Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] I know I just had you. You just automatically sat down. Isn't that so good? But can I have you just stand one more time? Would you mind doing that?
[00:00:09] Thank you. I'll tell you what, we're going to pray, and I know you're going to be seated for a few minutes anyway, so you'll have a chance to rest. So, Lord, we want to thank you today. And we think especially what's happening in our world. We think of the Ukraine, we think of what's happening there. And there's other parts of our world that are undergoing tremendous things. We think of Myanmar, there's so much conflict. And as we're going to look at your word today, we can see that as human beings, Lord, we have walked away from you. We don't really know your ways.
[00:00:42] Around the world. There are people that do know your ways, but for the vast majority, they don't. And we can see what happens in a world where when we turn our backs away from you, Father, it leads to death and destruction. And I pray for the Ukraine, Lord. I'm not suggesting that they're worse than anyone else. I'm praying, Lord, for their your grace to be upon that nation. I pray for your help. I pray that there would come a speedy cessation of hostility, Father. I pray that the end of the loss of life would come about quickly so that people could begin to rebuild their lives, Lord. And we pray for those that have been displaced as a result of this conflict, Lord, and not only in Ukraine, but other places in our world that people have been displaced, that you would be there with them. Father, you know what it's like to be a refugee. You fled from Herod. You fled into Egypt. Lord, you understand what it's like for humanity to experience times of difficulty. And I pray a special grace upon them. And now I ask, Lord, that you would open up the eyes of our understanding, open up our hearts, that we may hear your voice through your words. And we thank you for that. In Jesus name. And God's people said, amen. Amen. You may be seated. I'm going to have you turn to the book of Jeremiah. I know this is.
[00:01:58] The more I preach this book, the more challenged I am. Could you just turn me down just a little bit, Chris? I feel like I'm really loud here.
[00:02:07] Jeremiah, chapter nine. So in Jeremiah, chapter nine, I was actually listening to a series of lectures in the Morning by Dr. Rufus Fears. He's a professor of classical history. He's talking about ancient antiquity. And you ever have those moments when you're listening and he's talking about Athens. And I've listened to a lot of lectures on Greece and Rome, parts of the world. And he said something I'd never heard before and it just kind of resonated inside of me. And he simply said this, that just prior to the end of the Athenian empire, I don't know if you realize, Athens actually became very dominant and actually controlled much of the Mediterranean world.
[00:02:48] And just before their demise at the hands of the Spartans, which was another city state in Greece, the philosophers and people of Athens began to believe that there were no absolutes. Very interesting. Now, I don't know if you understand, but that's the current predominant note of this, what we would call a post modern culture. Today we're living in the same place as Athens was.
[00:03:16] We have abandoned our moorings. We are now recasting many of our historical narratives. I don't know if you know that, but we are doing that.
[00:03:24] And it's to suit our current values. One of which is the idea that we don't have any absolutes. There is no truth, there's no absolute truth, there's no right, there's no wrong. And you're beginning to see really the demise and the decay of a society.
[00:03:40] And you saw it in ancient Athens, it happened to them.
[00:03:44] And we're beginning to see it happening here in the 21st century. We've arrived at the same place that the ancient Athenians came to before their demise as a dominant civilization in the ancient world.
[00:03:59] Unfortunately, we're beginning to fall apart.
[00:04:05] And I want to raise the question, have we really progressed as a culture when our ancestors have already been there before?
[00:04:13] And the answer is, of course not. As a matter of fact, the book of Ecclesiastes says something very profound and many times we don't pay attention, but we ought to. It says, what has been will be again.
[00:04:24] What has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun where we're at today.
[00:04:34] Our ancestors have been there before.
[00:04:37] And what we need to do is actually learn from those who have gone before us. And if we don't, what are we going to do? We're going to make the same mistakes and we're going to suffer the same consequences.
[00:04:50] So I think we need to awake, we need to learn what happens when a culture begins to embrace lies rather than the truth as a value. And In Jeremiah chapter 9, we're going to discover that that's exactly what was happening in the history of Judah at this point in time. They had you know lived in a state of self deception. I believe that we're going to see today an eerie parallelism between what happened to the ancient nation of Judah and what is happening to us. You know, people are getting more confused today. I had someone say to me not too long ago, pastor, I don't know what to believe anymore. You know, we have news, fake news, this. I don't know what the truth is anymore. And you know what I said to them? We have a book called the Bible. It's the truth.
[00:05:37] If you're a little confused, go back to the book, recalibrate, get your bearing. Start reading the Word of God. Some people spend so much time listening to all the news that people get worked up, stressed out, they're full of fear, full of anxiety.
[00:05:52] I want to encourage you today, we can go back to a source that's reliable. We can go back to a foundation that will help us navigate through a time of what we're going to look at today. I'm going to call it moral pollution. We're just swimming against the tide of moral pollution. But what should we be doing? And I think as we look at this chapter, we're going to discover it. Because what we're going to find out is, is we're going to discover some of the values that God wants us to embrace.
[00:06:23] And whenever we embrace God's values, it produces truth, it produces life. When we disregard God's values, we end up falling apart, we end up coming undone, we end up destroying ourselves, really. And we're going to see that very clearly today as we look at these texts. So I want to look today at this chapter and identify three movements in Jeremiah, chapter nine. And the first one is really identification of the problem.
[00:06:50] In other words, how did we ever get into the mess we're in today?
[00:06:54] And a lot of times, you know, people feel like they have the answers to the problems. But most of the times what people have is what I call an answer to a symptom, or they're focusing on the symptoms. And a lot of what people are discussing today are just symptoms of a more fundamental problem, a problem that we don't even understand. And most people never discuss it because we've dismissed this concept completely in our culture today. And what is that problem? The problem is simply that we've turned our backs on God, that we're not living for him, and we're actually allowing something that's destroying us, which is sin, to dominate our culture today. But we don't even believe in that word. That word is not used anymore. It's an old word. It's a biblical word. It's a theological word. But today we talk about things like problems or dysfunction or. Or what's healthy and unhealthy. We don't use a theological term like sin. But we need to understand that the core issue is still the core issue.
[00:07:54] And when we try to deal with symptoms and we try to get rid of the symptoms, we're kind of like the gardener that's going into the yard and trimming the branches of the tree. We're just pruning. And how many know when you prune the trees, all you're doing is creating the avenue for greater growth, more foliage. And that's exactly what we've been seeing today. All we've been doing is addressing symptoms, and we see a greater degree of problems than ever before because we're not dealing with the core issue. When John the Baptist was here preaching, he said, hey, you got to cut down the root. You got to cut down the tree at its root. You got to get to the root problem. And so here we're going to find out what happens when God is cast aside as a culture or even when we as an individual cast God aside. We end up. What do we do? We end up distorting and embracing the wrong values. And once we do that, we're in trouble, because those values are going to take us on a journey that's going to lead to our own personal demise.
[00:08:58] So here we find Jeremiah, and he's expressing his anguish of soul as he's living in the moral corruption of his day. And so I want to ask the question, how do and I handle living in a broken world? Because that's what we're living in. We've always lived in a broken world. It's always been messed up.
[00:09:18] So some people say, well, Pastor, it's never been worse. No, it's been far worse.
[00:09:22] So don't fret. We've been here before.
[00:09:24] Learn from history. You know, do we just succumb to the tidal wave of sin? You know, another response we might entertain is, I'd like to check out, you know, like, is there a ship off the planet? You know, I'd like to get away from this mess. It just seems like I can't get away from this moral rot that's happening in our society. And so Jeremiah has an interesting emotional response. And I think we're going to all identify with his emotional response, but then we're going to see how we handle the situation.
[00:09:55] Now, you may feel one way and, you know, we're all entitled to our emotions, right? We can always feel bad. We can always feel like running away, but that's not the issue. It's what we really do that matters. We're going to see what Jeremiah does. So In Jeremiah chapter 9:2, he says, oh, that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers so that I might leave my people and go away from them, for they are all adulterers and a crowd of unfaithful people.
[00:10:25] It's not a nice summation of what Jeremiah thinks of the crowd he's been hanging with. You know, he's just saying, this is a bad lot. You know, it says when Jeremiah is calling the people adulterers and unfaithful, he's not speaking of their personal relationships with each other, though that's part of it. But he's really dealing with their infidelity towards God. They've not been faithful. God made a covenant with Judah. They've broken that covenant and they've done it for a long time. So Jeremiah is one of many, a long line of prophets who's been trying to speak into their lives.
[00:10:56] Now, Andrew Fawcett describes the level of despair that Jeremiah is experiencing when he says, I want to go to this lodging place.
[00:11:05] It's actually a caravan seri. And, you know, I had to look that up. I'd never heard of this, but there's actually along the silk Road for 4,000 miles. During the Middle Ages, they actually built these things. And even earlier they would be rest stops, but they were not like our rest stops. You didn't just pull in, grab a bike to eat, fuel up your car and keep on going. They were like deserted.
[00:11:30] As a matter of fact, they were usually a square building enclosing an open court. So you'd come into the building, it was an open court, and usually it was lonely. And because caravans would come in and come out, nobody really picked up after the mess.
[00:11:46] And it was a filthy place and it was lonely. And Jeremiah is basically saying, I'd rather live in that kind of squalor and loan by myself than to live in the comforts of Jerusalem so I could be removed from the moral pollution that I'm dealing with every day. So he wanted to get away. It's kind of like David's cry from Psalm 55. Oh, that I had wings like a dove. I would fly out of here. I just want to get out of here. He was so disgusted with what he was witnessing. It was grieving his heart.
[00:12:18] How many know it's easy to want to give up, you know, especially when, you know you're trying to share something with someone you love and they're not listening. How many feel like that's a little frustrating? Or when people are indifferent or they're hard hearted, or maybe they're even hostile. It's kind of hard to hang in there, isn't it? Sure it is. You know, Robert Davidson says to opa, would have been easy, yet Jeremiah did not take the easy way. He stayed to share the suffering which his people's depravity made inevitable. And because he stayed, he had a word to say to them in their darkest hours. So when we're going through this difficult time, he was hanging right with the people. He knew that they were going to suffer. How do you know when people are going to suffer? When people make bad choices, they're going to suffer. That's the way it works in life. You know, God says, I'm not mocked. Whatever a person sows, they're going to reap. That's what happens.
[00:13:11] So goes on to say, nowhere does the Bible encourage us to believe that we can find or serve God by withdrawing from this world, world and from our fellow humanity basically into some private oasis of personal spirituality. So this idea of, well, I'm going to be a super saint, I'm going to just step away from all kinds of people and it'll just be me and God. That's not super spirituality. That's running. That's not. It's really a lot more challenging to be in the middle of the mess and to actually live the right kind of a way, standing for the right things, doing the right thing and actually praying for people and sharing God's grace with people, that's far more difficult.
[00:13:55] How many know what I'm talking about? You know, it's a lot easier to just say, you know, I want out, than it is to hang in there and do the right thing. That's true spirituality.
[00:14:05] Then he goes on. Here we see God's attitude towards his own people as expressed in the next few verses. How many know God is a loving God?
[00:14:16] You know what I always tell people? Settle this in your mind. God is good and he's loving. But how many know love also means that if you really love somebody, you're invested in them and you're not indifferent towards them. See, you know, the opposite of love is not hate.
[00:14:33] The opposite of love is indifference.
[00:14:36] And so when people get upset with us, sometimes it's because they do love us.
[00:14:41] You know, that does happen you know, that I'm frustrated, but it's not because I'm indifferent. And, you know, God gets, I'm not going to say frustrated, but he does decide he's going to deal with things in people's lives. And one of the ways that God shows his love towards us is that he disciplines us.
[00:14:58] That's part of it. But we don't think of it as love.
[00:15:01] You know, most of us as parents, you know, when you're talking to your child and you're disciplining, you're saying, you know, this is actually because I love you. And the kids kid looks at you, goes, I don't buy that line.
[00:15:12] But the reality, it's the truth. I mean, if you really didn't love your kid, you just ignore what they're doing and let them destroy themselves and grow up to be a person that would be destructive to themselves and to others. But a loving parent's going to address that issue in their lives. And that's certainly the way God is.
[00:15:31] So here we find In Jeremiah, chapter 9, God's opinion and his attitude towards his people. He says, they make ready their tongue like a bow. This is all now poetic to shoot lies. Can you see this picture of an archer? They got the bow out, they're ready to shoot. But what they're shooting at you is not arrows. They're shooting lies at you, okay? It is not by truth that they triumph in the land. In other words, they don't see truth as a way to get ahead.
[00:15:59] They're literally out to deceive people.
[00:16:01] They go from one sin to another. They don't acknowledge me, declares the Lord. They do not acknowledge me. That's verse three. He's going to repeat that in verse six. Beware of your friends. Do not trust anyone in your clan. For every one of them is a deceiver and every friend a slanderer. How many go, that's not a good place to be living when everybody's out to get you. How many feel, you know, you say, I have a reason to be paranoid.
[00:16:25] According to this text. You can see why. Because you're going, man. The way people are behaving today, who can you trust, right? Verse four, he says, yeah, that's what's happening. He says, friends deceive friend, and no one speaks the truth. They've taught their tongues to lie. They weary themselves with sinning, yet you live in the midst of deception and their deceit. They refuse to acknowledge me, declares the Lord.
[00:16:49] Wow.
[00:16:50] How many would like to live in a world like that you don't have a clue who you can trust. Because even the people you're around, the closest people, are not speaking the truth. They're out to get you, they're out to take advantage of you, they're out to exploit you. They're manipulating. You know, I think we're moving closer to a time where, you know, you just feel like every time somebody says something, you're thinking to yourself, what's the angle? You know, isn't that kind of sad to be living in a world like that? But we're moving more and more towards that and it's scary, you know. Dr. Tremper Longman says even those in the most intimate of relationships must be on their guard against deception.
[00:17:26] Friends and brothers betray each other. Implicit is the message that those who betray God will also betray their closest human relationships, thus undermining community.
[00:17:36] And you see how important it is that you and I walk in the truth, that you and I embrace the truth, because it helps build community, it helps build relationships. You know, but when people today are, you know, they turn their back on God, they have no standard of right and wrong anymore. They don't know where the line is.
[00:17:56] And so pretty soon they're doing what they think is in their own personal best interest, whatever that might be. But most people don't know what's in their own best interest. You know, that's true. They think they do in the moment, but they don't see long term ramifications of their decisions. And so people are doing things biblically is warning us against, but they think that this is good for them and they do it. And it becomes very.
[00:18:20] It breaks up families, it's breaking up communities. We see nations fragmenting. We see all the problems. When you're living in a realm where there's deception as its primary driver.
[00:18:34] Philip Reichen says this.
[00:18:39] Well, I just wrote down, anytime trust is completely eroded, words then become used to exploit and abuse. Philip Reichen says the words that come from their mouths were like so many poisoned darts. They even took their tongues to boot camp, training them for verbal bad. That's a very apt description. I mean, how many can relate to that? That doesn't sound nice. They have taught their tongues to lie. When a society loses its love for truth, it's in a lamentable condition.
[00:19:08] Are we not living in a time like this? Can we begin to see it? People are not being that honest anymore. They're very quick to say whatever they think is going to be expedient for them.
[00:19:20] You know, trust is quickly eroded in a whirlwind of deception and lies. Jeremiah concludes this paragraph with a daunting statement. They refuse to acknowledge God.
[00:19:32] We are living in a time where so many people are refusing to acknowledge God. Walter Brueggemann says the telling phrase is falsehood, not truth is mighty in the land. Every practice of fidelity, be it theological, moral, judicial, economic, has become a practice of fickleness and self deception.
[00:19:52] This is rooted in the fact that they do not know me, that is they don't recognize Yahweh as a common covenant. Lord, Judah has forgotten everything necessary to survive. She's forgotten her commitments, forgotten shame, forgotten accountability, forgotten God. When that core commitment is disregarded, there's not enough arms, strategies, policies, prayers or sacrifices to survive.
[00:20:15] All of these things aren't going to do any good. We can see that. You know, we can do a lot of human things to try to make things work. But when you kick God out of the equation, you, you've lost a base and you're free floating now you're in trouble.
[00:20:28] God not known as the one drawn to grief because the end is sure. What is he saying? He's saying, listen, God himself is now grieving over the condition of his people.
[00:20:40] We're going to end up in a state of lament. Lament is a state of grief.
[00:20:45] Anytime we have a society doing this kind of stuff, anytime a society forsakes truth, what we're going to get is moral pollution. We're going to get corruption. There's going to be no baseline. And we're seeing that today in the culture in which we're living in.
[00:21:02] And then we get to the place where people are refusing to be corrected. You can't correct people today.
[00:21:08] That doesn't work anymore. People won't listen. So the second movement here is God's response to our human indifference and to his own correction. How are we going to respond to what God's saying to us?
[00:21:22] God will address every human injustice, every deception and every abusive relationship. It may not always be in this life, but he's going to address it. When we have wrong values and begin to pursue them, God's going to strip away those.
[00:21:38] Basically those values become idols, those things that we're pursuing. And he's going to show you at the end of the day that what you've been chasing after has no validity, no value. Look at verse 7. Therefore, this is what the Lord Almighty says. See, I will refine and test them for what else can I do because of the sin of my people?
[00:21:58] What is God saying? He says, I'm going to refine you. I'm going to discipline you. I'm going to address this issue. I'm not going to leave it alone. Something's going to happen here. And God had warned them earlier in their history, he said, listen, when you obey me, I'm going to bless you. When you, you disobey me, if you keep doing it and ignore me, you're going to go into exile. He'd warned them about this, but they just ignored it. And you know, when we just start ignoring what God's counseling us, we're going to get into trouble. He said, their tongue is a deadly arrow. It speaks deceitfully with their mouths. They all speak cordially to their neighbors, but in their hearts they set traps for them. How many would like to have people, you're talking to them, they're saying really nice things to you, but deep down inside, they're really working and trying to figure out how to take you down. That's the kind of society they were living in then. How many would like to live in that society? You have no idea who you can trust anymore. That's the society in Jeremiah's time. Oh, by the way, if we keep turning our back as a culture from God, that's the society we're moving towards. We need to understand that God says, should I not punish them for this? Declares the Lord, Should I not avenge myself on such a nation as this? So here we see God's work of refining in our lives.
[00:23:09] God will allow suffering to come into our lives.
[00:23:15] When we live a life of disobedience, he'll let it happen.
[00:23:19] He's going to refine the dross and the moral impurities from our lives. John Thompson says, for such misdeeds, Yahweh would punish or judge the people and avenge himself on sin. Such a nation. It's interesting that word nation in the Hebrew is goy. And he goes on, he says the use of the term goy for Israel may represent the transfer to Israel of a term which was regularly used of non Israelite people.
[00:23:47] He goes on to say its use here suggests that Jeremiah had come to regard the people as no different in their behavior from the goyen, the people outside the covenant. That word goyen is, by the way we translated, gentile.
[00:24:01] So what is, what is, what is Jeremiah saying that. What is God saying through Jeremiah? He's saying, guys, you are behaving just like the other people in the world that have no covenant with me. Now you want me, I'm going to Translate it so that we get it in our language.
[00:24:19] Christians, you are behaving like the non Christians.
[00:24:24] That's problematic.
[00:24:26] You see, I have a covenant with you. But when you act like this, you're behaving as if you're not my people.
[00:24:34] Your behavior is wrong. That's what he's trying to tell them.
[00:24:38] He goes on to say, certainly whatever they might claim, there was nothing about them to suggest that their covenant with Yahweh had produced in them ethical responses which would mark them out from others around them.
[00:24:51] Can I explain something to all of us here? We really get this.
[00:24:54] To be a Christian means not only do I believe that Jesus died for my sin, I received him as my Savior. He's now the Lord of my life. I'm living. Christ is in me and I am in Christ.
[00:25:07] What makes a Christian distinctly unique from people that are not Christians is that we are the people of God's presence.
[00:25:15] Everybody follow that. So now if God is present in my life, I will reflect the presence of God, I will reflect the values of God, I will reflect the character of God in my life. And if I'm not doing that, that should be a warning sign to us. Something is amiss, something has gone wrong, something needs to change in my life.
[00:25:42] So Thompson, he's telling us that when the people of God degenerate and behave like the sinful occulture around them, God will discipline. He will. Actually Proverbs tells us that God says, listen, don't resent my rebuke because the Lord disciplines those he loves, even as the Father, the Son, he delights in. And by the way, the writer to Hebrews picks up on this proverb and starts talking about that in Hebrews chapter 12. And he basically says, when you and I sin, God's going to discipline us and we should be rejoicing.
[00:26:19] When you know, God deals with us when we sin. How many know what I'm talking about? When you do the wrong thing, all of a sudden you go, I need to straighten that out. Something inside of me just was.
[00:26:30] That was not the right way to approach that. I didn't say the right things, my attitude was wrong. How many get that little Holy Spirit grieved inside of you? I got to fix what I just did wrong and straighten myself out because I know that I've sinned against God.
[00:26:44] That's a good thing.
[00:26:46] We don't want to violate that. We want to stay tenderhearted towards God. But if we ignore that, then we get become harder hearted and eventually it's hard for God to talk to us, and we don't even listen to him anymore. And we don't take him at his word anymore. We just do our own things. And then we start justifying our behavior and we're just going down the wrong path.
[00:27:07] We need to begin to see that what God says, it needs to affect how we're going to live our lives. Then we see that a lament is taken up. That means that we begin to sorrow about what's wrong. And I don't think it's just sorrow about what's wrong in me. I begin to sorrow about what's wrong around me. And I begin to weep with those who are weeping. I begin to see the pain in our world. I begin to see the people around me just like you do. And we're affected by that. We can't just be indifferent to the people that are in pain.
[00:27:39] It should cause consideration and lament. We're told to. The Bible says, weep with those who weep.
[00:27:46] I think he goes on here to say, I will weep and wail for the mountain. So Jeremiah doesn't just go, oh, you know, I like to leave Dodge, but he stays. But what does he do then? He starts weeping over the condition. And then he goes on and take up a lament concerning the wilderness grasslands. They are desolate and untraveled. The lowing of the cattle is not heard. The birds have all fled and the animals are gone. What's he saying?
[00:28:09] He's using poetic language to tell us that what's happening is that they're being taken off the land, and so there's a desolation that's left. He goes on to say, I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals, and that will lay waste the towns of Judah so no one can live there. God says, I'm going to execute my covenant responsibilities.
[00:28:29] You have sinned grievously for a long time. Now we're going to act on it. Here's the reason for the lament. Why is this a state of lament happening? Verse 12. He says, who is wise enough to understand this? Who has been instructed by the Lord and can explain it? Why has the land been ruined and laid waste like a desert, and no one can cross? The Lord said, it's because they have forsaken my law, which I've set before them, and they have not obeyed me or followed my law? It's very simple. God says, listen, I told you what I expected and you've just disregarded it. By the way, when you say something to someone and they totally disregard what you say. What is that saying to you?
[00:29:10] Do they have a respect for you?
[00:29:12] None.
[00:29:13] That's the point. God says when you and I don't obey what he says, we're showing total disregard for God, total disrespect for God. How can we say we love God with our whole heart if we're ignoring what he's telling us? That's a statement of disregard. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their own hearts. Man, how many think the heart is the big issue? Actually, Proverbs says, guard your heart. Out of it are the issues of life. We need to be tender hearted. We need to be open hearted towards God. He says they have followed the Baals as their ancestors have taught them. You know what this tells me? This has gone on for a long time. This is not just. This is generational.
[00:29:50] These people have been violating God's covenant for a long time. Now their ancestors were doing it. And these people were taught to continue on in this course and they continued on. And can I just say something? Oftentimes God is very long suffering. And so because God doesn't jump on us right off the bat when we do the wrong thing, that doesn't mean God's in agreement with us. God's long suffering, he's not willing that any should perish. We need to understand that.
[00:30:14] He goes on to say, therefore this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says. See, I will make this people eat bitter food, drink poison.
[00:30:23] Wow.
[00:30:24] Water. Drink poison water.
[00:30:27] I will scatter them among the nations that neither they nor their ancestors have known. And I will pursue them with the sword until I've made an end of them. What is he basically saying? You know, I've been your ally, I'm going to be your enemy.
[00:30:41] And by the way, if you say, well, that's just the Old Testament, pastor. The book of James says, friendship with this world is to be at enmity with God. That means if you and I brace the society's value system, we make God our enemy. I don't know about you. I want God as my friend.
[00:30:56] I want to be known as the friend of God, not the enemy of God. That's a challenging statement.
[00:31:03] So to really understand what's happening in our world, we must know God and understand his ways.
[00:31:08] And here it's explained why they were being exiled. They had violated their covenant, they were resistant to truth, and they were actually following the ways of their neighboring nations, worshiping false gods.
[00:31:21] And this had been going on for generations. Philip Reichen reminds us, God's people received judgment the old fashioned way. They earned it. The question is not what had these people done to deserve this. The question is, what haven't they done? They were doing everything wrong.
[00:31:37] He says, you name it, they did it. Idol worship, adultery, lying, child sacrifice, not praising God, prostitution, unfaithfulness, treachery, shady dealings, false preaching, not fearing God, covenant breaking, violence, greed, not walking in God's ways, hypocrisy, racism, murder, goddess worship, slander and rejecting God's word. Boy, these guys were really something, weren't they? You know, goes on to say, in a word, they were stubborn. Which means to exhibit a defiant attitude toward the Lord and a rejection of his law, a preference for other gods and a refusal to repent. How many go? That was a nasty little crew here. But before we get too tough with them, I think sometimes we've got to look at that list and go, okay, maybe I'm in that list. You know, I better not be too fast to cast the rocks. I might be hitting myself. It's a few stones. That's what I'm trying to say to us. We better be careful here, you know, Are we, you know, rebellious? Are we defiant? Are we obedient? See, that's the issue he's talking about.
[00:32:33] A day of reckoning had now arrived. Can I just tell all of us whatever, wherever we're at in our life, a day of reckoning is coming.
[00:32:42] You know, God is not mocked. Whatever you sow, you're going to reap. If you sow to the flesh, you're going to reap corruption. If you sow to the spirit, you're going to reap eternal life. It's whatever you're giving your life to. The question.
[00:32:56] Robert Davidson frames it this way. The question which haunted the religious consciousness of the Jews after the destruction of the city which they thought was indestructible because it was God's holy city, God's holy temple. How could that ever be destroyed?
[00:33:11] Why did this happen? You can see them in exiles going, what happened?
[00:33:15] How did this all happen?
[00:33:17] And the answer, in line with all the prophetic teaching in the Old Testament, is the people's disloyalty to God. Out of this comes the bitter experience of exile to distant lands and death they were to now eat bitter food and drink poisoned water. It's all poetic language, isn't it? A nation of mourners. How many know in the ancient world you actually hired people to come in and mourn for you?
[00:33:40] Did you know that?
[00:33:41] Remember the story of Jesus. He comes to the little girl that's dead and they're already mourning. They're professional mourners, and that's their job. They come and they cry. And that makes you feel, you know, sad, too, because everyone around you is crying. Helps facilitate the grieving process.
[00:33:56] Notice what he says. This is what the Lord Almighty says. Consider now. Call for the wailing women to come and send for the most skillful of them. In other words, what's about to happen to you is not good. You're going to need a bunch of people here coming and crying. You better hire the best you got, right? Then he goes on to say, let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water stream from our eyeballs. This doesn't sound like a Happy time.
[00:34:20] Verse 19. The sound of wailing is heard from Zion. How ruined we are. How great is our shame. We must leave our land because our houses are in ruins. Now, you women, hear the word of the Lord. Open your ears to the words of his mouth. Teach your daughters how to wail. Teach one another a lament.
[00:34:36] What's he saying?
[00:34:37] It's going to be so bad. You better start training people as fast as you can. We need a whole new group of mourners. We need a lot of mourners. There's going to be a lot of lamenting. Repenting here. Not a good situation.
[00:34:48] What's he describing? The inevitability of destruction. You know, when there's a lack of repentance, all that's left is death.
[00:34:57] Paul tells us In Romans, chapter 6, verse 23, the wages of sin is what?
[00:35:02] It's death. You know, God. I've already said it twice earlier. God's not mocked. Whatever we sow, we reap.
[00:35:10] Listen, I know I've discovered something. I actually kind of like poetry now. I'm starting to realize the Bible is full of it. Listen to this. This is real beautiful poetry. But this is pretty grim poetry, actually. You know, it says, death has climbed in through our windows. What's he mean? You can't shut it out. You can't close the door on death. It's going to find its way in. It's climbing in through the windows.
[00:35:34] It has entered our fortresses. It has removed the children from the streets and the young men from the public squares.
[00:35:41] What's this talking about? This is. The hope of your future has now gone.
[00:35:45] Your young people are disappearing. They've been taken. Either by war, by famine, by pestilence, who knows They've been Taken.
[00:35:54] This is talking about a state of hopelessness, but let the one. Oh, sorry. It says, this is what the Lord declares. Dead bodies will lie like dung on the open field, like cut grain behind the reaper, with no one to gather them.
[00:36:10] You ever heard of the Grim Reaper?
[00:36:12] This is the text.
[00:36:14] Can you imagine what it's like to come out? Could you imagine coming out to stepping outside in our city, and you and I are walking outside and all we see is a field full of dead bodies and there's nobody left to bury them.
[00:36:28] Could you imagine stumbling on something like that? How many? Say, that's pretty grim.
[00:36:33] Is that grim?
[00:36:34] He said, this is what it's going to be like. You're going to see devastation like you've never seen it before.
[00:36:39] Sounds like war.
[00:36:41] You know, people right now in the Ukraine, they're experiencing this. You know, they're seeing terrible things.
[00:36:49] Awful stuff.
[00:36:51] But then we move on to the third movement in this chapter, and it's a challenge.
[00:36:56] You know, when I was looking at this, I'm going, this is the most depressing sermon you could possibly preach. Pastor, what in the world are you thinking?
[00:37:07] I'm going, yes, it is depressing. But here's the good news. We're not going to end here.
[00:37:13] There's a challenge for us. How many go, I don't want to live this. I don't want to experience what you're describing. Anybody say, I'm opting out, I don't want this. I don't want this for myself. I don't want this for my kids. I don't want this for my grandchildren. How many say, with me, I don't want it. It. I don't want it. Okay, so let's find out what we need to do. What should our response be? Okay, there's a challenge to embrace godly values.
[00:37:43] How could they have avoided this devastation?
[00:37:48] How could they have avoided it?
[00:37:50] By turning to God.
[00:37:52] That's exactly right. What can we learn from this descent into destruction so that we don't follow in the same path? What can we learn from history?
[00:38:05] Oh, we'll just rewrite it. We don't like the script.
[00:38:08] That's what people do today. I'm going, that's the wrong response. It's going to happen to you.
[00:38:14] Settle down, Paul.
[00:38:17] It's going to happen to you. If you just try to rewrite the story right, that's not going to solve the problem. It's meant to teach us something. So what should we learn?
[00:38:27] Well, we need to hear the difference between what God values and what society values. We need to develop the right values. Okay, and here we go. Jeremiah 9:23. This is what the Lord says. Let not the wise boast of their wisdom, or the strong boast of their strength, or the rich boast of their riches.
[00:38:45] But let the one who boasts boast about this, that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth. For in these I delight, declares the Lord.
[00:39:01] Okay, what's he. Let's just unpack this because this is very powerful. I think he's saying God values who he is and what he's like. What is God like?
[00:39:15] Kindness. Now this word kindness, this is just a translation, you know, in the Hebrew it's the word hesed. I love this word. Hesed is a word that means a covenant, loyalty or love. It's an unfailing love. It's a love where God says, I'm going to do this for you. And he always comes through.
[00:39:34] God says, I want you to be like that. I want you to. When you tell people something, you're going to be there for them.
[00:39:42] Actually Psalm 15 tells me, a righteous person swears to their own hurt. In other words, you know, in my grandparents generation, so this is a while ago now, Canada was a different country a long time ago.
[00:39:58] It was more godly for one. And they had values. And like my grandfather in that day, they didn't even need to write a contract. It was unnecessary because they knew each other and if they said they would do something, it was done, that was it. They were as good as their word. That's what integrity is.
[00:40:17] We are so far away from that. We can even sign contracts. It means very little. People still go to court, break contracts and sue each other. How many know that's the culture we live in today, it's full of deception.
[00:40:28] You know, they're looking for the loopholes in the contract.
[00:40:32] But that's the wrong kind of an attitude. God's not interested in those kind of people. That's the wrong value system. Because those people, they have, they're after money, they're driven, they want to boast about how rich they are. They have the wrong value system, they're pursuing the wrong thing and it ends up corrupting their character. But when you have the right value system, you pursue the right things, you become the right value, you become godly, you become like God. You have hesed a kindness, a loyalty.
[00:41:03] You're standing beside people even when their lives are falling apart. God's like that. He says, here this word justice.
[00:41:12] Elmer Martens describes it as going beyond fairness. It represents putting things right and maintaining relationships that are honorable according to God's behavioral prescriptions.
[00:41:23] I like that. In other words, you're doing the honorable thing. You're a person of honor.
[00:41:30] We've lost that in this culture. People get married today and they don't like something, they just end it.
[00:41:36] Well, this person has an issue.
[00:41:39] I've been a pastor a long time now. I've heard a lot of stuff. Believe me, I've heard a lot of stuff. Remember one guy comes in, he says, oh, I want to marry this new girl. I said, well, were you married before? Oh, yeah. I said, well, so you got a divorce? Yeah. Did you get a divorce as a Christian? Yeah. I said, did you have any sort of grounds for getting this divorce? Well, my wife had mental issues.
[00:41:59] I said, so oh, what you're telling me is. And I said to the new person he had in my office, I said, so what you're telling me is if she develops a problem, you're checking out.
[00:42:10] I did not win a popularity rating.
[00:42:14] But what was I telling them?
[00:42:17] I was telling him the truth. I said, you're not an honorable person. No, I'm not doing the wedding. Sorry, can't do it.
[00:42:24] See what I'm talking about? We need to understand something. We need to become the right kind of people.
[00:42:31] And the only way you'll get there is when you have the right kind of values.
[00:42:35] Goes on to talk about righteousness as a commitment to doing what is right. And God's word tells us what's right. This is in contrast to wisdom, wealth and power that so many are striving for.
[00:42:48] Listen to me very carefully.
[00:42:51] Our society glories in fame, fortune and reputation.
[00:42:57] Right? That's what it's all about. I've got all this money. This is who I am. I'm successful. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:43:04] Elmer Martin says scripture is not negative about riches, power or wisdom, except that when these usurp the place that God should have. In other words, if we make those things our goals, that's bad.
[00:43:16] If those things come into our life while we're pursuing the right values, that's fine. But that's not our goal.
[00:43:23] And let me say something to all of us. Do you think the day you're standing before Jesus in heaven, it'll matter how much you have in your bank account?
[00:43:32] Not one iota.
[00:43:34] Isn't that true? Means nothing. You know the kind of person you are.
[00:43:41] All that matters.
[00:43:42] Let's be the right kind of people.
[00:43:44] Let's embrace God's value system. Let's go after those things because it'll shape us. It'll make us become more like God. You see, the whole issue is the transformation of our hearts that's so critical in our lives.
[00:43:57] Listen to what Paul writes in Galatians, chapter 6, verse 14. He says, May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. What's Paul saying? He says, my boast is that I know Christ and I know him as the one that was crucified for my sins and rose from the dead. And because of that, I've embraced Him and the things of this world.
[00:44:21] I'm dead to those things.
[00:44:24] Let me tell you a little story. I was reading it the other day in the scripture. I was thinking about it, meditating on it. Remember, the rich young ruler came to Jesus. Jesus says, he says, I've done all the things and the commandments. Jesus said, well, just give up everything you've got. Give it to the poor and come follow me. And he left away sorrowful because he was trusting in his riches. Wouldn't you know that story? It's not that. God's telling every one of us to give all our money away to the poor. You know what he's telling us to do? He's telling us not to allow the things that we possess to possess us.
[00:44:53] That's the moral of the story that you and I are saying. It all belongs to you, Lord. You want something, it's yours. My hands are open. It's a two way street. You can take it anytime you want to. That's your business. It's God. You're in control here.
[00:45:08] But let me move on to this transformation of the heart. How critical that really is. Listen to what it says. The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh.
[00:45:19] This was a ritual, Remember? The Jewish people were in a covenant agreement with God. They had circumcision as a sign of that covenant. But it was extremely external.
[00:45:29] It wasn't changing their hearts.
[00:45:31] This is the last verse in the chapter. We're done now. He says, just go back and read this. He says, they're circumcised only in the flesh.
[00:45:40] Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and all who live in the wilderness and distant places. Is there kind of a name that sticks out in this list?
[00:45:50] Judah? Why is it packed in between Egypt and Edom? Those are guys who are uncovenant people.
[00:45:55] These guys probably practice some form of circumcision. But it goes for all these nations are really uncircumcised.
[00:46:04] Wait a minute, Judah, you've all been circumcised? No. God says you've been uncircumcised. And even the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart. See, God is not interested in what we're doing in the sense, you know, I have an external form of godliness. God is interested in what's driving me on the inside.
[00:46:23] The essence of my personality is my heart.
[00:46:28] So God is looking for something far more significant than an external expression of faith. Well, I'm a Christian.
[00:46:35] You may or may not be what's going on on the inside?
[00:46:39] Am I living to please God? See?
[00:46:42] So let's close the sermon. How does this message from Jeremiah impact me?
[00:46:47] How does it impact you? How is it impacting us?
[00:46:51] Do we weep over the brokenness in people's lives? Are we reflecting God's system of loyal love? Are we being faithful to God's word and to our word? Are we keeping our commitments? Are we putting things right and maintaining relationships that are honorable to God? Is our heart living for God, or are we just going through the motions?
[00:47:14] Do I really have a passion for God and a compassion for people? That's what we say we have. That's our mission statement in our church.
[00:47:24] I said to myself, if I have a passion for God, it should translate then into compassion for people.
[00:47:31] You know, do I believe that Jesus is the truth, the way and the life? Or am I being slowly seduced by the lies of our society, embracing sinful attitudes and pursuing wrong values? Us? Let's stand as we close this morning.
[00:47:51] Let me just ask the question with every head bowed.
[00:47:54] Just take a moment, a reflection, a pause, and I'm going to pray and you can be dismissed here.
[00:48:00] You know, I believe the Spirit of God is speaking. You say, how do you know that? Because first of all, I deeply believe that when believers gather together, the presence of the living God is in our midst.
[00:48:12] I believe that when a minister of the gospel or anyone begins to share the word of God, they're speaking the oracles of God.
[00:48:20] God's spirit, God's voice is speaking into your soul. I believe that.
[00:48:26] I believe today that you're here not by accident or listening, not by accident, but that God is speaking into your souls today. And some of us, this room, have to say, you know what? I've gotten my value Systems crossed.
[00:48:41] I've allowed myself to be seduced by the trappings of this present age.
[00:48:51] And I am living now more for the moment than I am living for eternity.
[00:48:56] It's very subtle. It's a shift. Slowly, it can happen over time. It. We can start drifting. The spirit of God is speaking to you. And you say, you know what?
[00:49:06] I want you to begin to pursue my values.
[00:49:11] I want you to become a person of integrity.
[00:49:14] I want you to cast off the seductions and the lies that you're buying into. I want you to become obedient to me and my word. That's God speaking into your life. God's been speaking to you right now.
[00:49:27] I don't know what's going on in your life. I don't know what's going on in your heart, but God does.
[00:49:33] With every head bowed, every eye closed. We're not here to embarrass anybody. This is an opportunity, a moment. You say, you know, lord, I don't want to keep walking down the wrong path because I see where it's leading. It's leading to a demise. It's leading to destruction.
[00:49:50] It's leading to death. It's leading to broken relationships. It's leading to heartache.
[00:49:56] I could rewrite it and I could see I'm not that person. But you know what? Deep down inside, spirit of God's talking to you, saying, I'm speaking to you now. I want you to turn your back on that.
[00:50:06] I want you to turn your face towards me. I want you to embrace me and acknowledge me. I want you to embrace my value system.
[00:50:13] I want you to walk with unfailing loyal love. I want you to walk and do what's right. And just in my eyes, I want you to have the right kind of healthy relationships.
[00:50:23] You know, a lot of times we do the wrong things because there's something broken inside of us.
[00:50:28] That's the nature of sin. Inside of us is brokenness. God wants to fill that empty spot. You don't have to be a millionaire to make you feel better.
[00:50:37] That's a deception.
[00:50:39] That's just a different form of taking, a drug.
[00:50:42] God says, I want to fill that place with myself.
[00:50:45] Maybe you're here today and there's some brokenness inside of you and you've been filling it with the wrong stuff. Why don't we just acknowledge God? I need your help. There is pain in my life. There is loneliness in my life. There is brokenness in my life. Would you come right now and fill my soul with your presence?
[00:51:00] Would you move me to a new trajectory so I can move towards you. That's my goal.
[00:51:06] With every head bowed right now. If that's you, God's speaking to you right now, just raise your hand. I'm going to pray for you, for those that are. Yeah, just raise your hand.
[00:51:13] God's going to hear that cry. Beautiful. God speak in hearts. It's beautiful what God was doing today. Yeah, we're going to let him work, Lord.
[00:51:21] You see our response to you, Lord. We recognize there's poverty of spirit inside of us. There is a brokenness. We want you to fill us with your divine presence. We want you, Lord, to apprehend our soul. We want to walk towards the right values. We want to become like like you, Lord. Because we know one day we will stand before you face to face. We will have to give an account of our lives before you, Lord. And we want to stand there with purity of heart. Because your word says only the pure in heart really see you for who you are. And I just pray today, Lord, that you would do a cleansing work, a healing work, a renewing, restoring, reviving, forgiving work in our souls. We thank you for that, Lord. In Jesus name, amen. God bless you as you leave this morning.
