The Bad News Bearer (Jeremiah 15v10-21)

If there’s one guy you don’t want to bring bad news to, it’s Darth Vader.

After losing the Millenium Falcon when it emerged from the asteroid field, Captain Needer took a shuttle to apologize to Vader personally and got the telekinetic strangulation treatment for his trouble.
Vader likewise killed Admiral Ozzel for alerting the Rebels to the Imperial presence by coming out of hyperspace too close to the planet Hoth.  He didn’t give him the common courtesy of killing him in person.  Rather, Vader killed him over the comm view screen and you see him gasping and choking to death.

There’s an old expression, “Don’t kill (or, don’t shoot) the messenger,” meaning that often folks do react with hostility towards the bearer of bad news.

The sixth century poster-boy for bearing really, really horrible news was the prophet Jeremiah.  God had a message for His wayward nation, the nation of Judah.  It was all doom and gloom, judgment and death.

Life as God’s messenger was starting to get to Jeremiah.
First he wished he had never been born.
Then he lashed out at God, telling God He was “an unreliable stream… waters that fail” (v18).

You and I may not be prophets of the Lord.  But we are every bit messengers.

I can support the claim Christians are messengers from the Great Commission Jesus gave all His disciples when He said,

Matthew 28:19  Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Or I could cite Jesus’ words to His followers to go to the ends of the earth testifying of Him after they received the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.
Or I could cite the apostle Paul who described Christians as “living letters” “known and read by all men” (Second Corinthians 3:2).

Even a quick overview of the New Testament will reveal that Christian messengers don’t always fare very well in delivering their message.  While what we have to share is definitely Good News, it is “a savor of death” to those who refuse to receive the message about Jesus Christ and they tend to want to persecute or kill the messenger.

Like Jeremiah, when we find ourselves in some peril we can vilify God.  After all, we are serving Him, loving Him, and look how He allows us to be treated?

OR we can determine to instead glorify God, looking to Jesus.

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 Your Perils As A Messenger Can Influence You To Vilify God, or #2 God’s Passion As The Messager Can Inspire You To Glorify God.

#1    Your Perils As A Messenger
    Can Influence You To Vilify God
    (v10-18)

Ever wish you’d never been born?  If so, you can relate to Jeremiah because that’s how he was feeling.

Jeremiah 15:10  Woe is me, my mother, That you have borne me, A man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent for interest, Nor have men lent to me for interest. Every one of them curses me.

Even though he was a prophet of God, Jeremiah commanded no more respect than a ruthless lender or an irresponsible borrower.

Forget Jeremiah for just a moment and think instead of Jesus.  The Son of God, the Second Person of the trinity, through whom all things were made and without whom was not anything made that was made… He was largely despised and rejected.  He was accused of being a drunk and a glutton.  A cloud of illegitimacy hung over His life due to the circumstances of His birth.

If He is your Savior, your Lord, you can’t really expect to be treated any better, can you?

Jeremiah 15:11  The LORD said: “Surely it will be well with your remnant; Surely I will cause the enemy to intercede with you In the time of adversity and in the time of affliction.

This is a small but powerful word of encouragement from the Lord.  It would “be well with your remnant” meant God would honor His covenant with Abraham and David.  The Jews would not be totally destroyed.

And among Jeremiah’s enemies some would soon be humbled to ask him to intercede for them out of desperation.

However, the heart of Jeremiah’s message was that judgment was barreling down upon Judah.

Jeremiah 15:12  Can anyone break iron, The northern iron and the bronze?

Babylon was “the northern iron and the bronze.”  Nothing could stop her advance to conquer Judah.

Jeremiah 15:13  Your wealth and your treasures I will give as plunder without price, Because of all your sins, Throughout your territories.
Jeremiah 15:14  And I will make you cross over with your enemies Into a land which you do not know; For a fire is kindled in My anger, Which shall burn upon you.”

Commentators are split on whether God was addressing Jeremiah personally or the Jews corporately.  I think it’s best to say God was addressing the Jews and that Jeremiah was included among them – not because of his sin but because he must identify with them.

Although he had done nothing wrong, he, too, would lose his “wealth” and “treasures”  and would “cross over… into a land” he did not know.  In Jeremiah’s case that would be Egypt.  We’ll see later in this book that, after the Babylonians conquered Judah, some of the Jews left in the land fled to Egypt, against God’s advice through Jeremiah, and took him with them.

God had a strange way of encouraging His discouraged prophet.  He told Jeremiah that things were definitely going to get much worse.

Jeremiah 15:15  O LORD, You know; Remember me and visit me, And take vengeance for me on my persecutors. In Your enduring patience, do not take me away. Know that for Your sake I have suffered rebuke.

Jeremiah couldn’t handle the truth.  He objected to being taken away anywhere, and especially by those who persecuted him.

He asked God to instead take “vengeance” on his persecutors.  It wasn’t enough for God to tell Jeremiah he was doing exactly what he was supposed to do.  Jeremiah wanted others to know it, too.

Jeremiah exclaimed, “for Your sake I have suffered rebuke.”  Every Christian, at some point in their life on earth, is going to say, “for Your sake I have suffered rebuke.”  It’s how you say it that matters!

The apostle Paul rejoiced saying it in Romans 8:36, “FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE KILLED ALL DAY LONG; WE ARE ACCOUNTED AS SHEEP FOR THE SLAUGHTER.”
After being beaten by the Jewish leaders and publicly humiliated, the apostles rejoiced to be counted worthy to suffer for the sake of Jesus (Acts 5:41).

That’s not the tone in Jeremiah’s voice.  He was blaming God.  And it got worse.

Jeremiah 15:16  Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.

Jeremiah looked back and thought of his call to the monistry.  God had come to Jeremiah and he had accepted the call.  He compared it to eating God’s words – meaning he committed totally to it.

Now if you will recall, Jeremiah shared a few doubts at his calling; he wasn’t exactly gung-ho.  He made no mention of the fact God also told him he would suffer.  Jeremiah had selective memory.  This is revisionist history.

By the way, if no one told you at the time of your conversion, let me right that wrong: You are going to suffer many things as a Christian.  In the world you will have tribulation.

Brace yourself for Jeremiah’s big blow-up.

Jeremiah 15:17  I did not sit in the assembly of the mockers, Nor did I rejoice; I sat alone because of Your hand, For You have filled me with indignation.
Jeremiah 15:18  Why is my pain perpetual And my wound incurable, Which refuses to be healed? Will You surely be to me like an unreliable stream, As waters that fail?

My free paraphrase goes like this: “God, I was righteous among the wicked.  I walked the narrow path.  I adopted your attitude of indignation against sin.  And what did you do, God?  You wounded me, or you certainly let me be wounded; and now you won’t take away my pain, even though you could.”

Wow.  Get it together, Jeremiah!  And yet, be honest; Haven’t you ever felt that way?  Maybe you feel that way right now.

He accused God of being an “unreliable stream,” “waters that fail.”  Having been influenced by the New Testament, and remembering Jesus’ promise that He would be to us a continual source of living water, this is a scathing accusation, an insult of huge proportions.

Truth is, the world is full of moments when we ask, “Why, God?,”  “Why us?,”  “Why now?”  Behind the question is the feeling that the waters of God have somehow dried-up or are being held back.

I’m going to explore an answer to those questions in verses nineteen through twenty-one.  For now I want to dwell a brief moment on the reality of evil and suffering and pain in our world – what I’m calling your ‘perils.’

These perils that befall us, we can’t help but think God could have stopped them from happening.  He could have protected us.  It’s only one small thought from thinking He could have to saying He should have.

If we’re not careful we can vilify God; we make Him out to be the villain, maybe not directly but indirectly, by His supposed inaction.

For some people it’s done openly.  They let you know they are angry with God.  They turn their back on Him.  They walk away from Him.
For some Christians, they vilify God in their hearts while trying to keep their Christian game face on.  Over time what they think in their hearts erodes their faith and they drift away on a tide of bitterness and anger.

Theologians are all over the map trying to give ‘the’ answer to the question, “Why, God?”  At the extremes, they either make God the author of evil and try to get you to believe that it somehow glorifies Him, or they propose that God has lost control of His universe.  In other words, the standard answers are shallow and hollow.

What’s the answer?  It’s to be found in God’s response to Jeremiah.

#2    God’s Passion As The Messager
    Can Inspire You To Glorify God
    (v19-21)

Let me give you the bottom line.  In light of his discouragement God told Jeremiah to “return.”  That’s a curious command because, from our point of view, Jeremiah hadn’t gone away from God.  In fact, he was having a direct, if doubtful, dialog with God.

God nevertheless said to “return.”  To what?  To God.  “Return” to knowing that God IS your living water, your inexhaustible stream.  “Return” to knowing God is your all-in-all.  In Him you have everything you need and could ever desire regardless the blessings the world has to offer or the buffetings it has to dish out.

If you are a messenger, God is your Messager.  (I made-up that word, but you get it!).  You and He, sharing fellowship, that’s as good as it gets; and it’s pretty great, really.

Jeremiah 15:19  Therefore thus says the LORD: “If you return, Then I will bring you back; You shall stand before Me; If you take out the precious from the vile, You shall be as My mouth. Let them return to you, But you must not return to them.

I wonder if Jeremiah thought he needed to “return?”  He hadn’t gone anywhere.  He hadn’t fallen into sin.

But his words, though honest, indicated he thought of God as a distant force rather than his familiar friend.  He wasn’t looking to God for fellowship but only for power, only to give him what he wanted and thought he had earned or at least deserved.

God, for His part, offered to immediately “bring [Jeremiah] back.”  He’d forgive him, accept him, and they would pick up right where they had left off.

“You shall stand before Me.”  Was Jeremiah not standing before God?  Not really; not in his heart.  Not while he was accusing God of being unloving in allowing his troubles to continue.
Think of the incredible privilege it is to stand before God!  Is there anything, really, that can compare?  Is there any suffering that can take away the wonder of being in the presence of God?

Stop for a moment and remember that your God, your Lord and Savior, understands suffering.  He suffered for you – because there was no other way to save you and because that is what His love does.

“Take out the precious from the vile.”  It’s a reference to refining precious metals through fire.  It’s a reminder that God can and does use the troubles you encounter to develop Christ in you.

“You shall be as My mouth.”  To speak the word of God to men; to speak forth and to speak for God.  Is there any greater message in all the world?  It’s worth suffering for at the hands of those who reject it.

“Let them return to you, But you must not return to them.”  If you’ve encountered the living God, no matter how difficult your road home to Heaven you are to influence others rather than fall back into their way of thinking.

Jeremiah 15:20  And I will make you to this people a fortified bronze wall; And they will fight against you, But they shall not prevail against you; For I am with you to save you And deliver you,” says the LORD.
Jeremiah 15:21  “I will deliver you from the hand of the wicked, And I will redeem you from the grip of the terrible.”

This is a restatement of Jeremiah’s original calling.  In case he had forgotten the Lord reminded him that he was in a “fight.”  It wasn’t peacetime duty.  He wasn’t a recruiter in some cushy office.  He was in a war for souls and to represent the glory of God.  He was deep behind enemy lines, fighting hand-to-hand.

One of our problems, especially in our mostly affluent Western culture, is we forget we are in a war – a spiritual war.  We acknowledge there is spiritual warfare but we tend to live as though it shouldn’t affect us on a personal level unless we sign-up for duty, which we think is voluntary.

It does affect us.  Stunningly powerful spiritual enemies are marshaled against you.  When their attacks occur you can begin to vilify God.

Or you can glorify God.  You can reveal His love and His light as you battle back.  Your rallying cry, in the midst of the siege, can be,  “[My] light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for [me] a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (Second Corinthians 4:17).

If there is a secret, a key, in doing so, it is captured in God’s encouragement, “return to Me.”  It demands a certain way of thinking.  When it comes to suffering and trouble, we must know in our hearts that God is against, not behind, all the evil in this world.  Instead of trusting our own assessment of circumstances that are too complex to totally fathom, we must determine to remain in the love of God, never doubting His love for us.

How can I possibly think God loves me in the midst of something tragic?  All I have to do is take a look at Jesus.  As one author put it,

Jesus is the perfect expression of God’s thought, character and will.  He is God’s self-definition to us.  In Christ God defines and expresses Himself as a God of outrageous love.  He is for us, not against us.  We are undeserving people with whom He nevertheless is in love.

In practical, everyday, rubber-meets-the-road terms, I cannot explain why, when James and Peter were both arrested in the Book of Acts for preaching Christ, James was beheaded while Peter was miraculously delivered by an angel from prison.

No one can really adequately answer questions like that!  I can say that the first century Christians glorified God in both outcomes rather than vilifying Him.

If we begin to look away from Jesus, putting emphasis on our “light afflictions which are but for a moment,” it’s easy to vilify God.

All of us will to say to God, “for Your sake I have suffered rebuke.”  It’s how you say it that matters.  Don’t vilify God; glorify Him.  He loves you.  He is love.

We can always, therefore, fix our eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, trusting that He is at all times against suffering and, when it isn’t prevented, glorifying Himself through it.

What We’ve Got Here Is A Savior To Communicate (Jeremiah 14v1-15v9)

I want to let you in on a secret.  I sometimes get discouraged when I read about the effective prayer lives of God’s saints.

George Müller comes immediately to mind.  In the 1800’s he established 117 schools which offered Christian education to over 120,000 children, many of them orphans.  Müller prayed about everything and always expected his prayers to be answered positively.  There are dozens, if not hundreds, of stories about his answered prayers – miraculous answers at that.

On occasion a person would ask George Müller, “What if God doesn’t answer your prayer?”  He would tell them that such a failure on God’s part was impossible.  Man, however had the responsibility to meet certain conditions before expecting an answer from God.

Now I’m doubly discouraged.  Not only do my prayers sometime seem ineffective but the reason, given by someone whose prayers were seemingly always effective,  is that I fail to meet certain spiritual conditions.

What if I were to tell you that one of the greatest intercessors of all time was mostly ineffective?  And that it had nothing to do with his failure?

It’s true.  It was Jeremiah.  In our text God will compare Jeremiah’s intercession for Judah to that of two other great Old Testament men of prayer, Moses and Samuel.  He considered Jeremiah a giant when it came to prayer.  Nevertheless Jeremiah’s prayers of intercession for Judah had absolutely no effect on averting God’s judgment.

Perhaps we need to change our ideas of what constitutes an effective prayer life.  Maybe it’s more important prayer be affective, meaning it recognizes that you are in a passionate dialog with the living God.  Effect is primarily concerned with getting results whereas affect is more about relationship.

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 Your Praying Is Affective When You Realize God Is Present, and #2 Your Praying Is Affective When You Remember God Has Promised.

#1    Your Praying Is Affective
    When You Realize God Is Present
    (14:1-18)

We believe that prayer is simply talking with God.  But right after we say that we have a tendency to turn it into a religious activity.  We identify five or ten or twenty different types of prayer.  We teach seminars on how to do it.  We keep lists of our asking and God’s answers, implying that only those prayers that are answered are effective.

God measures effectiveness differently than we do.  He’s going to tell us that Jeremiah is among the great intercessors – something we’d never conclude from a review of the effect of his prayers.

The opening six verses set the stage for Jeremiah’s talk with God.

Jeremiah 14:1  The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah concerning the droughts.
Jeremiah 14:2  “Judah mourns, And her gates languish; They mourn for the land, And the cry of Jerusalem has gone up.
Jeremiah 14:3  Their nobles have sent their lads for water; They went to the cisterns and found no water. They returned with their vessels empty; They were ashamed and confounded And covered their heads.
Jeremiah 14:4  Because the ground is parched, For there was no rain in the land, The plowmen were ashamed; They covered their heads.
Jeremiah 14:5  Yes, the deer also gave birth in the field, But left because there was no grass.
Jeremiah 14:6  And the wild donkeys stood in the desolate heights; They sniffed at the wind like jackals; Their eyes failed because there was no grass.”

In His covenant with the Jews God promised abundant rain for their crops if they would walk in obedience to Him.  Multiple seasons of “droughts” were a direct judgment from God upon Judah for disobedience.

It’s harder for us, as New Testament believers, to analyze circumstances.  God often buffets you when you are walking close to Him; He can seem to be blessing you when you are backsliding.

It isn’t to confuse you.  It’s to draw you closer to Him on a moment-by-moment basis.  God doesn’t want to be a distant deity whose favor you can earn or spurn.  He wants to be intimate, up-close-and-personal with you.

Jeremiah talked to God about the droughts.

Jeremiah 14:7  O LORD, though our iniquities testify against us, Do it for Your name’s sake; For our backslidings are many, We have sinned against You.
Jeremiah 14:8  O the Hope of Israel, his Savior in time of trouble, Why should You be like a stranger in the land, And like a traveler who turns aside to tarry for a night?
Jeremiah 14:9  Why should You be like a man astonished, Like a mighty one who cannot save? Yet You, O LORD, are in our midst, And we are called by Your name; Do not leave us!

Jeremiah believed God was “in [their] midst.”  He believed, he knew, God was present among them.  Further, He understood that God was their “hope” and “Savior.”

God, however, was acting like a “stranger” just traveling through who refused to get involved.  He was acting like a soldier but one who was too “astonished,” too terrified, to fight.

Have you ever told God He was acting like a stranger?  Or a deserter?  You may have felt that way; you may be feeling that way right now on account of some trial or tragedy.

A.W. Tozer has said, “the notion that there is a God, but that He is comfortably far away, is not embodied in the doctrinal statement of the Christian church.”

Isaac Watts wrote,

Within Thy circling power I stand,
On every side I find Thy hand.
Awake, asleep, at home, abroad,
I am surrounded with my God

Doctrinally we call this God’s omnipresence.  But we must learn to practice His presence.  Maybe we should call it ‘practi-presence.’

Jeremiah was, in fact, practicing the presence of God.  God couldn’t be a stranger; He couldn’t be a deserter.  He was there, in their midst, their “hope,” their “Savior.”

Jeremiah 14:10  Thus says the LORD to this people: “Thus they have loved to wander; They have not restrained their feet. Therefore the LORD does not accept them; He will remember their iniquity now, And punish their sins.”
Jeremiah 14:11  Then the LORD said to me, “Do not pray for this people, for their good.
Jeremiah 14:12  When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence.”

Historically the nation of Judah had passed a point of no return.  They refused to repent – even after 40 years of Jeremiah pleading with them.

Yes, it’s possible to pass a point of no return.  But since we cannot see the hearts of men, our attitude ought to be that the point of no return is after death.  Until then we urge men everywhere to repent and trust the Lord.

Jeremiah 14:13  Then I said, “Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, the prophets say to them, ‘You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you assured peace in this place.’ ”
God told Jeremiah “do not pray for this people, for their good.” Jeremiah’s response was to go right on seeking their good, pointing out that the people were being deceived by false prophets.

Now you’d think that in the school of prayer when God said “Quit praying!” that you’d flunk-out if you disobeyed Him.  But Jeremiah kept praying.  That’s because he didn’t think of himself as being in a school of prayer.  He didn’t think about what he was doing as offering intercessory prayer.  He was simply talking to and with the Lord.

Jeremiah 14:14  And the LORD said to me, “The prophets prophesy lies in My name. I have not sent them, commanded them, nor spoken to them; they prophesy to you a false vision, divination, a worthless thing, and the deceit of their heart.
Jeremiah 14:15  Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the prophets who prophesy in My name, whom I did not send, and who say, ‘Sword and famine shall not be in this land’ – ‘By sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed!
Jeremiah 14:16  And the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; they will have no one to bury them -them nor their wives, their sons nor their daughters – for I will pour their wickedness on them.’

If you are deceived by a false prophet or teacher, it’s not God’s fault.  He has given you His Word as a measure to test all things.

Jeremiah 14:17  “Therefore you shall say this word to them: ‘Let my eyes flow with tears night and day, And let them not cease; For the virgin daughter of my people Has been broken with a mighty stroke, with a very severe blow.
Jeremiah 14:18  If I go out to the field, Then behold, those slain with the sword! And if I enter the city, Then behold, those sick from famine! Yes, both prophet and priest go about in a land they do not know.’ ”

God was describing Himself in these verses.  He was the Father whose “virgin daughter” was taken violently, whose people were “slain” and “sick.”  It brought Him no pleasure to allow the Jews to be overrun by the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.  It brought Him pain.

God shared His heart with Jeremiah.  He shared His grief, His sorrow, His pain, His disappointment.  Prayer, then, isn’t just about getting God to do something or to not do something.  It’s about getting to know God.

God is present.  He is omnipresent; wherever you are, there He is in your midst.  Because His presence is spiritual, we can think Him distant.  For example.  In literature and film there are certain characters who can be called upon at great need.  Obi-won Kenobi is like that.  Every now and then Luke Skywalker can cry out for his help and Obi-won can remind him to “use the force.”

(If you are familiar with The Lord of the Rings, Tom Bombadil is such a character).

I dare say sometimes without meaning to we think of God that way!  We go about our day as if He is in His distant Heaven, knowing that we can call upon Him at great need to use the ‘force,’ as it were, to help us.  It’s why we think of prayer only in terms of its effectiveness when, in reality, it is its affect that is most critical.

By His Spirit, He lives in you.  He tells us in the Bible that He is especially desiring to manifest His presence when Christian get together.

God is present.  He is in you and in your midst.  Talk to Him as if you understood that; as if you are turning to address Him directly rather than sending long distance messages to Heaven.  Practice His presence.

#2     Your Praying Is Affective
    When You Remember God Has Promised
    (14:19-15:9)

In his next statements Jeremiah remembered that God had made a covenant, a promise, with the Jews.

Jeremiah 14:19  Have You utterly rejected Judah? Has Your soul loathed Zion? Why have You stricken us so that there is no healing for us? We looked for peace, but there was no good; And for the time of healing, and there was trouble.
Jeremiah 14:20  We acknowledge, O LORD, our wickedness And the iniquity of our fathers, For we have sinned against You.
Jeremiah 14:21  Do not abhor us, for Your name’s sake; Do not disgrace the throne of Your glory. Remember, do not break Your covenant with us.
Jeremiah 14:22  Are there any among the idols of the nations that can cause rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are You not He, O LORD our God? Therefore we will wait for You, Since You have made all these.

Jeremiah was hardcore.  God told Him to quit praying for and seeking the good of Judah but here he boldly asked the Lord to bring rain.

Jeremiah knew God could never “utterly” and totally “[reject] Judah” on account of His “covenant” to them through Abraham and David.  Some of those promises were conditional upon obedience; but many were unconditional.

God has promised you and I so much more!  Spiritual blessings in heavenly places; eternal rewards; a mansion in a forever city where the Lord is the light and life of the place.  How can I not be affected?

Our attitude should be that expressed by Jeremiah in the last thing he said – “Therefore we will wait for you…”  It’s a particular type of waiting.  It’s power-waiting.  We wait trusting in the infallibility of His promises.

Jeremiah 15:1  Then the LORD said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel stood before Me, My mind would not be favorable toward this people. Cast them out of My sight, and let them go forth.

Moses and Samuel were two great Old Testament intercessors.

Moses told God if He didn’t spare the Israelites to blot his own name out of the Book of Life (Exodus 32:32).
Samuel once said, “Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD in ceasing to pray for you…” (First Samuel 12:23).  Only someone in constant intercession could say that.

The mention of these two giants put Jeremiah in their category.  Jeremiah was one of God’s great intercessors – even though his intercessory prayers would not be effective.

The remaining verses of our text express more of the coming judgment.  There is also an interesting insight to prayer.

Jeremiah 15:2  And it shall be, if they say to you, ‘Where should we go?’ then you shall tell them, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Such as are for death, to death; And such as are for the sword, to the sword; And such as are for the famine, to the famine; And such as are for the captivity, to the captivity.” ‘
Jeremiah 15:3  “And I will appoint over them four forms of destruction,” says the LORD: “the sword to slay, the dogs to drag, the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy.
Jeremiah 15:4  I will hand them over to trouble, to all kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for what he did in Jerusalem.
Jeremiah 15:5  “For who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem? Or who will bemoan you? Or who will turn aside to ask how you are doing?
Jeremiah 15:6  You have forsaken Me,” says the LORD, “You have gone backward. Therefore I will stretch out My hand against you and destroy you; I am weary of relenting!
Jeremiah 15:7  And I will winnow them with a winnowing fan in the gates of the land; I will bereave them of children; I will destroy My people, Since they do not return from their ways.
Jeremiah 15:8  Their widows will be increased to Me more than the sand of the seas; I will bring against them, Against the mother of the young men, A plunderer at noonday; I will cause anguish and terror to fall on them suddenly.
Jeremiah 15:9  “She languishes who has borne seven; She has breathed her last; Her sun has gone down While it was yet day; She has been ashamed and confounded. And the remnant of them I will deliver to the sword Before their enemies,” says the LORD.

Let’s concentrate on verse four.  “Manasseh the son of Hezekiah” was the king who began Judah’s downfall into idolatry.  He was king from 696-642BC.   One Bible dictionary described his reign this way.

The abominations of various lands, especially of Babylon, were brought together [by him] at Jerusalem, “altars for Baalim, “groves” and altars for the host of heaven, in the two courts of the Lord’s house.”  “He caused too his children to pass through the fire in the valley of the son of Hinnom,” the old Moloch worship of Ammon; and in imitation of the Babylonians “observed times, enchantments, witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit and wizards.”  A religion of sensuous intoxication reigned on all sides.  He made a graven image of the Asheerah (the obscene symbol of the phallic worship), for which women dedicated to impurity wove hangings in Jehovah’s house! Sodomites’ houses stood nigh to Jehovah’s house, for the vilest purposes in the name of religion, Jehovah’s altar was cast down, the ark was displaced, the sabbath, the weekly witness for God, was ignored.

Here is something important to realize.  In 701BC Hezekiah became seriously ill (Isaiah 38:1-21).  Isaiah warned the king to prepare for his approaching death but Hezekiah prayed that God would intervene.  God answered by promising Hezekiah fifteen more years of life.

It was during those extra fifteen years that Manasseh was born!  Hezekiah did a few weird things, too, in those bonus years.  One commentator stated bluntly,

It would have been far better both for Hezekiah and the whole nation of Judah if Hezekiah had died on God’s “original” timetable.  If Hezekiah had died “on schedule,” Manasseh would never have lived and deep national rebellion and dissipation would not have taken hold if Hezekiah had not been given 15 additional years.

If you judge prayer by its effectiveness, then Hezekiah had an incredibly effective prayer life!  He was able to gain fifteen years of life after God told him he was going to die.

For his part, Jeremiah’s intercession accomplished nothing for Judah.

But God elevated Jeremiah to the status of Moses and Samuel while letting us know that Hezekiah’s son, Manasseh, was the source of Judah’s decline.

God looks upon prayer much differently than we do.  An effective prayer life is one more affective, achieved by having a sense of God’s presence and promises.

Talk to God – all the time.  He is not a distant force, but your closest friend.

One Man’s Sash is Another Man’s Typology (Jeremiah 13v1-27)

“Who are you wearing?” is easily the most asked and answered question on any red carpet.  The celebrities are all decked-out in gowns and suits, the ladies adorned with borrowed but beautiful and costly accessories.  When they answer, “Vera Wang” or “Versace” or “Louis Vuitton” or “Gucci,” it’s a huge moment of recognition for the designer.

You might be surprised to learn that the prophet Jeremiah was fashion conscious.  As he went about Jerusalem and the surrounding cities he wore a “linen sash” (NJKV) around his waist.  He was stylin’!

There was no red carpet but if someone had asked Jeremiah, “who are you wearing?” he’d have answered, “Yahweh.”

You see, God had told him to wear the sash to communicate a message to Judah, saying in verse eleven, “for as the sash clings to the waist of a man, so have I caused the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to cling to Me…”

God thought of His people as a beautiful adornment that the other nations would see and ask, “who are you wearing?” to which they would answer, “Yahweh,” thus giving testimony to the true God Who was reaching out to save them.

As you read through the New Testament you come to a passage (it’s Titus 2:10) that says of us, as believers, “that [we] may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.”

God still thinks in terms of our adorning Him and His Gospel.

Instead of adorning the Lord the Jews distorted Him to the surrounding nations and God had to discipline them.  Let’s not make their mistakes.  I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 You Adorn The Gospel; Do It With Praise, and #2 You Adorn The Gospel; Don’t Do It With Pride.

#1    You Adorn The Gospel;
Do It With Praise
(v1-11)

The “sash” that “clings to the waist of a man” is an article of clothing that goes by several different names in various Bible translations.

The New International Version calls it a “linen belt.”
The New American Standard Bible calls it a “linen waistband.”
The New Revised Standard Bible calls it a “linen loincloth.”
The New English Bible calls it an “apron.”
In the King James Version, it is a “linen girdle.”

It is best understood as a long linen sash about a handbreadth wide that was wrapped around the waist.

Jeremiah 13:1  Thus the LORD said to me: “Go and get yourself a linen sash, and put it around your waist, but do not put it in water.”
Jeremiah 13:2  So I got a sash according to the word of the LORD, and put it around my waist.

Jeremiah went sash-shopping!  Whenever these prophets did anything, it was a big deal.  God was always using props to speak in parables and figures through them to His people.
Either Jeremiah didn’t normally wear a sash or he bought one that was particularly fancy.  It would be immediately noticeable, then, as he went about town.  It made a statement – much more than a fashion statement.

Commentators are stressed about what is meant by “do not put it in water.”  It seems to me that the Lord was telling Jeremiah to not launder it.  Just wear it and keep on wearing it day-after-day.

When we would take our short-term missions trips to the Philippines, I would sweat so much that my shirt would develop salt patterns.  It was gross.  Let’s just say I could barely wear a shirt one whole day, let alone day after day.  The Lord was letting Jeremiah know that his new fashion accessory was going to get dirty, then dirtier, then filthy as he wore it over time without washing it.

Jeremiah 13:3  And the word of the LORD came to me the second time, saying,
Jeremiah 13:4  “Take the sash that you acquired, which is around your waist, and arise, go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a hole in the rock.”
Jeremiah 13:5  So I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the LORD commanded me.

After some time had transpired, and after folks had noticed Jeremiah wasn’t laundering his sash, he was told to take it to a river and stash it in a hole in a rock.

I said ‘a’ river because we’re not sure it was, in fact, the Euphrates in Babylon.  That is how it’s translated into English, but good language scholars point out that in Hebrew the spelling for “Euphrates” and “Parah”  are identical.  Parah was a village just outside Anathoth, Jeremiah’s home town.  Considering the distance to Babylon was 700 miles round trip and that he’d have to make that journey twice, it’s unlikely that he actually went to Babylon.  The symbolism works without him having to go all the way to Babylon.

No one saw Jeremiah do this; at least that’s what I get from the command to “hide” the sash.  Afterwards it would be obvious as he walked about that his once fashionable, then filthy, sash was gone.

Jeremiah 13:6  Now it came to pass after many days that the LORD said to me, “Arise, go to the Euphrates, and take from there the sash which I commanded you to hide there.”
Jeremiah 13:7  Then I went to the Euphrates and dug, and I took the sash from the place where I had hidden it; and there was the sash, ruined. It was profitable for nothing.

To which we might comment, “Duh!”  Hold on; here it comes.

Jeremiah 13:8  Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
Jeremiah 13:9  “Thus says the LORD: ‘In this manner I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah 13:10  This evil people, who refuse to hear My words, who follow the dictates of their hearts, and walk after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be just like this sash which is profitable for nothing.
Jeremiah 13:11  For as the sash clings to the waist of a man, so I have caused the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah to cling to Me,’ says the LORD, ‘that they may become My people, for renown, for praise, and for glory; but they would not hear.’

It’s a figure, typology, to preach to God’s people.  Through Jeremiah God pictured Himself a man wearing a beautiful linen sash.  The sash was His one outstanding fashion accessory; it’s the one thing that adorned Him.  Israel and Judah were to adorn the Lord like a sash in that when the other nations of the world looked at them they’d see beauty and holiness and grace in their representation of the nature and character of God.

Because of their sin, however, they looked more-and-more like a sash that was soiled until one day the sash was gone – no longer being worn by its owner.  Where’d the soiled sash go?  It was taken away by its owner to a river, hidden in a rock there to further decay, until finally it was no good as a sash anymore.

Thus would God “hide” His people by the rivers of Babylon so they would recognize and then repent of their sin.

The Jews did adorn the Lord – just not the way He desired and deserved.  He intended them to adorn Him “for renown, for praise, and for glory.”

“Renown.”  We use the word when we talk about someone ‘making a name’ for himself.  The idea is that the Jews were to be great PR people, spreading the knowledge of the Lord, His holiness, His salvation.  They were to make a name for Him among the nations.

“For praise” seems to mean to elicit (to call forth) praise.  In other words, through their representation of the Lord the Jews were to elicit the praises of the lost for the God of Israel Who was seeking to reveal Himself to them.  They would see the beauty of the Lord and be drawn to Him.

“For glory” is the third way they were to represent God as His sash.  In Matthew 5:16 we read, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.”  “For glory,” then, means that by attitudes and actions the Jews would always be pointing away from themselves and to the Lord.

Since we are to “adorn” the Gospel, these three words – “renown,” “praise,” and “glory” – are just as applicable to us.

Am I good PR for Jesus?  What do people think He is like based upon my overall presentation of Him to them?

As for praise, it’s not my praising Him but others seeing that He is praiseworthy because of what He’s done for me and wants to do for them.

“For glory” means I better not get in the way, taking any credit.  Instead there better be something supernatural about how I live, something heavenly.

We’re down-to-earth folk here in the real California, not really all that fashion conscious.  Still, each of us has our own fashion style and it makes a statement.  Start thinking about the ‘statement’ you make as an adornment, as a fashion accessory, to the Lord.  Because there, too, you are making a statement by your walk and through your talk.

#2    You Adorn The Gospel;
Don’t Do It With Pride
(v12-27)

Several times in this section the Lord points to the “pride” of His people – their sinful, selfish pride – as a root of their problem.  As we run through the remaining verses we’ll get some idea of what constitutes pride.

Jeremiah 13:12  “Therefore you shall speak to them this word: ‘Thus says the LORD God of Israel: “Every bottle shall be filled with wine.” ‘ “And they will say to you, ‘Do we not certainly know that every bottle will be filled with wine?’
Jeremiah 13:13  “Then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land – even the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem – with drunkenness!
Jeremiah 13:14  And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together,” says the LORD. “I will not pity nor spare nor have mercy, but will destroy them.” ‘ ”

“Every bottle shall be filled with wine” was a saying the Jews used to indicate that a good harvest was being gathered and thus “every bottle,” or wineskin, would be able to be filled.

The Jews would ridicule Jeremiah as if he wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know.  But the message was that the ‘harvest’ would be one of the Lord’s judgment against them.  The Babylonians would come and the Jews would be terrified and run about as if they were drunken men.

The “pride” working in their hearts was that they were living harvest-to-harvest, focusing on material things, while the spiritual was being neglected.  If our approach to life is mostly material, mostly physical, it’s pride on our part.

Jeremiah 13:15  Hear and give ear: Do not be proud, For the LORD has spoken.
Jeremiah 13:16  Give glory to the LORD your God Before He causes darkness, And before your feet stumble On the dark mountains, And while you are looking for light, He turns it into the shadow of death And makes it dense darkness.

Your walk with the Lord is depicted as an ascent along a narrow mountain path.  You need light so you don’t stumble and fall.  The “pride” here is thinking the path is much broader, with lots of detours you can indulge in along the way.  It’s not!  You need the light of His Word, His lamp at your feet.

Jeremiah 13:17  But if you will not hear it, My soul will weep in secret for your pride; My eyes will weep bitterly And run down with tears, Because the LORD’s flock has been taken captive.

Every now and again Jeremiah interjected his own feelings.  Knowing God as the Great Shepherd, he saw the Jews as the Lord’s flock “taken captive.”  In the sharing of his heart about their sad state of affairs we are reminded that, if we would adorn Jesus, we must look out upon the whole world with compassion.

Jeremiah 13:18  Say to the king and to the queen mother, “Humble yourselves; Sit down, For your rule shall collapse, the crown of your glory.”

This was a prophecy.  Both King Jehoiachin and his wife, Nehushta, would in fact be carried off as captives.  Implied is that their “rule” was bringing them “glory,” rather than bringing glory to the Lord.  Humble yourself so the Lord can be exalted.  Jesus saves – not our wisdom or talent or abilities.

Jeremiah 13:19  The cities of the South shall be shut up, And no one shall open them; Judah shall be carried away captive, all of it; It shall be wholly carried away captive.
Jeremiah 13:20  Lift up your eyes and see Those who come from the north. Where is the flock that was given to you, Your beautiful sheep?

The Jews had established fortifications in the “South” against invasion but they would not stop the advancing armies of King Nebuchadnezzar.

We try to fortify our lives; then we trust in those fortifications.  Health and wealth are the two most prominent fortifications we build.  Both of those come into play as we get to retirement age where we think we’ll have the health to enjoy the wealth we’ve managed to squirrel away.  That’s fine, as long as we don’t ignore the furthering of the kingdom along the way.  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God,” then think about things on the earth.  Otherwise it’s pride.

Jeremiah 13:21  What will you say when He punishes you? For you have taught them To be chieftains, to be head over you. Will not pangs seize you, Like a woman in labor?

The Jews were to be separate from the surrounding nations in order to express the wonder and the glory of the Lord.  Instead they adopted the disgusting practices of the surrounding nations.  In doing so, they put themselves in submission to those people and their practices because to whomever you yield yourself, to that person you become a slave.

“Like a woman in labor” is a common expression in the Old Testament to describe the unavoidable pain and suffering of God’s judgment once it falls upon you.  It’s a warning to repent before it’s too late to stop the consequences of sin.

Jeremiah 13:22  And if you say in your heart, “Why have these things come upon me?” For the greatness of your iniquity Your skirts have been uncovered, Your heels made bare.

This is a description of how a prostitute would be treated for her sins – she would be “uncovered” and “made bare.”  It describes the backslidden believer as a prostitute, pimping himself or herself out to the world when, in fact, they belong to the Lord.  Pride tells us we can serve two masters but that is never true, never possible.

Jeremiah 13:23  Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil.

The Jews were so “accustomed to do evil” that for them to change would seem as impossible as the examples given.  He was saying that, if you’re not careful and diligent, you can be come “accustomed to do evil.”

Jeremiah 13:24  “Therefore I will scatter them like stubble That passes away by the wind of the wilderness.
Jeremiah 13:25  This is your lot, The portion of your measures from Me,” says the LORD, “Because you have forgotten Me And trusted in falsehood.

“Stubble” was the broken straw separated from the wheat after the grain had been trampled out by the oxen.  Sometimes it was burned as useless; at other times left to be blown away by the wind from the desert.  The point here is that rather than bearing fruit for the Lord, their lives were really stubble.

The mention of being either fruit or “stubble” reminds me that we will all one day stand before Jesus and when we do we will want to be able to see that we built lives with precious, spiritual materials rather than the “wood, hay and stubble” of the things of this world.

Jeremiah 13:26  Therefore I will uncover your skirts over your face, That your shame may appear.
Jeremiah 13:27  I have seen your adulteries And your lustful neighings, The lewdness of your harlotry, Your abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe to you, O Jerusalem! Will you still not be made clean?”

This last figure is that of an adulteress caught and brought naked to be stoned to death.  It’s what the Law of Moses demanded.

The pride here is in thinking your sin won’t be found out; that you will get away with it.  Even if it isn’t exposed, think of what sin does to your relationship with your Lord.

God mercifully said to them, “Will you still not be made clean?”  Caught and condemned by their spiritual adultery, God was urging them to repent.  Judah was the woman caught in adultery and, like the woman caught in adultery in the Gospel of John who was brought to Jesus, forgiveness and restoration were preferable and possible.

You are the Lord’s sash.  How do you look?  Are you just as beautiful and fashionable as when first He put you on?  Or are you soiled from having picked-up so much filth from the world?

Let us adorn the ever-living God!

A Horse Is A Horse… (Jeremiah 11v18-12v17)

My favorite scene from the movie Jaws has to be when Quint and Hooper are comparing their wounds and scars, each trying to outdo the other.  At one point Sheriff Brodie lifts his shirt to reveal an appendectomy scar.  It’s funny because he realizes that what he considers suffering is so much less than his companions have experienced.

(BTW: A bit of movie trivia for you.  The scar was really Roy Scheider’s from his appendectomy).

All of us collect wounds and scars as we go through life.  Some are physical; some are emotional.  Some are worse than others.  I would respectfully say that even the worst of my scars, or yours, or anyone’s for that matter, are like an appendectomy compared to the sufferings of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

No one ever suffered as much as He did.  When you consider what it cost Him to leave Heaven for earth it puts His experience of suffering into a whole new category.  He knew isolation and loneliness more than anyone, ever.  His human experiences were those of danger, poverty, loss, obscurity, and being derided as an illegitimate son.  Let’s just summarize it by remembering Jesus was called “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.”

Of course His suffering was immense leading up to the Cross and then unfathomable upon the Cross.

We are going to suffer; it’s the human condition in a fallen world.  Jesus Christ’s greater suffering provides us a context in which to experience our own suffering.  We are told – no, we are promised – that through suffering we can experience a fellowship with Jesus that is impossible without pain.

Our tendency is to want to withdraw from suffering.  All the while Jesus is seeking to draw us deeper into the fellowship of His sufferings.

Jeremiah had a moment like that in our text.  He wanted to withdraw from his suffering; God told him He was drawing him deeper into it.

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 Your Tendency Is To Withdraw From Further Suffering, and #2 God’s Tenderness Is To Draw You Into The Fellowship Of His Sufferings.

#1    Your Tendency Is To
Withdraw From Further Suffering
(11:18 – 12:4)

God made known to Jeremiah that a plot had been devised against him.

Jeremiah 11:18  Now the LORD gave me knowledge of it, and I know it; for You showed me their doings.
Jeremiah 11:19  But I was like a docile lamb brought to the slaughter; and I did not know that they had devised schemes against me, saying, “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be remembered no more.”

The plot against Jeremiah was to “destroy the tree,” destroy him, and thereby destroy its “fruit,” referring to anyone who might be affected by his message.  It’s clear that it was a plot to kill him.
Does anyone want to murder you for the sake of the Gospel?  Probably not!  But there have been, and always will be, believers who face death simply for confessing Jesus Christ.

Jeremiah did what we tend to do when faced with a threat.  He called upon the Lord to deliver him from his enemies.

Jeremiah 11:20  But, O LORD of hosts, You who judge righteously, Testing the mind and the heart, Let me see Your vengeance on them, For to You I have revealed my cause.

Jeremiah appealed to God’s righteousness as the One who can see the hearts of all men and therefore mete out proper justice.  He may also have thought that by revealing the plot against him God was letting him know He would thwart it.  Why tell Jeremiah about it unless God was going to do something about it?

In fact, God was going to intervene:

Jeremiah 11:21  “Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the men of Anathoth who seek your life, saying, ‘Do not prophesy in the name of the LORD, lest you die by our hand’ –
Jeremiah 11:22  therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Behold, I will punish them. The young men shall die by the sword, their sons and their daughters shall die by famine;
Jeremiah 11:23  and there shall be no remnant of them, for I will bring catastrophe on the men of Anathoth, even the year of their punishment.’ ”

Alright!  Amen!  You want to plot against God’s servant, you’re messin’ with God!  Thanks, Lord.

Jeremiah got up everyday and went right to the obituaries in the local paper, looking for God to bring His judgment upon the men of Anathoth.  Day after day nothing changed.  If anything, those who were plotting to kill him were prospering all the more.  It began to concern the young prophet.

Jeremiah 12:1  Righteous are You, O LORD, when I plead with You; Yet let me talk with You about Your judgments. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously?
Jeremiah 12:2  You have planted them, yes, they have taken root; They grow, yes, they bear fruit. You are near in their mouth But far from their mind.
Jeremiah 12:3  But You, O LORD, know me; You have seen me, And You have tested my heart toward You. Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, And prepare them for the day of slaughter.
Jeremiah 12:4  How long will the land mourn, And the herbs of every field wither? The beasts and birds are consumed, For the wickedness of those who dwell there, Because they said, “He will not see our final end.”

Jeremiah expressed a common confusion that we all, at one time or another, will have.  Since God is “righteous,” why do the wicked seem to “prosper” and why are they so “happy” while, in the mean time, God’s own servants suffer at their hands?

One theologian said,  “the fact of suffering undoubtedly constitutes the single greatest challenge to the Christian faith.”

A whole branch of theology, called theodicy, is dedicated to defending both God’s love and His omnipotence in view of human suffering.

I may be naive when it comes to the subject but I don’t think the answer is all that hard.  It’s captured in one small word: Sin.  Because our first parents chose to sin, humanity fell and with it suffering of all sorts entered God’s creation.

Jeremiah, however, wasn’t looking for the big-picture answer.  He wanted to comprehend how God could allow him to suffer, right then, and let the wicked who plotted against him prosper.

C.S. Lewis, who’s attempt at theodicy is articulated in a book called The Problem of Pain, made this insightful statement:  “You would like to know how I behave when I am experiencing pain, not writing books about it. You need not guess for I will tell you; I am a great coward.”

We are all “great cowards” with respect to the problem of our personal pain.  I say that with compassion, not as a rebuke.  Suffering hurts!  It wounds; it scars.  It is made so much worse when we look around and see the nonbeliever, even the wicked nonbeliever, prosper and experience happiness.

God told Jeremiah He would, in fact, deal with the men of Anathoth, who plotted against him.  God just didn’t tell Jeremiah when He was going to do it; nor did He promise to deliver Jeremiah from out of their hands.

Therein lies the real issue we struggle with.  Why doesn’t God deliver me when it’s clear He loves me?

It’s because getting delivered from our suffering is not as valuable in the long run as enduring it with the Lord.  Corrie ten Boom, no stranger to intense suffering, once said, “you’ll never know that Jesus is all you need, until Jesus is all you have.”  Thus in our fallen world God has chosen to use suffering to our advantage.

#2    God’s Tenderness Is To
Draw You Into The Fellowship Of His Sufferings
(12:5-17)

God’s answer to Jeremiah was to reveal to him that He, too, suffered along with His prophet.  But before God told Jeremiah about it, He told him that things were about to get worse.

Jeremiah 12:5  “If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, Then how can you contend with horses? And if in the land of peace, In which you trusted, they wearied you, Then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan?
Jeremiah 12:6  For even your brothers, the house of your father, Even they have dealt treacherously with you; Yes, they have called a multitude after you. Do not believe them, Even though they speak smooth words to you.

It wasn’t just the men of Anathoth who were plotting against the prophet.  His own family wanted him dead.  That’s intense.

The Lord compared Jeremiah’s present suffering to a race and to a journey.

If he thought “run[ning] with the footmen” was difficult, wait until he shortly was called upon to “contend with horses.”
If Jeremiah thought walking through “the land of peace” was dangerous, just wait until it was more like “the floodplain of the Jordan.”

In plain language God was telling His faithful servant that this was just the beginning of his suffering.  Things were going to get much worse.

There is something to notice in the projected sufferings.  There is a promise.  It’s easy to overlook because all you hear is, “there’s more suffering coming.”

Jeremiah would, in fact, be empowered to “contend with horses,” and to journey through “the floodplain.”  There would become something rare, something supernatural, about him as he endured his sufferings.

In the Bible it’s described as sharing in the fellowship of Jesus Christ’s suffering.  The apostle Paul, himself no stranger to suffering, said,  “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11).

There is both empowering and intimacy in shared experiences.  It’s why people are attracted to, and helped by, joining groups where the other members have had similar experiences.

In walking with the Lord, if you want to experience empowering by Him and intimacy with Him, you must have shared experiences of suffering.  As I indicated earlier, all of your suffering, in total, will never be much more than an appendectomy scar compared to what Jesus suffered for you; but it is nevertheless real suffering and He will be with you in it and through it.

Let me put it another way.  No one is going to look at you and think something other-worldly, something supernatural, is going on if you only run against other footmen and if your journey is easy in a land of peace.  The Lord, therefore, uses the fallen world in which we find ourselves until His return to highlight what a life can be like dedicated to sharing in the fellowship of His sufferings.

Here is another angle to consider.  When you look back upon your Christian life, are you going to be content to say it was a race against footmen?  That it was lived carefully and comfortably in your own strength?  That you were always trying to maintain a quiet peace rather than accept any challenges?  Don’t you want to look back and see God empowering you to live beyond your natural talents and abilities?  Of course you do!

In the remaining verses God describes His own sufferings at the hands of His disobedient people.  He reveals a tenderness, a vulnerability even, of being hurt by them.

Jeremiah 12:7  “I have forsaken My house, I have left My heritage; I have given the dearly beloved of My soul into the hand of her enemies.
Jeremiah 12:8  My heritage is to Me like a lion in the forest; It cries out against Me; Therefore I have hated it.
Jeremiah 12:9  My heritage is to Me like a speckled vulture; The vultures all around are against her. Come, assemble all the beasts of the field, Bring them to devour!
Jeremiah 12:10  “Many rulers have destroyed My vineyard, They have trodden My portion underfoot; They have made My pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.

God employed three figures to describe His hurt at the hands of His beloved nation:

They had become like a “lion” encountered in the “forest.”  They “cried out against” God.  They provoked Him by their sin and, so, He must “hate” them – meaning He must treat them according to their sin.
Judah was like an odd-colored bird which other birds would therefore pick apart.  This was a reference to the fact that because they did not represent God to the other nations but, instead, fell in to sin with them, God would use nations to discipline them.
Judah was a vineyard – God’s vineyard – but they had allowed themselves to be breeched and trampled down and destroyed.

God was describing His grief, His suffering, brought about by Judah’s sin.  It would bring Him no pleasure to judge them.

God’s discipline would eventually restore them to a relationship with Him.

Jeremiah 12:14  Thus says the LORD: “Against all My evil neighbors who touch the inheritance which I have caused My people Israel to inherit – behold, I will pluck them out of their land and pluck out the house of Judah from among them.
Jeremiah 12:15  Then it shall be, after I have plucked them out, that I will return and have compassion on them and bring them back, everyone to his heritage and everyone to his land.
Jeremiah 12:16  And it shall be, if they will learn carefully the ways of My people, to swear by My name, ‘As the LORD lives,’ as they taught My people to swear by Baal, then they shall be established in the midst of My people.
Jeremiah 12:17  But if they do not obey, I will utterly pluck up and destroy that nation,” says the LORD.

God plans long-term.  His unconditional promises to the nation of Israel through Abraham and David cannot ultimately be thwarted.  Though the devil will keep trying to kill and destroy right until the moment he is cast alive into the Lake of Fire, God will prevail.

Mean time, lots of suffering is on tap for the world, including for you as God’s beloved saint.  At the beginning of his career as a Christian, Jesus said of the apostle Paul, “…he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel.  For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Acts 9:14-16).

James, in his letter, told us, “my brethren, take the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an example of suffering and patience. Indeed we count them blessed who endure” (James 5:10-11).

Paul was clear and to the point when he told young Pastor Timothy, “… all who desire to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution (Second Timothy 3:12).

Whatever your ‘theodicy,’ your argument for how an omnipotent God of love can nevertheless allow suffering, your suffering is that you may know Jesus and the fellowship of His sufferings and the power of His resurrection.

The shared experience of suffering with Him that causes intimacy and produces empowering.

Think of it like this.  In some suffering you have experienced, were you not helped by sharing it with someone who could understand your pain, having gone through it themselves?  Or if you, sadly, could not find such a person, did you not desire one to share your experience?

That Person is Jesus – Who endured pain and suffering on an unfathomable level for you.  Let Him bring you through your pain in a way that you see it no longer as the problem of pain but as the promise of pain that will empower you to contend with horses and journey through the flood plain to the glory of God.

It’s A Whole New Baal Game (Jeremiah 11v1-17)

From the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.  From Roswell, New Mexico, to Nasa’s moon landings. Every major event of the last 2,000 years has prompted a conspiracy theory.

That’s the opening paragraph of a series of articles by The Telegraph, a United Kingdom publication, called “The 30 Greatest Conspiracy Theories.”  Their list includes things as serious as September 11th and as curious as whether or not Paul was dead.

There was a conspiracy – a real one – in sixth century Judah.  It’s mentioned in verse nine of our text where we read, “a conspiracy has been found among the men of Judah and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem.”

What was it?  Twice we are told that the Jews were “offering incense to Baal” (v13 & 17).  We might call it ‘the Baal Conspiracy.’

Not everyone was involved, however.  Jeremiah was going against the flow.  For his part he was involved in a resurgence of reading and preaching God’s Word.
I may sound like a crazed conspiracy theorist for saying this, but Baal is still with us today.  As we work through these verses we’ll see two things: #1 You Can Get Into A Bible Resurgency, or #2 You Can Give In To A Baal Conspiracy.

#1    You Can Get Into
    A Bible Resurgency
    (v1-8)

The word “covenant” is repeated five times in the first eight verses.  It’s referring to the discovery of a portion of God’s Word by the high priest, Hilkiah, when repairs were being made to the Temple at Jerusalem.

According to Deuteronomy 31:24-27, there was to be a copy of this Book of the Law beside the ark of the covenant.  But it had been forgotten, neglected, lost as it were.  Rediscovered by Hilkiah, he gave it to Shaphan the scribe who took it to, and read it to, King Josiah.

Josiah was struck with grief and terror, certain that the LORD was furious with him and his people for their disobedience.  Immediately Josiah set upon a program to eliminate pagan worship and obey the ancient covenant of the LORD.  He toured the land, destroying pagan shrines, and he celebrated the Passover for the first time in decades.

Jeremiah was excited about the resurgency of the Word of God.  He went around on assignment from God urging his countrymen to heed the Word they were hearing.

Jeremiah 11:1  The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,
Jeremiah 11:2  “Hear the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem;
Jeremiah 11:3  and say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD God of Israel: “Cursed is the man who does not obey the words of this covenant
Jeremiah 11:4  which I commanded your fathers in the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and do according to all that I command you; so shall you be My people, and I will be your God,’
Jeremiah 11:5  that I may establish the oath which I have sworn to your fathers, to give them ‘a land flowing with milk and honey,’ as it is this day.” ‘ ” And I answered and said, “So be it, LORD.”

Scholars mostly agree that what was rediscovered in the Temple was a portion of the Book of Deuteronomy – the portion that reiterated the covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai when He delivered the Jews from 400 years of slavery to Egypt.

It was a conditional covenant in that God promised material and physical blessings for obedience but warned of cursing and judgment for disobedience.

The Jews had voluntarily accepted the conditional terms, both for themselves and their future offspring.  It was binding on the Jews throughout their generations.

Jeremiah 11:6  Then the LORD said to me, “Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying: ‘Hear the words of this covenant and do them.

Jeremiah was to go on tour “proclaim[ing]” the Word of God and then end his reading of it with an exhortation for the people to heed it.

Anytime you read the Word, there ought to be the expectation that it will not return void but instead accomplish mighty things in and through the hearers.  At the same time there is often the experience that very little actual change occurs in the hearers.  The fault cannot be with the Word, since it is alive and powerful to the saving of the soul.  There must be a dullness or a defiance in the hearers, therefore, when a person can listen but walk away unchanged, unchallenged.

The Jews had a history of walking away unchanged and unchallenged.

Jeremiah 11:7  For I earnestly exhorted your fathers in the day I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, until this day, rising early and exhorting, saying, “Obey My voice.”
Jeremiah 11:8  Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but everyone followed the dictates of his evil heart; therefore I will bring upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but which they have not done.’ ”

God reveals Himself as being “earnest” and “early” in “exhorting” us.

One possible translation of “earnest” is diligent.  God is diligent to instruct us from His Word.  There are many possible examples I could use.  For instance, have you ever gone through a day or a week and had the experience of hearing the same passage read or taught by different means?  You might read it in your devotions, then hear it in church, then again on the radio.  It is God being diligent to reach your heart with His Word.
God is “early.”  The word comes from a root word that would be used to describe loading-up your donkey first thing in the morning to get a head start on the journey for that day.  It indicates that God has, each day, a “load” for you to carry.  He doesn’t just load you up, however.  Remember Jesus said that He would be your yokefellow, shouldering the load with you, and that His load each day (His “burden”) would therefore be “light.”
God “exhorts” us.  It’s a complicated word whose root means to duplicate or to repeat but it’s come to mean to warn.  In other words, God makes Himself clear to us by repetition, warning us for our own good.  As Mark Twain was quoted as saying, “It isn’t the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that bother me.  It’s the parts that I do understand.”

All we need, according to verse eight, is an “ear.”  But it must be an “ear” that is “incline[d]” to “obey” what is heard.

The Jews in Judah and Jerusalem heard with their ears but instead “followed the dictates of [their] evil heart[s].”  They listened to their own hearts rather than hearing God’s heart expressed through the Word He spoke to them.

We need ears to hear.  How do I develop ears to hear?  Well, your spiritual ears, or we might say your heart, can only be opened by the Word of God, but it seems it must be the Word of God that you act upon.  The more you hear and actually heed, the more you will hear… and the more you will heed!

You hear something from the Lord, through reading or listening to His Word.  He’s enabling you to do something or to stop doing something.  If you obey, He shares more of His heart.
If you don’t obey, He keeps repeating Himself – for your good.  If God seems indifferent, distant, uninvolved, He’s not.  He is always earnest and early to exhort you.  But you must respond to His exhortation with obedience.

Jeremiah experienced a resurgence in the Word.  He was hearing it fresh.  So can we!

God has been talking to you this week.  He’s talking to you right now.  What’s He saying?  Hear it, then heed it.  If what He’s directing or asking seems a burden, it’s not because His “burden” is light.

#2    You Can Give In To
    A Baal Conspiracy
    (v9-17)

Burning incense to the Canaanite god, Baal, figures prominently in the remaining verses.  Interesting thing about Baal.  It seems that it was a catch-all name, or title, for a number of deities.  Baal derives from a word meaning master.  Baal wasn’t one particular god or idol; it was the name a culture gave their particular god or idol because he was supposedly their “master.”

This opens up our understanding of how, today, we are still be affected by Baal even though we don’t call it that or have a particular idol representing it.  Whoever or whatever we yield ourselves to as a “master,” if it isn’t Jesus Christ, becomes our Baal.  It can be a passion, or a possession, or a person.  But whoever or whatever it is, it is Baal.

And it is a conspiracy in that the devil is the one who started us thinking that we could get out from under God as our master.  He told Eve, who sold Adam on the idea, that we each could be as god.  In other words, we didn’t need God as our master but could be our own masters.  That lie plunged all of creation into the fall.

How do you know if you’re part of a Baal conspiracy?  Well, for sure if you are sinning you are a conspirator.  You’ve decided to let some other person or passion or possession be your master instead of God.
Perhaps you are in love.  But is it a biblical love?  Is it a relationship, for example, with a nonbeliever?  Then it is Baal for you – because God, as master, warns you against it in His Word but you are ignoring Him and following the dictates of your own heart.

Something seemingly ‘good’ can take the place of God – even something you do supposedly for Him and in His name.  In my own orbit I’ve seen a lot of guys become mastered by the ministry and sacrifice their families along the way.

Let’s see what more we can glean from the remaining verses.

Jeremiah 11:9  And the LORD said to me, “A conspiracy has been found among the men of Judah and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah 11:10  They have turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers who refused to hear My words, and they have gone after other gods to serve them; the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken My covenant which I made with their fathers.”

You’d think the Jews in Judah would have learned from looking at the history of Israel.  Why didn’t they?

Well, first of all, the human heart has a tremendous capacity for deception.
In the case of Judah, part of their Baal conspiracy was the lie that God would protect the Temple and His city from ruin.

Second of all, if we have Baal in our lives we always think it is subordinate to God so it’s not that big a deal.  In other words, as long as God is our master passion we think we can harbor other mini-passions even if they are contrary to Him and to His Word.

Jeremiah 11:11  Therefore thus says the LORD: “Behold, I will surely bring calamity on them which they will not be able to escape; and though they cry out to Me, I will not listen to them.
Jeremiah 11:12  Then the cities of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem will go and cry out to the gods to whom they offer incense, but they will not save them at all in the time of their trouble.

It initially seems disturbing that though the people “cry out,” God “will not listen to them.”  The context shows that though they cry out, they were refusing to repent.  They expected God to help them while they continued in disobedience.

Jeremiah 11:13  For according to the number of your cities were your gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem you have set up altars to that shameful thing, altars to burn incense to Baal.

They served many gods but God considered them all “Baal” because the Jews had given themselves over to them as masters.

Jeremiah 11:14  “So do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them; for I will not hear them in the time that they cry out to Me because of their trouble.

God would not “hear” them doesn’t mean He didn’t hear them; of course He did.  He was ‘hearing’ them the way they chose to ‘hear’ Him.  They heard but refused to heed and so did God hear them and refuse to heed.

All they needed to do was repent.  But they wanted to continue to serve two or more masters – God and whatever else their hearts were set upon.

I offer as an illustration marital love.  Do you want to share the person you love with all your heart with a third person?  Unless you are a polygamist, the answer is, “Of course not!”

God has loved you with an everlasting love from eternity through eternity.  He will not share you, especially not with some other master that will only deceive and destroy you.  He can’t share you and really be a God of love.  He must be jealous for you; and He must act upon His jealousy to retrieve you – from yourself if necessary.

Listen to God’s tenderness in the next two verses.

Jeremiah 11:15  “What has My beloved to do in My house, Having done lewd deeds with many? And the holy flesh has passed from you. When you do evil, then you rejoice.
Jeremiah 11:16  The LORD called your name, Green Olive Tree, Lovely and of Good Fruit. With the noise of a great tumult He has kindled fire on it, And its branches are broken.

God employed two illustrations.
First He illustrated His love for Judah as that of a faithful husband with a whoring wife.  “Holy flesh” is a reference to their sacrifices in the Temple.  They kept making them, kept outwardly the rituals of Judaism; but they also worshipped “evil.”
Second He illustrated His care and plan for Judah as that of an olive tree He had planted and was constantly tending in order to bring forth abundant fruit.  Instead He must break-off its branches and burn it down, seeing it produced no fruit.

Jeremiah 11:17  “For the LORD of hosts, who planted you, has pronounced doom against you for the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have done against themselves to provoke Me to anger in offering incense to Baal.”

“Offering incense to Baal” was the outward expression of their inward disposition to serve two masters – God and something else.

Jesus once said,

Matthew 6:24  “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other…

The apostle Paul said,

Romans 6:16  Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?

There exists, still, a Baal conspiracy.  Satan’s lie, that we can be as God, reverberates in our flesh and is fueled by the world around us.

It’s not the only voice we hear, however.  God is speaking – constantly speaking – through His Word.  He is revealing Himself as our Master with nothing but the best intentions for bringing us to completion as His special projects.

The Word is available to us.  We hear it.  Let’s heed it – all of it – and let God be Master.

Back To The Paddle Again (Jeremiah 10v17-25)

Times have changed when it comes to disciplining children.

Back in my day every teacher hung a paddle on his or her classroom wall and used it on us when we were unruly.  Nearly every parent supported corporal punishment.

That was then and this is now.  Corporal punishment of children in schools has been banned in thirty-one states.  It’s well on its way to being banned in the remaining nineteen states.

An international organization, the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, reports that thirty-two countries prohibit all corporal punishment of children in all settings, including your home.  Supreme Courts in two other countries – Italy and Nepal – have ruled that corporal punishment in child raising is unlawful.  At least twenty-three additional countries are actively debating prohibition in their legislatures.  The Council of Europe has launched a campaign to ban corporal punishment of children in all its forty-seven member states.

Truth is, even among Christians whose literal reading of the Bible is to spare not the rod, corporal punishment of children is becoming infrequent.

I don’t want to get into an argument about the corporal punishment of children.  I only presented facts to verify that it is vanishing in order to say this.  A generation of people have grown up with no experience or example of corporal punishment and therefore they do not respect God as someone Who disciplines His own sons and daughters.

If they are disobedient they think God might ‘yell’ at them through the Bible, or give them a time-out, but that’s about all.

Listen to these verses from the Book of Hebrews.

Hebrews 12:5  And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: “MY SON, DO NOT DESPISE THE CHASTENING OF THE LORD, NOR BE DISCOURAGED WHEN YOU ARE REBUKED BY HIM;
Hebrews 12:6  FOR WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE CHASTENS, AND SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.”

The Lord still “chastens” and “scourges” His followers, and He does it because He love them.  He does it because He loves you.

Jeremiah understood that the Lord disciplines those He loves.  Our text describes His severe discipline of Judah.  It does something else, though.  It describes God as a disciplinarian; i.e., it reveals the heart behind discipline.

We’ll ask ourselves two questions: #1 Are You Submitting Your Heart To God’s Discipline?, and #2 Are You Seeing God’s Heart As Your Disciplinarian?

#1    Are You Submitting Your Heart
    To God’s Discipline?
    (v17-19)

Judah was sinning and they wouldn’t quit.  God must discipline them.  Since God was dealing with them as a nation, He would use another nation as His rod of discipline – as His ‘paddle.’
Jeremiah 10:17  Gather up your wares from the land, O inhabitant of the fortress!
Jeremiah 10:18  For thus says the LORD: “Behold, I will throw out at this time The inhabitants of the land, And will distress them, That they may find it so.”

In other words, grab anything of value and flee to the “fortress” of Jerusalem, because an enemy was coming to “throw out the inhabitants” of the land surrounding the city.  Those huddled behind its walls would finally realize (“find it so”) that they were in “distress.”

This is like a parent saying, “If you don’t stop doing such-and-such, you’re going to get a spanking.”  Then, when the disobedient child continues to rebel, the parent says, “Go to your room and wait for your spanking.”

Regardless whether or not you spank your children, you discipline them in some fashion because you love them and for their own good.  The chapter in Hebrews we quoted from earlier goes on to say, “no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Discipline isn’t simply good for you.  It proves something.  Do you realize that discipline proves you are a son or daughter who is loved by your Father in Heaven?  Jeremiah did and he said,

Jeremiah 10:19  Woe is me for my hurt! My wound is severe. But I say, “Truly this is an infirmity, And I must bear it.”

Jeremiah called God’s discipline “my hurt” and a “severe” “wound.”  The Babylonians would come against Judah in three waves over a twenty year period, in 605BC, 597BC, and 586BC.  It was in the first invasion that Daniel and his three friends were taken.  Ezekiel was among those taken in the second wave.   In the final wave Nebuchadnezzar’s army would set fire to the royal palace, to the Temple, and all the houses.  They broke down the walls around Jerusalem and took most of the people into exile back to Babylon.

Do we think it was excessive?  Remember, God was disciplining a nation and He decided to use another nation as His rod.

Jeremiah, who would live through it, did not think it excessive.   Or, if he did, he put it into perspective.  He said it was an “infirmity, And I must bear it.”

The word translated “infirmity” comes from a root word that can mean put to pain or be wounded.  I believe Jeremiah was using it to describe the pain of the discipline.  This was a swat that would definitely sting!

(I guess you could also call it a ‘time-out,’ because the Jews would be in Babylon and subject to that government for the next seventy years).

More importantly was Jeremiah’s assessment, “I must bear it.”  In other words, he must submit to it because it was an appropriate discipline for their sin, disobedience, and rebellion against God.

God disciplines His children, whom He loves.  Exactly when and how He does it is sometimes hard to figure.  For example, every sickness is not a discipline, but God can afflict you as a discipline.

Likewise, when tragedy strikes, we must not assume that it can be traced to some specific sins or failures.  God puts some of His most obedient children through the severest trials.

Then, too, we sometimes see a believer living in willful, deliberate, blatant rebellion and God seems to do nothing about it.

God is always at work disciplining.  For example.  Discipline can be preventive.  God can bring something into our lives, or withhold something from us, to keep us from harm.  Preventive discipline is to be preferred to getting something that will lead to the ruin or wreckage of our lives.

The apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” is a biblical example of a preventive discipline.

God can, and does, mete out what scholars call retributive discipline.  That means it comes upon us to deal with specific sin or sins.  Jonah is a good example.  He ended up in the belly of a great fish as retribution for the specific sin of disobeying God’s command to go to Nineveh and preach to the Assyrians.

In the end, unless I know I am in sin, I cannot always be sure whether I am subject to preventive or retributive discipline.  If I know I am in sin, I cannot always understand God’s timing in my discipline.  His lack of immediate retribution doesn’t mean I am getting away with anything.

This is where Jeremiah’s words, “I must bear it,” apply.  I simply submit myself to God, to every circumstance He brings into my life.  If it’s a trial it can only strengthen my faith.  If it’s His discipline it will either keep me on the narrow road or it will get me back on it.

Are you living in sin today?  Then repent!

If you are not living in sin, then think about the situation you find yourself in.  Maybe it is severe; maybe you feel wounded and hurt.  Can you say, “I must bear it?”

That’s the place you want to be in your heart and mind as God works all things together for the good.  He’s your good heavenly Father Who sees all things and has a wonderful plan He’s working out for your life.  But that plan is to make you more and more like Jesus and it must involve suffering and sacrifice along the way.

#2    Are You Seeing God’s Heart
    As Your Disciplinarian?
    (v20-25)

It seems that the Book of Jeremiah is all about Judah’s sin and God’s wrath, His judgment.  But there is also His compassion, His love.  One thing we’ve been trying to accomplish in our studies through Jeremiah is to show something of the heart, of the nature, of God.

The next few verses show something about God’s heart as your disciplinarian.  It gives us some of the “why?” He disciplines.  For one thing, it is to get you back to a place where He can actively bless you.

Jeremiah 10:20  My tent is plundered, And all my cords are broken; My children have gone from me, And they are no more. There is no one to pitch my tent anymore, Or set up my curtains.

This seems to be God talking.  As the Jews continue to sin, and the destruction of their city and Temple approaches as their discipline, God was remembering back to the days when there was no Temple, only the Tabernacle.  In those days He would move and the people would disassemble the “tent,” the Tabernacle, and move with Him.  He would stop and they would stop and erect the Tabernacle and worship Him.

God was thinking back to their ancestors and lamenting what the current generation of Jews had lost.  Oh, they had a beautiful, walled city and a grand Temple – Solomon’s Temple.  But in many ways they had been better off as a less settled people with the Tabernacle.

What God was lamenting was that they had lost the desire to worship and serve Him.

You were created to worship and to serve.  That’s not a bad thing until you determine to worship and serve self rather than God.  Then you lose your humanity, your meaning, your purpose, your joy.

God disciplines His followers to return them to their proper worship and service.

Jeremiah 10:21  For the shepherds have become dull-hearted, And have not sought the LORD; Therefore they shall not prosper, And all their flocks shall be scattered.

The “shepherds” here is a reference to the leaders of God’s earthly people.  He saw His followers as sheep, and He saw Himself as their Great Shepherd and their leaders as mere under-shepherds.

The point of this is that God has tender care for you.  He thinks of you the way a Good Shepherd thinks of His sheep.  When you sin, you are like a lost sheep, in grave danger – whether you know it or not.  He comes after you!  His discipline is intended to restore you to the safety and protection and provision of the flock.  That’s the ‘heart’ behind it.
Jeremiah 10:22  Behold, the noise of the report has come, And a great commotion out of the north country, To make the cities of Judah desolate, a den of jackals.

Jeremiah said that “the noise of the report has come.”  In other words, there was advance notice giving opportunity to repent.  I mentioned that the invasion of Judah by Babylon came in three waves.  I would add that Jeremiah warned the Jews for almost forty years to repent.  It’s like a parent counting to a million instead of to three or ten before meting out a swat.

As a disciplinarian, God is more than fair; He is gracious.

Jeremiah 10:23  O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself; It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.

If God disciplines, it is only, always for our good, to “direct our steps” in such a way as to help us spiritually, never to hinder us.

God is looking ahead.  He sees what you will become.  If you could see it, you’d want to cooperate.  But sometimes we ‘see’ other things, ungodly things, that detour us.  So God works through discipline to move us forward.

Jeremiah 10:24  O LORD, correct me, but with justice; Not in Your anger, lest You bring me to nothing.
Jeremiah 10:25  Pour out Your fury on the Gentiles, who do not know You, And on the families who do not call on Your name; For they have eaten up Jacob, Devoured him and consumed him, And made his dwelling place desolate.

The great realization in these verses is that God deals differently with His children than with nonbelievers.  He “corrects” you.  As we’ve said, His discipline in your life proves He loves you, proves He is in a special relationship with you, proves you are a son or daughter of His.

Eventually God will judge, not discipline, nonbelievers – here called “the Gentiles who do not know [God].”  He will hold them especially accountable for what they did to His own special people.

God’s disciplines can be severe.  One very severe form we see in the Bible is premature death.  For example.  Some believers in the church at Corinth were approaching the Lord’s Supper in a sinful manner.

1 Corinthians 11:30  For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.

“Sleep,” in this context, means “die.”  Their sin was bringing a discipline of premature death.

The apostle John wrote that we as believers should pray for those whose sin does not lead them to death.  But then he also added, “There is a sin leading to death; I do not say that he should make a request for this” (First John 5:16).  The “sin unto death” is probably not a specific sin, but a certain kind of sin that is so severe that it merits the physical death of the individual.

We have no idea how many people have died prematurely as a discipline from God.  But neither should we speculate.

Again I emphasize that it can be very difficult to determine when what is happening in my life is a preventive discipline.  It’s not so hard to determine what is a retributive discipline, if I know I am in sin.  But even then God works in ways, and has a timing, that I cannot predict.

In the end I must trust and know that “whom the Lord loves, He disciplines.”  For my part “I must bear it” – and I would add, “I must bear it joyfully,” rejoicing I am His child and that He takes the time to discipline me.

MetallicApostate (Jeremiah 10v1-16)

What kind of a terrible father would name his son “Sue” only to abandon him?

That’s the psychosocial dilemma Johnny Cash explored in his 1969 recording, A Boy Named Sue.

After suffering ridicule and harassment everywhere he goes, Sue eventually locates his father at a Gatlinburg, Tennessee tavern and confronts him by saying, “My name is Sue! How do you do? Now you’re gonna die!”  This results in a vicious brawl that spills outdoors into a muddy street.  After the two have beaten each other almost senseless, Sue’s father explains that the name was given for his own good, as an act of love.  Because Sue’s father knew that he would not be there for his son, he gave him the name to make sure that he grew up strong.

Sue forgives his father and they reconcile.  With his lesson learned, Sue closes the song with a promise to name his son “Bill or George, anything but Sue! I still hate that name!”

Sixth century Judah would be overrun by the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar.  The Jews would be exiled in Babylon for seventy long years.  Why would a loving heavenly Father treat His sons and daughters that way?

It was for their own good as an act of love!

We rarely consider all the good that came out of the Babylonian exile.  By its end the Jews repented of their sins and returned in their hearts to the Lord.  But there were other significant spiritual benefits:

They became purely monotheistic, giving up idolatry completely.
They became a separate people who did not want to become like their neighbors ever again.
During this time God placed a longing for the coming of the Messiah in their hearts.

The benefits of being in Babylon got me thinking about our own situation as believers.  In one of his letters the apostle Peter greeted his readers from “Babylon.”  He may have been in Babylon, but a lot of commentators think he was referring to the world in general as ‘Babylon’ in a figurative sense.  By that reasoning, anywhere you are is ‘Babylon.’  And anywhere you are is a place where your loving heavenly Father is doing a work in you.

I’m going to approach this text as if we are exiles in ‘Babylon’ learning an important lesson about our Father in Heaven.  I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 You See How Futile It Is To Make A ‘god,’ and #2 You See How Faithful God Is To Make A Man.

#1    You See How Futile It Is
    To Make A ‘god’
    (v1-10)

“Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural beings, of which 2,870 can be considered deities.  Those numbers are probably a very conservative estimate because we have no accurate information before 4000BC.”
Mankind likes to make gods!  We are prone to idolatry.  Although stone and wooden idols are one representation of a god and one form of idolatry, a person does not need to bow down before them to be an idolater.  For example, “covetousness” is said to be idolatry in Colossians 3:5, and in First Timothy 6:10 we’re told that the “love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

Whether it is represented by some physical object or not, idolatry is still practiced as mankind puts power or pleasure or possessions in the place of God in their lives.

Our text doesn’t rebuke you for idolatry.  It takes a different approach.  It’s a satire about idolatry.  It shows you the stupidity of it!

Jeremiah 10:1  Hear the word which the LORD speaks to you, O house of Israel.
Jeremiah 10:2  Thus says the LORD: “Do not learn the way of the Gentiles; Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, For the Gentiles are dismayed at them.

Think of this as a warning to the Jews to remember when they found themselves captive in Babylon.  One of the things Babylon was noted for, one of her “ways,” was astrology – “the signs of heaven.”  They were pretty good at it, or at least renowned for it.  The Magi who followed the star that led them to Jesus were Babylonian astrologers.

One reason to not learn “the way of the Gentiles,” of nonbelievers, is that regardless their much knowledge, they are left “dismayed.”  It means terrified.  Most of the explanations of the universe that philosophers and scientists have suggested are simply terrifying.  Ignore or remove the God of the Bible and you are left with a random, cruel universe in which the survival of the fittest is the prevailing rule.  There would be no basis, not really, for morality and justice.  There would be no standard for government or laws.

To put it another way, without God there can be no peace – not with other men or within your heart.  “Dismayed” is the nicest way we could state all that, and it’s quite an understatement.

Even though exiled, the individual Jew would know that his or her life had purpose and meaning.  They would know there was a flow of history and that God was providentially overseeing it to bring about His promised end.

The Bible provides the only worldview that makes perfect sense and that can satisfy the longings of our heart for answers to life’s most difficult questions and circumstances.

Jeremiah 10:3  For the customs of the peoples are futile; For one cuts a tree from the forest, The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax.
Jeremiah 10:4  They decorate it with silver and gold; They fasten it with nails and hammers So that it will not topple.
Jeremiah 10:5  They are upright, like a palm tree, And they cannot speak; They must be carried, Because they cannot go by themselves. Do not be afraid of them, For they cannot do evil, Nor can they do any good.”

Men fashion physical objects to represent their gods.  It’s stupid.  First of all, it’s made by a man.  If you can make your own god then you are more powerful that it is.

Beyond that, it’s ugly, needing to be decorated.  It needs to be propped-up.  And it can’t communicate.

It’s hard for us to see our idolatry when we are covetous of power or pleasure or possessions.  We don’t literally bow down before idols and worship them.  But these, too, are represented by objects we make.

Generally speaking, the wealthy represent their wealth with objects that are more expensive and more elaborate to communicate their status.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful some representation is; it’s made from commonplace materials.  It’s just decorated better by the metalsmiths.  While I agree that a Ferrari is an amazing automobile, it is essentially no different from my Scion xb.  Still, one is a status symbol, communicating an interest in power, pleasure and possessions while the other is a clown car!

Jeremiah 10:7  Who would not fear You, O King of the nations? For this is Your rightful due. For among all the wise men of the nations, And in all their kingdoms, There is none like You.
The Jews in the midst of all that idolatry in Babylon would have a relationship with the “King of the nations.”  They would understand His “rightful due” was to be feared, to be reverenced.  Though held in exile, the Jews would remain at the center of God’s plan for the ages.  You could successfully argue that there wouldn’t have been a Babylonian Empire unless God had needed a nation to discipline His wandering children.

Jeremiah 10:8  But they are altogether dull-hearted and foolish; A wooden idol is a worthless doctrine.
Jeremiah 10:9  Silver is beaten into plates; It is brought from Tarshish, And gold from Uphaz, The work of the craftsman And of the hands of the metalsmith; Blue and purple are their clothing; They are all the work of skillful men.
Jeremiah 10:10  But the LORD is the true God; He is the living God and the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth will tremble, And the nations will not be able to endure His indignation.

The very finest “silver” and the very finest “gold” in the hands of the world’s greatest “metalsmith” enhanced by the very finest fabric woven by the most “skillful” designers cannot substitute for a relationship with the living God.  My mythical Ferrari could be described that way; it remains an object that will break down and become obsolete.

You can and should enjoy good things.  God is not opposed to beauty or art or literature or architecture or any of those things.  But read the Book of Ecclesiastes to understand that all those things, everything, is vanity if pursued apart from God.

I said earlier that this wasn’t a rebuke for idolatry.  It’s a revelation of how dumb it is to be drawn away by the things of the world.  Look at a nonbeliever and what he or she idolizes and you see ‘dumb and dumber’ – the idol is dumb but certainly someone who props it up, who seeks after it, must be dumber still.

#2    You See How Faithful God Is
    To Make A Man
    (v11-16)

The Jews would be exiled; they would be held captive.  It looked as though Babylon had the power, did it not?
Not at all!  My favorite illustration for this kind of thing is the story of Phillip and the Ethiopian eunuch.  From the world’s point of view, the Ethiopian had wealth, power and authority.  Phillip was an itinerant minister sitting by the side of the road, homeless for all practical purposes.  But as the story unfolds, who has the real wealth?  Who has the real power?  Who has the real authority?  It’s the child of God who is led by the Holy Spirit to share the treasure of the Gospel with all the authority of Heaven.

We must quit looking at things – especially our own lives – from a purely earthly, temporal perspective.  We are eternal beings and God is working in us and on us to mold us and shape us into the image of something awesome and wonderful.

Jeremiah 10:11  Thus you shall say to them: “The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens.”

Do you remember when it was popular for Christians to say, “it’s all going to burn?”  I haven’t said or heard that in a while.  It means that everything the world has to offer is going one day to be burned away; it will be gone.

That is our message to those who, though they seem wealthy and powerful, are really “dismayed” because there is eternity in their hearts and they cannot be satisfied by anything other than God.

Jeremiah 10:12  He has made the earth by His power, He has established the world by His wisdom, And has stretched out the heavens at His discretion.
Jeremiah 10:13  When He utters His voice, There is a multitude of waters in the heavens: “And He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, He brings the wind out of His treasuries.”

Theologians and pastors debate the extent to which you can know God through His creation.  One thing is clear: You can know there is a God!  And, knowing that much, you can begin to seek Him.  He’s promised to be found by those who do.

Read the creation account in Genesis and you come to one great conclusion.  God created the universe in order to have an environment within which to make man in His image.

Jeremiah 10:14  Everyone is dull-hearted, without knowledge; Every metalsmith is put to shame by an image; For his molded image is falsehood, And there is no breath in them.
Jeremiah 10:15  They are futile, a work of errors; In the time of their punishment they shall perish.

While men are trying to fashion ‘gods,’ God is at work making men!

By the way.  Every few years it seems there is a report that scientists somewhere have created life in the laboratory.  Not true; it will never happen.  God created everything, including ‘life,’ out of nothing.  Scientists are not in the same league at all.  As soon as you say they created something in the laboratory you’ve shown they have ‘something’ to start with.

God’s greatest work is the making of a man or a woman.  If you are a Christian, you are a new creature in Jesus Christ.  Salvation is only the beginning, though, of what God has planned for us.

1 Corinthians 2:9  But as it is written: “EYE HAS NOT SEEN, NOR EAR HEARD, NOR HAVE ENTERED INTO THE HEART OF MAN THE THINGS WHICH GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.”

The psalmist declared, “…I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.” (Psalm 17:15).  You and I are predestinated to be conformed into the image of Jesus Christ.  We are God’s workmanship and He who began this good work has promised to complete it.

Jeremiah 10:16  The Portion of Jacob is not like them, For He is the Maker of all things, And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance; The LORD of hosts is His name.

God considers Himself, in this verse, “the Portion of Jacob.”  Having redeemed the Jews, God was their Portion; He belongs to them by love and by covenant.

The “maker of all things” was, even in Babylon, working out the promised “inheritance” of “Israel.”

He was “the Lord of hosts,” meaning at any moment a heavenly host could overthrow Babylon and free the Jews.

He would overthrow Babylon, but He wouldn’t need angels to do it.  God was already raising up another world empire, the Medes and Persians, to do His work.  The casual observer of history thinks the Jews are a tiny blip on the timeline of history.  In fact, the flow of history is all about God’s dealings with them – right up til today’s headlines.

God, for His part, is faithful to make you.  He requires, however, your cooperation.  Between your salvation and your final state, your glorification, there is what is called sanctification.  It is the daily molding and shaping of you into the image of Jesus.

What kind of clay are you in God’s hands?  Are you pliable, moldable, shapeable?  Or are you hardened?

Let God make you rather than going after the ‘puny gods’ men make for themselves.

It may sometimes seem as though you are a tiny speck sitting alone as the seemingly powerful world system marches forward.  At those times you’ll need to have faith that God will be faithful to perform everything He’s promised and is using your circumstances for your good and to His glory.

The Call Of The Wilderness (Jeremiah 9v2-26)

To illustrate biblical Christianity we often liken our lives on earth as believers in Jesus Christ to wandering in a wilderness.  One author put it somewhat poetically, saying,

To every child of God this world, with all its conceived pleasures, is nothing but a wilderness – far from his Father’s house; far from that goodly land which he so ardently longs to see and to possess.  This is the view which every saint takes of earth; and it is a just one.  What the wilderness was to the children of Israel in their journey to the promised land, this decaying scene is to the believer in his progress heavenward.  It is not his rest; it is not his home.  On the contrary, it is a wilderness world of trouble, from which he is coming up out of, and traveling to the mansions above.

Without in any way detracting from that great illustration, I must say that there is another way “wilderness” can describe our lives, one that is less poetic and more tragic.  It is this: If we are not careful, we can turn our lives into a spiritual wilderness.

In our text Jeremiah mentions the word “wilderness” no less than three times.  As we will see, the disobedience of the people of God brings judgment upon them that turns their land into a physical wilderness.  It is to show them that their sin has already turned their lives into a spiritual wilderness.
Our reading of this text will prompt us to ask of ourselves two questions: #1 Are You Turning Your Life Into A Spiritual Wilderness?, or #2 Are You Turning Your Life Over To Spiritual Wonderment?

#1    Are You Turning Your Life
Into A Spiritual Wilderness?
(v2-22)

One interesting feature of these verses is that Jeremiah speaks in three of them and each time he does – in verses two, ten and twelve –  he mentions the word “wilderness.”

At the time Jeremiah spoke the Jews were still dwelling in relative comfort in and around Jerusalem.  He was therefore predicting the future time when God’s judgment would turn their land – literally – into a wilderness.

Meanwhile, as you read through the chapter, you see that their lives were already a desolate spiritual wilderness.

No believer wants their life to turn into a spiritual wilderness!  That being the case, let’s see what we can learn from the disobedience of the people of Judah.

Jeremiah 9:2  Oh, that I had in the wilderness – A lodging place for travelers; That I might leave my people, And go from them! For they are all adulterers, An assembly of treacherous men.

“Lodging places,” in those days, weren’t comfortable and they were dangerous.  To prefer life on the road, going from lodging place to lodging place, was quite a commentary on the sad state of life in Jerusalem.

Jeremiah said that “they are all adulterers.”  Either everyone was literally committing adultery, spiritual or otherwise; or everyone had changed their mind about what constituted it and were OK with it.

Just because other believers are doing certain things, it doesn’t mean it’s OK for me to do them.  Just because certain standards have grown lax, it doesn’t mean my standards need to be lowered.  If an entire “assembly” of people are headed in a direction, it doesn’t make the direction right.

I see a lot more flaunting than ever before of behaviors that were once considered things that might stumble other believers.  It’s not healthy for either party and, at least for some, it’s a surefire way to turn life into a spiritual wilderness.

Jeremiah 9:3  “And like their bow they have bent their tongues for lies. They are not valiant for the truth on the earth. For they proceed from evil to evil, And they do not know Me,” says the LORD.
Jeremiah 9:4  “Everyone take heed to his neighbor, And do not trust any brother; For every brother will utterly supplant, And every neighbor will walk with slanderers.
Jeremiah 9:5  Everyone will deceive his neighbor, And will not speak the truth; They have taught their tongue to speak lies; They weary themselves to commit iniquity.
Jeremiah 9:6  Your dwelling place is in the midst of deceit; Through deceit they refuse to know Me,” says the LORD.
Jeremiah 9:7  Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: “Behold, I will refine them and try them; For how shall I deal with the daughter of My people?
Jeremiah 9:8  Their tongue is an arrow shot out; It speaks deceit; One speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, But in his heart he lies in wait.
Jeremiah 9:9  Shall I not punish them for these things?” says the LORD. “Shall I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?”

God speaks of their “lies” three times and of their “deceit” four times.  Why was it so easy to lie and deceive?  I think the answer can be found in the phrase in verse three, “they are not valiant for the truth on earth.”

To be “valiant for the truth on earth” is to agree with God’s Word, His truth, as you walk with Him on the “earth.”  You agree with it and obey Him.  And you agree with it when you disobey Him by confessing and repenting.

Used to be when a believer sinned, they would confess it, i.e., agree with God about it.  They would repent from it.  They would get back on track in their walk with the Lord.  They were “valiant for the truth on earth.”

More-and-more today we are seeing professing Christians fall into sin and then choose to continue in it on some level.  Here’s an illustration from real life.  A husband has problems with pornography.  He admits it but refuses to give his wife access to his online activities.  He’s not being “valiant for the truth.”  Ten times out of ten he is deceiving himself and lying to her.  It’s not long before his life is a wilderness.

Jeremiah 9:10  I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains, And for the dwelling places of the wilderness a lamentation, Because they are burned up, So that no one can pass through; Nor can men hear the voice of the cattle. Both the birds of the heavens and the beasts have fled; They are gone.

This was Jeremiah speaking.  He seemed to accept the inevitability that the areas surrounding Jerusalem must be “burned up” as a judgment by God.  In light of the next two verses, it may be his way of urging the Lord to make desolate the surrounding areas but leave Jerusalem standing.

Jeremiah 9:11  “I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a den of jackals. I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.”

Well, that settles that!  God would not spare His city or His Temple.  The sin, the rebellion, the disobedience of His people would make their land and Jerusalem a wilderness.

Jeremiah 9:12  Who is the wise man who may understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of the LORD has spoken, that he may declare it? Why does the land perish and burn up like a wilderness, so that no one can pass through?

This reminds me a great deal of the confusion Habakkuk, a contemporary of Jeremiah’s, expresses in his book over God’s use of the Babylonians to discipline His people.

Jeremiah 9:13  And the LORD said, “Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them, and have not obeyed My voice, nor walked according to it,
Jeremiah 9:14  but they have walked according to the dictates of their own hearts and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them,”
Jeremiah 9:15  therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will feed them, this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.
Jeremiah 9:16  I will scatter them also among the Gentiles, whom neither they nor their fathers have known. And I will send a sword after them until I have consumed them.”

The Jews were a people who were promised physical blessings for obedience but were warned of physical discipline for disobedience.  They entered into those covenants with God willingly.  This judgment was no more, but no less, than they deserved.
God’s dealings with us, in the church, are more on the level of spiritual blessings.  Thus we can continue to prosper physically while deteriorating spiritually.  In fact, it’s possible to become even more prosperous, in some cases, by disobeying the Lord.  It masks the deterioration of our spiritual lives until we find ourselves parched and hurting in the wilderness of our sin.

The next section is especially graphic and even morbid.

Jeremiah 9:17  Thus says the LORD of hosts: “Consider and call for the mourning women, That they may come; And send for skillful wailing women, That they may come.
Jeremiah 9:18  Let them make haste And take up a wailing for us, That our eyes may run with tears, And our eyelids gush with water.
Jeremiah 9:19  For a voice of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How we are plundered! We are greatly ashamed, Because we have forsaken the land, Because we have been cast out of our dwellings.’ ”
Jeremiah 9:20  Yet hear the word of the LORD, O women, And let your ear receive the word of His mouth; Teach your daughters wailing, And everyone her neighbor a lamentation.
Jeremiah 9:21  For death has come through our windows, Has entered our palaces, To kill off the children – no longer to be outside! And the young men – no longer on the streets!
Jeremiah 9:22  Speak, “Thus says the LORD: ‘Even the carcasses of men shall fall as refuse on the open field, Like cuttings after the harvester, And no one shall gather them.'”

Funeral customs can seem pretty weird from culture to culture.  In Judah, it was customary to hire women to mourn at funerals.  The more mourners you hired, the more you showed your love for the deceased.  Their much wailing and crying would encourage all those attending to have their eyes fill with tears.

The indication in these verses is that the death toll in Judah was going to be so great that they should gather all the mourning women as well as their daughters.  Even that wouldn’t be enough, however, so they should teach all their neighbors how to lament.  Death would be everywhere, “like cuttings after the harvester.”

When I turn my life into a spiritual wilderness, then all around me the things that the Lord has made beautiful and those He would have made beautiful in His time are killed.  The death toll can be quite significant as families are destroyed and careers are ruined and testimonies are tarnished.

Be “valiant for the truth on the earth.”  Know what God has said, agree with it, then do it – no matter the cost.  When you sin, agree with God about it and repent.  If you are sinning, stop!

The way out of the wilderness you’ve turned your life into is to return to God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.  You must love Him more than anyone, more than anything, else.  Then He can renew your life as His garden and bring forth the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

#2    Are You Turning Your Life
Over To Spiritual Wonderment?
(v23-26)

The chapter closes with a call for you to live on the spiritual plane, seeking spiritual blessings and expecting spiritual rewards. See if you are excited about the perspective of the next two verses.

Jeremiah 9:23  Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
Jeremiah 9:24  But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight,” says the LORD.

Are you interested in human “wisdom,” “might,” and “riches?”  To put it another way, Do you value what men value – being considered wise, having power and possessions?

Or do you get all excited by knowing that God exercises “lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.”  To put it another way, Do you value what God values – lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness?

We used to sing, “Thy lovingkindness is better than life.”  It means unfailing love or steadfast love.  It occurs 250 times in the Old Testament.  Twenty-six times we are told His lovingkindness is forever.

“Lovingkindness” is that attribute of God which leads Him to bestow upon His obedient children His constant blessings.  But it is more than His desire to bless us for our obedience.  A.W. Pink speaks of God’s lovingkindness as keeping us, as preserving us.  He writes,

This lovingkindness of the Lord is never removed from His children. To our reason it may appear to be so, yet it never is. Since the believer is in Christ, nothing can separate him from the love of God… God has sworn that if His children keep not His commandments He will “visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes.”  Yet He adds, “Nevertheless My lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor allow my faithfulness to fail.  My covenant will I not break” (Psalm 89:31-34).

“Judgement” doesn’t mean judgmental.  It’s more like God’s assessment.  The idea is captured in the words of Hebrews 11:6 where we read, “[God] is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”  God is always assessing your life, looking to reward you.

“Righteousness” is having a right to stand before God.  How can God allow sinners to stand before Him?  He can declare the believing sinner righteous based on the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross.

If you are a believer, you stand and walk before God on your way to Heaven.  He has promised you all spiritual blessings in heavenly places as you walk on the earth.  He is looking to reward you when He takes you home, to Heaven, to be with Him.

There is no One like Him!  Desiring to bless you… Promising to reward you… If you will only be valiant for the truth and obey Him.

As if all that isn’t enough incentive to obey the Lord, He reminds us to have a sense of urgency.

Jeremiah 9:25  “Behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD, “that I will punish all who are circumcised with the uncircumcised –
Jeremiah 9:26  Egypt, Judah, Edom, the people of Ammon, Moab, and all who are in the farthest corners, who dwell in the wilderness. For all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.”

Circumcision was always an outward ritual that spoke of the need for your heart to be transformed in a relationship with God.  No rite, no ritual, no rules, no regulations, can change the heart.

God spoke of His judgment coming upon all the “uncircumcised” – all nonbelievers in every nation.

These verses remind us that, today, the “Day” is coming when God will pour out upon the whole earth His wrath.  That “Day” is the seven-year period we call the Great Tribulation.

It’s therefore not a good time to be turning your life into a wilderness!

Instead, turn your life over to spiritual wonderment:

Have you been declared righteous by God – justified as a believing sinner based on the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross on your behalf?

Do you prefer God’s lovingkindness which is better than life?  Or are you living your own life, seeking the things of the world?

Are you constantly thinking about the day you will see Jesus and stand before Him to receive rewards for the things you’ve done?

Only one life, will soon be passed;
Only what’s done for Christ will last

Resist the call of the wilderness.  Rejoice in the wonder of His love!

The Revival Of The Faintest (Jeremiah 8v4-9v1)

Evan Roberts was born in the village of Loughor near Swansea in Wales in 1878.  He grew up in the church and as a young man he attended meetings six days a week and was deeply committed to praying for revival.

He worked in the coal mines for twelve years and then became a blacksmith.  In 1903 Roberts entered school to prepare for the ministry.  He crossed paths with Reverend Seth Joshua, an evangelist, who called for a deeper obedience to the Holy Spirit.  During one of Joshua’s meetings Evan Roberts came to the front, kneeled, and cried in agony, “Lord, bend me.”  While some observed it as an ecstatic emotional experience, Roberts later gave testimony that a wave of peace flooded his soul and that he felt ablaze to tell all of Wales about Jesus.

In October 1904 Roberts suspended his studies and went home to preach the Gospel.  So began the Welsh Revival.

The second night the church service lasted three hours and within a week the crowds were staying until three o’clock in the morning.  The second week the small church was overflowing with 800 people.

It spread and soon South Wales was ablaze and within two months conversions numbered 34,000.  Within six months 100,000 converts were added to the Welsh churches. Spirit-filled gatherings were held in homes, barns, coal mines, quarries, and even a pig-sty.

The revival effected Welsh society.  J. Edwin Orr writes,

Drunkenness was immediately cut in half, and many taverns went bankrupt.  Crime was so diminished that judges were presented with white gloves signifying that there were no cases of murder, assault, rape or robbery or the like to consider. The police became  unemployed in many districts.  Stoppages occurred in coal mines, not due to unpleasantness between management and workers, but because so many foul-mouthed miners became converted and stopped using foul language that the horses which hauled the coal trucks in the mines  could no longer understand what was being said to them.

Fast-forward about a century.  According to an article by The Independent,

England and Wales have one of the worst crime rates among developed nations for rapes, burglaries and robberies… The study for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found England and Wales had more burglaries and robberies per 100,000 people than the United States in 2006.

A 2001 census showed that in Wales fewer than one in ten people regularly attend a church or chapel.  It simultaneously showed that over 70% of Welsh people see themselves as Christian.

Wales is a post-revival country.  So was Judah in the sixth century.  After a brief revival under King Josiah, the Jews were again mired in sin.

If some of the consequences of a genuine revival are massive positive changes in the morals of a society, then we are definitely post-revival as well.  But rather than look out, at our society, let’s look at ourselves to see if we remain revived or have grown post-revival.

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 Check Yourself For Post-Revival Apathy, and #2 Check Yourself For Post-Revival Ardor.

#1    Check Yourself For
    Post-Revival Apathy
    (8:4-17)

In verse eight of chapter eight Jeremiah quoted the people as saying, “the law of the Lord is with us.”  It’s a reference, probably, to the discovery of the Law – the Book of Deuteronomy specifically – by King Josiah.  It sparked a revival.  But the description of their society in these verses reveals that revival was a thing of the past.

The signs that a people are no longer revived are pretty obvious.  The Jews, however, wouldn’t acknowledge their backsliding.  They acted as though everything was fine.

That’s what we want to focus on – how it is a believer can be obviously post-revival but not admit it!

Jeremiah 8:4  “Moreover you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Will they fall and not rise? Will one turn away and not return?

We sometimes make fun of the phrase, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”  The Jews were depicted as falling down and not wanting to get back up!  It’s absurd to think that if you trip you’ll just stay down and even think it’s normal to live on a horizontal plane.

Same with “turn and not return.”  As if a person is set upon a desired destination then, for no good reason, they turn away.  It isn’t logical.

Sometimes believers don’t act logically.  You look at something they are doing or saying and you say, “Where did that come from?”  They act as if nothing has changed when, in fact, they’ve fallen and won’t get up.  They act like they are still headed in a godly direction when, in fact, they have turned around.

Jeremiah 8:5  Why has this people slidden back, Jerusalem, in a perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit, They refuse to return.

If a person is sinning, “refus[ing] to return,” acting illogically, then they are deceiving themselves.  Self-deception is a major reason believers fail to recognize and admit they are backslidden.

If you can make excuses for yourself for what you once understood to be wrong and sinful, you are self-deceived.

Jeremiah 8:6  I listened and heard, But they do not speak aright. No man repented of his wickedness, Saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turned to his own course, As the horse rushes into the battle.

Here we see the self-deceived person who is excited about their new “course” when it is clearly not godly.  They are like a horse bred for battle – rushing headlong into danger.

Jeremiah 8:7  “Even the stork in the heavens Knows her appointed times; And the turtledove, the swift, and the swallow Observe the time of their coming. But My people do not know the judgment of the LORD.

Animals always follow God’s proper order for them, whereas God’s people sometimes ignore His ordering of their lives by His “judgments,” meaning His Law.  If a person ignores the clear directives of God’s Word, he or she is dumber than a stork or a turtledove!

Jeremiah 8:8  “How can you say, ‘We are wise, And the law of the LORD is with us’? Look, the false pen of the scribe certainly works falsehood.
Jeremiah 8:9  The wise men are ashamed, They are dismayed and taken. Behold, they have rejected the word of the LORD; So what wisdom do they have?
Jeremiah 8:10  Therefore I will give their wives to others, And their fields to those who will inherit them; Because from the least even to the greatest Everyone is given to covetousness; From the prophet even to the priest Everyone deals falsely.
Jeremiah 8:11  For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of My people slightly, Saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ When there is no peace.

The impact of these verses is to say that those who ought to be teaching God’s Word by precept and example were purposely misinterpreting it to allow for their own sin and for the sin of the people.

There are two things to point out here:

First, you don’t get a pass if you are a leader.  Instead, you are held to a higher standard.
Second, a post-revival believer will often leave a church where people know them and will honestly reprove them in favor of another group where they can hide or where the message is watered down.

Jeremiah 8:12  Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed, Nor did they know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; In the time of their punishment They shall be cast down,” says the LORD.
Jeremiah 8:13  “I will surely consume them,” says the LORD. “No grapes shall be on the vine, Nor figs on the fig tree, And the leaf shall fade; And the things I have given them shall pass away from them.” ‘ ”

It’s becoming more common for a person to openly admit their behavior but have no sense of sin and shame about it.  Maybe they’ll quit; maybe they won’t.  They act like there’s no urgency.

Jeremiah 8:14  “Why do we sit still? Assemble yourselves, And let us enter the fortified cities, And let us be silent there. For the LORD our God has put us to silence And given us water of gall to drink, Because we have sinned against the LORD.
Jeremiah 8:15  “We looked for peace, but no good came; And for a time of health, and there was trouble!
Jeremiah 8:16  The snorting of His horses was heard from Dan. The whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing of His strong ones; For they have come and devoured the land and all that is in it, The city and those who dwell in it.”
Jeremiah 8:17  “For behold, I will send serpents among you, Vipers which cannot be charmed, And they shall bite you,” says the LORD.

The Jews were “sit[ing] still,” thinking that nothing would happen to them since they were in Jerusalem and had the Law and the Temple.  God, however, wouldn’t sit still.  He would discipline them by bringing the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to destroy the city and the Temple and to carry them away captive.

When a believer is continuing to live in sin, refusing to deal with their backsliding, there is a lack of peace and health in their relationships.  You feel awkward around them; they sense it but blame you for being judgmental.  It’s very, very sad because you love them and want God’s best for them but there’s a problem that needs acknowledging.
The question to ask yourself is, “Do I fit this profile?”  Working backwards, if I am comfortable being backslidden in a behavior I once identified as sin and am therefore acting illogically, then I am self-deceived and need to heed the judgment of the Lord about my situation rather than my own thoughts and feelings.

I – you; we – need to repent!

#2    Check Yourself For
    Post-Revival Ardor
    (8:18-9:1)

I don’t know of anything, right now, in the United Sates or California or Central California or Kings County that could be called ‘revival’ in the historic sense.

That isn’t to say that believers or local churches are all blowing it; not at all!  It’s just an honest assessment of the bigger spiritual landscape.

What is revival?  Scholars who have studied it give this working description:

An evangelical revival is an extraordinary work of God in which Christians repent  of  their sins as they become intensely aware of his presence in their midst, and they manifest a positive response to God in renewed obedience to the known will of God, resulting in both a deepening of their individual and corporate experience with God, and an increased concern to win others to Christ.

You might distinguish God’s activity in and upon the church as revival while His activity among the lost is an awakening.

Scholars go on to say that a genuine revival impacts positively the wider society in which it occurs – a city, a county, a country, even the world.  Douglas Shields wrote in 1905, “There is a theory that all social and moral advance may be traced to religious revivals.”

Should we pray for revival?  I came across this quote in a book summarizing ten great revivals in history:

Usually when we pray for revival, we’re thinking about the bad guys, and we’re telling God to “sic ‘em.”  Little do we realize that revival begins with us, the people of God.  As a matter of fact, we’ve got a suggestion for those who want revival: Don’t pray for revival.  Just repent of all known sin, do everything you’re supposed to do, give God all – not part, but all – your time, and you’ll experience revival.

What we might say is this.  Don’t seek revival; seek God with a new passion, a fresh ardor, and see what happens.

That seems to be the general theme of the remaining verses.

Jeremiah 8:18  I would comfort myself in sorrow; My heart is faint in me.
Jeremiah 8:19  Listen! The voice, The cry of the daughter of My people – From a far country: “Is not the LORD in Zion? Is not her King in her?” “Why have they provoked Me to anger With their carved images – With foreign idols?”
Jeremiah 8:20  “The harvest is past, The summer is ended, And we are not saved!”

In verse eighteen it seems that Jeremiah has “sorrow” for the sin all around him and that his “heart” has grown “faint” from his concern for God’s glory and the people’s welfare.

Do I have sorrow for sin – mine as well as all the sin around me?  Is my heart really faint from talking to God about it so much that it wearies me?

“We are not saved,” it says in verse twenty.  So many people around us remain lost, dead, perishing.  Soon the “harvest” will be past!

Am I concentrating my efforts on spreading the Gospel?  Do I understand that I am one of the workers in the harvest?  Am I thinking about the day I meet with my Lord to have Him review my life to reward me for the things I did in His name and for His sake?

Jeremiah 8:21  For the hurt of the daughter of my people I am hurt. I am mourning; Astonishment has taken hold of me.
Jeremiah 8:22  Is there no balm in Gilead, Is there no physician there? Why then is there no recovery For the health of the daughter of my people?

Jeremiah speaks of “mourning” and “astonishment.”  In other words, he was gripped by the spiritual condition people were in.  He was astonished they could be so far from the Lord; but he mourned for them.  He didn’t hate them; he knew they needed the Lord.

In verse twenty-two he recognized that there is a Great Physician who can save and heal.

These verses describe a heartfelt ardor and passion for the lost.  Yes, they are involved in terrible sin; yes, they are ruining society, bringing judgment upon themselves.  But the solution was salvation – not political reform or economic reform or judicial reform or moral reform; not reform of any type.

The First Great Awakening had tremendous political effects.  When the revival emerged in the 1740’s, the churches of New England were
supported by property taxes and the church controlled community life.  George Whitefield encouraged itinerant preaching and many evangelists ended up establishing new churches without government affiliation.  These churches involved lay people in ministry, but more importantly, they gave lay people a voice in the affairs of their churches.  It wasn’t long before lay people were wanting a voice also in the affairs of their government and society in general.  According to some historians, this development did more than anything else to lay a foundation for the American Revolution.

Revival came first.  Everything else was a result of genuine evangelical revival.  That’s why, as a church, we concentrate on the Gospel.

Jeremiah 9:1  Oh, that my head were waters, And my eyes a fountain of tears, That I might weep day and night For the slain of the daughter of my people!

Jeremiah had exhausted his own tears crying over the people.  He wanted God to open a fountain of tears so he could go on weeping day and night for lost, dead, perishing sinners.  No wonder he is called ‘the weeping prophet.’

A. T. Schofield noted, “Since the days of Pentecost there is  no record of the sudden and direct work of the Spirit of God upon the souls of men that has not been accompanied by events more or less abnormal.”

While revival is often accompanied by enthusiastic experiences, like uncontrolled weeping, just crying isn’t revival.  I guess what I’m saying is while revival is an experience, you can’t bring it on by encouraging experiences.  And just because there may be a few weird experiences, it doesn’t mean you are in a revival.

Whether you and I weep until we have no more tears, we can set our hearts toward seeking Jesus and sharing with the lost.

If you study historic revivals you find that there are as many differences as there are similarities:

Some are instigated by a crisis, such as when the banks collapsed before what is called the Laymen’s Prayer Revival.  Others come at peaceful times, such as the Great Awakening.
Some start with one extraordinary leader while others begin as a group seeks the Lord.

What is always true, however, is that revival involves prayer.  The first great revival, the mother of all revivals, was on the Day of Pentecost.  God sent His Holy Spirit and the world was turned upside down for Jesus.

What were those 120 disciples doing in the upper room?  They were praying.

Does fervent prayer bring revival?  Or is praying a sign revival has come?

Either way… We ought to pray!

Don’t Pray For Me, Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7v1-8v3)

Introduction

Christians have made popular certain catchy phrases.  See if you can finish these four:

“Christians aren’t perfect… (just forgiven).”
“God said it.  I believe it….  (That settles it).”
“Get right or… (Get left).”
“Christianity isn’t a religion – it’s a… (relationship).”

I’ve often told people “Christianity is not a religion – it’s a relationship.”  It’s true; but it’s not complete.

You cannot earn or enter into a relationship with God by observing any religion or religious activities.  But after you have received the Lord, the apostle James says there is a pure and undefiled “religion.”

James 1:26  If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless.
James 1:27  Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

James was (and is) addressing believers.  He indicated there was a positive, “pure and undefiled religion,” and that there was what we might call a ‘poor’ religion.  From a read-thru of the entire letter we can summarize what James meant like this:

Yours is a ‘poor’ religion if you are observing outward forms of worship and Christian disciplines but are avoiding doing what is right and are even doing what is wrong by being involved in sin.
Yours is a “pure religion” if your outward behavior and activities are the genuine result of the control and leading of God.

Our text in the Book of Jeremiah is an Old Testament example of this same situation.  The people of Judah thought themselves very religious; but theirs was a poor and defiled religion rather than a pure and undefiled one.

Maybe we can glean some insight from their failure on how to stay pure in our religion and therefore honor our relationship with the Lord.

I’ll organize my thoughts around two points: #1 There Is A Poor Religion That Disgraces Your Relationship With Jesus, and #2 There Is A Pure Religion That Graces Your Relationship With Jesus.

#1    There Is A Poor Religion
    That Disgraces Your Relationship With Jesus
    (7:1-15; 7:20-26; 7:32-8:3)

Scholars call chapters seven through ten Jeremiah’s “Temple Sermon.”  You see why in the first four verses.

Jeremiah 7:1  The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying,
Jeremiah 7:2  “Stand in the gate of the LORD’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, all you of Judah who enter in at these gates to worship the LORD!’ ”
Jeremiah 7:3  Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place.
Jeremiah 7:4  Do not trust in these lying words, saying, ‘The temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD are these.’

During the reign of King Josiah the Temple at Jerusalem, which was Solomon’s Temple, was restored.  Also the Book of the Law was discovered and read aloud.  A sort of revival swept through Judah.

I said it was a ‘sort of’ revival because while the Jews returned to keeping the Sabbath and worshipping in the Temple, they did not turn from their worship of idols.  Nor, as we will see, did their everyday morals or ethics become transformed.  Instead they were, as James might have observed, “spotted [blemished] by the world.”

Jeremiah was instructed to stand outside the gate of the Temple and deliver this scathing sermon as folks came with their offerings.  According to verse twenty-nine, he was instructed to shave his head as well.

If you’ve ever seen a crazy street preacher, that was the kind of thing God asked Jeremiah to do.

We talked about Christian phrases.  The Jews had a phrase, “The Temple of the Lord!”  Whenever they heard a message about God’s judgment upon them, or had a tinge of inner conviction for sin, they would say, “The Temple of the Lord!”, meaning that since His Temple was restored and since God dwelt there in their midst, no matter what they did or didn’t do He would defend them for the sake of His own honor.

Jeremiah 7:5  “For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor,
Jeremiah 7:6  if you do not oppress the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, or walk after other gods to your hurt,
Jeremiah 7:7  then I will cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever.

The Jews were practicing a poor religion, going through the motions of outward rites and rituals, while ignoring the things that mattered most to God.

Their treatment of the poor and oppressed is very reminiscent of what James wrote in his letter to Christians.  The Jews had the kind of poor, defiled religion James attacked as hypocrisy.  Relationship should result in pure religion.

Jeremiah 7:8  “Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit.
Jeremiah 7:9  Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you do not know,
Jeremiah 7:10  and then come and stand before Me in this house which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered to do all these abominations’?
Jeremiah 7:11  Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of thieves in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” says the LORD.

God looked at them as if they were a band of “thieves” who were holed-up in their supposedly impregnable stronghold after pulling a job.  Think Hole in the Wall from Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid – except that these Jews were not likable scoundrels who didn’t really harm anyone.  They were wicked.

The Lord listed just a few of their regular, daily behaviors – “steal, murder, commit adultery,” etc.  We may not like to read them, but there are lists of sins in the New Testament as well.

Writing to the believers at Corinth, the apostle Paul said,

1 Corinthians 6:9  Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites,
1 Corinthians 6:10  nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.
1 Corinthians 6:11  And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

Paul was talking in this passage to believers about nonbelievers.  He said “such were some of you.”  But it doesn’t mean we’re off the hook if we practice these things.  We don’t get a pass.

A few verses later (v18) he says to believers, “flee sexual immorality!”  He assumed they would know that it was totally inappropriate for them to act the way they used to.

Your salvation doesn’t free you to act the way you used to, the way nonbelievers do; it frees you to act obediently!

Being a Christian doesn’t deliver you to sin; it delivers you from sin.  None of the behaviors Paul listed, or that Jeremiah listed, should ever be a part of your relationship with the Lord.

Jeremiah 7:12  “But go now to My place which was in Shiloh, where I set My name at the first, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of My people Israel.
Jeremiah 7:13  And now, because you have done all these works,” says the LORD, “and I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking, but you did not hear, and I called you, but you did not answer,
Jeremiah 7:14  therefore I will do to the house which is called by My name, in which you trust, and to this place which I gave to you and your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh.
Jeremiah 7:15  And I will cast you out of My sight, as I have cast out all your brethren–the whole posterity of Ephraim.

God reminded them of a historical precedent.  Centuries earlier the Jews worshipped God at Shiloh.  Because of their sin, God allowed the Philistines to destroy Shiloh.  The Jews in Judah had no reason to think God wouldn’t do the same to the Temple at Jerusalem.

Skip to verse twenty.

Jeremiah 7:20  Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, My anger and My fury will be poured out on this place – on man and on beast, on the trees of the field and on the fruit of the ground. And it will burn and not be quenched.”
Jeremiah 7:21  Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat meat.
Jeremiah 7:22  For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.
Jeremiah 7:23  But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.’
Jeremiah 7:24  Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward.
Jeremiah 7:25  Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have even sent to you all My servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them.
Jeremiah 7:26  Yet they did not obey Me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers.

This was God saying He wanted relationship, not religion.  He didn’t care, ultimately, about their “burnt offerings or sacrifices,” but wanted obedience.

Obedience, however, is what proves there is a genuine relationship with the Lord and not something surface or formal.  When there is obedience, then we will see a religion that is pure and undefiled.

Now skip to verse thirty-two.

Jeremiah 7:32  “Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD, “when it will no more be called Tophet, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Tophet until there is no room.
Jeremiah 7:33  The corpses of this people will be food for the birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth. And no one will frighten them away.
Jeremiah 7:34  Then I will cause to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. For the land shall be desolate.

Just outside Jerusalem they had built places of idol worship where orgies were part and parcel of the ceremonies, as were the sacrifices of live infants.

It would become a place of slaughter when God brought the armies of the Babylonian Empire to destroy Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 8:1  “At that time,” says the LORD, “they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of its princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves.
Jeremiah 8:2  They shall spread them before the sun and the moon and all the host of heaven, which they have loved and which they have served and after which they have walked, which they have sought and which they have worshiped. They shall not be gathered nor buried; they shall be like refuse on the face of the earth.
Jeremiah 8:3  Then death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of those who remain of this evil family, who remain in all the places where I have driven them,” says the LORD of hosts.

The Babylonians would desecrate the bones of the deceased, which were kept in ossuaries (bone boxes).  Any Jews left alive would wish for death and, it seems, would “choose death,” meaning suicide.

Remember all this was being said while the people filed through the Temple gate dressed in their Sabbath-best armed with their offerings and sacrifices to go through the motions of the Jewish religion.

Maybe you find yourself this morning, in some area of your life, at odds with God.  You’re here and that’s great!  But it has to be more than the outward observance of religion.  There must be obedience from the heart – true, pure, undefiled religion.

Look back on the list of things in First Corinthians 6:9 & 10 or Jeremiah 7:9.  Are any of them in your life?  If so, don’t simply say, “I’m the temple of the Lord!” thinking that there will be no consequences.

Repent of your sin.  Turn to the Lord from it.  He will receive you back.  Don’t delay.  Do it.

#2    There Is A Pure Religion
    That Graces Your Relationship With Jesus
    (7:16-19 & 27-31)

The verses we skipped are whisperings from God directly to and for Jeremiah.  They are precious for us to eavesdrop upon.

Jeremiah 7:16  “Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or prayer for them, nor make intercession to Me; for I will not hear you.
Jeremiah 7:17  Do you not see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
Jeremiah 7:18  The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger.
Jeremiah 7:19  Do they provoke Me to anger?” says the LORD. “Do they not provoke themselves, to the shame of their own faces?”

Don’t pray?  Wow, that’s heavy.  But let’s not go too far with it.  Before we say that there are times God says to not pray for people, remember the context in which these comments are found.

God was giving the Jews time to respond and repent to His pleadings through Jeremiah.  In fact, He gave them forty long years!  Whatever He meant by “do not pray” has to be understood in the context of His love for them, His pleadings to them.

I think it best to understand that God was probably telling Jeremiah to quit praying for their judgment to be averted.  It’s reasonable Jeremiah would pray that.  There’s maybe a clue to that in verses sixteen through nineteen.  It was as if God was saying, “Jeremiah, how can I avoid judging these people if they keep on with these behaviors?  They deserve judgment – even though I am offering them mercy.”

If I’m right, God was simply – but sadly – indicating that Jeremiah ought to pray accordingly.

What can we learn from God telling His servant “do not pray?”

For one thing, there is a sense in which if I am asked to pray for a nonbeliever, my prayer ought to be that they would get saved – not healed or blessed or anything else.  Salvation is always the greatest need.  That’s why, when four friends lowered a paralyzed man through a roof to be healed by Jesus the Lord started by saying, “your sins are forgiven.”
For another thing, my prayers for believers ought to always be in the spirit of “Thy will be done, Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in Heaven.”  I can’t presume to know if God wants someone’s situation to change; but I can assume that God wants every believer to endure with His help.

Jeremiah 7:27  “Therefore you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not obey you. You shall also call to them, but they will not answer you.
Jeremiah 7:28  “So you shall say to them, ‘This is a nation that does not obey the voice of the LORD their God nor receive correction. Truth has perished and has been cut off from their mouth.
Jeremiah 7:29  Cut off your hair and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on the desolate heights; for the LORD has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.’
Jeremiah 7:30  For the children of Judah have done evil in My sight,” says the LORD. “They have set their abominations in the house which is called by My name, to pollute it.
Jeremiah 7:31  And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My heart.

Let’s focus on a couple of things going on between God and Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was called to a very difficult life and ministry, and from a very young age.  In fact, he was promised that his preaching would have no effect on the people.  Yet he obeyed the Lord!

Things don’t always go our way or the way we’d like.  Things can get pretty rough, actually.  We can grow impatient, dissatisfied, even angry with God.  We can go our own way.

Or we can grace our relationship with Jesus by holding firm to the pure religion of simple obedience.

Something else we noted earlier about Jeremiah.  He was told to cut off his hair and stand outside the Temple gate and preach.  He was what we might call a Jesus-freak.

A few years ago DC Talk popularized the title, Jesus-freak.  Truth is, though, most of us would like to be considered Jesus-freaks without having to act or look freaky.

There are only two people, really, in our text:

The Jesus-freak, and,
The Jesus-fake.

Be the freak who honors biblical marriage, who sees their employment as a place of ministry, who is the best student at school, who pushes forward a Christian agenda by wearing witness clothing, carrying a Bible, listening to Christian music and teaching while others are around, who invests time, talent, and treasure in furthering the Gospel of Jesus Christ.