"Make Some Noise"

Well, let's pray together. Father, we come before you this morning and we confess that we need your blessing.

We need your grace that we can, by our experience and our skill, by our learned behavior, accomplish anything here today.

You tell us that the flesh profits nothing. It is the spirit who gives life.

So we ask that you would give to us your grace. Fill us with your spirit.

Illumine the text to our lives. Give us a desire to know you more and to repent from the deception that is in our lives.

Give us a hunger for truth, the passion to live it out. We ask for deliverance for those who are ensnared in deceit and darkness.

Shine your light today. We pray these things for the sake of Jesus Christ in whom you are well -pleased.

Amen. Please open your Bibles and turn with me to Jeremiah chapter nine.

Jeremiah chapter nine. I will be reading verses two through eight and then reading a key passage near the end of the chapter.

We will spend a little bit of time in this rather noisy corner of Jeremiah.

A lot of noise is being made in this chapter and we're going to try to understand what that is and why it is.

Jeremiah chapter nine. And let me read for us. Let me read for us beginning in verse two.

Oh, that I had in the desert a wayfarer's lodging place that I might leave my people and go from them.

For all of them are adulterers and assembly of treacherous men.

They bend their tongue like their bow. Lies and not truth prevail in the land for they proceed from evil to evil and they do not know me, declares the

Lord. Let everyone be on guard against his neighbor and do not trust any brother because every brother deals craftily and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer.

Everyone deceives his neighbor and does not speak the truth.

They have taught their tongue to speak lies. They weary themselves in committing iniquity.

Your dwelling is in the midst of deceit.

Through deceit, they refuse to know me, declares the

Lord. Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, behold, I will refine them and to save them.

For what else can I do because of the daughter of my people? Their tongue is a deadly arrow.

It speaks deceit. With his mouth, one speaks peace to his neighbor, but inwardly, he sets an ambush for him.

And then if you will look down at verse 23, thus says the

Lord, let not a wise man boast of his wisdom and let not the mighty man boast of his might.

Let not a rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts, boasts of this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the

Lord who exercises loving kindness and justice and righteousness on earth.

For I delight in these things. As I read through Jeremiah 9, reading it again and again, it seemed to me that there was a lot of noise in the chapter.

At the beginning, we have Judah making a lot of noise, a kind of cacophony of lie and deceit.

Everyone's telling lies to each other. Everyone's making a lot of noise. There's a lot of confusion, but there's not truth and there's not clarity.

I move into the next section in Jeremiah 9. I hear a lot about judgment.

I hear a lot about God's promises to come and do what he promised he always would do.

If his people turned away from him and turned to idols, he would come and judge them. And this precipitates a great wailing.

There's a call for the wailing women to come and to make their noise and to teach their daughters their trade, to wail and lament and cry aloud because of the devastating judgment that is to come.

And then I hear another noise near the end of the chapter. The last two verses I read for you. And there's this word boast.

Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom. Let not a mighty man boast of his strength.

Let not a rich man boast of his riches. But let him who boasts boast in this. Do you know what the Hebrew word for boast is?

Hallel, as in hallelujah, as in praise the Lord. And so at the end of this noisy chapter,

Jeremiah, the Lord through Jeremiah is saying this. If you're gonna make some noise, don't make a noise about yourself.

Don't shout about yourself. Why don't you make some noise and praise

God and what he delights in, orienting your life around what he values, rejoicing in that you know him, that you understand him and that you amen him in your life.

Most of the time we see this instruction, this command, make some noise.

We mostly see that in some sort of a stadium. The opposing team has arrived.

They're trying to figure out what they're going to do to win the game. And all of the people who have come to watch the game, all of the spectators are told to give some noise.

The job of the spectators is to make so much noise, it renders linear thought impossible by the captain of the squad or the quarterback of the team.

This has become such a phenomenon in sports that some stadiums are named after the noise that the crowd makes.

The 12th man, a football stadium saying that the spectators are like a 12th man on the field, giving the advantage to the home team.

Make some noise so as to make conscious, rational thought impossible.

This is kind of the noise that is being made by Judah. And their noise is not the frenzied, rabid screaming of the home crowd.

Their noise is deceit. Their noise is lies. The lies they tell, the deceits they tell, they don't match up with the truth.

They don't match up with each other. It's a lot of unharmonious, conflicting, contradicting statements and ideas.

There's no harmony. It's all cacophony. It reminds me of one of my favorite stories, my favorite episodes of the

Andrew Griffith Show, in which the Mayberry town band wants to go to the band celebration, the band competition.

But they're so bad that the new mayor in Mayberry refuses to sign the check to pay their way.

And he convinces them to come listen to half a stanza of Stars and Stripes Forever.

And he tries to get them ready to go. And the mayor comes in and sits down and listens to the worst rendering.

Of Stars and Stripes Forever that's ever been played. Different tempos, different pitches, different volumes, different rhythms.

All of them at the same time. Mayor couldn't end their song soon enough or leave the band hall fast enough.

And this is how Jeremiah feels in our text. The noise of Judah's sin drowns out the music of God's truth.

There's so much lies and so many lies, so much deception going on that you can't even hear

Jeremiah's lone voice preaching the truth anymore. And he gets weary and he's ready to leave.

But at the end, we hear what kind of noise we ought to make. And it's a noise that clears away all the other static, that clears away all the cacophony.

It's praising God, it's boasting in God, it's rejoicing in who he is and what he values. In justice and in righteousness, in loving kindness.

We need to boast in that which the Lord delights. And I think this is an important way that we end man's cacophony of deceit.

Verses two through eight. It's all we're gonna get through this morning. But I was arrested by Jeremiah's statement at the beginning of verse two.

Do you see what he says? Oh, that I had in the desert a wayfarer's lodging place that I might leave my people and go from them.

Do you hear that? Oh, that I had in the desert place, a wayfarer's lodging place, that I might leave my people and go from them.

Jeremiah is preaching, preaching, preaching the truth of God's word. He has preached his temple sermon in which he called all of the habitual worshipers who came to the temple.

He's called them to repentance from their idolatry to truly worship the one true God. And they have tried to kill him for what he has proclaimed.

There is not any signal that anyone in all of his people will repent and turn away from their sins and go back to the one true

God. Disaster looms on the horizon. They're already hearing the stamping of the hooves and the snorting of the horses from the

Babylonian armies. And Jeremiah doesn't want to get trapped in Jerusalem with all of these idolaters trying to preach to those who will not listen.

And he's gonna die with them as if he were the one who committed the crimes. So I'm done.

They're not listening. I just wanna leave. I don't wanna be caught here.

I'm done with this. Oh, that I had some place to escape to.

There are many who share Jeremiah's sentiments today. There's a growing niche market for survivalists and preppers.

As more and more internet rumors incubate, projecting the impending collapse of our society, vendors look to sell you bug -out kits and supply bug -out weapons and hidey -hole structures for when you have to bug out and leave all the unprepared behind to die in the chaos or be enslaved by the totalitarian government institutionalizing martial law.

It's a strange little thing, but I really do think it exists.

The market exists because we're all created in the image of God, that we have a conscience on which the moral law is written.

We know we live in an immoral society. We know things are collapsing. We know that judgment is imminent. We know that disaster looms.

And so people who really don't even give God too much thought know that disaster is coming because of the way the society is shaping up.

And they say, I just wanna bug out. Give me my escape route.

Flood's coming, I need an ark. Jeremiah is feeling like that.

What keeps him in Jerusalem? What keeps him from running away?

I thought about that for a little while. And the only thing I could come up with was his call in Jeremiah one, verses 17 through 19, where God says to a very young Jeremiah, now gird up your loins and arise and speak to them all which

I command you. Do not be dismayed before them or I will dismay you before them.

Now behold, I have made you today as a fortified city and as a pillar of iron and as walls of bronze against the whole land to the kings of Judah, to its princes, to its priests, to the people of the land.

They will fight against you, but they will not overcome you for I am with you to deliver you declares the

Lord. And so he stays, he stays.

But the desire to leave, the desire to bug out is one which caught me by surprise and penetrated deep into my heart as I studied this text.

It seemed to me that it was a timely word for me. Apples of gold and settings of silver.

There's a lot of noise in the city, a lot of noise. From my house

I hear blasphemous music, screeching tires, screaming profanities, car wrecks, helicopters, sirens, gunshots.

I think to myself, in the terms of Psalm 11, the foundations are destroyed.

What can the righteous do? Flee as a bird to a mountain. Like Jeremiah, I wanna find a remote outpost somewhere in the rural countryside and bug out to quieter, safer lands.

We all have something like that in our hearts. Do not we all desire that the static of this broken world be replaced by a symphony of God's righteousness?

We all have that desire for a new creation. I wanna leave the cacophony of sin for the harmony of Shalom.

No call in your Christians to bug out, there isn't.

When we're at a loss about the faithlessness of our world, like Jeremiah, loss about the faithlessness of Judah, the way to respond to faithlessness is faithfulness.

Faithfulness, we are the salt of the earth. What's gonna happen if we all go away?

We're the light of the world. What happens if we darken our lamp? We have to stick to loving

God supremely, stick to loving others rightly, stick to stewarding the creation responsibly.

There's a kingdom to advance and a king to glorify. He has called us to follow him. We're not yet bearing the crown, we're now bearing the cross.

That's what he said in all of his instructions about discipleship in Matthew 10, 38. He says, he who does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.

He who has found his life will lose it. He who has lost his life for my sake will find it.

Take up the cross, which means what? It means that we stick to following Christ in the way that he walked.

It means that we love enemies, forgive wrongdoers, pray for the hateful and preach, preach, preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And Jeremiah was in the same situation that Abraham was in and they're in the same situation that we are in. We are looking, seeking for a city which has foundations.

A city not built by man. We're looking for a city whose foundations are eternal, not built with our hands, but built by God, a city of Shalom, eternal foundations.

I think we relate to Jeremiah's frustrations. Just give me a place to get away from all this.

And we even see that God is at an end of his patience and long suffering.

Look at verse seven. Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, behold, I will refine them and assay them.

And these are metallurgical terms. They are about getting a crucible in some heat and with metal ore in the middle of it and heating it up hotter and hotter and hotter until the metal melts.

And it is designed to bring up all the impurities to the top of this molten metal and the impurities taken away.

And then when the metal cools, you have something of precious value. And God says, what else am I gonna do to this people

Judah, to my people Judah? I'm going to refine them. I'm going to assay them. I'm going to try to purify them.

What else can I do because of the daughter of my people? We've already been told the results.

The end of chapter six, the same image is used. God tells

Jeremiah, I'm gonna send you out as an assayer. You're gonna be a refiner of precious metals. You're gonna go out and you're gonna preach my words.

And what's the result of the assaying process? What's the result of the refining process? Judah ends up as slag.

Judah ends up worthless. Judah's impurities are not removed, but only solidified in this worthless chunk of ore.

God says, what else am I going to do? This is the daughter of my people. You see,

God is bound to his people by covenant love. Unlike them, he is a being of his word.

They may go against what they promise to do, but he will always perform what he promises to do.

He is a faithful God. And he responds to their faithlessness with faithfulness.

When we're at a loss of how to proceed, how else can we proceed except doing what we're supposed to do?

Saying what we're supposed to say. When your daughter is unfaithful, what else can you do but remain faithful?

When your daughter will no longer respond to parental authority and guidance and love, when you're at a loss of how to proceed, what else can you do except what you're supposed to do?

Faithfulness is never foolish in God's eyes. God is the perfect parent.

God is the perfect father. He put his children in a perfect environment, everything that they needed, always responsive to them, always there to help them and supply their every need.

What a perfect father, and his children rebelled. Adam and Eve, what does he do?

He remains faithful to what he said. He's a perfect father to Israel, loving them, promising them wonderful blessings, giving them the best kind of upbringing.

And what does he do when they rebel? He remains faithful to what he said. Faithfulness is the way we are to respond to faithlessness.

Judah rebelled. God kept doing what was right. Judah chose the folly of deceit.

She embraced it with all of her being. She won't listen to her father anymore.

She can't hear his melody for all of the preferred cacophony.

She's got her headphones of deceit over her ears and the volume is all the way up. She's not listening anymore.

Well, the first part of this is just trying to figure out what we're supposed to do when we're at a loss.

What are we supposed to do when we're at a loss at the deceitfulness of society, the faithlessness of the world around us?

The second part is to recognize our own participation in this and how we're to respond when we realize we're dwelling in deceit.

Let's pick it up in verse two. Jeremiah says, I just wanna get away from it all. I wanna bug out.

Why? Why does he wanna leave his people? For all of them are adulterers.

An assembly of treacherous men. They bend their tongue like they bend their bow.

Because we could say they shoot off their words like they fire their guns. Lies and not truth prevail in the land for they proceed from evil to evil and they do not know me, declares the

Lord. Let everyone be on guard against his neighbor and do not trust any brother because every brother deals craftily and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer.

Everyone deceives his neighbor and does not speak the truth. They have taught their tongue to speak lies.

They weary themselves committing iniquity. Your dwelling is in the midst of deceit.

Through deceit they refuse to know me, declares the Lord. And then verse eight, their tongue is a deadly arrow.

It speaks deceit. With his mouth, one speaks peace to his neighbor but inwardly he sets an ambush for him.

Now, I think it's important to notice in verse two, Jeremiah is not exaggerating. He is not using hyperbole.

He is saying every single last one of them is adulterous.

There is no one left in all of the assembly who could be considered faithful. They are all treacherous.

He is not exaggerating. God has already sent Jeremiah on a quest earlier in the book of Jeremiah.

He already sent him on a quest to roam to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem. Looking and taking notes and seeking in the open square.

Just one man, just one man who would do justice and seek the truth.

And God said, you find one man who does justice and seeks the truth and I will pardon the whole lot of them.

Go find that one man. Jeremiah looked and he looked and he looked and he couldn't find one man.

I think he saw his shadow. I think he saw his shadow. But he didn't find the substance, not yet.

The one man, the one man who does justice and seeks the truth upon whose account

God will pardon us is none other than Jesus Christ. None other than Jesus Christ.

The failed quest of Jeremiah applies still today. If Jeremiah were alive today and he was sent to the streets of Oklahoma City to find one man who did justice and sought the truth, he would still come up empty.

He would still come up empty, even though he would see his reflection. Because the person upon whom the basis for which

God will forgive us is none other than Jesus Christ. But there's no one left in all of Judah.

There's no one there. There's no one there who is faithful. Judah is filled with adulterers,

God says. And the assembly is rightly so called because these treacherous men were unfaithful to God and worshiping

Baal. You see that in verse 14 of this chapter, they worship Baal. But at the same time, they're unfaithful to their wives because in the process of worshiping

Baal, they engage in sexual debauchery as part of their Baal worship. Their lifestyle of lies is notorious.

They don't just lie when it comes to them. They actually teach themselves to lie.

They develop it like a skill. They become proficient in lying, ever better at it.

You might say in Jeremiah's day, how do you know when a

Judean is lying? Well, he's moving his lips. That all they do is lie, that they are notorious for lying.

And this is causing a great deal of chaos in their society. Envision a society where each person cloaks himself or herself from each other in deception, moving from one perverse pleasure to the next idolatrous affair, each of them suspicious of the others, looking to take advantage of one another as opportunity arises, employing their words as weapons and entrapment to bring each other down.

It's deception, it's chaos, it's cacophony. It's an evolutionist dream come true.

Survival of the fittest, society of wild animals who have no sexual inhibitions.

It's evolutionist dream come true. Now notice at the end of verse five, the beginning of verse six, they weary themselves committing iniquity.

You see that? They weary themselves committing iniquity. And then the beginning of verse six, your dwelling is in the midst of deceit.

Those two words, the weary and the dwelling, it sounds very similar to Genesis 19, which begins this way.

The dwelling of Lot was in the midst of Sodom. God sends his angels to Sodom to investigate the iniquity, the wickedness there.

They arrive and are welcomed by Lot into his house. Though the Sodomites saw them come in and they had the physical appearance of men.

And so the Sodomites clamored for them, for Lot to throw them out into the streets so they could rape them. Lot has a disgusting, compromising counteroffer that fails.

And so the angels struck the mob with blindness, struck them with blindness.

And then we read in Genesis 19, 11, nevertheless, they wearied themselves trying to find the doorway.

How far gone do you have to be? How far deceived do you have to be that when you're struck by blindness, you still wear yourself out trying to find the door to satisfy your perverse pleasures?

In a sense, it says to Jeremiah, your dwelling is in the midst of deceit. Jeremiah is no better off than Lot was in the midst of Sodom.

Both societies in absolute chaos. Deceit everywhere.

And none of them know God. It's not by accident or by oversight.

The men of Sodom and the people of Jerusalem purposed to not know God. Verse six says, through deceit, they refused to know the

Lord. You see, deceit is not just the accidental product of ignorance.

Deceit is the purposeful instrument to deny God, to obscure God.

It's not by accident. The truth which is known about God is evident within all of us, for God has made it evident to us.

By creation and by conscience, all people everywhere know the truth that there is a God. The Judeans were doubly responsible having received the scriptures, the special revelation of God.

But they, as many today, refuse to know the Lord by purposefully, purposefully lying to others and lying to themselves about themselves.

They create for themselves their own little version of reality. This is the world in which we live today. It's nothing new, but people lie to themselves and to others to create their own version of reality in which they feel comfortable operating.

It has always been there. I would say that one of the best illustrations is one

I've already said, is the headphones today. Headphones are all the rage. The wireless headphones, the one that fit all over the ear and no matter where you go, driving, walking, working, anywhere you go, the headphones are on and only what you wanna hear is on.

That's where people are today in sin. Lying to themselves and lying to others about themselves, creating their own versions of reality, taking up the fig leaves of deceit, crafting for themselves loin coverings, making bricks of deceit, burning them thoroughly, using rationalization for murder, building for themselves a city and a tower whose top they envision reaching heaven, making for themselves a name.

But God comes down to see the chaos that we create with deception and lies and he judges the cacophony of our lives.

When I was supervising a bunch of kids at Presbyterian Day School when I was in seminary, there we had about 80 boys from four years old to sixth grade and I had about half of them with one other guy in one room, third grade through sixth grade.

And the longer I worked there, I didn't realize it, but the louder the roar got. Happy roar, but you know, you put 40 boys in one room and it's just gonna be noisy.

And I tried to keep it on the happy side of noise, but eventually my supervisor came around, said, can't you hear that?

It's like, hear what? They're happy. But apparently we were getting too loud.

And the loudness was bothering other people in other parts of the school. And I didn't realize it.

I didn't realize it. It was just kind of growing on me. I got accustomed to the noise. Judah got accustomed to the noise.

Judah got accustomed to the lies, the chaos of deception. And the question

I think should be for us, are we getting accustomed to lies? Do we get accustomed to the noise?

Do we get accustomed to the growing roar of falsehoods that are being told us?

And do we grow accustomed to the lies we tell about ourselves, they no longer bother us? Do we tell lies to other people to gain advantage over them?

Do we tell lies to other people to advance ourselves? Do we tell lies to hinder people we view as our rivals?

Do we lie to ourselves to try to cover sins, to assuage our guilt, to cover shame, to excuse sin?

Do we tell lies to ourselves to hide from God? It's a question we have to stop and ask because maybe we just get accustomed to the noise.

Maybe we just don't realize that we have a growing level of tolerance for that which is not truth, deception.

And this is why all of us, all of us, each one of us here have to submit ourselves to the scriptures.

This is the one, this is the one source by the power of the Holy Spirit that's gonna cut through the noise.

I am so glad that scripture is sharper. Cutting deep into me.

I am so glad for that. If I didn't have that, then how would I ever be corrected from the growing of noise in my head?

I need the scriptures to correct my deceiving impulses, to lie about myself, to lie to others, to believe lies that people say about themselves and not care enough about their soul to dig for the truth.

We need the scriptures because they reveal to us Christ. And we need to see

Christ who is the truth and to love Christ and to draw close to him that we be renewed in the image of God.

Lies, lies work like that little dent in your windshield. You know where it is.

You have a little dent in your windshield, little speck, it's pretty small. But over time, if you leave it alone, cold and heat, slamming of the doors, rattling of the person who has the bass turned all the way up next to you on the road is going to crack all the way across the windshield.

It's gonna spread. Lies are like that. You leave them alone, you abide in your life, and they're going to grow, they're going to fracture, and they're going to harm.

Colossians 3 .9 says, do not lie to one another. What simple instruction.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we don't have to lie to each other. Isn't that, hey, that should be releasing, that should be refreshing, that should be freeing, that we don't have to lie to each other.

Do not lie to one another, since you lay aside the old self with its evil practices.

You know that old self with the evil practices that lies to people to say, don't look at me like I'm not proficient.

Don't look at me like I don't have it all together. Don't look at me like there's something wrong in my life. We can lay aside the old self with its evil practices of pride, and put on a new self, who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one.

It's renewing. It renews the image of God in us when we put our attention on the

God in whom we should boast. We should boast in the God who loves loving kindness.

Chesed, covenant faithfulness, that he is faithful and he loves his people because of who he is and not because of who they are.

Let's boast in that God. Let's boast in a God who loves justice and does what is right, and seeks to establish the order of how we are to love him and love others and take care of this world.

Boast in the God of truth. Let me be renewed into his image.

Ultimately, as I think about Jeremiah 9 in verse 24, that when we look, if we are to really understand and know the

Lord, the one who exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness on the earth, delighting in these things, that ultimately, what we're boasting in and who we're boasting in is none other than Jesus Christ, who reveals to us who

God is. We only know who God is through Jesus Christ. We only know who

God is because of the covenant faithfulness and the grace and the mercy that God wrought through Christ.

We only know God because of Christ who rendered God's justice satisfied for our sins on the cross.

We only know who God is because of Jesus Christ and the righteous order that he brings into this world and the righteous word that he has spoken.

There's a lot of noise being made in this world. A lot of noise trying to cover over the truth of God.

Let's not be a part of the crowd that screams and hollers and tries to make linear thought impossible.

In some sense, we should be a part of that which silences the crowd.

You know that expression. When the opposition does something that silences the crowd.

What silences the crowd, what silences the deceit, what silences the cacophony of lies is none other than the victory of Jesus Christ, the revelation of God and his light.

Let's be part of that crowd. Let's rejoice when the lies are silenced and in the cacophony of man's deceit.

We find it in our lives. Let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Heavenly Father, you know our hearts. You know what goes on in the depths.

You know that each one of us here, no matter how old we are or how long we've been a

Christian, that we need to hear this word, do not lie to one another.

Every single one of us here needs to be reminded of the kind of chaos and harm that deceit does.

In our lives and in the lives of those that we lie to, we would really truly be living out the stereotype if we were to try and deceitfully say we don't have a problem with lying.

We are always tempted to obscure and obfuscate and shield and come off as more holy and more adept, more spiritual than we are.

Father, forgive us. Give us a brokenness about lies. Give us a brokenness about being satisfied, listening to lies.

Give us true repentance. Call us out of the chaos and may our place of refuge not be some outpost where we don't have to deal with people.

But Father, may our outpost and our refuge be Christ and communing with the one who is the truth, saturating our minds with the scriptures, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ.

And Lord, may your melody, may your harmony be all the more evident in our lives.