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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/william-skates/our-response-to-the-word-of-god/
Let's turn in our Bibles to the book of Jeremiah, please, chapter 36. One of the most important things, I take it, when we come to the Word of God is our attitude to it, toward it. And the scriptures I'm going to read will highlight, perhaps from a negative way, what our attitude should not be.
So let's read then from Jeremiah 36, verse 1. It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil that I purpose to do unto them, that they may return every man from his evil way, that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.
Then Jeremiah called Barak, the son of Neriah. And Barak wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord which he had spoken unto him upon the roll of a book. Now, these words get read to the princes, come further down, eventually it comes to the king, verse 22.
Now, the king sat in the winter house in the ninth month, and there was a fire on the hearth burning before him. It came to pass that when Jehudai had read three or four leaves, he cut it with a pen knife and cast it into the fire that was upon the hearth.
Until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth. Yet they were not afraid, nor rent their garments, neither the king nor any of his servants that heard all these words. Verse 30, therefore thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, he shall have none to sit upon the throne of David, and his dead body shall be cast out in the day of the heat and in the night to the frost.
And I will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity, and I will bring upon them and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem and upon all the men of Judah all the evil that I pronounced against them, but they hearkened not.
So Jehoiakim was not a good actor. Come to chapter 37 now, and here's another king. King Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, reigned instead of Conaniah, the son of Jehoiakim, whom Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, made king in the land of Judah.
But neither he nor his servants nor the people of the land did hearken unto the words of the Lord which he spake by the prophet Jeremiah. Now, and Zedekiah the king sent Jehuchal, the son of Shalamiah, and Zephaniah, the son of Masiah, the priest to the prophet Jeremiah, saying, so here's the request of the king.
Pray now unto the Lord our God for us. But Jeremiah ends up in prison, verse 16, when Jeremiah was entered into the dungeon and into the cabins, and Jeremiah had remained there many days. Then Zedekiah the king sent and took him out, and the king asked him secretly, saying in his house and said, Is there any word from the Lord?
And Jeremiah said, There is. For said he, Thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon. Now, let's come to chapter 38, verse 6. Then took they Jeremiah and cast him into the dungeon of Melchiah the son of Hamalek that was in the court of the prison, and they let down Jeremiah with cords, and in the dungeon there was no water but mire, so Jeremiah sunk down in the mire.
Now, Ebed-Melek, verse 11, he went to the king and asked to take Jeremiah out of that dungeon. He took men with him, verse 11, and went into the house of the king under the treasury and took thence all cast clouts and all rotten rags, clothes, cloths, and let them down by cords into the dungeon to Jeremiah.
And Ebed-Melek the Ethiopian said unto Jeremiah, Put now these all cast clouts and rotten rags under thine armholes under the cords. Jeremiah did so, so they drew up Jeremiah with cords and took him up out of the dungeon, and Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison.
Now, further down, verse 19, Zedekiah the king said unto Jeremiah, I am afraid of the Jews that have fallen to the Chaldeans, lest they deliver me into their hand, and they mock me. But Jeremiah said, They shall not deliver thee.
Obey, I beseech thee, the voice of the Lord which I speak unto thee, so it shall be well with thee, and thy soul shall live. But if thou refuse to go forth, this is the word that the Lord hath showed me.
Verse 24,. Then said Zedekiah unto Jeremiah, Let no man know these words, and thou shalt not die. Keep it secret, Jeremiah. Keep it secret. Chapter 39, verse 15,. Now the word of the Lord came unto Jeremiah while he was shut up in the court of the prison, saying, Go speak to Ebed-Melek the Ethiopian, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will bring my words upon this city for evil and not for good, and they shall be accomplished in the day before thee.
But I will deliver thee in that day, saith the Lord. So Ebed-Melek was given that promise. Now chapter 42, briefly, Jeremiah 42, Jeremiah is appealing to them to be not afraid of the king of Babylon.
Verse 15,. And now, therefore, hear the word of the Lord, ye remnant of Judah. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. If ye wholly set your faces to enter into Egypt, and to go to sojourn there, then it shall come to pass that the sword which ye feared shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine, whereof ye were afraid, shall follow close after you there in Egypt, and there ye shall die.
So shall it be with all the men that have set their faces to go into Egypt, to sojourn there. They shall die by the sword, by the famine, by the pestilence, and none of them shall remain or escape from the evil that I will bring upon them.
Now that was under the leadership, you notice at the beginning of that chapter, it was under the leadership of a man called Johannan, the son of Caria, and what they did was they went on down to Egypt anyways.
So come to chapter 44, this is our final reading, chapter 44. So they go to Egypt, and in Egypt they become like the Egyptians. Verse 15,. Then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word which thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee.
But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth. To burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem.
For then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. Now that'll be our reading, we trust, with the Lord's blessing, I hope that is bringing before us the story that we have in mind. Jeremiah is known, of course, as the weeping prophet.
Like the Lord Jesus, who wept over Jerusalem in his day, Jeremiah spoke as well of the judgment that would come upon a people who progressively moved away from God. And Jeremiah lived to see the meltdown in Judah, where they completely threw off any allegiance to Jehovah, and the meltdown in Judah took place before his very eyes.
It was systemic. What I mean by that is, it began at the top, and it worked all its way through the population, and if we were to take time to read further, we would notice it didn't all happen at once.
But there was an ongoing process of departure from the Lord, and it ended up, not well for Judah, it ended up in the Babylonian captivity, when they were carried away by the Babylonians to the land of Shinar.
Now, what I want to do, just to summarize our thoughts here, I want you to notice with me a man who burned the Word of God. He burned it, literally, set it on fire. Then we'll take a look at a man who was afraid to obey the Word of God.
And finally, a man who left the inheritance of God. Now, these are obviously negative things, and the lesson for us is, we shouldn't go this way ourselves, in our day and generation, when it comes to testimony for God.
King Jehoiakim, son of the good King Josiah, he took the role that Jeremiah had written out, the Word of the Lord that he had dictated to Barak, and Barak had read it to the princes, and after that, it went to the king, and he heard, he put up with about three or four columns in the scroll that Jeremiah had caused to be written, and the king could stand it no longer, and he took the roll of the book, and he cut it into pieces with a pen knife, and threw it on the fire, and so he burned it.
He did not want to hear the plain Word of God. He didn't want it. No, it didn't end well for him. The lesson for us is simply that if we deliberately disregard or disrespect the teaching of the Word of God, it will not turn out well for us either.
That's simple, isn't it? I think it's a very solemn thing for us to grasp, because we do live in a day when there has been some measure of decline, I take it, in assembly testimony. I'm not thinking of Cedar Falls and Waterloo, I'm thinking generally of testimony even in a worldwide sense.
It's unquestionable. There has been decline in assembly testimony. Now, we shouldn't be really surprised at that. Paul anticipated that. You remember in his second letter to Timothy, second letters are for last day conditions, he said this, chapter 4, verse 3,.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts they shall heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall not be turned on to fables.
So what Paul is identifying there as he writes to Timothy about last day conditions is a natitude that will be found in the people who have set themselves not to hear what the Word of God is teaching.
Now that should not mark us as the people of God, should it? We ought to be ready listeners with ears opened to hear what God the Lord will say when the Word of God is presented to us. I think of the Lord Jesus as the perfect example.
Isaiah speaks of him in chapter 50, verse 4. He wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear, as the learned. The Lord God hath opened mine ear. And you remember it goes on to say, I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.
So the Lord Jesus is our perfect example. He set himself to hear what God would say. And if you and I are going to be like our blessed Lord, we too need to be taught by God and instructed day by day and give attention to an appropriate word from God.
Every morning, every morning, the Lord Jesus received instructions for the day from his Father and the Word of God was everything to him. As a dependent man upon his God, the Word of God was precious to him.
So brothers and sisters, though others may not hear or give ear to the Word of God, may you and I always have our ear opened to hear what the Lord would say to us in the plain teachings from the Bible, and to support preaching and efforts to teach that Word from day to day.
Now, we're going to move on from that. Let's come to a man who was afraid to obey the Word of God. Zedekiah became the king of Judah. These are in the closing days of the kingdom of Judah, just prior to the Babylonian captivity.
And Zedekiah, it seems he had some things going for him. He approached the prophet Jeremiah and he asked him to pray unto the Lord our God for us. That's good. He's asking for prayer. But then we notice in chapter 37, verse 2,.
But neither he nor his servants nor the people of the land did hearken unto the words of the Lord, which he spake by the prophet Jeremiah. So there's something doesn't add up there. And then we find the princes, they went about to try and kill Jeremiah for saying, because he said that Jerusalem will fall to the Babylonians.
They didn't like it, didn't like the message. So they took the messenger, Jeremiah, who was speaking in the Word of the Lord, and they put him down into a dungeon. Sadly, throughout history, that has repeated itself.
People who don't like the message, they shoot the messenger who brings the word to them. But Ibn Malik, he stands out by way of contrast, and he entreated the king for the prophet. And so instruction was given and he went and he took these ropes and these old clothes and he took 30 men with him and they dropped the ropes down to Jeremiah and then they hauled him up out of the pit.
Now after that, Zedekiah, the king, he approaches Jeremiah secretly. And again, we get a positive note. He asked Jeremiah if there is a word from the Lord, not good. Here's a man, he's asking for prayer.
And he's asking, is there a word for the Lord? And so just looking at that, we would think, oh, this is positive. Will there actually be a chance of revival in these last days of the kingdom of Judah?
Well, Jeremiah gave the word that was from the Lord. Chapter 38, 16 to 20, he says, the Lord says, go forth onto the Chaldeans and you'll live. Well, Zedekiah did a double take. He says, look, he says, I'm afraid of the Jews.
I'm afraid of the Jews that have sided with the Chaldeans. If I surrender like that, they're going to take advantage of me and put me to death. I'm afraid. And his fears get in the way of the plain teaching from the word of the Lord.
And Jeremiah pleads with him, he says, obey, I beseech thee, the voice of the Lord. And the king in response, he tells Jeremiah to keep their conversation secret. Shh, don't mention that, keep it secret.
So, sadly, Zedekiah, he was not sincere, was he? He was not really interested in hearing the word of the Lord. And he was going to do his own thing anyway. Now, we would note that the truth of God is not to be kept secret.
It is to be made known. It is to be published abroad. And the best way to protect the truth is to propagate the truth. So, in those last day conditions in 2 Timothy, Paul had a word of advice to Timothy.
He said, thou, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace. That is in Christ Jesus, and the things which thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, notice the public aspect of it, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.
So Timothy, in spite of last day conditions, even though the people may not want to hear it, he says, you pass on the baton of truth, undiminished, to faithful men who will carry it on to another generation.
You've heard this among many witnesses, and he says you pass that on publicly to faithful men. We have the same challenge today, brothers and sisters, to handle the word of God sincerely and to pass it on undiminished to a generation that's growing up amongst us, and we thank God for every young believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, this man, Ibn Malik, we don't really know much about him. He was an Ethiopian, but he was given a promise there in chapter 39, as we read. Because of his faithfulness toward the Lord's man, Jeremiah, the promise from the Lord was I will surely deliver thee because thou hast put my trust in me, saith the Lord.
Just in a very simple way, Ibn Malik had stood up against those princes and even the king himself, and quietly he made request to haul Jeremiah up out of the dungeon. In his own quiet way, he stood his ground.
I believe that oftentimes you and I may have to do that in these last days. It is good when brethren and sisters quietly stand their ground in the truth of God. Sometimes we may encounter, perhaps, a swing to another line of things, but you and I are required to simply go by the word of God.
That's it. If it's not in the word, then don't bother with it. If it is, by all means, carry it out in the fear of God and by the grace that he has bestowed allows us to stand in our own quiet way, in our own quiet corner, for the truth of the word of God.
So brethren, stand your ground. Not in a boorish, arrogant, stubborn kind of way, but as Paul would say, with all long suffering and doctrine. So being graciously instructed in the word, graciously instruct others and propagate the truth of the word of God, even in times of departure.
Now finally, let's come to this man who left the inheritance. In those final years, just before the Babylonian exile, Johanan, the son of Koriah, he arises as a leader. And he is determined to lead that remnant that's in the land, to lead them down to Egypt out of fear of the Chaldeans.
They have actually murdered a man by the name of Gedaliah. He was a puppet king that the Babylonians had installed, but he was murdered. And so Johanan, he asked Jeremiah, again, he asked the prophet to declare the word of the Lord to them in the matter.
Well, there was really no need for Jeremiah to make a pronouncement about going down to Egypt. That had already been revealed by Isaiah, the prophet in chapter 31 and verse 1. Woe unto them that go down to Egypt for help.
There's the plain teaching of the word of the prophet Isaiah. So evidently, Johanan didn't read his Bible or else he didn't care what the prophet Isaiah had said. Well, Jeremiah, he told him not to go down to Egypt anyways.
He says in chapter 42, verse 10, if he shall still abide in this land, then I will build you and not pull you down and I will plant you and not pluck you up. For I repent me of the evil that I have done unto you, but be not afraid of the king of Babylon, of whom you are afraid.
Be not afraid of him, saith the Lord, for I am with you to save you and to deliver you from his hand. That's a good promise from the Lord, wasn't it? But you know, to enter into that, that's going to mean trusting the Lord.
Can we do that? Well, they decided they couldn't. And they went on down to Egypt anyway, even though they had made a pretense of having an interest in what God would say, had no intention of obeying it, and on down to Egypt they went.
So the challenge to us is this, in a very practical way at this conference, indeed, we may attend meetings in the assembly or come to conferences like this seemingly with an interest in the word of God.
Now, my dear brother, my dear sister, let me ask you kindly, do I really have an interest in hearing what God will say and carrying that out in my life, if it means adjustment in my life, and if it means stepping out in faith and simply trusting God for the outcome that he desires, am I prepared to do it?
So they come to Egypt. I noticed that they dwelt in a place called Tapanes, Tapanes, I looked up the word, it means hands filled with pity. They went to dwell in a place called hands filled with pity.
They evidently were going to have their own little pity party. They were going to have some me time down in Egypt. And in the process they became just like the Egyptians. They became like them. And it seems they fitted right in to the point where they were actually worshipping their gods.
Now, again, if they had read their Bible, way back in the books of Moses, in Exodus chapter 11, verse 7, Israel should have known how that the Lord doth put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.
It was written in the word. Did they obey it? No, they thought their own way was better. Now, Egypt was marked by pleasure, Egypt was marked by treasure, Egypt was marked by a false narrative in religion, and the people just went in for it.
Sadly, it may be observed in some cases, in some quarters across the globe, that people have left the assembly for self-centered lives of pleasure, for going in for treasure, and various forms of false narratives in religion.
Maybe it started by missing assembly meetings, until it becomes easier to miss, until they leave the inheritance altogether, and in that sense, drawing the parallel, they go down to Egypt to enjoy its pleasures, its treasures, and its false narratives.
So Jeremiah has something to say about that. He spoke again to the Jews, and he did rebuke them for the idolatry, for actually offering incense to this idol of their imagination, the queen of heaven. So God would certainly judge that.
And in chapter 44, verse 15, we read this,. "...then all the men which knew that their wives had burned incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt and Pathos, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto it, but we will certainly do whatsoever goeth forth out of our own mouth to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and pour out our drink offerings unto her.".
Now here's another note of departure. We see here how women rose to prominence, and they were in the lead, and their men folk knew about it, but they just went along with it. They would not listen anymore to the word of the Lord, plainly.
They would just do just whatever they wanted to do. Now there's another note of warning to us, isn't there? Sadly, certainly in the evangelical world, we have women that have risen to places of prominence, and have defected from the truth in that way, and men folk have gone along with it.
So it is sad when people will not listen to the plain teaching of the word of God, how that women should be silent in the assembly and so on. Not dwelling with that right now. But in spite of what they had been told, they took their own course, and sadly, it didn't save them.
The Babylonians, they would come in just like grasshoppers, and they would cover not only Judah, but right down into Egypt and the whole region, and then the Lord of Hosts would punish Babylon itself.
Ultimately, that looks to the future, doesn't it? The spirit of Babylon is still abroad in the world, and the world of Egypt is still very much alive today. But we remind our hearts, it will soon all come under the judgment of God.
It's earmarked for destruction, and we hear again the call from the Lord to come out from among them and be separate, separate unto the Lord as a called out company. With ears open to hear what he will say, with hearts prepared to bow in willing and loving obedience and devotion to carry out what he teaches to us from his word.
So as I sit down, let us be faithful to the Lord, and to his assembly, and to the care for one another as the saints of God, and to engage in this world only in as much as we have to, and to live for that world to come.
And that kingdom that we've been thinking of so much today, because then it's going to be put on display, the degree of faithfulness that has been in our hearts and lives, to the King himself. And it's only what's done for Christ will last, and be rewarded in that coming day.
So may the Lord bless his word to our hearts, and with what will follow.