

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 Imprecate Only If You Are In The Most Severe Difficulty, and #2 Imprecate Only When You Are In The Most Spiritual Disposition.

#1      Imprecate Only If
    You Are In The Most Severe Difficulty
    (v18-20)

Jeremiah came to the realization that there was an organized plot against him.

Jeremiah 18:18  Then they said, “Come and let us devise plans against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come and let us attack him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.”

There must have been a secret meeting in which a strategy was devised to discredit Jeremiah.  They would actively “attack him with the tongue,” with slander; and they would go out of their way so as to not “heed… any of his words.”

The “law… the wise… and the word from the prophet” might correspond to the three main divisions of the Old Testament – the Law, the Wisdom Literature, and the Prophets.  They were thus claiming to be people of God’s Word while simultaneously devising evil plans against one of God’s servants.

The the priests, the scribes, and the prophets had their message; Jeremiah had his.  They couldn’t both be right!  You could judge who was right by the content of the message and by the character of the messengers.

If what you or someone else is doing is contrary to God’s Word, then it’s wrong.  No matter how much a person claims to love God, if they ignore His Word they either have never known Him or they have left their first love.

A double-barreled campaign of slander and indifference was a powerful attack upon a prophet.  I’ve discovered over the years that not only are there plots against you, evil plots by evil forces, but that they seem to know right where it hurts the most.  Where it will get your eyes off of the Lord, crippling you spiritually.

The plans against Jeremiah were even more sinister than slander.

Jeremiah 18:19  Give heed to me, O Lord,
And listen to the voice of those who contend with me!
Jeremiah 18:20  Shall evil be repaid for good?
For they have dug a pit for my life.
Remember that I stood before You
To speak good for them,
To turn away Your wrath from them.

“They have dug a pit for my life” means the end game was to eliminate Jeremiah.  Imprisonment was one he could be eliminated way but murder couldn’t be ruled out.  In verse twenty-three Jeremiah says, “their counsel is to slay me.”

For his part Jeremiah had interceded for these wicked people, asking God to withhold His judgment against them.  With their plot against him revealed, Jeremiah went from intercessory prayer to imprecatory prayer.

When do we go from intercession to imprecating?  Let’s notice a few things.
First (and foremost) you can only imprecate when that is also God’s revealed will.  God had been telling Jeremiah all along He was definitely going to allow the Babylonian armies to destroy and burn Jerusalem and carry away its citizens as captives.  He had even told Jeremiah to quit interceding for them.  Imprecatory prayer was appropriate.

Second, Jeremiah was in this trouble because he was serving the Lord in a righteous cause.  For his part he was innocent of any wrongdoing.  So you can only honestly pray an imprecatory prayer if you are blameless in the situation.  Imprecatory prayer isn’t something you have as an ace-in-the-hole to win arguments and disputes.

Third, the trouble Jeremiah was in, the trial, was severe in that his very life was at stake.  Imprecatory prayer, it would seem, is reserved for the most severe trials in which your enemies literally seek your life.

If you find yourself innocent of all wrongdoing being mortally attacked by relentless enemies whom God has told you He is definitely going to deliver to destruction, then by all means quit interceding for them and start imprecatory prayers.

You might, therefore, want to think twice about praying against run-of-the-mill nonbelievers – even if they are the heads of anti-Christian organizations.  And you have no biblical support for praying that the president of the United States would die.

Before we move forward in the text I want us the think about the severity of Jeremiah’s trial.  Some commentators fault him for going imprecatory, saying it was a backslide into depression. Others point to imprecatory prayers elsewhere in the Bible and say he was perfectly justified in his behavior.

While that debate goes on, what we can say is that this trial overwhelmed him – so much that he saw as a real option that God would smite his enemies.  He was surrounded by sin and idolatry; his message was purposely being ignored and, in fact, the opposite of what he said was being done; he personally was being slandered; his life was in constant grave danger; if he survived he would suffer along with the rest of the Jews as a casualty or captive of an invading army.  I think it’s safe to say Jeremiah was heavily burdened.

Has anyone ever told you, or have you ever told anyone, that “God won’t give you more than you can handle?”  The biblical support given for that is usually First Corinthians 10:13, No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

That is indeed a glorious promise.  What it is promising is that when you are tempted to sin you need never yield to the temptation.  You will always find a “way of escape” that you may “bear” the temptation without  succumbing to it.

Isn’t that wonderful?  Even though you are up against the devil using the world to tempt your flesh, you need not fall into his traps but can escape without sinning.

What that doesn’t say, not really, is that “God won’t give you more than you can handle” in terms of your trials.  The truth is, your trials ARE more than YOU can handle.  If you could handle them they wouldn’t be trials.

Anyone who has ever genuinely suffered will tell you it was more than they could handle.  It is in that moment that the Christian can count on God to handle it for them – for His strength to be made perfect in their weakness.

If you don’t believe me, you will believe the apostle Paul who said, For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us (Second Corinthians 1:8-10).

Its spiritually dangerous to think “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”  It’s spiritually glorious to realize there’s nothing He can’t handle.

#2    Imprecate Only When
    You Are In The Most Spiritual Disposition
    (v21-23)

Let’s get back to Jeremiah’s imprecatory prayer.  Here it is.

Jeremiah 18:21  Therefore deliver up their children to the famine,
And pour out their blood
By the force of the sword;
Let their wives become widows
And bereaved of their children.
Let their men be put to death,
Their young men be slain
By the sword in battle.
Jeremiah 18:22  Let a cry be heard from their houses,
When You bring a troop suddenly upon them;
For they have dug a pit to take me,
And hidden snares for my feet.
Jeremiah 18:23  Yet, Lord, You know all their counsel
Which is against me, to slay me.
Provide no atonement for their iniquity,
Nor blot out their sin from Your sight;
But let them be overthrown before You.
Deal thus with them
In the time of Your anger.

After you get over the initial shock that tender Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, can utter such a strong imprecation you notice a few things.

You notice that he was talking about the eventual judgment God had prophesied – the Babylon siege and captivity.  He wasn’t asking God to nuke his enemies right now but only to not relent of the judgment He had formed for them.

Even though Jeremiah was in immediate personal danger he was looking past it to God’s ultimate judgment.  Imprecatory prayer is patient, waiting for the Lord to act according to His plans and purposes.
Or we might say it requires we learn to be patient as we wait for God to act.

Along those lines, when we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus,” it’s sort of an imprecatory prayer because when the Lord comes again to resurrect and rapture the church it will be followed by the seven year Great Tribulation – which is most definitely a time in which the enemies of God will be subject to many terrible judgments from Heaven.

Another thing to notice is that God is longsuffering.  There was no doubt the people of Judah deserved the things Jeremiah outlined that were coming, and that they deserved them right now.  But his ministry would last a total of forty years.  Lots of terrible things would happen to Jeremiah and to others during those years.
Still God’s longsuffering waited for any who might turn to Him because, after all, an eternity suffering in Hell is a whole lot worse than any amount of earthly suffering.

God remains longsuffering today, not willing that any should perish but that they would instead receive eternal life.

Let’s put that into perspective.  Something awful is happening right now, somewhere.  Should God stop it?  One day He will… But when He steps in to permanently stop the evil men do to each other by their own free choice it will be too late to repent and receive eternal life.  So His longsuffering waits and He gets blamed for every awful thing men do of their own free will.

Jeremiah’s disposition was extremely spiritual.  He was walking in sync with the Lord and His will.  He wasn’t calling for revenge.  He wasn’t praying out of anger.

We tend to be more like James and John who, before Jesus died and rose from the dead, were nicknamed “the sons of thunder.”  Once when the people of Samaria rejected Jesus they asked Him if they could call down fire from Heaven to consume them – the way Elijah did in his contest with the false prophets of Baal.

Jesus said “No” and told them they were not of that spirit.  Neither are we.  We are to pray for our enemies and that mostly means intercessory prayer, in the spirit of our Lord, Who is really not willing any should perish.

We will rarely, if ever, be in a situation like Jeremiah’s that calls for imprecatory prayer.  Keep interceding!

We will find ourselves feeling overwhelmed in our trials.  You can’t handle them but they are never more than God can handle.  Cast your care upon Him because He cares for you.

Holy Potter And The Deathly Hardening (Jeremiah 18v1-17)

I’m an absolute loser when it comes to home repairs.  Case in point: Several summers ago I drained our swimming pool in order to fix an ugly crack on the bottom.  It’s relatively easy – that is, unless you choose the quick-drying patch plaster as opposed to the normal one.

Man, that stuff started to harden the minute I took the top off of the container!  Suffice it to say that my patch looks worse than the original crack.

We are witnesses to a materials problem in our text.  Jeremiah watches while a potter is molding and shaping clay on his wheel.  The clay is found to be “marred” and, as a result, the potter cannot mold and shape it as he originally wanted.

God told Jeremiah that Israel in particular and all nations in general are like clay and that He, the sovereign God, is the Potter.  He has a plan, He has a purpose, He has a program for the nation of Israel.  But they can turn from Him causing Him to change His immediate dealings with them.

The figure of the potter and the clay has its first application to nations but it is also used of individuals.

In Second Corinthians 4:7 believers in Jesus Christ are called “earthen vessels,” or the more poetic “jars of clay.”
We are elsewhere described as capable of being either being vessels of honor or vessels of dishonor.

The implication is that God, the Master Potter and Craftsman, is working on us with a plan, a purpose, a program in mind, but that we can turn from Him.  When we turn from Him it causes Him to change His immediate dealings with us.

While we contemplate the work of the Potter we have a wonderful word of encouragement to keep in mind.  It’s in verse four, “so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make.”  God continues to work on you despite your rebellion.

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 Turn To God And He Will Make You Again, and #2 Turn From God And He Must Break You In The End.

#1    Turn To God
And He Will Make You Again
(v1-10)

When you get saved, God begins a work in you that He promises to see through to its completion.  His work is to conform you into the image of Jesus Christ – to make you like Jesus!  He says that, after you are saved, it is something He has “predestined” you to become (Romans 8:29).  In First John 3:2 we are likewise promised, “it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

It is God’s plan, purpose, and program for us to become like His Son.  Along the way we are not always as cooperative as we could be.  Some of us are downright uncooperative, going our own ways and against God’s.  We are “marred clay” in His hands.

It might be good to ask ourselves, as we work through these verses, not if we are being uncooperative with the Master Potter but where we are not cooperating and therefore need to turn back to Him.

Jeremiah 18:1  The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying:
Jeremiah 18:2  “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause you to hear My words.”

The potter’s equipment consisted of two stone discs placed horizontally and joined by a vertical shaft.  The lower disc would be spun using the feet; the other disc, at waist level, had on it the clay for the potter’s hands to shape.

Jeremiah would have been familiar with the method of making pottery.  I’m sure he knew the potter.  Still God told him to go to the potter’s house.  That is where He would speak to Jeremiah.

You can meet with God anywhere and at anytime.  But if He tells you to “go” somewhere, then do it – because that is where He has determined to speak to you in ways that further His work in you.

Since we are all here we can use going to church as our example.  Do you have to go to church to hear from the Lord?  No; but in His Word He’s told you to assemble with other saints on as regular a basis as you are able.  So you’d better go if you want to hear from Him.

Jeremiah 18:3  Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something at the wheel.
Jeremiah 18:4  And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make.

The clay was “marred” in the potter’s hands.  You are not told the precise problem only that the clay presented a difficulty that made it unfit for the particular vessel the potter had in mind.

I wonder how long Jeremiah stood there watching before God gave him the application?  We need to go where the Lord tells us to and sometimes we need to wait on the Lord there.

Jeremiah 18:5  Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying:
Jeremiah 18:6  “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?” says the LORD. “Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel!

These words are all too often taken out of their original context and offered as a prooftext that God has cast aside Israel as an unusable lump of clay and replaced her with the church.  They are also erroneously applied to individuals by saying that God casts aside whoever He wills to eternal damnation because, after all, He is the Potter and we are but useless clay anyway.

We must always read verse six in context with verses seven through ten.  We must only understand the illustration of the Potter and the clay by hearing God’s own commentary in these verses.

Jeremiah 18:7  The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it,
Jeremiah 18:8  if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it.
Jeremiah 18:9  And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it,
Jeremiah 18:10  if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it.

Wow, that’s just the opposite of what some people say this means!  God’s sovereignty doesn’t mean He has no regard for His love of mankind and our free will to choose.  With regard to nations He has made His response contingent upon our choices.

God had and has a plan for the nation of Israel.  In a nutshell it was for them to bring the Savior into the world and to ultimately establish the kingdom of God on the earth prior to the consummation of this current creation and the creation of new heavens and a new earth.  Along the way the Jews were to reveal the glory of God to the surrounding Gentile nations so that they, too, would be saved.

Israel turned away from God time after time.  These sixth century Jews to whom Jeremiah was sent to minister were gross idolators who had turned from God to walk in their own ways.

Now this is instructive in light of all our intellectual questions about God’s sovereignty and man’s free will.  These verses teach that God most definitely grants free will.  The Jews, and any other nation, could choose freely to either “turn from” evil or to do evil and not “obey [God’s] voice.”

At the same time we can look back over the course of history and see that God remained sovereign over His specific plan, purpose and program.  Case at hand: The nation of Judah continued to turn from Him so instead of continuing to bless them God brought the Babylonian captivity upon them.  It would discipline them to repentance and, at least for a time, they would turn back to Him.  In returning to Him the Jews got back on the prophetic track God had outlined – that of bringing the Savior into the world.

God therefore describes Himself as granting us free will – real, honest-to-goodness free will – while acting providentially to remain in ultimate control of His universe.

Then candidate Obama made famous the statement, “that’s above my pay grade.”  I am not claiming to understand or to have resolved the deep issues of the universe.

Let me put this in very down-to-earth terms.  The Lord is coming to resurrect and rapture His church.  It absolutely will be followed by the seven-year Great Tribulation which will absolutely be followed by the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to establish the kingdom of God on the earth.  There will be a final judgment of nonbelievers, a literal Hell and a glorious Heaven.

But along the way I can freely choose to turn to God or from God.  I can cooperate with His work to make me more like Jesus or I can shipwreck my life.  It’s my free choice.

For His part, God will react according to His nature in order to warn me and to win my heart.

Because we are in these bodies of flesh in a world system in which Satan is the ruler, all of us turn from God.  It can be in very slight, small ways; or it can be a complete meltdown into backsliding.  When that is true of you, God can make you again.

Maybe you’re going through a time when you are being affected by someone else making shipwreck of their life. Walk with the Lord and he will make you again.

At the potter’s house Jeremiah learned that the potter did not abandon the clay.  He worked with it, on it, to create something from it – despite it’s marred condition.

God only works with marred clay.  He formed Adam from the earth and ever since Adam sinned, every lump of clay that has ever been on His wheel has been marred by inherited sin.

Since He is longsuffering and patient, gracious and full of tender mercies, God continues to work with you.  He “makes you again.”  He takes what you or others around you have ruined, corrupted, destroyed, or wasted and remakes you through it.

What do you have to do for God to make you again?  You have only to be like clay that easily yields itself to the Potter’s masterful touch.

#2     Turn From God
And He Must Break You In The End
(v11-17)

The remaining text records the insane reaction of the Jews to God’s warnings.

Jeremiah 18:11  “Now therefore, speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.” ‘ ”

The Word of God was simple and straightforward.  It didn’t mince words.  It may have sounded harsh, but only if you weren’t really listening because it was an invitation to return to God.

Jeremiah 18:12  And they said, “That is hopeless! So we will walk according to our own plans, and we will every one obey the dictates of his evil heart.”
They said, not God, that there was no hope that they would turn to God.  If repenting of their sin and obeying God was the only way to avoid judgment, that wasn’t gonna happen.  They wanted to walk according to their plans and obey the dictates of their evil hearts.  Let judgement come!

What grips me is that even though it seemed hopeless, and for most of these particular Jews it remained that way, God believed His love and longsuffering could yet reach them.

Next we get a look at the stupidity of sin.

Jeremiah 18:13  Therefore thus says the LORD: “Ask now among the Gentiles, Who has heard such things? The virgin of Israel has done a very horrible thing.
Jeremiah 18:14  Will a man leave the snow water of Lebanon, Which comes from the rock of the field? Will the cold flowing waters be forsaken for strange waters?
Jeremiah 18:15  “Because My people have forgotten Me, They have burned incense to worthless idols. And they have caused themselves to stumble in their ways, From the ancient paths, To walk in pathways and not on a highway,

God compared His chosen nation to a “virgin” betrothed to Him who decided instead to become the promiscuous partner of dead, worthless idols.
Then He compared them to a thirsty man abandoning the most refreshing, pure spring water to search for a drink from a puddle alongside the road.

We need to put a high priority on believing what God says in His Word because, believe me, we can talk ourselves into believing that promiscuity and the puddle are better for us.  In life we always find that short term pleasures lead to long term sorrows.

Jeremiah 18:16  To make their land desolate and a perpetual hissing; Everyone who passes by it will be astonished And shake his head.

Every Gentile watching the nation of Judah had eternity in his or her heart.  They had a knowledge there was a God from creation, and they had conscience to tell them there was something more.

They were like Rahab who, when the Jews first entered the promised land, was seeking the true God.

The Jews abandoned their mission to reveal God because they wanted to revel in sin instead.  Even nonbelievers were “astonished” at their stupidity.

Jeremiah 18:17  I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy; I will show them the back and not the face In the day of their calamity.”

God didn’t have to do this; He didn’t want to, either.  But since they would not turn to Him, He must relent of the good He wished to do for them and instead bring judgment upon them.

One way or the other, however, He would accomplish His plan, purpose and program to bring the Savior.

Turn from God and He will break you in the end.  Having said that, I can’t know what it means in any particular, specific case.  If a person is backslidden, I don’t know if God will break them tomorrow or ten years from now.  In the New Testament God sometimes allowed sickness and even death to come upon believers for their sin.  But He also sometimes seemed to do very little.

I only know that God wants to mold and shape us into something far more beautiful than any of our own plans and the dictates of our evil hearts and that it’s my choice to cooperate or not.  He can make all things work together for my good – even things that are certainly not good in and of themselves.  As a Master Potter He can work with the marred clay others would discard.

The plaster patch in my pool is adequate but ugly.  When God makes you again, He does so as a Master Potter.  It’s more than adequate and it’s anything but ugly!  But it can take time.  Be patient and believe that He makes all things beautiful in His time.

No Sabbath For You! (Jeremiah 17v19-27)

The State of California wants you to take a rest.

State labor laws require that employers set aside rest periods during your work day.  Here in California if you are a non-exempt worker you are entitled to 10-minute breaks for every 4 hours you work.  If an employer does not provide all of the rest periods required in a workday, the employee is entitled to one additional hour of pay for that workday. Employees can sue for violations of meal and rest break provisions going back a period of three years.

God is a big fan of rest breaks:

After six days creating the world He rested on the seventh day.
Centuries later His chosen nation, Israel, was commanded to observe rest breaks called Sabbaths.  There was a weekly Sabbath, a Sabbath year every seventh year, and a year of jubilee every fiftieth year.

The Jews weren’t observing the Sabbath year and the year of jubilee.  As for the weekly Sabbath, they went to the Temple for worship but they violated God’s command to rest by working on the Sabbath.
Jeremiah was sent to speak out against God’s people for their failure to keep the Sabbaths.  Good for him!

Sooner or later someone is going to try to bust your chops about your failure to ‘keep‘ the Sabbath.  Shame on them!

As I hope to show you, keeping the Sabbath in the traditional sense they mean, of doing no physical work on whichever day they deem the Sabbath, is the exact opposite of what God intends.  The people who really violate the Sabbath are those who are trying to ‘keep’ it.

We’ll get to that conclusion by asking two questions as we work through the text: #1 Why Would You Want To Be Burdened On The Sabbath?, and #2 Why Would You Want To Be Burdened By The Sabbath?

#1    Why Would You Want
    To Be Burdened On The Sabbath?
    (v19-26)

Setting your personal work ethic aside for a moment, if your boss wanted to give you time off, why wouldn’t you take it?

God told His people to rest every seventh day, every seventh year, and every fiftieth year.  Sounds good to me!

The problem with resting every seventh year was that you were talking to farmers whose lives and livelihood depended upon the annual harvest. agricultural economy.  The Sabbath year meant they were not to sow any seed but instead let the ground lie fallow.  All debts were to be cancelled as well.

Following seven cycles of Sabbath years every fiftieth year was to be a year of jubilee when, in addition to the requirements of the Sabbath year, all ancestral lands were to be restored and all slaves were to be set free.

You know what that meant?  It meant they had to actively trust in God and not in themselves!  They had to trust, for example, that God would provide them the extra harvest during the sixth year so that they would have enough food for the seventh year.  They had to trust that even though they remitted debts, returned  lands, and released slaves, that they would nevertheless prosper.

Think of it.  You harvest in the sixth year, then no harvest in the seventh.  You wouldn’t have a harvest again until the eighth year – two seasons after your last harvest.  That’s a long, long time for a farmer to wait.

The Sabbath’s God required weren’t about the need for rest; not really.   They were a test of faith in which the Jews must trust in God to sustain them rather than in themselves.

Once they quit observing the bigger Sabbaths, seemingly without consequences from God, it became easier to violate the weekly Sabbath.  Enter Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 17:19  Thus the LORD said to me: “Go and stand in the gate of the children of the people, by which the kings of Judah come in and by which they go out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem;
Jeremiah 17:20  and say to them, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, you kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, who enter by these gates.

Jeremiah preached this message several times at different gates so he’d reach the greatest number of people.  Perhaps Jeremiah noticed folks were able to avoid him by using different gates so he stationed himself randomly.

It speaks to me about different approaches to get out the Gospel rather than getting stuck in our old habits.  Where are the “gates” we should be standing outside?  It’s a good question to constantly ask ourselves.

Jeremiah 17:21  Thus says the LORD: “Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem;
Jeremiah 17:22  nor carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath day, nor do any work, but hallow the Sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers.

Some were bringing stuff “in by the gates of Jerusalem” on the Sabbath while others were bringing stuff “out of [their] houses on the Sabbath Day.”
Town dwellers were bringing their merchandise to the Temple to sell to farmers and farmers were bringing their produce to the Temple to sell to town dwellers.  In other words, the Sabbath had become the Monday Sale with the Thursday Farmer’s Market thrown in!  Worship While You Work might have been their theme song.

Jeremiah 17:23  But they did not obey nor incline their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear nor receive instruction.

To paraphrase Captain Barbosa, they were “disinclined to acquiesce to God’s request” regarding the keeping of the Sabbath.

Jeremiah 17:24  “And it shall be, if you heed Me carefully,” says the LORD, “to bring no burden through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but hallow the Sabbath day, to do no work in it,
Jeremiah 17:25  then shall enter the gates of this city kings and princes sitting on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes, accompanied by the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and this city shall remain forever.
Jeremiah 17:26  And they shall come from the cities of Judah and from the places around Jerusalem, from the land of Benjamin and from the lowland, from the mountains and from the South, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, grain offerings and incense, bringing sacrifices of praise to the house of the LORD.

God promised to prosper Jerusalem physically and spiritually if they would only quit working on the Sabbath.  People from all over would flock to them having seen the example of a people who, though seemingly dependent upon the land and its annual harvest, nevertheless trusted more in God Who had given them the land.

The Gentiles would see that you could trust in God for physical rest and it would convey the understanding that He provided spiritual rest for their souls.  The Sabbath was evangelistic in that it was a symbol of salvation.

All the Jews had to do was nothing, i.e., “do no work” on the Sabbath.

Ah, but they did work on the Sabbath.  And they did plant in the Sabbath year.  And they ignored the requirements of the year of jubilee.  In all of these things they showed that trusted in themselves and not in God.

So, you see, the Sabbath wasn’t just a day set aside to rest-up physically.  It wasn’t even just a day set aside for worship.  No, it was a visible exercise of faith in God.
The Jews wanted to be burdened on the Sabbath because they didn’t believe, didn’t have faith, that God would take care of them.

Our problem, as New Testament nonJewish believers, is a little different.  The question we need to ask is,

#2    Why Would You Want
    To Be Burdened By The Sabbath?
    (v27)

The Jews in Jeremiah’s day were most definitely required to keep the Sabbath and, because they hadn’t, judgment would fall upon them.

Jeremiah 17:27  “But if you will not heed Me to hallow the Sabbath day, such as not carrying a burden when entering the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle a fire in its gates, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched.” ‘ ”

The Babylonians would burn and destroy Jerusalem and take its citizens captive.  The captivity would last exactly seventy years.  Why seventy?  It got its duration from failed Sabbaths.  Between the Exodus and the Babylonian captivity the Sabbath year had been disregarded a total of seventy times by the Jews in Judah.  Their captivity was measured by their failure to keep those Sabbaths.

We are under no obligation to ‘keep’ the Sabbath – not weekly, not every seven years, not every fiftieth year, not ever.

There are a lot of biblical arguments to support the fact we are not required to keep the Sabbath but one verse is really sufficient.

Colossians 2:16  So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths,

The apostle Paul wrote that to address the very issue of certain false teachers trying to convince believers they must keep certain rules and regulations, like Sabbaths.  No; no they don’t.  No you don’t!

“But didn’t God rest on the seventh day of creation, thereby establishing the Sabbath as a day of rest for everyone throughout history?”

God did rest on the seventh day of creation but He did not say anywhere that seventh day was the Sabbath and He did not command anyone to ‘keep’ it until Moses!

You do not see Adam, Enoch, Noah, nor Abraham (the first Jew) keeping the Sabbath.  You only assume that they did.

Take Adam for example.  God does require a number of things from he and Eve, e.g., “be fruitful and multiply,” “keep the Garden,” and “don’t eat from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”  He said nothing to them about Saturday being a day of rest.  In fact, while telling them about keeping the Garden, it would have been the perfect time to say, “but not on Saturday.”

Even after the fall, Sabbath keeping is never mentioned to our first parents.  Nor is it mentioned to any of the other godly men and women who preceded the giving of the Law to the nation of Israel.

When Moses came along God gave him the Law for Israel and in it He specified that the Sabbath was especially a requirement for His chosen people Israel.

Exodus 31:16  Therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.
Exodus 31:17  It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.’ ”

No Sabbath was required of believers until Moses and then it was to be between God and Israel only.  You cannot find any command to the Gentiles to keep the Sabbath in the pages of Scripture (both Old or New Testament) unless they converted and became part of the nation Israel.  And when you do see Gentiles being told they must observe the Sabbath it is presented as a false teaching.

By the way – in the Sabbath command you are told to work for six days then take a day of rest.  That means if you work only a regular five-day week, you are breaking the Sabbath commandment!  By that I mean to say you cannot pick just the words you think are applicable; you either obey the whole commandment or you don’t.

Why would anyone want to be burdened by trying to keep the Sabbath?  It’s legalism, plain and simple.  It is doing something for God to show your righteousness.  We call that sort of thing ‘self-righteousness’ and it’s not a good thing.

Now I think we are ready to explain how it is the people who really violate the Sabbath are those who are trying to ‘keep’ it.

The Jewish Sabbath communicated that the people could rest and that God would do the work.  We’ve also seen how it was a symbol of salvation.

The Sabbath-rest was a type of our salvation in that we can rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ!

Because of Jesus, we can cease from all works of righteousness and rest in His finished work on the Cross.  If I try to ‘keep’ the Sabbath as a required work to show my righteousness before God, I void the symbolism of resting in His finished work on the Cross.  I’m trying to return to keeping the Law as a way of relating to God.

There is a lot of talk in the Book of Hebrews (especially chapter four) about entering into God’s rest.  The situation in that book is very appropriate to our point.  The Hebrew Christians were considering returning to Judaism, including a return to keeping the Sabbaths.  The writer of Hebrews exhorts them to not return to things like the Sabbath because Jesus IS their rest.  They’d be taking a giant step backwards, spiritually speaking.

Jesus didn’t die on the Cross so He and I could spend one day a week together.  Even if it’s a really quality day spent in worship.  No, He opened up Heaven 24/7 for me.  And for you.

I came across an illustration.  I wish I had thought of it but I didn’t.  I’ll read it to you.

Imagine that you have just met someone and fallen in love. You spend every moment with them because you love to be in their presence.  But your employer requires you to travel to another country to work for a year. You are separated from the one you love.  While you are away, you agree that, every week, on Saturday, you will have a video conference call to catch up with each other.  You look forward to it every week.  You plan everything around it.  When the time comes for your video conference you drop everything to spend that time communicating with your beloved.  Nothing is allowed to encroach on that time.

When the year is finished, you return home.  What do you do?  Do you continue to have the video conference call on Saturdays?  No!  You are back home.  You communicate and relate every moment of every day.  The weekly video conference calls are no longer needed.  You abandon them in favor of the reality of direct, ongoing relationship with the one you love.

Attempts to keep some version of a Sabbath are like the conference call.  It is a step backward just as much for any of us as it was for the Hebrew Christians in the first century.

Many Christians think that Sunday is somehow the new Sabbath day for Christians.  It isn’t.  The early church did, in fact, meet on Sunday.  They met on Sunday because it’s the day Jesus rose from the dead.  The very fact they met on Sunday distinguishes it from the Sabbath.  It marked their break from the old covenant to celebrate the new covenant in Jesus Christ.  Nowhere is there any teaching in the Bible transferring the Sabbath to Sunday.

In our Wednesday Men’s Fellowship Geno referred to a quote attributed to Matthew Henry.  I was floored by it; it’s just so spot-on.

Matthew Henry said, “It’s easier to build Temples than to be the Temple.”

There’s real insight in those words.  For example.  Today there is a ton of what might be called program Christianity.  A book is published that gives you some plan to follow that will lead you in to a closer walk with Jesus.  Just do this one thing, or these four things, or whatever it might be.

They are all essentially telling you to mechanically ‘keep’ something in order to be more spiritual.

We need to resist everything programmatic by which we only Skype with God on occasion.  Everyday is a Sabbath rest of relationship.

Do not put yourself under any burden.  The Lord wants you to enjoy Him unburdened.  Jesus said,

Matthew 11:28  Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:29  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
Matthew 11:30  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

I don’t know about you but I need real spiritual rest.  I won’t find it in the keeping of days like the Sabbath.  Or in any rules or regulations.

I find it in Him alone.

The Not So Comic-Con (Jeremiah 17v1-18)

Workplace pranks can be fun… Or they can become deadly.

Joshua Philip Martin, an EMT in Virginia, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for zapping a coworker with defibrillator paddles in what turned out to be a deadly prank.

Zapping a beating heart isn’t always deadly.  Doctors use a technique by which an abnormal heart rate is converted back to a normal rhythm. Synchronized electrical cardioversion uses a therapeutic dose of electric current to the beating heart at a specific moment in the cardiac cycle.

In other words, they zap you to get your heart back in sync.

This portion of the Book of Jeremiah is like spiritual cardioversion by which God is seeking to get your heart back in sync with His.

Maybe your heart is already in sync with God’s.  That certainly can be true – at least for a time.  But because we still struggle with the flesh, and will until we go to be with Jesus, from time-to-time (sometimes daily!) we need a good jolt to get back in sync.

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points:

First we will see that God Wants Your Heart To Be In Sync With His, and
Second we will ask ourselves, Do You Want Your Heart To Be In Sync With God’s?

#1    God Wants Your Heart
    To Be In Sync With His
    (v1-12)

These first few verses are pretty rough on us.  They are going to describe the human heart – your heart and my heart – as constantly departing from God and deceiving ourselves while we are doing it.

Maybe it will help to first see God’s intention in zapping us.  We see it in verse twelve where Jeremiah’s response to God’s spiritual cardioversion is to say, “A glorious high throne from the beginning Is the place of our sanctuary.”

The “sanctuary” He’s talking about isn’t a physical place; it’s a spiritual relationship wherein we enjoy peace, security, safety, and love.  It has been God’s intention from the beginning of creation to be our living sanctuary.  He therefore is constantly working to bring our hearts in sync with His.

Billy Graham is credited with coining the phrase, “the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart.”  There is something very wrong with us in that we are born into this world dead in our trespasses and sins.  Even after being born-again, the flesh remains and our hearts are prone to depart from the Lord.

Jeremiah 17:1  “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; With the point of a diamond it is engraved On the tablet of their heart, And on the horns of your altars,
Jeremiah 17:2  While their children remember Their altars and their wooden images By the green trees on the high hills.

Young King Josiah had destroyed all the pagan altars.  Afterwards King Jehoiakim had restored them!

God likened the situation to engraving.  You probably have some jewelry that is engraved.  Maybe it’s your wedding ring and it has the name of your beloved or your wedding date.  On the outside onlookers see only the ring; inside you carry the meaning of it closer to yourself.

God likened their idolatry to an engraving upon their hearts.  Outwardly they still worshipped Him in the Temple but the presence of these other altars and images showed what was really engraved upon their hearts.

Likewise the fact they were teaching their kids to be idolaters revealed where their hearts were focused.

Jeremiah 17:3  O My mountain in the field, I will give as plunder your wealth, all your treasures, And your high places of sin within all your borders.
Jeremiah 17:4  And you, even yourself, Shall let go of your heritage which I gave you; And I will cause you to serve your enemies In the land which you do not know; For you have kindled a fire in My anger which shall burn forever.”

In every way He could, by every image He could employ, God was warning Judah of the Babylonian invasion and subsequent captivity.  He would not spare Jerusalem or its Temple.  Their idolatry must be checked and broken.

Jeremiah 17:5  Thus says the LORD: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man And makes flesh his strength, Whose heart departs from the LORD.

Trusting in “man” means trusting in yourself rather than in God.  You do it whenever you make “flesh [your] strength.”  The “flesh,” in the Bible, refers to your natural bent, your innate tendency, towards pride and self-gratification.  Even after you are saved the flesh remains and you are in a life-long struggle against it until you go to be with the Lord.

That struggle against your flesh is here described as a departure from the Lord.  Think of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  One minute God was their sanctuary as they met and talked with Him in the cool of the day in their beautiful garden.  The next minute, because they chose pride and self-gratification, they departed from Him and, for His part, God had to banish them.  Instead of fellowshipping with God in a beautiful garden they had to sweat to til the ground and could only approach God through blood sacrifice.
The next three verses provide a stark contrast:

Jeremiah 17:6  For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, And shall not see when good comes, But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, In a salt land which is not inhabited.
Jeremiah 17:7  “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, And whose hope is the LORD.
Jeremiah 17:8  For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, Which spreads out its roots by the river, And will not fear when heat comes; But its leaf will be green, And will not be anxious in the year of drought, Nor will cease from yielding fruit.

Satan told Adam and Eve they’d be like God if they disobeyed Him.  Instead they found themselves in conflict with Him, with each other, and with creation itself.

Whenever I choose to disobey God, to sin, I’m choosing to vacate His sanctuary in favor of a desert.  What I think is going to satisfy, to gratify, leaves me hopeless and helpless.  I think it’s an oasis; it’s really a mirage.  It may be pleasurable for a time.  I may enjoy worldly success.  But since I was made to have fellowship with God, I cannot truly be satisfied planted like a shrub in the desert of this world.

The next verse gives us a rather unique insight into the workings of the flesh.

Jeremiah 17:9  “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?

Let’s dig in here for a moment.  This word “deceitful” is very interesting.  This word is used only three times in the Old Testament.  It describes a swelling and is used of a knoll or small hill.  When used in relation to traits of human personality, it describes an inflated, prideful vanity.  According to Strong’s Concordance it also indicates something fraudulent or crooked.

Even more interesting is that it comes from exactly the same root as the proper name Jacob.  You might remember how Jacob, in the Old Testament, on two occasions used fraud to get what he wanted.  What Jacob twice did to Esau gives a good idea of the practical meaning of “deceitful.”
One commentator said, “we might say our heart is always attempting to ‘con’ us into something that is not good for us in any way.  Its inducements may indeed appear attractive on the surface, but further examination would reveal that its appeals are fraudulent and risky.”

We have a romantic idea of con artists.  Think Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting.  Or Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me if You Can.

In reality con artists are more like Bernie Madoff who defrauded thousands of investors out of millions of dollars ruining their lives in the process.

You are, or at least you have in your heart, Bernie Madoff – not Paul Newman.  But you think it’s Paul Newman and, so, you don’t always take your departing from the Lord seriously.

The person you con… Is yourself!  And it’s not a romantic comedy when you do; it’s a tragedy every time – even if it seems a small con.

Your heart is also “desperately wicked.”  One translation of that is incurable.    It is incurable humanly speaking.  We cannot change our hearts or heal them.  God must do something to heal and save us.

Jeremiah 17:10  I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.

Concentrate first on the words, “to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doing.”  God wants to reward you.  He is always providing opportunities for you to bear fruit – spiritual fruit – with His help and enabling.  He comes looking for it, I dare say even hoping for it.

The kind of fruit He is looking for, at least as He stated it here, isn’t what you accomplish.  It’s how you respond to life and its circumstances.  It’s what He finds in your heart upon a deep and thorough examination.  Is your heart really set on God?  Are you submitting to His will, walking in His ways, despite the obstacles and difficulties?  Or are you conning yourself?

Jeremiah 17:11  “As a partridge that broods but does not hatch, So is he who gets riches, but not by right; It will leave him in the midst of his days, And at his end he will be a fool.”

You can’t believe how much discussion there is about the accuracy of this proverb regarding partridges!  Do they really “brood but not hatch”?  Some say “Yes,” while others say “No.”

It’s not important that this statement be scientifically accurate.  For example we say, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”  Is that statement a scientific reality?  Is it mathematically correct?  No, but we all understand what it means.

The point of the partridge proverb is that you can approach life one of two ways – yours or God’s.

Your way, when you give in to your flesh, is that of the thieving partridge.  What you gather and brood over will never “hatch,” will never bring life.
Or you can go God’s way, the “right” way, and be fruitful.

Jeremiah 17:12  A glorious high throne from the beginning Is the place of our sanctuary.

We can claim this because we can put that into New Testament terms:

Ephesians 1:3  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

Ephesians 2:6  and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

The con man within you, the partridge, always suggests there is something better than being in the sanctuary of fellowship with Jesus.  That you are missing something.  It was a lie in the Garden; it’s a lie today.

#2    Do You Want Your Heart
    To Be In Sync With God’s?
    (v13-18)

Jeremiah was told to not marry, to not mourn for the dead, to not attend any feasts as a sign to the Jews of God’s coming judgment.  No one listened to Him.  Instead people, including those in his home town and in his family, plotted to kill him.

His response was to seek God for sanctuary.

Jeremiah 17:13  O LORD, the hope of Israel, All who forsake You shall be ashamed. “Those who depart from Me Shall be written in the earth, Because they have forsaken the LORD, The fountain of living waters.”

Jeremiah turned to the Lord and the Lord immediately responded.  Now the Lord didn’t change Jeremiah’s circumstances.  In fact, things would get worse.  I think we sometimes fall for the con because we expect God to work in a particular way.  If He doesn’t, then we label Him a failure and are open to suggestions from our conning heart.

He has promised to be our “fountain of living waters.”  He has promised to refresh and sustain us spiritually no matter the circumstances.  Earlier in this book Jeremiah had described the Jews as trying to find substitutes for living waters by hewing out for themselves reservoirs, called “cisterns,” that could hold no water.  The con always sells us on a broken cistern.  It’s like buying the Brooklyn Bridge!

Jeremiah 17:14  Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; Save me, and I shall be saved, For You are my praise.

If you are a believer, do you still need to be healed and saved?  This is Jeremiah’s response to verse nine.  Remember we said the heart, in its natural condition, was incurably wicked.

We need to be healed whenever our hearts are discovered to be out of sync.  We need a good zap from the Lord.
We need to be saved and then go on being saved in the sense of daily trusting in the Lord until we are ultimately saved when we go to be with Him.

“For you are my praise.”  Can I praise God in the storm?  In the tragedy?  Even when I can’t understand what He is doing, or why He doesn’t do something different?  Yes, yes I can.  But it’s a choice I must make.

Jeremiah 17:15  Indeed they say to me, “Where is the word of the LORD? Let it come now!”

It would seem that one of the criticisms leveled against Jeremiah was that the judgment he was warning about hadn’t come.  It’s a common objection even today to say that God is never going to judge the earth.  The apostle Peter describes it in his letters, saying that scoffers say, “Where is the promise of His coming?”

We can give this a broader, more general application.  It can be hard to hold on to the promises of God when things seem to be crumbling around you.  You don’t need a scoffer to say, “Where is the Word of the Lord?” because you ask it of yourself!

The ‘answer’ is to go on serving the Lord even if you get no answer:

Jeremiah 17:16  As for me, I have not hurried away from being a shepherd who follows You, Nor have I desired the woeful day; You know what came out of my lips; It was right there before You.

Jeremiah didn’t really like the message he was told to deliver.  He probably wouldn’t have chosen to live at that time if it was left up to him.  Nevertheless he kept on serving the Lord, giving out the Word.

Jeremiah 17:17  Do not be a terror to me; You are my hope in the day of doom.
Jeremiah 17:18  Let them be ashamed who persecute me, But do not let me be put to shame; Let them be dismayed, But do not let me be dismayed. Bring on them the day of doom, And destroy them with double destruction!

Jeremiah was predicting “the day of doom” for Judah.  As much as he believed and trusted God, he still needed encouragement that God would be his “hope” when Jerusalem’s walls fell and its Temple was on fire.

We all put on a good front but I think there are times when, if we would be honest, we are terrified of life and whether or not God is going to be sufficient for us in the spiritual conflicts.  Since I can’t know He will be until I get to the end, I must look at the lives of believers who have gone before me.  Like the men and women of faith in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews.

God came through for each of them – even when His coming through was their martyrdom.

Which brings us back to the question I asked in this section, Do I want my heart to be in sync with God’s heart?

All of us who are believers would answer, “Yes!”  We need to continue to answer “Yes” through all of our trials and tribulations, listening for God, looking to Him, rather than conning ourselves and approaching life as a thieving partridge.

When I used to scuba dive I was told there was always the possibility of becoming disoriented underwater; of not knowing which way was up and which way was down.  It’s a serious, life-threatening problem!

If you become disoriented you are to follow your bubbles because they always rise towards the surface.

All of us become disoriented in our walk with the Lord.  The devil uses the world to appeal to our flesh to disorient us.

God’s Word can always lead us ‘up’ to the heavenlies if we will trust in Him and in it more than our deceitful hearts.

Lifestyles Of The Righteous And Faithful (Jeremiah 16v1-21)

Do you know what a ‘nakation’ is?  I’m hoping you don’t.  It’s a bare-it-all, clothing-optional vacation for nudists and naturalists.

Vacations specifically designed for those involved in alternative lifestyles are growing in popularity.

Cruise passengers who wanted to travel with others who shared their lifestyle once were relegated to small groups among mainstream liners or short voyages on small ships.  In recent years, however, cruises for nudists and naturalists, for gays and lesbians, for cougars and cubs, and for heterosexual swingers have attracted so much interest that those groups are able to book entire large vessels.

There are all-Christian cruises.  Would you therefore consider Christianity an alternative lifestyle?

The loose definition of ‘alternative lifestyle’ is a way of life considered unconventional or nontraditional according to a social or cultural ‘norm.’

By that definition, and factoring in that born-again believers are clearly a minority in this country, biblical Christianity is very much an alternative lifestyle.

(Of course we would call it a superlative lifestyle because it comes to us from God).

A question we might ask is, “How different are we than the surrounding culture?”  For example, if you’re in a group of people who are free to practice their alternative lifestyle, you’re gonna spot the nudist right away!

Christians are told to “put-on the Lord Jesus Christ,” as if we were clothed with Him.  Are we conspicuous for the way we ‘wear’ Jesus?

I want to explore some lifestyle issues that arise from our text.  God had a very alternative lifestyle for His young prophet.  Adjusting for time and place, we are called to live differently than the ‘norm.’

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 God Has A Lifestyle For You To Choose, and #2 You Have A Lifestyle For God To Use.

#1    God Has A Lifestyle
    For You To Choose
    (v1-18)

Look at what God said to Jeremiah regarding his lifestyle choices:

Jeremiah 16:2  “You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place.”

Jeremiah 16:5  … “Do not enter the house of mourning, nor go to lament or bemoan them…”

Jeremiah 16:8  Also you shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink.”

No marriage… No mourning… No merriment for Jeremiah in the last days of Judah.

These extreme alternatives were suggested by the times in which Jeremiah lived.  He and the people of Judah were about to be taken captive by the Babylonians.  Knowing that, it would have been foolish to go on living his life as usual.

There is nothing wrong, normally, with marriage, mourning, or merriment.  Nevertheless, we can see the signs of the times in which we live.  And in every era we are called upon to serve the Lord by fulfilling the Great Commission and furthering the kingdom of God.

You ought to choose an alternative Christian lifestyle.  Let’s think, then, about how it affects marriage and mourning and merriment.

Jeremiah 16:1  The word of the LORD also came to me, saying,
Jeremiah 16:2  “You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place.”
Jeremiah 16:3  For thus says the LORD concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning their mothers who bore them and their fathers who begot them in this land:
Jeremiah 16:4  “They shall die gruesome deaths; they shall not be lamented nor shall they be buried, but they shall be like refuse on the face of the earth. They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their corpses shall be meat for the birds of heaven and for the beasts of the earth.”

You see immediately why it was better for Jeremiah not to marry and have children.  Sons, daughters, and wives would “die gruesome deaths.”

In normal times, you find that there is a great deal of encouragement in the Bible for you to marry.

Are we, however, getting married in an alternative way that reveals our commitment to Jesus?  When you do, if you are a Christian, here is what you look like:

You show that Jesus is your first love by refusing to be in a romantic relationship with a nonbeliever.
You go against the flow of society by abstaining from sexual behavior until marriage.
You show the world you agree with God’s design by marrying a person of the opposite sex.
You keep your marriage pure by refusing to commit adultery.
Except for a few exceptions., e.g., adultery and abandonment, you remain married for life.

Too many Christians have abandoned this marriage lifestyle and look exactly like the norm in our society.  We no longer stand out; we’re not putting on Jesus Christ.

Jeremiah was told to not marry.  We are told to uphold biblical marriage.

Jeremiah 16:5  For thus says the LORD: “Do not enter the house of mourning, nor go to lament or bemoan them; for I have taken away My peace from this people,” says the LORD, “lovingkindness and mercies.
Jeremiah 16:6  Both the great and the small shall die in this land. They shall not be buried; neither shall men lament for them, cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them.
Jeremiah 16:7  Nor shall men break bread in mourning for them, to comfort them for the dead; nor shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or their mother.

Prior to the final Babylonian invasion, Jeremiah was to quit attending funerals and he was to cease from mourning at all for the dead.  By those lifestyle choices he would be a figure to the people of what was coming – a time of great destruction after which there would be no time for funerals or for the proper care of the deceased.

We know that a time of great destruction is coming upon this earth.  It’s the Great Tribulation described in chapters six through nineteen of the Revelation of Jesus Christ.  We also believe that the Lord’s coming for us, to resurrect and rapture us, precedes the Great Tribulation and is, in fact, imminent.

Am I living in such a way as to communicate that I truly believe I could be gone in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye?  This speaks to my values and my investments and as to whether or not, if someone reviewed my choices, they would say that I was seeking first the kingdom of God.

Jeremiah 16:8  Also you shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink.”
Jeremiah 16:9  For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will cause to cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

Jeremiah was restricted from partying.

How do you ‘party?’  I want to keep this in the realm of your heart and its desires because it’s too easy to get all legalistic about certain behaviors.  But, regarding your heart, would you say you’d rather be with Jesus, with His people, ‘partying’ in fellowship; or are your merriments things that are more characteristic of the world?

Jesus, when He was on the earth, hung with sinners and was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard.  Of course He was neither!  And when He partied with sinners, He led them to faith.  They wanted to be more like Him rather than vice-versa.

Jeremiah 16:10  “And it shall be, when you show this people all these words, and they say to you, ‘Why has the LORD pronounced all this great disaster against us? Or what is our iniquity? Or what is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?’
Jeremiah 16:11  then you shall say to them, ‘Because your fathers have forsaken Me,’ says the LORD; ‘they have walked after other gods and have served them and worshiped them, and have forsaken Me and not kept My law.
Jeremiah 16:12  And you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, each one follows the dictates of his own evil heart, so that no one listens to Me.

They were openly worshipping idols, doing so right in the Temple.  They were committing all manner of sexual sin.  They were even practicing human sacrifice.  Yet they acted surprised at the pronouncement of judgment.

This reminds me how easy it is for me to become desensitized to sin and thereby think I’m doing great spiritually.

God told them to take a look back and gauge their current lifestyle by His “law.”  We can, and should, look back.  Am I making spiritual progress – growing in personal holiness?  Or am I backsliding?  Faced with a decision, do I follow the dictates of my own heart or do I submit to God’s Word no matter the personal sacrifice involved?

Jeremiah 16:13  Therefore I will cast you out of this land into a land that you do not know, neither you nor your fathers; and there you shall serve other gods day and night, where I will not show you favor.’
Jeremiah 16:14  “Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD, “that it shall no more be said, ‘The LORD lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,’
Jeremiah 16:15  but, ‘The LORD lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had driven them.’ For I will bring them back into their land which I gave to their fathers.
Jeremiah 16:16  “Behold, I will send for many fishermen,” says the LORD, “and they shall fish them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.
Jeremiah 16:17  For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity hidden from My eyes.
Jeremiah 16:18  And first I will repay double for their iniquity and their sin, because they have defiled My land; they have filled My inheritance with the carcasses of their detestable and abominable idols.”

Tucked away in these verses is the promise God will not abandon His people.  He speaks of a second ‘exodus,’ a time when He will bring the Jews back to their land and fulfill His promises to them.

I think we’d agree that God has an alternative lifestyle for His children to live.  It’s really a superlative lifestyle.  We might disagree on some of the particulars at different times and in different places, but we’d say that it should set us apart from the world in which we are a minority.

God invites us to choose the lifestyle He describes in His Word.  He leaves it to us.  He doesn’t force us because He loves us.

If you can believe pollster George Barna, the trend among Christians in America is to reject the alternative lifestyle.1  He found, among other things, that only 9% of America’s Christians have a biblical worldview; only 3% of Christian parents include the salvation of their children in the list of critical parental emphasis; 45% of America’s Christian parents teach their children that there are NO moral absolutes; and 43% teach their children that there are SOME moral absolutes.

Choose the superlative lifestyle.  In more biblical terms, be hot rather than lukewarm.  Whatever times we live in, it’s never a good idea to be just barely living the Christian life.

#2     You Have A Lifestyle
    For God To Use
    (v19-21)

The chapter ends with a brief exchange between Jeremiah (v19-20) and God (v21).

Jeremiah 16:19  O LORD, my strength and my fortress, My refuge in the day of affliction, The Gentiles shall come to You From the ends of the earth and say, “Surely our fathers have inherited lies, Worthlessness and unprofitable things.”
Jeremiah 16:20  Will a man make gods for himself, Which are not gods?

No matter how bad things would get, Jeremiah saw the Lord as his “strength,” “fortress,” and “refuge.”  That’s because everything we need is to be found in relationship with Him despite circumstances.

Jeremiah also indicated that the people of God were to be so attractive to the Gentiles, to nonbelievers, that they recognized how empty and meaningless all of their pursuits on the earth were and turned to God from idols.

I remember feeling that way when I met Jesus Christ as my Savior.  Everything else was empty, was vanity, was hollow and shallow.  The superlative life of Jesus Christ stood out against the darkness of this world.

Being different from others makes a difference in that it allows them to see something beautiful about life, about living.  You and I are the ‘Jesus’ people see.

Jeremiah 16:21  “Therefore behold, I will this once cause them to know, I will cause them to know My hand and My might; And they shall know that My name is the LORD.

Albert Barnes wrote,

Whether we consider the greatness of the national disgrace and suffering caused by it, or its effect upon the mind of the Jews, the burning of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, followed by the captivity of the people at Babylon, stands out as the greatest manifestation of God’s “hand” in all His dealings with them.

For our purposes, look at the last phrase.  “… They shall know that My name is the Lord.”

God has chosen to use believers to reveal Himself to lost, perishing sinners.  It is by your life and lifestyle that “they shall know that [He is] the Lord.”

In 1979 I was a lost, perishing sinner.  I was following the desires of my own heart.  I wouldn’t admit it but everything in my life was shallow, hollow and failing.  A colleague at the title company I worked for got saved, both he and his wife.  Their lives changed dramatically.

It affected me – but not like you might think.  I made fun of them.  I openly ridiculed them.  I treated them with scorn.

That is, until the Lord began to reveal Himself to me.  Then, in a panic, I knew exactly where to go – to the person whose life evidenced something different and supernatural.

You and I are that person to someone; maybe to many ‘someone’s.’

While we sometimes try to be more like the world, the world needs us to be more like Jesus.