Latest / Journey Elgin / Journey Through Scripture - Jer 14-17 & 8-10
Transcript
- Phillip Thomas: Hey, it's great to see you today. Welcome to our journey through Scripture. My name is Philip Thomas, pastor of Journey here in Elgin, and we continue our kind of chronological walk through the Bible. We're going to be mainly in the book of Jeremiah today. Jeremiah is kind of all over the place ⁓ as far as ⁓ chronology goes. ⁓ So we're going to do our best, but we're going to read Jeremiah 14 through 15, verse 10 or so. So it's the first part of chapter 15. Jeremiah 16 and 17, Jeremiah 8 through 10. So these are all kind of about ⁓ just, ⁓ this is kind of the desperation where things that there basically is no hope. We've read some things where Jeremiah has called on the people to repent and that there's kind of been a hope that they would. This is definitely a time where the people have chosen to go their own way. and that there is no chance that God is going to do what He has said He was going to do, and there's no changing that. This is a sad thing, but it's just the reality. And so we're going to see that. This is why sometimes Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet, because he had to continue to give this type of a message. So start off, we'll be in Jeremiah 14 and 15. The first part of chapter 15 anyway, it kind of talks about drought, uses that analogy as the people are in a drought and are dry. Chapter 14 says, the word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the droughts. It says, they mourn for the land, they cry of Jerusalem has gone up, 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. So they're doing all that they can do, but it's just not enough. It comes to that point that you can do everything that you can, but you may just be in a season of drought and it's going to be difficult. We continue on, verse seven says, ⁓ Lord, though our iniquities testify against us, Do it for your name's sake, for our backsliding are many. We have sinned against you." And so the people are crying out to the Lord. Why are they crying out to the Lord though? Well, it's because of the drought, not because, they may legitimately be sad and repenting for what they've done, but it's the reality of this drought that is causing them to cry out to God and saying, we have sinned against you. Verse 9, why should you be like a man astonished, like a mighty one who cannot save? Yet you, Lord, are in our midst, and we are called by your name. Do not leave us. Thus says the Lord to the people." Right? So they kind of come across as religious here, as sincere, says, 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. Right? So this This is not a drought that is going to end quickly. This is going to be punishment for sin. That day is finally arriving that the prophets have been warning about for so long. It says, then the Lord said to me, Jeremiah, do not pray for this people, for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry. 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." ⁓ This is tough, right? I mean, the people have gotten to that place where God is not going to intervene, ⁓ that He is going to allow their evil actions, He's going to allow the consequences to sweep across the nation. Verse 13, then I said, ⁓ Lord God, behold the prophets say to them, So now Jeremiah is talking about other prophets. 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. And this is interesting. And the Lord said to me, the prophets prophesied lies in my name. I have not sent them, commanded them nor spoken to them. They prophesied to you a false vision, divination, a worthless thing and the deceit of their heart. 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, but sword and famine, those ⁓ prophets by the sword and the famine, ⁓ those prophets shall be consumed." Now, this is kind of an interesting principle and it's one that we're kind of seeing today in the church. I can kind of see this going on in the church. There's, you know, It's never popular to basically talk about all of the bad and the evil that is being done in society and how we are complicit in that, which that's what Jeremiah is doing. saying, hey, y'all have turned your back on God and now you're going to ⁓ pay the consequences. That's not an easy message. It's also, sometimes we can be overly pessimistic and... you know, say things that may not be true, make things to be worse than they are. But there's this balancing act that we have to do, and it has to flow from what you truly believe God is calling you to do and to believe. I think we're kind of at that time where there are those pastors, I tend to be one, that I'm looking at what's going on in society, and I see lots of major problems that I feel like Our society is starting to hold on to things that go completely opposite the biblical worldview or an understanding of Scripture. And then there are pastors who don't see that. They disagree with that completely. And churches who do not feel that way. Who's right? I don't know. I humbly... ⁓ I that I share the words that God has truly given me, but I know there are people that disagree with me that believe the same exact thing. That's a tough place to be in, which the place where Judah is right now is a tough place because there are people in Judah who are faithful to God, but the majority, especially the leadership, is not faithful to God and is worshiping other gods and is open to the evil teachings of pagan religions and things like that. many of the people have bought into that. And so they're at this difficult place. And I just thought that was interesting that God tells Jeremiah, you know, punishment is coming by sword and by famine and by pestilence. And Jeremiah said, well, there's a lot of people who are prophesying. that that's not the case, that that's not going to happen. And God says, well, they prophesy lies and they will actually fall by the sword and famine and pestilence as well. I think we're kind of at that place where we really need to be searching out for what is true. it continues on. You'll see it. the people pleading for mercy. Verse 20, we acknowledge, O Lord, our wickedness and the iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against you. 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. And 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. So, you know, trying to get back into the good graces with God. ⁓ And then chapter 15, then the Lord said to me, even if Moses and Samuel stood before me, my mind would not be favorable towards this people. Cast them out of my sight, let them go forth and it shall be. If they say to you, where should we go? Then you tell them, thus says the Lord, such as are for death to death and such as are for sword to the sword and as such as are for famine to the famine and as such are as are for captivity to captivity and I will point over them four forms of destruction says the Lord the sword to slay the dogs to drag the birds of heaven and the beast of the earth to devour and destroy." And this is brutal stuff. This is very, very serious. Verse five says, For who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem, or who will bemoan you, or who will turn aside to ask you how you are doing? 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." Right? God has given them time and time and time again to repent and to turn back to Him, and now He is weary of relenting. Chapter 16 is a little bit different. It kind of goes into Jeremiah's life and kind of uses it as an example. It says, shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place. This is ⁓ very symbolic because blessing was found in the family in ⁓ producing children because then the The children continued your line long after you, and here Jeremiah is not participating in that blessing, just as the people are going to be losing the blessing of God. Verse 5 says, for thus says the Lord, do not enter the house of mourning nor go to lament or bemoan them for I have taken away my peace from the people says the Lord loving kindness and mercy both the great and the small shall die in this land. just the harsh reality of what is to come. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, verse 9, Behold, I will cause to cease from the place before your eyes, and in your days the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. It says verse 10 in chapter 16, And it shall be when you show this people all these words, and when they say to you, Why has the Lord pronounced all this great disaster against us? or what is our iniquity? What sin have we committed against the Lord our God? Then you shall say to them, Because your fathers have forsaken me, says the Lord, they have walked after other gods, have served them and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and not kept my law. And you have done worse than your fathers. For behold, each one follows the dictates of his own evil heart, so that no one listens to me. Therefore I will cast you out of this land and into a land that you do not know, neither you nor your fathers. And there you shall serve other gods day and night where I will not show you favor." So again, just reiterating what is causing this. It is that the people have turned their back on God. They're following the dictates of their own heart, not the dictates found in the Word of God. But then it says, and this is always important, as bad as that is, verse 14 of chapter 16, Therefore, behold, the days are coming." Right? So the days are coming. It says, the Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands that He had driven them, for I will bring them back into their land, which I gave to their fathers. Right? But then verse 18, and first I will repay double for their iniquity and their sin, because they have defiled my land and they have filled my inheritance with the carcasses of their Contestable and abominable idols, right? So he said it's gonna get bad, but I will bring them back God will be faithful. He will show mercy, but he also will show ⁓ Vengeance Says this is Jeremiah says ⁓ Lord my strength in my fortress my refuge in the day of affliction ⁓ Verse 21, therefore, behold, I will this once cause them to know, I will cause them to know my hand and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord. Then verse, chapter 17, the sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, right? It's done, it is written, it is not coming off. It is now time for God to make things right. Thus says the Lord, verse 5, cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord, for he shall be like a shrub in the desert and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the parts places in the wilderness, in a salt land which is not inhabited. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose hope is in the Lord, not the one who trusts in flesh or their own heart. but whose trust and whose hope is in the Lord. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river and will not fear when the heat comes, but its leaf will be green and will not be anxious in the year of the drought, nor will cease from yielding fruit." ⁓ Even God is reminding those people, those who will continue to be faithful to God, will be able to weather the storm, right? They will be able to survive even in the midst of the desert, which means it's not going to be easy. They will definitely be impacted, but that God, that you can still find hope, you can still find strength in the Lord God. This is a great verse, verse 9 of chapter 17. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doing." Right? We need to understand we have a ⁓ sinful nature and we need to keep that in check. We need to put our heart before the Lord because if we put our trust in man, if we put our trust in our own strength, ⁓ we will go astray. ⁓ Jeremiah, praise for deliverance starting in verse 14 of chapter 17. Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed. Save me, I shall be saved, for you are my praise. Indeed, they say to me, where is the word of the Lord? Let it come now. As for me, I have not hurried away from being a shepherd who follows you, nor have I desired the woeful day. You know what came out of my lips. It was right there before you. You do not be a terror to me. You are my hope in the day of doom. Let them be ashamed who persecute me, but do not let me be put to shame. Let them be dismayed, but do not let me be dismayed. Bring on them the day of doom and destroy them with double destruction." Jeremiah is kind of recognizing, okay, here's what's going to happen. He's going to be involved in that. But yet in the midst of that, he says, my hope is ⁓ in you are my hope, even in the day of doom, right? That he is going to follow God no matter what. And I think that's important decision for us to make as well. Are we going to continue to trust God? Are we going to continue to follow God even when things get very difficult? decision we need to start making now. Chapter 8, so chapters 8 9, kind of again going back to talking about false teachings, these are all in reference to the droughts that the people are going through, that they have reached the end and that there is no redemption until punishment has come. There's some... Just interesting verses in here. I just encourage you to read those. Verse 6, this is the Lord speaking, listened and heard, but they do not speak or write. No man repented of his wickedness, saying, what have I done? Everyone turned to his own course as the horse rushes into battle. So there's no kind of reflection and repentance. holding on to what that they have done and that what they have done is right and they are not repenting of the things that they have clearly done that go against the Lord. It continues, verse 10, "'Therefore I will give their wives to other in their fields, to those who will inherit them, because from the least even to the greatest, everyone is given to covetousness.'" Right? Everyone wants what the other one has. No one is content. From the prophets even to the priest, everyone deals falsely, for they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, peace, when there is no peace." Right? And they're trying to pretend that things are alright, but things are not alright. 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. Right? So kind of the, and we all did, well, many times do this, especially in our political world, right? We try to make things, ⁓ things aren't as bad as it seems. Well, you sometimes it's, it's bad. Right? You know, there are things that, that we have done as, as a society and as a people that are an abomination. I think slavery was one of those. Well, you know what? think for the most part. Most normal people have recognized that was an abomination. believe that abortion is an abomination. I believe that one day we will look back upon that in a similar way that we look back on slavery. It's like, how did we ever allow ourselves to use abortion as birth control? ⁓ Those possibly could be similar things in today's world that this kind of speaks to. That it's easy for us just to say, ⁓ no, peace, peace, everything's going well when there really isn't peace. that no, these are abominations. And rather than sitting back and looking and saying, wow, we have truly sinned and take time to repent and to change, we just smile and say that everything is okay. ⁓ That's one of the things that was happening. back in Jeremiah's day. ⁓ Continue on, you can read, continues on that kind of line going through the rest of chapter 8 and chapter 9. ⁓ There's another kind of where he reiterates what the problem is, chapter 9 verse 13, and Lord says, because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them, I have not obeyed my voice, nor walked according to it. but they have walked according to the dictates of their own hearts and after the bales which their fathers taught them. 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. I will scatter them among ⁓ the Gentiles whom neither they nor their fathers have known. And I will send a sword after them until I have consumed them." Then it goes into mourning and how people will be mourning. It says, even the carcasses of men, this is verse 22 of chapter 9, even the carcasses of men shall fall as refuse on the open field like cutting after the harvester and no one shall gather them. That is just going to be, it's foreshadowing the battle that is coming. And then 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. But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, exercising loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight," says the Lord. So the Lord delights in loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness. So this is a God who is loving, who is kind, who is ⁓ righteous, and who is the judge. And so he's been talking about all these horrible things. that he's going to allow to happen. But yet, the reason is, is because he is righteous, because he is the perfect judge, because he loves the people, right? If he just, if you were just to let people continue to live in their sin where it just brings destruction upon destruction upon destruction on society, how is that loving to let that just continued unfettered? No, God puts an end to it. And that's what he is doing here with Judah. ⁓ Chapter 10 talks about the idols ⁓ and following the idols more more, which that's at the heart of what the problem is, is the people are not following God. They are following idols that they have created. ⁓ We'll end Second Kings, just the first part of Second Kings, chapter 24. So what is all this leading up to is, well, Judah is being overrun by his enemies. In 2 Kings 24, just the first four verses, in his days Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up and Jehoiakim became his vassal for three years. Then he turned and rebelled against him, and the Lord sent against him raiding bands of Chaldeans, bands of Syrians, Moabites, bands of people of Ammon. He sent them against Judah to destroy it, and according to the word of the Lord, which he had spoken by his servants, the prophets, surely at the commandment of the Lord this came upon Judah to remove them from his sight because of the sins of Manasseh, according to all he had done, and also because of the innocent blood that he had shed, for he had filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, which the Lord would not pardon." All so all of the things that Jeremiah's prophesying now is starting to... to be fulfilled. All right, we're going to stop there. It went a little bit longer than I was planning to, but we'll be reading Jeremiah chapter 35, 23, 18 through 20. So 25, 33, 18 through 20. We'll read a little bit more in 2 Kings chapter 24. And then Jeremiah, a little bit in Jeremiah 22 and 13. So some of these I know are overlapping if you've read all of those verses, all of those chapters. Sometimes we're hitting them twice, but just different parts of the chapter. I'm just giving you the big, big pictures. So Jeremiah 35, 23, 18 through 20, 22 and 13, and then 2 Kings chapter 24. ⁓