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Sunday Morning, March 15, 2020 AM "In One Fear and Out the Other" Jeremiah 42-43
Certainty, and fear that we feel at various levels. I know that some cannot be here today for various reasons, and we pray a special blessing upon them, even though we're apart in our fellowship. Lord, you know our frame, that we are but dust.
You know our needs, and I thank you for in your providence for bringing us together to be nourished in our worship of you and in our adherence to your word. We confess our need for you, our dependence upon you.
We ask for your protection. We ask for your healing. We intercede for the many who are our friends or our neighbors, our countrymen who are sick. We do pray for all of our countrymen who are afraid, living in fear, controlled by fear.
Lord, teach us in this moment who we are to fear, how we are to view disease or disasters or anything else, or to view them in light of who you are, trusting in you. So help us this morning as we look at your word to hear your word as our most necessary food.
Please nourish us and change us. Conform us to the image of your Son. We pray these things in His name. Amen. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 42. We'll read a bit from 42 and 43 in a moment as these chapters hang together as a complete story.
We are considering all that is occurring in the aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem. We talked last time about the submission that was evident in the very brief administration of Gedoliah, the son of Hyakim, the son of Shaphan, the one whom the Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians had left in charge of the remnant of Judah, how Gedoliah, in obedience to the word of God, had called the people, the remnant of Judah, to gather to him at Mitzpah and to restart life anew, to go ahead and gather in what crops they could, to live at peace with the Chaldeans and to not fear.
He said that very specifically, do not fear Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans, but to submit to them and to live together in peace. And things were promising except for the sabotage that was conducted by one Ishmael who was of the royal family and he did not trust the Chaldeans and he did not trust Nebuchadnezzar and he assassinated Gedoliah out of fear of what the Babylonians might do.
He did not want to stay at Mitzpah. He did not want to stay in the land where there was no more fortified cities, where the people were so few. Who knows what could happen? And so he assassinates the leader and leads the remnant towards Moab.
He intercepts Ishmael and rescues the people of Judah from his hand and takes them back into the heart of the land, but he is interested in heading down to Egypt. Why? Because he is afraid of what Nebuchadnezzar might do, what the Chaldeans might do, especially now that Ishmael has assassinated their appointed magistrate.
And so in this we have the leaders of Judah sabotaging the blessings of submission and in their opposition to doing the will of God, they are pitting themselves, posturing themselves towards suicide as they are going exactly against what the Lord their God has told them to do.
So I want to read for us this morning the first six verses from Jeremiah 42 and the first seven verses from Jeremiah 43 and let you just hear the very stark contrast between these two passages. You would stand with me.
I'll read the word for us. Jeremiah 42 verses 1 through 6 and then Jeremiah 43 verses 1 through 7. This is the word of the Lord. Then all the commanders of the forces, Johanan the son of Kereiah, Jezaniah the son of Hoshiah, and all the people, both small and great, approached and said to Jeremiah the prophet, please let our petition come before you and pray for us to the Lord your God that is for all this remnant because we are left but a few out of many as your own eyes now see us.
The Lord your God may tell us the way in which we should walk and the thing that we should do. Jeremiah the prophet said to them, I have heard you. Behold, I am going to pray to the Lord your God in accordance with your words, and I will tell you the whole message with which the Lord will answer you.
I will not keep back a word from you. Then they said to Jeremiah, may the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act in accordance with the whole message with which the Lord your God will send you to us.
Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we will listen to the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you so that it may go well with us when we listen to the voice of the Lord our God. Jeremiah 43 verses 1 through 7.
But as soon as Jeremiah, whom the Lord their God had sent, had finished telling all the people all the words of the Lord their God, that is all these words, Azariah the son of Hoshiah and Johanan the son of Kereah and all the arrogant men said to Jeremiah, you are telling a lie.
The Lord our God has not sent you to say you are not to enter Egypt to reside there. Baruch the son of Neriah is inciting you against us to give us over to the hands of the Chaldeans so they will put us to death or exile us to Babylon.
So Johanan the son of Kereah and all the commanders of the forces and all the people did not obey the voice of the Lord to stay in the land of Judah. But Johanan the son of Kereah and all the commanders of the forces took the entire remnant of Judah who had returned from all the nations to which they had been driven away in order to reside in the land of Judah, the men, the women, the children, the king's daughters, and every person that Nebuzadred and the captain of the bodyguard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahiakim, the grandson of Shiphon, together with Jeremiah the prophet, Baruch the son of Neriah, and they entered the land of Egypt for they did not obey the voice of the Lord and went in as far as Tapanes.
This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Think about fear. Jeremiah does exactly what they asked him to do. He inquires of the Lord, God, what would you have us do now? Understandably, it's confusing.
God had told them to submit to the Chaldeans. God had told them to stay in the land. Gedaliah had been a good man. Now he's dead. The situation seems more complicated than it has ever been. What better time to go to the prophet of God and say, please pray to God for us that we may understand what it is that we may do.
Whatever he says, we'll do. Jeremiah tells them. It goes in one ear and out the other. Why? Because of the truth that when one fear comes in, the other one goes out. When one fear comes in, the other goes out.
And what they had that was definitional to their culture, to the life of that little remnant, was the same thing they had had for quite a while now. It was the fear of man. And when the fear of man comes in, the fear of the Lord goes out.
And the reverse is true. When the fear of the Lord comes in, the fear of man comes out. That is what our two chapters communicate to us this morning. We live in an age of fear. If anything, the coronavirus has taught us that.
We understand the need for taking precautions. We understand the need for wisdom. We understand the need for doing the right thing. But what has been most impressive by far has not been any kind of infectious ability of this microorganism or its deadliness.
No, no, no, no. By far, the most impressive pandemic that we have seen played out in our culture is the pandemic of fear. We see a great fear of death, a great fear of the state, a great fear of man at work in our culture.
We live in an age of fear, not the fear of the Lord, but the fear of man. It has been interesting to watch what happens as the various gods of our culture and the pantheon of American gods, how they've gotten themselves all bent out of shape and they're sorting themselves out in conflict.
The god of death and the god of the state are at war with each other to see who will win. The god of entertainment and the god of sports has been knocked down. The god of sexual idolatry is wondering what's going on next.
But all the different gods in the pantheon of America, they're all fighting each other. These, of course, are not true gods, but these are the things that people worship in our world, and they're all out of sorts.
They're in conflict with one another. God is making mockery, making mockery of the fragility of our culture and the fear of man. Why is it why is it that the people in Jeremiah's day are acting in the way that they're acting?
Why is it that Ishmael would assassinate the good man Gedaliah? Why is it that even those who rescued the remnant from Ishmael's hand, that they want to go down to Egypt and flee the land where the promised blessings are?
Why are they acting the way that they're acting? It's all because of a fear, but it's not the fear of the Lord. The question we need to ask ourselves this morning in light of Jeremiah 42 is, do you fear God?
Do I fear God? What do we see in the text as the necessary elements of fearing the Lord? How do we know that we're actually fearing God? What we find in the passage is that the fear of the Lord distinguishes hearing from speaking.
The fear of the Lord distinguishes hearing from speaking. What we have in chapter 42 in verses 1 through 6 is a matter of great vocals, but verses 20 through 22 clarify there's no soul in these vocals.
Sounds good, but there's nothing really to it at all. Verses 1 through 6, I read it earlier, isn't it picture perfect? It's pitch perfect. It's exactly what they should say. You can't get any better than this.
All the leaders are there, every last one of them. Nobody is holding out saying, I'll see how this goes. No, all the leaders that are left, they're there. All the people are there, both great and small.
They're gathered together in one accord. Look at that unity. They're all there to listen to the word of the Lord. You can see the great and the small, they're all going to submit to the authority of God.
It's pitch perfect. There's a humble recognition of their situation that they are small, they are few, but whatever the Lord God says, that's what we're going to do. Just ask the Lord. Just give us the word of the Lord that we can follow it.
And Jeremiah says, I will do exactly that. Of course, he's always done that. He's always brought the word of the Lord to them and told them every word. But he says, yes, of course, I will do this. I will pray to the Lord.
And I'm going to tell you every last thing that God says to me. And verses five and six are really where the vocals are very strong. God as my witness, they said. God is our witness. We are going to do whatever God tells us to do, even if it's unpleasant, even if it goes against what we want, we're going to do what God wants us to do.
I mean, Jeremiah 42. I would say Jeremiah 42 verses five and six would work very well as part of a church covenant or part of a confession. I mean, this is this is strong language. Believers coming together to submit to the word of the Lord, whatever he wants us to do, that's what we're going to do.
We're going to believe what he says, even if we don't like it. I mean, it's pitch perfect. To put it into perhaps more modern parlance, somebody appeals to the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, signs the abstract of principles, pledges allegiance to the Westminster Standards.
They swoon in their pulpit, speaking of their delight in God, their love for the Bible, prove the depths of their experiential holiness and the breadth of their Christian intellectualism. Is that, is all of that real evidence of fearing God?
Let's make it personal. Fearing God is more than just saying it right. Fearing God is more than just saying it right. We can see that from this text. They said it right. They said it really well, pitch perfect.
But in and of itself, saying it right is not really evidence of the fear of the Lord. God is not interested in great vocals with no soul. We can learn how to say it right. That's a learned behavior. We can know what we're supposed to affirm, and it has been proven in even recent church history, how men can sign creeds and confessions of faith and actually believe something other than what those things say.
So Jeremiah apparently knew what was up. Verses 20 to 22 of Jeremiah 42. This is what he has to say after he gives them the word of the Lord. Verses 20 through 22. For you have only deceived yourselves.
What is he referring to? What they said in verses 1 through 6. He said, you have only deceived yourselves, for it is you who sent me to the Lord your God saying, pray for us to the Lord our God, and whatever the Lord our God says, tell us so, and we will do it.
So I have told you today, but you have not obeyed the Lord your God. Even in whatever he has sent me to tell you, therefore, you should now clearly understand that you will die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence in the place where you wish to go to reside.
What Jeremiah has said in between verse 6 and verse 20 is basically this. He has said, stay in the land, you'll be blessed by God. You run to Egypt, God will utterly destroy you. It's a summation of what the word of the Lord is.
They were asking for guidance, God, what do we do now? Well, Jeremiah came back and told them, stay in the land and be blessed, but if you run away to Egypt, you're going to be destroyed. As any preacher would, he's watching the expressions, the body language, how is the audience receiving what I'm saying, and it is clear to Jeremiah as he is giving the word of the Lord, they don't like what he is saying.
They're not about to stay in the land. They've already determined they were going to Egypt and they were wanting him to give divine approval for their plan, but he doesn't and he can tell that all their fine sounding words in verses 1 through 6 were simply deceiving themselves.
They do not fear God so as to hear him. The difference between speaking and hearing. Now, notice in verse 21, verse 21, so I have told you today, but you have not obeyed the Lord, your God. Some of your translations will say, listen to the voice of God.
The term in the Hebrew is Shema. Some of the kids have been memorizing a passage called the Shema, hear O Israel, the Lord, your God, the Lord is one, him only shall you serve. The Hebrew word here is Shema.
It's a key term throughout these two chapters. We read about it in verse 6, verse 13, verse 15, chapter 43, verses 4 and verse 7. The word just keeps on popping up, popping up, and it depends on your translation, but sometimes it'll be translated as hear, listen, sometimes obey.
What's going on with this word? This word for hear or hear O Israel, that's the Shema, this word for hear is often translated as obey because this kind of hearing, which God is interested in, is the kind of hearing which refers to an active, submissive receiving, not just mere listening, but an active, submissive receiving.
And this is the soul that is missing from their vocals. They didn't have this. They were saying the right things, but they weren't hearing the right things. And there's a difference in the fear of the Lord.
The fear of the Lord is not proven or experienced by us saying the right things. The fear of the Lord is best understood by the way we hear the word of the Lord. That's where the rubber meets the road.
That's where it actually is lived out. If we fear the Lord, we will hear his word, and this is the kind of hearing that is an active, receptive submission. They sounded like they feared the Lord in verses one through six, but it was clear they did not by the end of the chapter and clear that they did not by their activity at the beginning of chapter 43.
If we would fear God, we must orient ourselves to the word of God in a posture of ready acceptance. We can say everything right. We can put our names to the best creeds and confessions, but if we do not receive the word of God, we're not fearing God.
Man's lip service is no service to God. And I'm not downing creeds and confessions. Those are very, very helpful. But I'm just saying plenty, a plenty of people have said, I believe that creed and I believe that confession.
There I go. I've checked my orthodoxy, but they do not fear God. They fear man, which is why they read the scriptures all twisted and crooked. If we would fear God, if we would fear God, if we would be discerning, if we would be discerning about evangelical leaders, if we would be careful in our own self-examination, if we would make progress in our maturity in holiness, if we would not be satisfied with just the quick and easy vocal affirmations of biblical truth, we must be diligent to ascertain a hermeneutic of submission.
In other words, we come to the scriptures wanting to know what it says. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we want to know what it says in agreement with itself. And our hermeneutic is one of submission.
We are ready to amen it. As soon as we get it, we want to amen it. And not just in form, but truly in our lives. We want the word of God to be lived out in our lives. That's our desire. And that shows more than anything what the fear of the Lord is.
The fear of the Lord distinguishes hearing from speaking. Now, verses...go look at verse 11. I want us to start reading in verse 11, and I want you to see how it is that in one fear and out the other.
If they would fear the Lord, they have no reason to fear man. But if they fear a man, then they won't fear the Lord. Well, they should. Beginning in verse 11. Do not be afraid. Listen to this. Do not be afraid.
This is part of Jeremiah's message to them. Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you are now fearing. Do not be afraid of him. I mean, how many times are we going to say, don't fear man, in half a verse?
Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you are now fearing. Do not be afraid of him, declares the Lord. Why? Why should I not fear man? For I am with you to save you and deliver you from his hand.
See? In one fear, out the other. I will also show you compassion so that he will have compassion on you and restore you to save your own soil. Wow, who's in charge of who? But if you are going to say, we will not stay in this land so as not to listen to the voice of the Lord your God, say, no, but we will go to the land of Egypt where we will not see war or hear the sound of a trumpet or hunger for bread, and we will stay there.
Then in that case, listen to the word of the Lord, O remnant of Judah. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. If you really set your mind to enter Egypt and go in to reside there, then the sword, which you are afraid of, will overtake you there in the land of Egypt.
And the famine about which you are anxious will follow closely after you there in Egypt, and you will die there. So all the men who set their mind to go to Egypt to reside there will die by the sword, by famine and by pestilence, and they will have no survivors or refugees from the calamity that I am going to bring on them.
Jeremiah, by the word of the Lord, is showing them how foolish it is for them to fear man, to fear what man may do, what the Chaldeans might do in another attack against them, and all the fallout that'll happen, the disease, the pestilence, the famine will kill them if the sword doesn't, and they want to avoid that warfare all over again, and they think they're going to avoid it by running down to Egypt.
The fear of man is telling them, run away, run to Egypt. God is saying, if you do that, you're going to end up facing all of those same disasters you're trying to run from. Look at the futility of the fear of man.
Why not fear the Lord? He's worthy of our fear. Verse 18, for thus says the Lord of hosts, Yahweh Sabaoth, God of all creation, the God of Israel, as my anger and wrath have been poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so my wrath will be poured out on you when you enter Egypt, and you will become a curse, an object of horror, an imprecation, and a reproach, and you will see this place no more.
Lord has spoken to you, remnant of Judah, do not go into Egypt. You should clearly understand today that I have testified against you. The word of God is extremely clear, isn't it? There's no way, there's no way that you can sanely twist that to mean something else.
He has said it a dozen ways in this short passage, do not go down to Egypt. That's the will of the Lord, stay in the land, do not go down to Egypt. And they should fear God, not Nebuchadnezzar. I mean, who's Nebuchadnezzar in light of the Lord?
Nebuchadnezzar himself is going to find that out as he's put out to pasture for seven years. Who is Nebuchadnezzar in light of the Lord and his sovereign power? Don't fear man, fear the Lord. The very disaster that we would fear when we fear man, the very things we would fear when we fear man, and we try to run and do our own way or do our own life the way that we think we should do, and our fear of man, we're going to run right into the things we want to avoid, into futility of the fear of man.
And why would they fear man, especially in light of the promised judgment that Jeremiah is giving here? Part of the goal here in showing that the Lord is this powerful and he will bring this great judgment upon them should they run down to Egypt is to remind them of just how powerful God is.
Why would they fear anyone else but the Lord? Well, we cannot serve two masters. We cannot serve two masters, Christ has told us. We cannot fear the Lord and fear man. We can try to appear like we do, but what happens is what happens here in the text, where at the beginning we have really great vocals, and it sounds like we're fearing God, but the reality is we fear man, and our decisions pan out and show who we actually fear.
Our approach to the Word of God eventually becomes clear, not just our verbal assent, but the actual application of the Word of God becomes clear, and it is seen whether we fear man or fear the Lord. But if we fear the Lord, we'll know his blessings, verses 7 to 12.
Now, at the end of 10 days, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. And he called for Johanan, the son of Kereah, and all the commanders of the forces that were with him, and for all the people, both small and great.
And he said to them, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your petition before him. If you will indeed stay in this land, then I will build you up and not tear you down.
I will plant you and not uproot you, for I will relent concerning the calamity that I have inflicted on you. Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you are now fearing. Do not be afraid of him, declares the Lord, for I am with you to save you and deliver you from his hand.
I will also show you compassion, so that he will have compassion on you and restore you to your own soil. Here's an opportunity for them to stay in the land and know God as their protector, God as their fortified city, God as their provider, God as their leader, if they would stay in the land.
If they would fear God, they would know the great blessings that he has stored up for them. The fear of the Lord disseminates his blessing. I read through various passages in Proverbs this week as I was reading over my sermon notes, so I don't have these references for you.
You can get them later if you want. My sermon manuscript is corona-free. But think about the fear of the Lord in Proverbs. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and the beginning of wisdom.
We know that, Proverbs 1 .7 and Proverbs 9 .10. Fearing the Lord, specifically, Proverbs 8 .13, says fearing the Lord means hating evil, hating evil. Fearing the Lord brings strong confidence and gives our children refuge, Proverbs 14 .26.
The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, Proverbs 14 .27. The fear of the Lord keeps us away from evil and brings us sound sleep, Proverbs 19 .23. The reward of humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, honor, and life, Proverbs 22 .4.
And in the fear of the Lord, there is a certain future and a sure hope, Proverbs 23 .17 -18. The fear of the Lord brings his blessings upon our lives. Do we fear the Lord? We need to ask that question of ourselves.
But what if we fear man? What if we fear man? This certainly was the case. In chapter 43, as you read through verses 1 -7, you can just hear the fear in these words. Especially consider verse 3, when the leaders are rejecting the word of the Lord, but listen to what they're afraid of.
As they reject God's word, listen to them express their fears. Verse 3, they say, but Baruch, the son of Neriah, is inciting you against us to give us over into the hand of the Chaldeans, so they will put us to death or exile us to Babylon.
You see what they're afraid of? They're so afraid of Babylon. They're so afraid of Nebuchadnezzar. They're so afraid of what might happen that they do not receive, they do not hear, they do not shema the word of God.
The fear of man has displaced the fear of the Lord in one fear and out the other. And the fear of man suspects the word of the Lord. They are suspicious of the word of the Lord. They do not trust the word of the Lord.
They immediately develop a theory about why this isn't actually the word of the Lord. Now, nothing could be plainer than what Jeremiah said. God had him say it five times in the course of a short statement.
Nothing could be more clear. Nothing could be more consistent than what Jeremiah said. How many times has he said the very same thing in previous passages and other prophets and other leaders had said something very similar to this.
So he is being clear. He is being consistent. They can go check their copies of the word of God to see that this is the word of the Lord, but they immediately come up with a reason why this can't be God's word.
It can't possibly mean that. Why can it not mean that? Why isn't it that? Because it puts us at risk in our fear of man. So notice the emphasis on the word of God, verse one. But as soon as Jeremiah, whom the Lord their God had sent, had finished telling all the people all the words of the Lord their God, that is all these words, you see the emphasis, these are the very words of God.
Now, what will they do with them? They approach them with not a hermeneutic of submission, but a hermeneutic of suspicion, a hermeneutic of suspicion. They say the plain meaning of God's word is not so plain.
It must be something else. It must be that when the scriptures, when the word of God contradicts majority thought, when the scriptures contradict the culture, when the scriptures make us uncomfortable, there's something sinister going on.
This isn't the word of the Lord. It's you and Baruch conspiring against us. You're trying to turn us over to the Chaldeans. You're trying to destroy us. You've given us the word of God to harm us, not to help us.
Do you hear it? That's the hermeneutic of suspicion. There's something sinister going on. You've told us the word of God, but it's not the word of God because it doesn't agree with us. So, who's playing God?
And notice what the leaders then do. Listen to verse 4. So, Johanna and the son of Kereah and all the commanders of the forces and all the people did not obey the voice of the Lord to stay in the land of Judah.
So, they are all responsible. They all decide not to listen to God's word. They are suspicious about the word of God. That doesn't fit our fear of man. So, they reject it. But look, verse 5, but Johanna and the son of Kereah and all the commanders of the forces took the entire remnant of Judah who had returned from all the nations to which they had been driven away in order to reside in the land of Judah.
The men, the women, the children, the king's daughters, and every person that Nebazerite and the captain of the bodyguard had left with Gedaliah, the son of Ahiakim and the grandson of Shaphan, together with Jeremiah, the prophet, and Baruch, the son of Neriah.
And they entered the land of Egypt where they did not obey the voice of the Lord and went in as far as Tipani. What is this? All these people that Nebazerite had left with Gedaliah who told them, we're going to listen to God's word, we're going to be blessed for our obedience, all these people who had gathered to mitzvah to know the blessing of God, all these people who had been gathered there for obedience, now where are they headed?
They're not heading into blessing, they're heading into cursing. Why? Yes, I know the people are responsible for what they believe, but notice the leaders. It's the leaders who pointed the finger at Jeremiah and Baruch and said, you are telling a lie.
What if those leaders had said, that goes against what we want, but we know the disaster of fearing man and not fearing the Lord. I know this is not popular with the people right now, but we're going to do what God says.
They would have stayed. It's on the leaders. The leaders pointed at the word of God and said, there's something wrong here. It doesn't fit with the current climate. It doesn't fit with the current consensus.
It doesn't fit. So somehow it's wrong. So we're going to go somewhere else and do something else. And they lead the people of God away from blessing into cursing. They distrust the word of God. They do not rely on it.
They have a hermeneutic of suspicion, not a hermeneutic of submission. Why? Because they fear man, not God. Has God really said? Did God really say? The devil is a father of lies. He's never gotten rid of the first one.
He's still using it for our good, for our discernment about who we listen to and who we let speak into our lives for our own self-evaluation. Now, am I truly submitting to the word of God? We need to recognize the fear of man suspects the word of the Lord.
And it doesn't matter if someone signs all the right confessions and says all the right things. That doesn't matter. What's the outcome? What does it look like when it begins to be applied? What does it look like when it's time to submit to the teachings of the word of God?
That's where it matters. When big evangelical leaders go squish on sexual perversion, but they can clearly condemn all manner of prejudice that they see. When they're absolutely certain of invisible racism, but they're open to transgender pronouns.
When they rejoice with Islamic religious advances and mock Christians they think are backward and ignorant. Why do they do those things? Why do they flash their conservative credentials and say we've signed all the confessions and the creeds?
Look, we're Orthodox. Check. And then live like that. Why do these leaders want to take the people of God to Egypt? Because they fear man. They fear man. What if we don't celebrate homosexuals? What if we don't celebrate Islam?
What if we don't celebrate feminism? Then what will happen to us? What will happen to our funds? What will happen to our power? What will happen to our churches? We might have to actually suffer persecution.
The fear of man is what will lead people into cursing, disaster for the people of God. It doesn't reside in what they say. It's how they hear. It's how they hear. Are they receiving the Word of God? And that's the same for us, each one of us individually.
Each one of us. We fear man when we make allowance, when we invent doubts, when we cast shade upon the Word of God, when we are quick to call to aid certain scriptures in contest against other scriptures as if cold air to warm air to create fog in which we may more happily sin.
That is the dark arts of our hearts. And rebellion is the sin of witchcraft. God help us. May we as children receive the Word of our elder brother as to the will of our heavenly Father, and by His Spirit respond in worship-filled obedience.
The fear of man suspects the Word of God, and the fear of man suppresses the fear of God in one fear and out the other. This is exactly what they are doing. They are so afraid of man, they don't even speak to whether or not the Lord will keep His Word in verses one through seven.
They don't even make an allowance for it. They don't even consider it. They just rule it out. They suppress the fear of the Lord because they fear man. Remember a story in 2 Chronicles 18 where the king of Judah went up to the king of Israel, and they were going to see about maybe combining their forces to fight off a common enemy.
And the king of Israel had all 400 prophets on his payroll, all speaking in unison that this was the Word of the Lord. Yes, yes, go up. You'll fight. You'll win. Because they knew what their king wanted to hear.
And the king of Judah smelled a rat, or 400 of them, and he said, isn't there anyone who actually prophesies for the Lord around here? The king of Israel says, yeah, there's one, but I hate him. He always says bad things about me.
It's like, go get him. So they go and get the prophet of God, Micaiah was his name, and the messenger that goes to him says, now look, all the prophets are in unison giving the Word of the Lord. So you need to say what they say.
All right? Don't rock the boat. The majority has ruled. The majority prophets have said, this is the official line, so don't deviate. Of course, he did, and he got thrown in jail for it. But the Word of the Lord is the Word of the Lord.
The fear of man suppresses the fear of the Lord, and the fear of man summons the wrath of the Lord, verses 8 through 13. Then the Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah and Tapani, saying, take some large stones in your hands and hide them in the mortar in the brick terrace that is at the entrance of Pharaoh's palace in Tapani, in the sight of some of the Jews.
And say to them, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I am going to send and get Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and I'm going to set his throne right over these stones that I have hidden, and he will spread his canopy over them.
He will also come and strike the land of Egypt. Those who are meant for death will be given over to death, and those who are captivity to captivity, and those for the sword to the sword. And I shall set my fire to the temples of the gods of Egypt, and he will burn them and take them captive.
So he will wrap himself with the land of Egypt as a shepherd wraps himself with his garment, and he will depart from there safely. He will also shatter the obelisks of Heliopolis, which is in the land of Egypt, and the temples of the gods of Egypt, he will burn with fire.
Exactly what they feared will come to pass. God tells Jeremiah, put these stones as a secret witness, and they're going to watch it happen. They're going to watch as I whistle up Nebuchadnezzar, here, Neb, Neb, and I'm going to put him exactly where I want him, who's in charge.
Nebuchadnezzar is going to sit right on top of where those stones are, exactly what the Lord had promised he will perform, and God's justice will not be denied. All will be sorted out, those to death, to death, those to exile, to exile.
And once again, he brings a judgment upon the gods of Egypt. He did that one time, the plagues of Egypt, brought a judgment against the gods of Egypt, and continually made a distinction between the Egyptians and his own people, between the Egyptians and his own people.
But now, now, ironically, ironically, in the last days of the remnant of Judah, they return to Egypt where they were once enslaved, for they are enslaved to the fear of man again. And having been thoroughly paganized, now they will be destroyed in God's destruction of the gods of Egypt.
They're a part of it this time. They're not going to be separate from it. The fear of man summons the wrath of the Lord. I remember what God told Jeremiah at the very beginning, chapter 1, verse 17. He said, 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. We do not want to be dismayed before our family members, before our neighbors, before our co-workers, before this culture. Let us not be dismayed.
Now, let us not fear man. Let us fear the Lord. Let us be a people who fear the Lord, who receive the word of God with that shema. We receive it submissively, perceptively. We're ready to hear it. We're ready to accept it and fold it into our lives and live that out.
That's the real fear of the Lord. Malachi 3 .16 says, then those who fear the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord gave attention and heard it, and the book of remembrance was written before him for those who fear the Lord and who esteem his name.
May Sunnyside Baptist Church be written in that book of remembrance. We are those who fear the Lord. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word, a reminder of what we cannot serve. We cannot serve two masters.
We either fear you or we fear man. Help us to fear you. Help us to be clear on what that means, what that actually looks like. Let us not be dissuaded by fine-sounding words, by just the surface appearance.
Let us truly receive your word, be transformed by the grace of your son, Jesus Christ, and it's in his name that we pray.
