[MUSIC PLAYING] The Bible from
30,000 Feet: Soaring Through the Scripture from
Genesis to Revelation. [MUSIC PLAYING] Back in 1970, a band
called Three Dog Night said, "Jeremiah
was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine. Didn't understand a
single word he said, but I helped him
drink his wine." It goes to show you
that musicians really don't have to think
through their lyrics to get a popular song. It's sort of a
meaningless set of lyrics. And it's very narcissistic
to just have a friend just to be able to drink his
wine, but you could care less about what he says. But anyway, they said,
Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Actually, Jeremiah
was a bullhorn. This Jeremiah is making
strong cries and proclamations to the nation of Judah,
principally, as well as to other nations, secondarily. He was God's bullhorn,
announcing to kings, announcing to
royalty, announcing to the people who would
gather in Jerusalem what is coming in their future. Jeremiah was both a
priest and a prophet. He was a priest-- living in Jerusalem,
working in Jerusalem-- when God called
him at a young age. And he ministered through
almost five decades-- between 40 and 50
years, altogether. Some of the kings that he
prophesied under the reign of are mentioned here in chapter 1. He is called God's
11th-hour prophet because the clock of judgment
is about to strike midnight. And at the 11th hour, even
though other prophets that have gone before, including Isaiah-- to no regard, they
didn't heed him-- Jeremiah comes and repeats
that strong message and is a little more emotional
with it than Isaiah was. He says, please, to king
Zedekiah at one point. Please, turn back to the Lord. Spare yourself, spare this city. It's not too late. But like Isaiah, his cries
were unheeded, as well. Jeremiah's prophecy reminds
me of an illustration I read about. Seems that a wedding
took place at a church in the church basement. And I don't know
if you've ever been to some of the old churches. The church basement is sort
of like their fellowship hall. It's the only extra
big room they have. And so because a lot of
different meetings take place, this one basement was decorated
with different scriptures all around it-- usually about God's
love, and God's mercy, and God's patience, et cetera-- just reminding people,
different scriptures. But during this
wedding reception, right above the
wedding cake happened to be the scripture Matthew
chapter 3, verse 7 that read, "Flee from the wrath
that is to come." [LAUGHTER] An odd, perhaps
prophetic, proclamation of what that marriage
might encounter. "Flee from the wrath
that is to come." In an era in which other
prophets-- false prophets and politicians-- were trying
to quiet and calm the people and say, it's all good,
nothing bad is going to happen, Jeremiah was saying, flee from
the wrath that is to come. He was the only straight
shooter of the bunch. Now, from Isaiah's time,
the chronology has advanced. Jeremiah has the grim
duty of overseeing the death of a nation. He predicts it, but he
will live through it. He's going to witness
the Babylonians come in. He's going to watch
as the city is burned. He's going to see people that
he loved being taken captive to another land. So Jeremiah is the prophet who
oversaw the death of a nation. I look at Jeremiah
as a tender warrior. He had a hard message, but
he was a mix of toughness and tenderness in one person. And that's good,
especially for a guy who has to deliver
a very hard message. Somebody once said,
no one has the right to preach about hell who
doesn't first weep over it. And Jeremiah is,
interestingly, known as not just the 11th-hour
prophet, but he's called the weeping prophet. And you'll see why next week-- more on that later. The book of lamentations
means, the book of crying. Jeremiah writes as he sees
Jerusalem being overtaken, and he weeps over it. And this is why, perhaps,
Jesus reminded people so much of Jeremiah. You remember when our Lord said
to his disciples, "Who do men say that I am?" And of all the
people, they said-- the people said-- reminded
Jesus of was Jeremiah. Some say that you are Jeremiah,
Elijah, or one of the prophets. And that's probably because
Jesus would pronounce denunciation, on one hand. He would say, woe unto
you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites. But at the same
time, he would turn with tenderness and
compassion to those who needed it the most, like
the woman caught in adultery. Jesus wept over the city of
Jerusalem, as well as Jeremiah. Jesus coming down from
the Mount of Olives, overlooking the city, at
one point began to weep-- the New Testament says-- saying,
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered
you as a mother hen gathers her chicks, but
you were not willing." And then, like Jeremiah, Jesus
predicted the destruction-- not of the Babylonian
army, but of the Roman army against Jerusalem. Now, let me give you
an outline of the book. I'm going to slice it
up, as I did in the book The Bible from 30,000 Feet,
into three simple slices-- preparation,
proclamations, predictions. Jeremiah's preparation
formulated-- that's chapter 1. Then, Jeremiah's
proclamations foretold-- that's chapter 2, all
the way to chapter 51. That's most of the book. And then, the last chapter
is Jeremiah's prediction fulfilled. Tell us how the city
actually fell, according to what Jeremiah predicted. Now, that large section-- so you have the
bulk of the book. That is Jeremiah's
proclamations. You have then two end caps-- his preparation and
his predictions. In that center core
of the book, Jeremiah proclaims against
two different groups. Number one, Judah-- that's
that southern kingdom of two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. That's Jerusalem-- the
southern kingdom of Judah. And then, finally, the
other nations around Judah that God
would judge because of their antagonism toward
Judah and the Jewish people. That forms the whole book. So we begin, in chapter 1,
with Jeremiah's preparation. And know this-- Jeremiah is the
author of the book. But the one who
actually penned the book was probably his scribe,
mentioned 21 times in the book-- a guy by the name of, Baruch. So you have to picture a man
dictating with an amanuensis-- that is, a scribe,
or a secretary-- taking down what the
prophet would say. Or putting together the
speeches that he gave, or wrote, or things he wrote-- poems
he wrote, et cetera-- and sort of like an anthology,
presenting this collection, called the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah is the one who gave
it, but the one who penned it was his secretary, named Baruch. So chapter 1,
verse 1, "The words of Jeremiah the son of
Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in
the land of Benjamin." You say, where is Anathoth? Anathoth is a little Arab
village today called Anata, and it's about three
miles north of Jerusalem. I've only seen it once. It's not much. It's just a little
bit of a village. But at that time, it
was a village assigned to the Leviticus priest. So a lot of the priests
who served in the temple lived there. Verse 2, "to whom
the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah,
the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the 13th year of his reign. It came also in the days of
Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, until the end
of the 11th year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah,
King of Judah, until the carrying away
of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month." So there's a lot of
weird names there. And I'm going to
actually go over a couple of them in the moment. But what we're told,
basically, is Jeremiah had a 40-plus-year ministry. Jeremiah ministered during the
reign of five different Judean kings. Not all of them
are mentioned here, because some of the
reign of those kings was so short that they're
left out of this book. But they are included in the
narrative of II Chronicles 36, II Kings, chapter 8, 23,
24, 25, right around there. They're mentioned
in those places. So just a few of the
kings are mentioned here, but let me give you
a little rundown. Down south, there
was a good king named Josiah, who's mentioned here. Josiah became king of
Judah at a young age. He was a good guy. But he became a
really great guy when a guy by the name
of Hilkiah found a copy of the Torah, the law. And the Bible says that
the people of Judah had not really read the
law much up to that point. They really didn't
know what was in it. Can you imagine? That was sort of their playbook. That's sort of like going to
a church, finding a Bible, and nobody-- a Bible? What's in that? We want to read that baby? I have no idea what
that's all about-- finding a New Testament. So they found the law,
and Hilkiah read the Torah in front of king Josiah. When Josiah heard
it, he tore his robe, put sackcloth on his head, and
said, we are in deep trouble because what he just read-- we are violating that covenant. So unless we repent, we're
going to go into captivity like Deuteronomy 28 and 29,
In the law that he just read, said. So he humbles himself,
asks God for forgiveness, reads it to the elders. And there is a
superficial turning, at least in leadership-- a heartfelt turning of the
king, but a superficial turning toward
God of the people. That's Josiah. Josiah dies in battle. When Josiah dies in battle, his
son, Jehoahaz, becomes king. Jehoahaz is not king very long. He's not mentioned. He's on the throne
for three months. He barely gets the throne warm. And he is deposed by pharaoh
Necho, the King of Egypt, taken down to Egypt,
placed in shackles, and put in prison
by pharaoh Necho. Following me so far? So we have Josiah,
followed by Jehoahaz. Jehoahaz is now
in Egypt in jail. In the place of Jehoahaz, the
pharaoh who took him prisoner put his brother
Eliakim on the throne. He's not mentioned
here, and here's why. Pharaoh Necho changed the
name of Eliakim to Jehoiakim. See how complicated it gets? He changed his name, probably
to show superiority-- I'm in charge, I
conquered you, so I'm going to make a new name. That was what kings
sometimes did. So we have Josiah-- killed. Jehoahaz, his son-- three
months, now in jail. Eliakim, his brother, now a.k.a. Jehoiakim-- on the
throne for 11 years. As he is on the throne,
Jeremiah is prophesying. Over in the east,
Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon are gaining strength. They're coming, making
a move toward Judah. So Jeremiah says, yo-- I don't know if he
actually said, yo. But he said, king, king,
Jehoiakim, whatever you do, don't rebel against
King Nebuchadnezzar because he looks like he's
going to take over the world. So don't rebel. Well, he rebelled. So King Nebuchadnezzar
deposed him from the throne and put a new guy
in named Jehoiachin. You're saying, Skip, you're
not making it any easier. I just want to show you, A,
the complications of some of these strategies and
what's going on in the world. And I'm actually
summing up for you the whole intrigue
of what's going on with Jeremiah, the prophet. So we have Josiah,
Jehoahaz, Eliakim-- AKA, Jehoiakim. Now, we have Jehoiachin. He's on the throne three
months and 10 days when, because he rebels
against Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar deposes
him, takes him to Babylon, and places his uncle, Zedekiah-- don't worry, that's
the last one. Zedekiah is now the
vassal King of Babylon. Following me so far? He's in good shape till he
rebels against the Babylonian king. Nebuchadnezzar then destroys
the city of Jerusalem. But here's what I
want you to know. Zedekiah, who rebels against
Nebuchadnezzar-- obviously, Nebuchadnezzar now is in charge
of the world, including Egypt, pharaoh. He wins a battle of Carchemish--
another story, another time. But Nebuchadnezzar
knows the king Zedekiah, the last
king of Judah, has run down to the Jordan. He's taken his family. He's rebelled against the King. But now, he's running away. The King chases him
down with his army, kills his two sons
in front of his eyes. And Zedekiah was probably no
more than 30 years of age, so his sons must
have been young boys. So he kills his two young
sons in front of his eyes. Then, he puts his eyes out. He blinds him and
takes him as a captive to Babylon so that
the last living memory he would
ever see in his life is the death of his own sons. That's how cruel
Nebuchadnezzar was. During all of that time of
those kings and intrigue, Jeremiah was being faithful
to say, Babylon is coming, turn to God. Babylon is coming, turn to God. Don't harden your
hearts, turn to God. But the people got harder,
and harder, and harder. Sorry I took up so
much time on the names. I wanted you to get sort
of the background of it. We're still at the
beginning of chapter 1. Verse 4, "Then the
word of the Lord came to me saying, before
I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born,
I sanctified you. I ordained you a
prophet to the nations." Please notice God's view
of life in the womb, by what he says to Jeremiah,
indicates that there was a plan for the unborn zygote. The cells have come together. Now, they're starting to divide
in that pre-embryonic state when the DNA has
just come together and is starting to formulate
into more and more cells. Before there is
even a formation, God says, I knew you intimately,
and I formulated my plan for you. You know we live in a state that
flatly goes against the Bible's view on the sacred sanctity
of life in the womb. You know that we happen
to live in a state that has pushed for, in
the legislature, late-term abortion on
demand for any reason, and even without parental
consent if you're a minor. And even if you're a
doctor and you say, I can't perform that
abortion on moral grounds or religious grounds, our
legislators in this state have been pushing that
they have to terminate that pregnancy if that
person says they want it. You have no say in it. Now, you compare that to this. "Before I formed you in
the womb, I knew you." And I ordained you,
I sanctified you, I ordained you as a
prophet to the nations. I know I may be taking up
too much time with this, but it's on my heart. So Psalm 139-- I'm just going to read
a couple verses to you. David wrote this Psalm,
and he said this. "For you formed my inward parts. You covered me in
my mother's womb. I will praise you, for I am
fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are your works and
that my soul knows very well. My frame," that is,
my skeletal structure, "was not hidden from you
when I was made in secret and skilfully wrought in the
lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance,
being yet unformed. And in your book,
they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when
there was as yet none of them." David is going to the womb
for an example of God's power. He goes to the heavens. But he goes, now,
look in the womb. because God's view
of personhood begins at the moment of conception. [APPLAUSE] And so a professor
in an ethics class presented this dilemma
to his students. He said, how would
you advise a mother pregnant with her fifth child
based upon the following? Her husband has had syphilis,
she had tuberculosis. The first child was born
blind, the second child died. The third child was born
deaf, the fourth child had tuberculosis. Now, with this
pregnancy, the mother is considering an abortion. Would you advise
her to have one? Most of the students
agreed that this mother-- this woman-- should
have an abortion. And the professor then
said, congratulations, you've just killed one of the
greatest composers ever, Ludwig Von Beethoven. The professor went
on to say, those were the circumstances
in that family. All of that to say this-- God has a plan for
you, and it began long before you were even born. God chose this prophet
when he was yet unformed. That's how God begins
with this calling. So it's pretty exciting to
know that God chose you way, way before you even
came into this world. Verse 6, "Then I
said, oh, lord God." Not a great reception
to God's word-- ah, lord God. "Behold, I cannot speak,
for I am a youth." Now, Jeremiah's probably
in his 20s, at the latest. "But the Lord said to me,
do not say I am a youth," even though he was a youth. Don't begin with that,
don't dwell on that, don't say that I am a youth. "For you shall go to
all to whom I send you. And whatever I command
you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid
of their faces." You know, this is
good for any speaker. Because when a speaker
looks at a crowd of faces, there are what experts call
yes faces and no faces. There are faces who-- their
resting face is very pleasant. But there are others
whose resting face-- they just look grumpy. They can't help it. My resting face, if
I just look serious, is pretty grumpy looking. And I'm looking out
at some pretty grumpy looking dudes right now. But not all-- not all of y'all. Some are yes faces,
some are no faces. But what do you
tell a 20-something who says, I'm afraid to speak? Well, don't be afraid at
looking at their faces. Don't go by that,
because I've called you. "For I am with you,"
verse 8, "to deliver you, says the Lord." Do you ever notice
in scripture how God uses the very
people who think they're unqualified to be used? Moses said, I can't speak. I'm a man of uncircumcised
lips, or I stutter. God sent him to be a spokesman. Isaiah, when God called
him, said, woe is me. I'm undone, I am a
man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of
a people of unclean lips. God said, don't worry about it. I'll clean your lips,
I'll give you the power. And so he finally said,
here I am, send me. Paul the Apostle said,
I'm less than the least of all the saints. And yet, he
recognized God called him to speak the unsearchable
riches of Christ. The general principle is this-- God chooses the most
unlikely, the weakest-- doesn't look for the
best or latest model. And usually the people
who say, man, I'm awesome, I can't believe God
isn't using me more, God will often bypass to
find the ones who say, I don't know if God
should ever use me. Bingo, you're the one
I've been looking for. I've had you on
my mind all along, even before you were born. I'll put my words in your mouth. And I will be with
you, says the Lord. Well, Jeremiah is called. That's chapter 1. So that's that first
part of the outline. Jeremiah's preparation
is formulated. He goes from here
and he preaches for four to five decades-- a long, healthy ministry. Are you listening now? Here's the most important
part-- very long ministry, but absolutely unfruitful. We would call Jeremiah's
ministry unsuccessful. Most ministry boards,
most mission boards, would call him home. Dude, you've been there 40
years, been there 50 years. You haven't seen a
single stinking convert. You're coming home. We're not going
to pay your wage. You're off the mission field. Jeremiah didn't see one person-- at least recorded-- obey him
or turn back to the lord. So was he in his sweet
spot, in his peace zone? I don't think so,
but he was obedient. He did what God
called them to do. Jeremiah chapter 2 to chapter
45 are those proclamations I told you about. And these are the
proclamations against Judah. Jeremiah reviews
their backslidings, but he does it with
pathos, with tenderness. Look at chapter 2, verse 1. "Moreover, the word
of the Lord came to me saying, go and cry
in the hearing of Jerusalem saying, thus says the
Lord, I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the
love of your betrothal, when you went after me in the
wilderness, in a land not sown." He's reviewing their history,
when God called them out into the wilderness of
Sinai, out into the desert. And there they were,
obeying the calling of God, leaving pharaoh, being
delivered to the Red Sea, trusting completely in the Lord,
learning how to walk by faith, learning to believe in
water coming from Iraq and bread falling from heaven. And God says, man, I
remember those early years, and I miss them. I miss that relationship we had. I miss that trust that you had. So in the most beautiful
relational terms, God is rebuking his people. But he's saying,
what I miss most is you, and us, and the
relationship of intimacy that we had. This is similar to
the church of Ephesus. In the New Testament-- in Revelation, the
first few chapters-- there are seven letters
to seven churches. And the first letter that Jesus
gives-- it's really a postcard. It's just a very short
little few words. He says to the
church of Ephesus, I have something against you. You have left your first love. You didn't lose
your first love-- I hear that often misquoted-- you've left your first love. You don't love me the
same as you did at first. He said that to the
church of Ephesus. Here's what's
amazing about that. We believe that Paul the Apostle
founded the church of Ephesus in AD 52. In AD 62, 10 years
later, Paul the Apostle writes the letter to the
Ephesians-- a very tender, healthy letter. In AD 66, it has grown
to the point where the apostle John needs
to move there and pastor the church that Paul started. So we have AD 52, AD 62, AD 66. In AD 96, John gets exiled
to the island of Patmos. There, he gets a
vision from the Lord. And right out of the chute,
he sends a first postcard to Ephesus saying, you
have left your first love, I have that against you. Only 44 years after
the church of Ephesus was founded by the
apostle Paul, it has back slid into
a state where Jesus has to rebuke it for leaving
that love relationship. Now, that should
be a warning to us. Church history is littered
with movements and churches that go this way. They start out well. They can even mushroom
and be even bigger. But then, they start to decline. Individual churches,
individual congregations, can lose steam, can lose
the love relationship. And you say, I don't want
that to happen to us. Then don't let it happen
to you, personally, because what happens to all
of y'all happens to all of us. And so all we are is the
combination of all us. And so you keep your
heart right with the lord. You let this speak
to your heart. You get back to that
intimacy with Christ. Verse 9, "Therefore,
I will bring charges." I can see this is
going to take awhile. "I will bring charges
against you, says the Lord, and against your
children's children." I will bring charges,
that's a legal term. "For I'm going to file a
lawsuit against you in court." Verse 11, "Has a nation changed
its God's, which are not gods? But my people have
changed their glory for what does not profit." What he means by that is, you've
left that glorious relationship with the only true
and living God, and you have put up
altars all around Judah. You are worshipping pagan gods. You are listening to false
prophets and bad politicians, and you have fallen from your
glory for what does not profit. Verse 12, "Be astonished,
oh heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid. Be very desolate,
says the Lord." Verse 13, "For my people
have committed two evils." Here's the first. "They have forsaken me, the
fountain of living waters." Here's the second. "They have hewn
themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water." Thousands of years ago,
there were only two ways to get water. Number one, moving water-- a river, a fountain,
a spring, a well, something that
bubbles up and moves. And if it's moving
water like a river, they called it living water. That's where the term
living comes from. It's moving, it's not stagnant. Or they would collect rainfall. There are two basic rainfalls
in the land of Israel-- the early rain, called
the [NON-ENGLISH],, and the latter rain,
called the [NON-ENGLISH].. When it rained early
in the season-- in the winter, and late in
the winter, early spring-- in places where there
wasn't living water, they would collect
it in a cistern. They would take a rock. They would cut out
a big hole in it, and dig it deeper and deeper-- 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 feet
deep out of solid rock, if it would maintain it. But there was a problem. When digging out a
cistern, sometimes they would dig it out, and they
would find this fissure that is in the rock. And they wouldn't know
it until the rain came and they collect all the water. They go the next day
hoping to get water, and it's empty,
because the crack-- it leaks out. They would then go in and
try to plaster it and fix it. And sometimes, they
were successful, sometimes they weren't. So here's what God is saying. There's two things
you've done wrong. You've forsaken me, the
fountain of living water, true refreshment. And you have turned to your
own passions, and visions, and devices to get filled up,
to get satisfied on your own. And you've discovered
it doesn't work, because all of
those pursuits are nothing more than broken
cisterns that hold no water. You've forsaken me, the
fountain of living water. You've dug out broken
cisterns that hold no water. If you forsake God, or
if you stop seeking God, one thing will
happen to you-- you will get thirstier and
thirstier and thirstier. And you will never be filled
up, no matter where you seek. Jesus said to the woman
at the well of Samaria-- and you could write this
over every earthly pursuit-- drink from this water,
and you will thirst again. If you are seeking
fulfillment in a relationship, drink of that water. You'll thirst again. If you're seeking fulfillment
for your life in a position, a job, a career, drink of that
water, but you'll thirst again. If you look for it anywhere
else other than God, you'll just get thirsty. I think it needs to
be said on this day-- July 3, the eve before July 4-- that we, in this country-- what Jeremiah said
to his country, I think we could
say to this country. I think we live in a
nation that has basically tried to rule God
out of national life, push God out of
the public square. Don't mentioned God,
don't mention Jesus, ever. And don't ever pray
at a public meeting, or get a lawsuit
filed against you-- I know-- or pray
in public schools. They don't know about
students taking tests. They always pray
in public schools. [LAUGHTER] Teachers just don't
know about it. But for years, I have
heard people say, America better watch out, or
God is going to judge America. I am under the belief
that you are experiencing the judgment of God. I don't think it's future. Oh, it will be
worse, but I think we are under God's judgment now. I developed this in our study
in Romans, several weeks ago. I commend you listening to
that, because the first step-- or evidence-- that God
is judging a nation is when he gives them over to
what they so desperately say they want. You want independence from me? You want no morality--
do what you want. sleep with who you want, male or
female, or anybody or anything? Have it. When God gives you
over to those desires, it's an indication that
God is judging that nation. So I think it's already begun. Arnold Toynbee, who is a
very renowned historian, said that out of 22
civilizations appearing in history, 19 of
the 22 collapsed when they reached the present
moral condition of the United States of America. He said that a generation ago. 19 of them, in his expert study
on human history, collapsed. You might be witnessing now--
like Jeremiah was witnessing-- the very collapse of our nation
under the judgment of God. I'm not trying to scare you,
but I want to prepare you. There's hope for
us, as you know. Chapter 3, verse 14, "Return,
oh backsliding children." I'll speed it up, I promise. "Says the Lord, for
I am married to you." There's another relational term. "I will take you, one from
one city, two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion." He'll bring them back. Go down to verse 22. "Return, oh,
backsliding children, and I will heal
your backsliding." 16 times in this book-- 1-6, 16-- the word or term
"backsliding" or "backslidings" appear. You're familiar with what
a backslider is, right? It just means, to move backward. If you want to get an
illustration of backsliding, have you ever tried to climb
up a slide on a playground? If you try to climb it, and
you let go of the side rails, you will backslide. You'll slide backwards,
you will lose ground. You may try to gain ground,
but you will more quickly lose ground. So this is a metaphor,
and the book of Jeremiah is filled with
metaphor like this-- 21 different
pictures of judgment. And that's because Jeremiah
was a good communicator. He didn't just help people hear
it, he wanted people to see it. So he chose very, very vivid
language for that to happen. Here's another example--
chapter 4, verse 3. See, we're making progress. "For thus says the Lord to the
men of Judah and Jerusalem, break up your fallow ground. This is agricultural
terminology. "And do not sow among thorns. Circumcise," different
metaphor, obviously. "Circumcise
yourselves to the Lord and take away the foreskin of
your hearts, you men of Judah, you inhabitants of Jerusalem,
lest my fury come forth like fire and burn so that
no one can quench it because of the evil of your doings." Now, chapter 5 and
chapter 6 happened to be during that
reform I told you about. Remember I mentioned King
Josiah, the good king, who heard the law, tore his
robe, humbled himself, turned to God in sincerity? Some of the leaders did,
too, but it was really a superficial turning as far
as the general population was concerned. OK, man, the king's into this. We better get into it, too. Any pig can fly in a
hurricane, and anybody can jump on a bandwagon. And it's like, ah, there's
a Jesus movement happening. I'm going to jump on. And there's a revival-- OK, I'm going to get
in, because the King-- I want him to be happy with
me, so I'll do it, too. So it was very superficial. It wasn't a national
turning at all. There was no real change. So chapter 6, verse 13, kind
of isolates one of the problems here. it Says, "Because from
the least of them, even to the greatest
of them, everyone is given to covetousness. And from the prophet,
even to the priest, everyone deals falsely. They have also healed the hurt
of my people slightly saying, peace, peace, when
there is no peace." Now, there's a couple
of bad groups here. One group is politicians,
which I generally find is a bad group, anyway. Just honestly speaking--
very hard to find a good one. I find good, godly
ones very rarely. They're out there, but I
also know God uses them. I know God uses them. And God sets them on thrones
and brings them down, raises them up. The Bible says that. And we're told to pray for them. Anybody in elected office,
you should pray for, whether you voted for them
or not, whether you like them or not, whether you like
their policies or not, whether you agree with
their tweets or not. [LAUGHTER] You're to pray for
every single leader. Is that right, or wrong? [APPLAUSE, CHEERING, CHATTER] So bad group number
one-- politicians, here. And I'll tell you
why in a minute. Bad group number two-- prophets. And as suspect as politicians
are, preachers are often-- I'm very suspicious
of preachers. I am one, but I'm still very,
very skeptical of many of them, if not most of them. And in this case, you had
politicians and prophets-- preachers-- who wanted
the people of Judah to not be worried about
the reports of Jeremiah saying the sky is falling,
the sky is falling, Babylon is coming. They wanted to quiet
that kind of anxiety in the hearts of the people. And so politicians went to form
alliances with other nations rather than trusting God. We covered that last week. And prophets wanted to preach
fun, feel-good, happy messages. Enter Jeremiah the
prophet, who brought truth. And they didn't want
to hear the truth. And it will get him in trouble. So this bad group of
prophets and politicians were trying to treat the
real core problem of Judah superficially. They were-- if I can use this
metaphor-- putting a Band-Aid on an arterial bleed. The patient would bleed out. They were quacks. I read a true story about
a 50-year-old nurse. You think she would know better. She had ovarian cancer-- very, very difficult form
of cancer to eradicate. She was scheduled to go into
surgery and chemotherapy afterwards, a lot of treatments. My wife had a very similar
cancer, so I know the routine. But a doctor said, I
found this ointment, this black salve that has healed
many cancers, including my own. She canceled her surgery,
submitted to his treatment and, after several
months, became far worse. And the area he treated
with his black salve became highly infected,
and she ended up dying. Jeremiah is the true doctor. These other guys are quacks. And the nation loves
it, because they don't want to hear the truth-- that you need surgery. So chapter 7 through 10,
Jeremiah goes to ground zero, and that is the
temple of God itself. Chapter 7 to 10, we call
them temple discourses. He is sent to the
temple, the main worship center in Jerusalem,
to preach sermons. There is another temple
sermon in chapter 26. We won't get to that. Chapter 7, verse
2, God says, "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 into these gates to worship the Lord, 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. Do not trust in these lying
words of the false prophets and politicians saying,
the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the
temple of the Lord, are these." What does that mean? It means that these false
prophets and bad politicians were saying, look around you. This is the temple
built by King Solomon. This is the center of worship. God wouldn't let anything happen
to this, just like somebody would say, God would never
let anything happen to the US. God wouldn't let anything
happen to Judah or this temple. This is the temple of the lord. And so Jeremiah has to go where
all the people are gathering, maybe even on one of the
three pilgrim feasts, like Passover, or
Pentecost, or Tabernacles. And there's thousands of
people coming in saying, don't trust in these lying words. Part of the problem
is that the people retained the symbol
of worship but left the substance of worship. The symbol is the
temple, the substance is the lord of the temple. There are many people who
are content with ritual short of a relationship. They'll keep the ritual. Hey, are you a Christian? Do you know God? Do you know you're
going to go to Heaven? Well, you know, I was
raised in the church. Translate what they're saying-- I believe in the ritual. I was baptized by my parents. I was confirmed
when I was a child. My parents took me to church. They always taught me. What about your relationship? So many like this trust
in the ritual short of an actual relationship. Some look to a place
as a holy place. Fast forward to
the New Testament. Are there any holy places? Are there any holy places? Well, every place is
holy in that sense. Wherever God is-- that's holy. But are there holy temples
that are holier than others? No, there are no holy
places in the New Testament. God does not dwell in
temples made with hands, as the prophet said. That's Stephen's sermon,
in the book of Acts. So there is no holy places,
but there are holy people. So the holy place that God
dwells in now are people-- you. You're the temple
of the Holy Spirit. He lives in you. So they were looking
to the place, but they didn't
become holy people. So that is part of the problem. So it gets so bad
that, in verse 16, God tells Jeremiah not to
pray for the people anymore-- first time God ever gave that
commandment to a prophet. He says, don't even
pray for these people, because it's a waste
of your breath. I'm not going to answer it. They've now crossed
the line of no return. Chapter 11 through
20 is what I'm going to call performance prophecy. You saw a great performance
by Cindy moments ago as she took to the little
clay and she molded it into a vessel. Here, Jeremiah-- in
chapters 11 through 20-- uses visual aids to
get people's attention. They would look, they
would get the message as he would do certain things. So chapter 13, God becomes
Jeremiah's fashion consultant and says, hey, Jerry, go take
this piece of cloth, this sash, and bury it in the muddy ground. Then, after a while,
take it out and wear it. And that would be a prophecy--
a symbol of Judah's pride-- that has become beat up,
and worn out, and soaked, and sullen, and useless. In chapter 16, God says,
Jeremiah, don't get married. Stay single. Don't you dare raise a
family in this place. Now, why would he do that? That's an unusual request,
because typically by age 20, all Jewish males
were well married by that time in
that day and age. By 20, they were married. They were expected to be. In fact, a Jewish
rabbi even said, of all of the
people who will not enter heaven is a Jewish
man who has no wife. So they expected
people to get married. God says, don't get married. Don't raise a family. Why? Chapter 16, verse 2, "You
will not take a wife. You shall not have
sons or daughters in this place,"
here's why, "for thus, says the Lord concerning the
sons and daughters who are born in this place, concerning
their mothers who bore them and their fathers who
begot them in the land, they shall die gruesome deaths. They shall not be lamented,
nor shall they be buried, but they shall be like refuse or
dung on the face of the earth. They shall be consumed by
the sword and by famine, and their corpses shall be meat,
food for the birds of heaven and for the beasts
of the earth." Now, that's a good
incentive to stay single. [LAUGHTER] Chapter 18, Jeremiah's
invited to Pottery Barn-- that is, the house
of the potter-- where he would go
to the workshop, watch the potter make a
vessel on the potter's wheel, watch as that vessel became
marred in the potter's hands, watch as the potter then
took that marred vessel and reshaped it into
something different. In chapter 19, Jeremiah is
told to take a pot from Pottery Barn, from the
potter's house, go outside the city of Jerusalem,
outside the gate, and smash it. And here's why--
chapter 19, verse 1. "Thus says the Lord, go get
a potter's earthen flask, and take some of the
elders of the people, and some of the
elders of the priest. Then you shall break this flask
in the sight of the men who go with you and say to them,
thus says the Lord of hosts, even so, I will break this
people and this city as one breaks the potter's vessel,
which cannot be made whole again. And they shall bury
them in Tophet, until there is no
place to bury." There's several of these
kinds of sermons in this book. I heard that, when a speaker
speaks like I'm doing now, people who listen will retain. If they're listening very
carefully-- some of you are. Not all of you are,
but some of you are. If you're listening very
carefully to my words tonight, you're going to remember-- at best-- 10%. If you listen to this twice-- that is, if you go home, go,
I'm going to get on the computer and listen to it again-- you'll remember 25%. And that's very discouraging
to a guy who speaks. [LAUGHTER] If you want to up your
odds, you show them. If they see something, people
usually retain about 50% of what they see. I guarantee everybody
who saw Jeremiah break this jar
that day remembered every detail of what they saw. And then, they would be
more inclined to remember the message that he gave. Now, Jeremiah gets discouraged,
because-- and here's one of the reasons. Chapter 20, verse 1. "Now Pashhur, the son
of Immer, the priest who was also chief governor
in the house of the Lord, heard that Jeremiah
prophesied these things. Then Pashhur struck
Jeremiah and put him in the stocks that were in the
high gate of Benjamin, which was in the house of the lord." Now, what do you think Jeremiah
is thinking at this point? This isn't in my
job description. I didn't sign up for this. I'm not feeling it, man. Maybe all of the above. He was so discouraged, he
wanted to quit the ministry. We understand that. I understand that. Verse 9, "Then I said, after
all this bad turn of events," he's now in prison. "Then I said, I will
not make mention of him nor speak any more in his name." This is Jeremiah turning
in his resignation. He's quitting. Jeremiah the prophet
now wants to become a non-profit organization. [LAUGHTER] I quit the ministry. I'm done-for. I'm out. Well, we're not done
with the book, yet. What kept him going? Verse 9 continues. "But his word was in my heart
like a burning fire, shut up in my bones. I was weary of holding it
back, and I could not." There's something
about God's word, and I had to look for an
opportunity to get it out. Do you remember
those two disciples who were discouraged
on the Road to Emmaus? They didn't know Jesus
rose from the dead. He walks up to them, incognito. He speaks to them from
the Old Testament. Once Jesus is revealed
to them, they said, did not our hearts
burn within us as he spoke to us along the way? What burned? God's word. What did he do? Speak to them. He spoke to them. The word of God-- it burned within them,
it motivated them. And for Jeremiah,
likewise, God's word motivated him to
keep on in ministry. DL Moody was a preacher
in Chicago a century ago. He said, I know the
Bible is inspired, because it inspires me. Something about God's word-- that gets me, yours
truly, out of many a rut. Martin Luther put it this way-- the Bible has hands. It lays hold of him. It has feet. It runs after me. It's like this living entity
that grabs a hold of my life and picks me up when
I'm at my lowest. So he's ready to
quit, and he does it. And we'll continue finishing-- get this-- the book of Jeremiah. And it's perfect, because the
very short book of Lamentations should be tacked onto the
study of the book of Jeremiah. So we're going to take next
week, the book of Jeremiah, part 2, and the book
of lamentations, where he is seeing Jerusalem
falling and comments on it. Father, we thank
you for your word that has sustained us through
some very deep moments of our lives. Some of us, Lord, who have
doubted a relationship we're in, doubted your calling
us into that relationship, doubted a calling
that we had once were very, very secure
about and sure about. At times, we were very weary,
and confused, and anxious. At times, we lost sleep, or
were even very depressed. Then, you spoke a word, a verse. We heard a message. We heard a promise. And we were lifted up
out of the mirey clay, and you set our
feet upon a rock. You established our goings. Lord, do that for those
who find themselves in very similar
circumstances here tonight. I pray for those who are
very weak, very desperate. Lord, we know
that, in any group, there is going to be several
who are in that condition. Or they're pleading for somebody
else that they're close to. Would you speak
your word to them? Use, even, some of the
word already spoken through the promises and
prophecies of Jeremiah to encourage their hearts. Give them courage to go on. And then, Lord, use them
to speak words of hope and encouragement to others. Rebuke, if need
be, like Jeremiah, but always filled with hope
at the possibility of those listening turning to you and
making the best out of what is left in a person's life. We ask these things
in Jesus' name, amen. [MUSIC PLAYING] We hope you enjoyed this message
from Skip Heitzig of Calvary Church. For more resources,
visit CalvaryNM.church. Thank you for joining us for
this teaching from The Bible from 30,000 Feet.
