One Hour. One Book: Jeremiah

when Pastor Chuck Swindoll was introducing his study on Jeremiah he very wisely took people to a proverb of Scripture so I'm just gonna mention this proverb because I thought he did a great job of introducing the subject by saying proverbs 13:20 starts off with these words he who walks with wise men will be wise now most of us think of walking with wise men as to being mentored or getting underneath or traveling alongside of a wise man but one of the ways you can gain wisdom is not necessarily living at the time of a wise man but maybe by reading the biography of one and The Book of Jeremiah is often thought of as a prophecy and it the body of the book really is prophetic but most of it if you look at the text is written in poetry it's the long poetic form of a narrative biography that is the drama of a man asked to do what is unthinkably impossible without God if there is someone else who has a job almost as bad as jobs in the Bible Jeremiah's got to be there on the list this is the assignment nobody wants and in that story of the narrative biography pops up various prophecies that God uses him for between 42 and 47 years to give forth to an entire generation that doesn't listen and the whole thing spirals downward so here's my upbeat beginning are you ready he's going to give them great words from God and nobody's gonna listen the Book of Jeremiah you you can't separate the story from the man you can't do it and God burns in the heart of this man in such a way that he has confidence even when rejected Carl Sandburg when he was writing about Abraham Lincoln said a tree is best measured when it's down so he wanted to write the biography of Lincoln because the tree had come down I think when you capture a life and you want to get the wisdom and lessons from that life sometimes a longer view looking back is a good view at their core great biographies are not designed to press you to live like the person you're reading about in fact it's not imitation they're not looking for a carbon copy God didn't give you Jeremiah so you can become a Jeremiah what I can tell you is he doesn't want imitation he wants inspiration and he wants it from the life of somebody who frankly nobody wants to imitate what God asked him to do one commentator called Jeremiah a figure of bronze slowly reducing into tears it's remarkable to note that Jeremiah spanned five kings and if you read Jeremiah one you'll note that only three of the Kings are mentioned two of them were unnamed and unimpressive but here's what I know between 42 and 47 years God took a man between 4 and 5 decades into a preaching ministry and here's the here's the trick there was no sense of any positive response at any point in his ministry it's not like he had a honeymoon and people liked him and then they didn't they never liked him and they didn't dislike him because of what he did like Ezekiel weird stuff they disliked him for what he said because he said God stuff and everybody else wasn't the interesting thing is we live in a time right now where faithfulness and fruitfulness get mixed up Jeremiah didn't have that luxury he needed to know that he was called to be faithful even when it didn't look like it was fruitful sometimes God's call of the Prophet was so that he would become the keeper of judgment now God's hand was on him he watched the death of his nation and for many of you I have to say this honestly I have struggled now for these past 15 years to somehow constantly call young people to a great day ahead but I will tell you that if you stand where I stand the America you are inheriting is not the one I inherited and there is a change in the winds of what's blowing out there and things we thought were long-term thousands of years truths are now being scoffed at routinely so I can only tell you that when you watch some people's Facebook it looks like they're just plain worn-out with the immorality of our day can I just tell you Jeremiah is the Facebook posts put together of Jeremiah over four and a half decades and during the entire time he's encountering the unenviable task of challenging religious hypocrisy economic dishonesty oppressive practices of Judah's leaders and everybody who follows him he's warning he's a watchman and he's giving attention to hard truths they're not only hard truths they're true as most people would rather ignore I want you to listen some words from Jeremiah 22 and I'm gonna come to the book I promise I will but in jeremiah 22 it says these words verse 6 thus says the Lord concerning the house of the king of Judah I will make you a desert an uninhabited city I will prepare destroyers against you many nations will pass by the city and all of them will say why has the lord eldon this way with this great city and they will answer because they abandoned the Covenant of the Lord their God now that's not the kind of preaching that makes you popular and what he literally says is it's gonna happen we're gonna face judgment people are gonna laugh at us and he doesn't seem to give them or maybe not because he's convinced that he's in the twilight of his nation and guess what he was in the twilight of his nation somebody gets the assignment to be the last prophet the last guy on the ship as it sinks and Jeremiah was that guy he began in about 627 BCE I'd probably put that on the on the front page of Jeremiah he began in about the year 627 BCE he ended somewhere around 582 BCE and he ends with a prophecy to the Jews who fled to Egypt in Jeremiah 44 by the way the books not in order Jeremiah 44 is the last of his prophecies of what's going on if you were to put it in chronological order this this book has to be reshuffled dramatically the book as you have it probably comes from his secretary Baruch who put it into the order that you have it but it's interesting because counterintuitive to modern ministry in his call God made clear that more of his ministry was going to be negative than positive this is why I don't want you to imitate Jeremiah you're gonna scare people if you imitate Jeremiah but but listen to Jeremiah chapter 1 verse 9 listen to the way God describes the ministry in Jeremiah 1 and you notice Jeremiah 1 is the call of the Prophet listen to how God describes what his go is going to be his ministry he says this then the Lord stretched out his hand and touched my mouth and the Lord said to me behold I've put my words in your mouth if he had stopped there that would have been wonderful you're gonna speak for me I'm gonna touch your mouth and your get up and when you speak it's gonna be my word well hallelujah isn't that what you want on a Sunday morning don't you want to hear something hot off the presses of God it's the problem is verse 10 follows verse 9 and verse 10 see I have appointed you this day over the nations and over the kingdoms to pluck up to break down to destroy to overthrow oh yeah to building to plant see most of its tear down break down destroy tear up and then you get a little building plant on the end in other words you should have understood the negatives outweigh the positive I'm gonna speak but the time in which you are to deliver my message is a time where more negatives are gonna be spoken than positives I don't know if you've ever gone through a job review but one of the things that you try to do in a job review is tell somebody what's good about them before you beat them up and tell them what's bad about them so you want to start off with hey you know your hair looks good and you showed up on time and that's good however virtually everything you did yesterday in the office was terrible and no one has ever taught you the alphabet or filing now the problem is there are some people that can't get the flavor of what Jeremiah is doing he was called to be a prophet not a politician at the end of the day people were not supposed to feel better because of what he said they were supposed to brace brace brace because the crash was coming for the majority of his time Jeremiah based his ministry out of Jerusalem that's a note I would make on the opening flap of his book as well he spent his time out of Jerusalem he lived in Anathoth which is just a knot ties now about three miles northeast of Jerusalem today he lived in the southern kingdom of Judah after the northern kingdom had long since fallen and he lived during a particular time of a change of wind of what was going on in the world for 300 years a powerful people the Assyrians had been the dominating world power they were the world's superpower but they were and Egypt knew it so Egypt was trying to prop up Assyria because the new kid on the block Babylon was trying to take everybody's lunch there are three major battles that are fought during the ministry of of jeremiah one of them's in 609 it's called the Battle of Megiddo that's when King Josiah wrongly decided he would go out siding with Babylon against Egypt and take on the Egyptians as they cut through Megiddo in the northern part of Israel and he died in the process of doing it it's a footnote of history but it's a pretty big turning point because Josiah was actually a pretty good guy but he got involved in a fight did you ever do this do you ever take up a cause for somebody else he got himself into a fight that wasn't his fight and he ended up getting killed for it so 609 then the battle that actually settled the rise of Babylon is the Battle of Carr kamesh and that is a world platform battle and then of course later on in the book will be the fall of Jerusalem in 587 86 so those three battles are all major listen if you were around at the time of Jeremiah people wouldn't have been talking about the kinds of things that Jeremiah was preaching they'd have been talking about those battles they would have been talking about the economic change they would have been talking about the change of wind of politics how do I know because that's what we're talking about now people are not talking about what God is doing in our nation nearly as much as what the wind is doing in our nation they're talking a lot more about what's happening in the White House than what's happening at their house now Jeremiah found himself addressing a nation that was hurtling headlong toward the judgment of God and the Israelites feared the future but they did not fear God listen to me America could be in that they feared the future they just didn't fear God and as a result they didn't respond with humility and repentance the people of Judah primarily lived like an island to themselves disregarding the Lord's commandments and increasingly living in danger of their own disobedience I don't know a way to say this more simply but I would definitely write it down in the opening flap of it Jeremih sounds like a pessimist but he's not he's a realist see when the captain comes on and says you're gonna crash and you're gonna crash he's not being pessimistic he's telling you you're gonna crash he never dismissed the others around him he simply gave God's word but he was dismissed and ridiculed by false prophets who insisted God would never let his people suffer he would never let the great city of Jerusalem fall and except for the fact that they were totally wrong their message was incredibly popular jeremiah was called to mark out evil but not defeat it if there's any obvious lesson in the book it's this sometimes success means doing what you know is right even when what you're doing doesn't appear to work even when everything's turning out against you God called him and the prophets persistence in delivering delivering his unwelcome message over four decades is remarkable he just wouldn't quit he wouldn't quit it was an impossible assignment now let me ask you something how many of us would have walked away from the assignment at some point don't you just want to get on board with retirement shut up and say things people like I mean really running against the wind all the time is just plain hard at the same time one of the striking things when you study the 52 chapters of this book is this Jeremiah was even though he didn't have a pop following he was tenaciously faithful to carry out God's instructions there was unrelenting opposition there was harsh criticism and he did not back down now can I just tell you he started his life as a priest priests and from a priestly family priests are guys who go to seminary they learn a certain thing they do the job and people like them when a priest walked through the street of Jerusalem on his way to or from the temple people would greet him they liked him there's a difference between the work of a priest and the work of a prophet in the Bible pre are men who can learn their craft and then pull it off it's something you you develop as a skill if you're supposed to be the guy who mixes the elements of the of the incense to burn for the prayer time then you learn how to do it if you're a guy who who kills the animals that they at the altar or washes people at the Laver you learn how to do it you execute a craft that's a priest a prophet isn't like that at all God calls him to say things and people don't understand him and really to be honest with you it's too volatile they don't trust him they don't like them so sometimes he gets a bad rap he's been called the weeping prophet because he mourned for the sins of his people and one of the things I see lacking even as my own country makes moral choices that make my head spin is I hear anger but I don't hear brokenness nearly so often I've been through very few prayer meetings where people sobbed about the sin of their country but I've seen him get their back up when they're ruined in my America and I'm wondering if we're fighting for God or for our grandkids I'm wondering which is more important to us the Prophet could be faithful to his unwanted call because God had promised him something very very clear I want you to know all the way through ladies and gentlemen when God calls you to do something hard he gives you a great vision of himself where he gives you a great promise to hang on to and in Jeremiah 1:17 it says this they will fight against you they will not prevail against you for I am with you says the Lord to deliver you not everybody has that but I gotta tell you when you know I had a big brother Russ and I gotta tell you I was much more bold on the playground when russ was there because I knew nobody's gonna beat me up because my brother was bigger than all them so I could get real mouthy and you know kind of get in people's faces and act really tough because I had my brother there my brother wasn't there I lost my voice it was a mysterious thing now as a book the Book of Jeremiah is a record that has some peculiar literary features I'm not sure if you knew this but this is the longest book in the Bible from your Bible read through last week would anybody like to say amen to this is the longest book in the Bible okay it contains more words than in any other book now let me ask you this just just from what you know of the book the book is cut into four sections the longest section has to do with with judgments against Jerusalem and against Judah in the middle section tell me why do you think God spent so long in the nose-dive ministry of the breaking of a people why in the world would he fixate on showing you the Prophet that took the nation into its twilight that doesn't sound like the the really good killer story that's gonna sell the novel the fact of the matter is Jeremiah writes some of the most lofty and lyrical poetry in the Bible and you have to ask was that just because it was the only way to get people to listen I have no idea why he crafts so beautifully terrible promises yes we're going down but let me say it beautifully I don't know what that does but I can tell you this he was a creator of beautiful phrases and there was an abundance of memorable passages you think about chapter two and he says he says you've traded the waters of the cisterns of God but the cisterns are broken they leak you have to remember that in the Bible there are only three ways to get water the water falls from heaven in rain or you can dig a well down to an underground aquifer or more likely you can dig out a cave a cistern plaster it wait for the rain to come down and collect up the rain and sometimes the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob is so wonderful he brings the water right to the surface in a spring and-and-and-and Jeremiah says you've treated the springs the grace of God for the work of your hands the cisterns and guess what they're cracked it doesn't work but he turns it with beautiful phraseology he also uses poetic repetition and like Ezekiel Jeremiah was often instructed to use symbolism like a ruined and useless belt or a smash clay jar so it's got some peculiar stuff to it now let's talk about what's in the contents of the book because you're here to study the book in the 4-hour version of this I go chapter by chapter I'm not going to do that for this one but let me just say there are four parts to the book and you can do something very easy you can lop off the last one 52 looks like a collection of later writings stuck on the outside to explain some of what was said in 46 to 51 that does not appear to be linguistically with the same work to the rest of the scroll let's look at the other three parts the first part is chapter one and in Chapter one there is an intricate discussion of the call of the Prophet and I want to take a look at it if we get the time but what's really important is for you to understand God spent one whole freeze-frame chapter just to say this is how I called Jeremiah and I never never sold him a bill of goods that he would be loved I never told him that this would work out for him we have to be careful when we start quoting all things work together for good that we mean God's good not my good because God's good is my best good but right now God's good might not include things I like God is under no obligation student to make your life comfortable he's under no obligation and if he were under that obligation he owes he owes an apology to martyrs the fact of the matter is chapter 1 lays out the call and in a very very rip by the way some great words there I knew you before you were in your mother's womb I planned your life I called and outfitted you you are who you are because I made you to be what I need and you are who I made for this hour there's something incredibly powerful about knowing you're doing what God called you to do that you have become the man or woman of God you were called to become maybe maybe that's too hard let's say it this way find God's choice for a mate in your life and there's something very powerful about that relationship why because you know that this is the one God made for you so when you find that and you drop into that kind of that secure position there's something great about it now in chapter 2 through chapter 20 this is 2 through 45 but it breaks down into 3 sections in chapter 2 through 20 there are some early messages of repentance for instance the early message of judgment I should say not repentance the early messages including a message for the temple they include covenant conspiracies they include a message about a drought a message about a disaster and some comfort that comes out of it even a command to observe the Sabbath all of that was in the early messages and what distinguishes those early messages is this after 21 he starts warning the end is near Jerusalem's gonna fall and by 39 you should mark in your Bible 39 fall of Jerusalem that's the shattering of the city and so the the second section is he's not just warning about the theory the first section is a theory section the second section is it's coming it's coming BAM it came the third section is after Jerusalem has been largely decimated it's now a vassal of Babylon get Alya is running the place but he's weak and he's a he's a puppet vassal and eventually you will find Jeremiah making his way on a trip to Egypt and he will probably die in Egypt he dies outside the land was sadness that he watches the fall of his own kingdom and then dies in a foreign land but what's interesting is that when you look at the whole story of what God is doing in him he gives a very large blow-up of what he has to say about his people Judah and Jerusalem and then toward the end of that he will even insert some promise after the destruction of Jerusalem you'll start to hear more and more promising language it's the same as what you see in Isaiah there is always bad stuff followed by good stuff right god Spanx and then says i'll renew you i will remember you i will come back to my covenant the last part of the book is a series of prophecies against nations and these nations are gentile nations that are near to the people of israel like egypt Philistia moab Ammon Adam Damascus kadar Alam and then finally to Babylon in 50 and 51 powerful materials but largely materials that give you that even though the Babylonians have won they will not escape God's judgment now I'm talking a lot about judgment I want to take you back to the guy what's the tone of this work you cannot read Jeremiah without a vivid awareness of the disastrous results of persistent faithlessness as a country big words let me say it another way mess around with God you're gonna find out that he's very very powerful and when he tells you not to do something there are reasons and consequences for ignoring his words when you look at the man you have to say it this way look at the man and his mission goat go to verse 1 and he identifies himself as the prophet Ihram yirme'yahu and the word yirme'yahu is the word for the lord exalts the Lord appoints some writers even say the Lord hurls it's it's an uncertain origin but the idea of hurling the prophet into a hostile world or throwing down the nations with divine judgment for their sins he's about 20 years old when God calls him I want you to stop for a minute and think about that don't rush past that he's about the age of most of you students and God says I'm gonna call you to the hardest job ever a aside from job I'm not gonna take everybody from I'm not even gonna give you anybody you don't get to marry I want you to live a celibate life with no nice home fires and cooked meals I want you to give a mess and nobody's gonna like you does God have that right in your life and if he does Wow his message held very little weight with people I I think he had the same feeling that Noah had more than a hundred years of telling people that judgment was going to come and they laughed at him I think that there's a substantial amount of emotional depth you know you get to Jeremiah at 12 you get to Jeremiah 15 and he's sobbing he's crying there's sorrow of the plight of God's people it's interesting because even other prophets that rose up at the time knew Jeremiah was a prophet of God Ezekiel knew he's a younger contemporary but he knew how and where Jeremiah died is not known most scholars would say he died in Egypt there's a Jewish tradition that he was he was stoned in Egypt and of course in Hebrews 11 37 some of the prophets were stoned all I can tell you about him is that he was a member of the household if you look at the opening verses he's a member of the household of Hilkiah who he'll keahak alec is the word for my portion yeah yeah of my portion is Yahweh his hometown Anathoth he might have been a descendant of a Viet r that is from during the priestly days after King Solomon in first Kings to the LORD commanded him in chapter 16 I want you to take a moment and turn in your Bible to chapter 16 verses 1 through 4 there's a very powerful section something I find very challenging and I wonder exactly how you would respond if God gave you this call 16 1 through 4 it opens this way it says the word of the Lord also came to me saying you shall not take a wife for yourself nor have sons or daughters in this place listen to me for a minute we're in a time right now where Christians are debating whether God has a right to tell them to be celibate sex wise God can tell you never to marry don't tell me that your pleasure is his ultimate goal and here's what he says you shall not take a wife for yourself nor have sons or daughters in this place every that made a person significant in antiquity was being taken away from him right there it was draining out the bottom for thus says the Lord concerning the sons and the daughters born in this place and concerning their mothers who bare them and their fathers who beget them in the land they will die of deadly diseases they will not be lamented or buried they will be as dung on the surface of the ground and come to an end by the sword and famine and their carcasses will become food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth you can't read anything more depressing than that I don't want you to have the normal relationships that define other people because it's going to be so bad out there they're gonna die on the ground and rot now that's pretty graphic stuff but there's a reason I mention it the Lord calls Jeremiah and he puts him in a position that I find to be incredibly hard by the way I went all the way through the book I can find three people to call them friend I find that that he apparently has Baruch who's the secretary who's a friend but also confidant and also paid off he come who's in chapter 26 and EV admit who's in chapter 38 those are the only ones I can find that like the guy so you get no wife you get no children you get a lousy job in three friends Jeremiah's closest companion was his secretary Baruch in chapter 36 and it's interesting what Baruch went through just to be his friend it's possible that Baruch was also responsible for the final compilation of the book as we have it today because nothing in the book refers to after 580 after Baruch was gone what got a man was Jerry what was his life like I looked at chapter 10 and I saw in chapter 10 verse 24 that he was given to self analysis and self criticism he reveals a lot about himself did you see in chapter 1 verse 6 it says I am not skilled to speak and he receives the Lord's assurance that he's going to be strong and he's gonna he's going to be courageous but he doesn't think he has the ability to pull off what God called him to do I count one two three four five six major portions of the book that are personal confessions he lays bare deep struggles of this innermost being he makes startling statements he engages God for redress against his personal enemies he turns and says God you got to do something about that guy you know why because he's only got three friends and no wife he's got nobody else to talk to and in a period period of storm and stress with the doom of the entire nation coming on him there are pawns that are being moved around as the Babylonians are rising I found that Jeremiah found a kindred spirit for a little while in King Josiah and perhaps he proclaimed some of the messages like chapter 11 I probably mark at the front chapter 11 and chapter 17 look like messages recorded during the Josiah reform movement but I can tell you that second chronicles 35 says that he lamented Josiah is death badly when Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem and humiliated you wholly Akeem or Jehoiakim you find that Daniel is carted off but you find that Jeremiah is watching it happen the best of the best the three friends of Daniel and Daniel are being carted away Jeremiah stands by and watches The Brain Trust is being drained the economy is being flushed out it's interesting because Josiah son Jehova's is also known as Shalem he was mentioned only briefly in jeremiah 22 and you remember that Egypt is replacing people on the throne in Jerusalem babylons replacing people on the throne at Jerusalem and Jerusalem becomes this ridiculous pawn with international players it's interesting because Josiah was a great friend you hiakim was is relentlessly hostile enemy what does that mean what does it mean for God to give you finally a president that loves your message and the next one hates your message he's getting bounced around and there's nothing he can do about it because there's a new guy in town and when the new guy comes any it's everything about you and your God on one occasion in chapter 36 there's a great story of an early draft of Jeremiah's writings Jeremiah took the time in antiquity hardly anybody wrote books you have to understand that a library in antiquity was was ten Scrolls in Iraq because in order to keep the scroll viable you have to keep recopy it with each generation so you needed a scriptorium the size of this room to put a small rack the size of that bookshelf in order to have enough Scrolls in order to pass to the next generation he took the time to carefully take what God had told him poetically write it out and in chapter 36 they brought it to yo Hakim the the the king and the King used a scribes knife and cut the scroll into pieces and threw it into the fire pot in his winter apartment he burned it it's standing in front of the king and your life's work is being burned I have to tell you the Prophet was under house arrest he suffered being lowered down into a pit he knew what it meant to have enemies in high places and while he was trying to finally get a resolution he kept saying to them the time is coming this kingdom is coming apart rising to the throne was Zedekiah and said oh kaya was overtaken by the Babylonians as he ran from Jerusalem you remember his story in chapter 39 a powerful story where as his children are to his children are executed and he's blinded in front of Nebuchadnezzar his eyes are put out and Jeremiah has to kind of look at his people and say I've been telling you now for years and years and years we're gonna lose it now we're losing it it would be like warning people that major parts of our country were going to be taken away and then watching them peel off watching the disunity foment in the streets from the campuses and the academies finally out into the streets and then finally into an unlivable no longer united country significantly The Book of Jeremiah I also provides the clearest glimpse of the New Covenant I'd like you to for a moment to take a look at a passage of scripture that I think is incredibly important if you're reading through you'll find that there's a there is an unmistakable sense that God loves his people I want you to go to Jeremiah 31 for just a moment it's impossible for me to cover all the details of all of the prophecies but there are some that stand out and he says in chapter 31 that God who has turned his face away from Israel has turned his way face away from Judah who is now pummeling them and their society is coming apart has not forgotten them even even the northern cousins that were carried away by Assyria more than a hundred years ago before this would be brought back that there would be a renewal of what God had to do in Israel and he says in chapter 31 verse 27 these words behold the days are coming declares the Lord when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of beasts you have to appreciate the house of Israel had been 130 years a desolate landscape and the house of Judah was being taken apart by the Babylonians and nobody looked like there were going to have anything in the future and he said I'm gonna bring back both the Northern Kingdom and the southern kingdom as I have watched over them to pluck up to break down to overthrow to destroy to bring disaster so I will watch over them to build and to plant declares the Lord do you see it those are the words that were given to him and his commission that he would one day have something to say about God replanting and here's what it says it says verse 31 behold days are coming declares the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and when the house of Judah not like the Covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt my covenant which they broke although I was a husband to them declares the Lord but this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord I will put my law within them on their heart I will write it I will be their God they will be my people they will not teach again each man his neighbor and each man his brother saying know the Lord for they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them declares the Lord for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more God promised that there was coming a day when as bad as it was for his Judah as bad as it was for the Northern Kingdom that has long since been lost there was coming a day when he would reinstitute a New Covenant and the New Covenant he would do every single one of the household of Israel and Judah would know him did you notice when you read 31 that in chapter 31 he kept saying to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah to the house of Israel to the house of Judah to the house of Israel to the house of Judah and many a church concludes that that means the church and not Jews but God is either stuttering or he's on the wrong page you have to understand the New Covenant is primarily for the Jewish people it says that there's coming a day and it's not going to be too long after the church is off the scene there's coming a day and it's not going to be until finally Israel buckles under realizing that no one loves her like her her husband in heaven the great father that sits on the throne it's gonna come when he comes in the cloud with king of kings and Lord of lords written on his thigh there is coming a day when they will look on him whom they have pierced and every eye that sees him will drop to their knees and all Israel will be saved and Paul said that's a future day not a past day and it's a real day not a figurative day and it's a promise keeping day not a flowery piece of poetry when Jesus was in the upper room and he said this is the New Covenant in my blood what he revealed was not that a new covenant was coming but how it would come no nothing in the Hebrew Scriptures ever told them how would God write the law in their hearts how would God change them and he said by my death because one day you're gonna look on me after I've died and see the one whom you have pierced and you will weep zechariah 12 says i want you to know that jeremiah the prophet over and over and over and I counted I actually lost count I think there's more than 30 times he says I'm Jeremiah the Prophet and I'm writing this so when I read a commentator that says we can't be sure Jeremiah the Prophet wrote it I just have to ask is it 36 times you have to write that before you're sure is it 37 42 what's the sustainable amount but I know that he has a conscious call from the Lord and and for Jeremiah God was ultimate the Prophet theology conceived of the Lord of creation as as all that exists and as a result he was able to stand with God now what's the benefit of studying this book what's the practical application I mean frankly none of us want this to be our country we're glad this was another time in another place and we're hoping it doesn't visit anything near us but the Prophet Jeremiah had this most difficult message to deliver because he loved the people men and women I have to use a lot of words to get through these presentations in an hour but I hope you're not going to miss something I hear a lot of people pronouncing judgment on my nation but I don't hear a lot of brokenness if you want people to understand what it is you're feeling when our country makes a moral shift and heads in a direction that violates the standard of Scripture you want to do it with a broken heart not an angry voice Jeremiah spends a lot more time crying than he does yelling and in today's world we raise up a placard but don't fall in prayer we are not the kind of people that sound like this let me give you a couple of key verse mark them on the opening line there before when we go through the book I'll go through line by line but right now let me just give you one two three four key verses that I think will help you the first one is in Jeremiah 1:5 and it's simply this God will call you only after he knows that you know that he's in charge before I formed you in the womb I knew you before you were born I set you apart I appointed you as a prophet to the nation's you have very few plans to make you have paths to follow God does the calling God builds the path and then he covers it with leaves and we need a good blower to get it off there so we can see which way the path goes Jeremiah 17:9 can I just call you to this 179 don't trust your feelings listen to the verse the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure who can understand it the answer to the question God so you are not to trust your feelings how you feel about yourself how you feel about the world in which you live is less important than what has God said because things are not what they appear to be they're what God says they are Jeremiah 29 verses 10 and 11 even judgment is only part of God's plan so it says this is what the Lord says Jeremiah 29 10 and 11 this is what the Lord says when seventy years are completed for Babylon I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord plans to prosper you and not to harm you plans to give you hope and a future let me stop there and say this isn't your life verse you're not them and and Jim Elliot's standing out there being surrounded by Indians and about to be killed couldn't say I know he has a plan for my future it's going to prosper me he's going to die so the idea that you can just lift out what God told to somebody in a specific context and wear it as a badge or a t-shirt that makes you unstoppable is ridiculous it's making promises for God out of the context of the promise there's a contract relationship and when God says he's gonna do something for somebody he doesn't say he's going to do it for everybody so how do I know how to use the script he says listen Judah I need you to understand something by the way I hear people that want to hear about the plans to prosper you but they don't want the 70 years they both go in the same package so he says even in judgment that's only part of my plan I also have rescue for you let me give you one more Jeremiah 52 at the end of this kind of regather inquiry may have done in 52 12 and 13 listen to the witness of the destruction it says on the tenth day of the fifth month in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon nablas are done the commander of the Imperial Guard who served the king of Babylon came to Jerusalem I want you to listen to these words he set fire to the temple of I am the royal palace all the houses of Jerusalem every important building he burned down there's probably not a sadder moment for a Jew than to think of the Temple of God in flames the people of God in exile now before you get real tough with God because some people were moaning and hollering go God how could you let this happen he could he couldn't answer them with how many prophets and how many years did you need me to warn you before I told you it was really gonna happen you know why if you walk on that high fence you're gonna fall down don't walk on that high fence you're gonna fall down don't walk on that high fence gee I'm sorry you fell down why do you study this book well Jeremiah shows the fullness of the character of God and I want you to know something we live in a world that has listened to me an impoverished view of God Jeremiah challenges us by putting on display the full range of God's character if you want a happy story where everybody goes home and a good time was had by all Jeremiah's not your book but if you want the truth about life that God may call you to do something hard in a place where people don't care and where hearts are hardened but God will be faithful if you want the truth Jeremiah's your book the second thing I would say is in addition to showing the fullness of God's character Jeremiah illustrates the brokenness over a nation's rebellion and I want to challenge you I mean this with my heart my generation has done a really poor job of reflecting well brokenness over the nation's rebellion I was born in 1961 and in the midst of the fires just beginning to be stoked over the rebellions on our campuses that eventually showed up as rebellions in our streets that eventually showed up as rebellion in our corporate boardrooms and is now showing up in virtually every place you can look I don't want to be mad that people are stealing from my grandchildren that America I had dreamed for them or taking from that my grandchildren the American dream of a nation that would be under God and would understand it is want to be broken for that because I think the brokenness drives ministering I think when you can see other people and you're not mad at them you're hurt for them they can detect in your voice a love that needs to be there for them to respond to to God through you just remember before Judah fell apart and Jeremiah watched it Judah fell apart away from God and God watched it listen to Jeremiah 9 listen to the way he speaks Jeremiah 9 1 o 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 oh that I had in the desert a Wayfarers lodging place that I might leave my people and go from them for all of them are adulterers an assembly of treacherous men the end sounds hard the beginning sounds broken when you have to say something hard make it hard for you to have to say because flippant sarcasm about immorality on Facebook isn't changing people yelling Adam isn't doing it the third thing I'd say is Jeremiah shows us the depths of sinfulness we live in a world that denies or minimizes the reality of sin Jeremiah penetrates this delusional fog that somehow you can just rewrite the rules of family and everything will work out swimmingly God wired us to be worshipers and it's absolute folly to exchange the truth of God for a lie it won't work so when you see people creating new moral boundaries and relationships here's what I want you to do I want you to be the person that will help bring them in out of the cold because they're living a lie you're not gonna sleep around with 14 people and have a happy end of your life it isn't gonna happen you're gonna end up in a motel 6 with a blinking light by yourself that's how it's gonna go you and your buddy Jack Daniels because the bottom line is you don't dance through life without paying a heavy price for this and on every street in every diner in America you can see somebody whose life is like a road map on their face but Hollywood keeps selling that it's freedom and that you're just gonna love it jump in and out of the sack and it won't bother you a bit here's the truth when you trade what God made you for for something else you're living a cheap substitute I would say this - there's a fourth reason I think it's worth studying Jeremiah shows how God's call can be incredibly heavy on some I think that we forget that God really can call us to do hard things because we've come to the place now where everything that offends me now needs to be changed by someone else God is under no impression that he has to make move the whole set so that you're always happy I want to say this in a loving way but I want to say it clearly get used to dissatisfaction at times so that the bigger program can be fulfilled I've been a parent I've had three kids can I just tell you there's not every day's fun not every moment is comfortable 3 a.m. not so comfortable and and I love the voices of each of my children when they weren't screaming let me let me offer one more Jeremiah shows us the power of a savior it's interesting to me when you read Jeremiah 23 mark on the front face of Jeremiah don't miss Jeremiah 23 because in jeremiah 23:5 it says that that god is gonna raise up a righteous branch who will when trained as a wise and righteous king executing judgment that's 23:5 he will call him the Lord is our righteousness 23 6 because he's going to give his people his righteousness that they need to be accepted by a holy God what we can't do for ourselves a messiah will come and do for us I think that in addition to all of these beautiful pictures there's a great foreshadowing of a coming Messiah I want to close this by just simply offering you this jeff's Meade pastor wrote something to help me understand what Jeremiah saw he said when my oldest son was about three years old I was outside doing some yard work one afternoon I took Kevin outside to play while I trimmed the hedges holding his hand I knelt down beside him so that we could look at each other face to face slowly carefully I said now Kevin you can play here in the front yard you can go next door and you can play in your friends front yard you can take your big wheel and ride up and down the driveway you can go real fast you can go in the backyard you can play with the dog you can play on the swing or you can stay here and watch me trim the hedges all of those things are things that you can do now listen to me son listen to me you cannot go out into the street do you understand what I'm saying three-year-old Kevin not at his head yes daddy I let go of his hand and he ran directly to the curb put one foot in the street and turned his head toward me and smiled as if to say foolish mortal why why after understanding all the freedoms his father had allowed him why would he deliberately go to the one place his dad told him not to hey get it because that's the nature of broken man we want to be free doing it our way we want to be free to make our own rules we want to be free to make our own decisions about what's right about what's wrong but we don't control reality and our father gave us the boundaries that's the rejection Jeremiah told him and they did the opposite and as they wept being carted out in Chains from the city they blamed the God that warned them for 42 years from his pulpit because that's what we do there are still people in your life that believe they can do everything the opposite of what God's Word reveals and somehow it will all work out well for them I am here to tell you on the basis of the authority of the word of God that God wasn't wasting words in eleven hundred and eighty nine chapters of scripture there's a little content to this but he's not fooling around and Jeremiah's message was the message I just gave listen to him because he's not fooling around [Music] I don't have [Music] to bring to you

Channel: One Hour. One Book.

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Keywords: GCBI, Dr. Randy Smith, Bible teaching, Bible class, Hebrew, Greek

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Length: 54min 2sec (3242 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2017