Sunday Morning, April 12, 2020 AM

He is risen indeed. Well, some of our folks, I know it's been difficult for all of us to communicate as thoroughly as we want to during this time, but the elders have agreed to a good idea. We're going to wait until we can regather together in a more full fashion to officially celebrate Easter.

So this morning, I'm going to continue preaching through Jeremiah, and of course, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is always important to everything that we read and consider in the Bible. And so I will be preaching on the resurrection today, though I will have a more direct focus on that later.

So we need to turn our attention back to Jeremiah chapter 44, and the theme of this chapter being that God's word and his will and his wrath are unavoidably undeniable. As we consider God's wrath in verses 15 through 30 of Jeremiah 44, it is of interest that there seems to be no end of complaints against the judgment of God.

Many will say it's too slow. Some will say it's too soon. Some will say it's not enough. Others will say it's too much. And many may consider it bad form for God to pour on a judgment so near a holy week rather than arranging it for the doldrums of summer.

But the truth is that whenever we think about the judgment of God, God's judgment is as precise as his purpose, as exact as his desire, and as righteous as his character. And that is what we see here in Jeremiah 44, verses 15 through 30.

So wherever you are, I encourage you to stand, if you're able, as I read God's holy word for us. Jeremiah 44, beginning in verse 15. Then all the men who were aware that their wives were burning sacrifices to other gods, along with all the women who were standing by as a large assembly, including all the people who were living in Pathros in the land of Egypt, responded to Jeremiah saying, as for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you.

But rather, we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings, and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.

For then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune. But since we stopped burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have met our end by the sword and by famine.

And, said the women, when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and were pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?

Then Jeremiah said to all the people, to the men and women, even to all the people who were giving him such an answer, saying, as for the smoking sacrifices that you burn in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your forefathers, your kings and your princes, and the people of the land, did not the Lord remember them?

And did not all this come into his mind? So the Lord was no longer able to endure it because of the evil of your deeds, because of the abominations which you have committed. Thus, your land has become a ruin, an object of horror and a curse, without an inhabitant as it is this day.

Because you have burned sacrifices and have sinned against the Lord and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord or walked in his law, his statutes or his testimonies, therefore, this calamity has befallen you as it has this day.

Then Jeremiah said to all the people, including all the women, hear the word of the Lord, all Judah who are in the land of Egypt. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, as follows. As for you and your wives, you have spoken with your mouths and fulfilled it with your hands, saying, we will certainly perform our vows that we have vowed to burn sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.

Go ahead and confirm your vows and certainly perform your vows. Nevertheless, hear the word of the Lord, all Judah who are living in the land of Egypt. Behold, I have sworn by my great name, says the Lord, never shall my name be invoked again by the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, as the Lord God lives, behold, I am watching over them for harm and not for good.

And all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt will meet their end by the sword and by famine until they are completely gone. Those who escaped the sword will return out of the land of Egypt to the land of Judah, few in number.

Then all the remnant of Judah who have gone to the land of Egypt to reside there will know whose word will stand, mine or theirs. This will be the sign to you, declares the Lord, that I am going to punish you in this place so that you may know that my words will surely stand against you for harm.

Thus says the Lord. Behold, I am going to give over Pharaoh, Hophra, king of Egypt, to the hand of his enemies, to the hand of those who seek his life, just as I gave over Zedekiah, king of Judah, to the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who was his enemy and was seeking his life.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

There are certain inescapable realities. This is God's universe. God made man as a special and distinct creature made in his own image. Man is depraved in his sin. God is holy and there must be a reckoning between God and man.

And of course, the inescapable reality that we've been talking about for some weeks now, that God sovereignly rules over all and is directly involved with each. Those of us who were able to watch the Riot in the Dance Water film, we heard Dr. Gordon Wilson talk about the octopi that he was observing, how they were escape artists, that they could use all of their unique giftings and intelligence to get out of all kinds of situations and closed containers, no matter where they were put.

Well, sinful man is also an escape artist, but unlike the octopus, he is a failed one. Man keeps on trying to escape these inescapable realities. How does man try to escape the fact that he lives in God's universe, that he's made in God's image, that he is depraved in his sin, that God is holy and that there is a day of reckoning coming?

How does he try to escape the fact that God sovereignly rules over all and is directly involved with each? Men have tried all sorts of things. They've tried narcotics, drunkenness, virtual reality, entertainment, echo chambers, postmodern existentialism, new age, speak it into existence witchcraft, head in the sand ostrich therapy, but all of it fails to actually escape.

As we've been observing in Jeremiah 44, that God's word is inescapable, verse one. God's will is inevitable, verses two through 14. And there we considered that we cannot explain away God's wrath, we must not revoice our wickedness and we cannot work around God's will.

And now in verses 15 through 30, we see that God's wrath is indisputable, indisputable, can't argue against it, can't bring a charge against it, can't indict God, can't call him unfair. Many claims have been made about the wrath of God being unjust.

Man in this way has been much like the children of Israel, wandering about and complaining about every little thing. Man considers the wrath of God to be unjust. What about the condemnation of the whole human race in Adam?

People say that's unjust. What about the global flood where everyone died except for eight people? What about the Egyptian plagues? What about the Canaanite conquest in which Israel as the instrument of God's judgment slaughter the Canaanite tribes?

People complain about that, saying that God's wrath is unjust. People even complain about the death of Jesus Christ. It has been called by those posing as believers cosmic child abuse. People have also claimed to be unimaginably cruel for God to mete out his wrath and his judgment in everlasting judgment in hell.

And so in every case, in the judgment of God, in the wrath of God, man finds things to complain about. Sinful men make a habit. Some have even made it a career, made a career out of questioning God and indicting the wrath of God.

And we understand why that is an attractive thought to those who are in sin. Jesus was telling Nicodemus in John chapter three that this is the judgment that the light of the world is, that light has come into the world and men fled from the light.

They wanted to stay in their darkness because they were afraid of their evil deeds being exposed. And so man in his sin wants to cast shade, does not want to come to the light. And so in order to cast shade upon the wrath of God, to bring some charge against God, man tries to close the gap.

Man tries to make God out to be not as holy as we once thought, and to make out that man is not as bad as we once thought, trying to close that gap. And if we can cast doubt on the clear meaning of scripture and propose that God's rule and God's involvement are not as total and not as intrusive as we once thought, that his approach to sin really isn't as harsh as we once thought.

If we can then present sin in the best light and at the right angle in this way, shade is cast upon the judgment of God. He's overreacting or our understanding of it was totally overblown. And we see this in verses 15 through 19 that the Jewish remnant in Egypt, they're doing their very best to present their sin in the best light and at the right angle.

They are excusing their sin. Now, excusing sin, as we've seen, involves revoicing it, trying to talk about it differently, but it also involves making excuses as to why there should not be any judgment.

How unfair it would be if God brought his wrath to bear on sin. Now, there are three excuses offered in our text. Some of these are more obvious than others. But the first is the argument from the majority, a homogenous majority, if you will, verses 15 and 16.

They're all together in this, look at them. Verses 15 and 16. And then all the men who were aware that their wives were burning sacrifices to other gods, along with all the women who were standing by as a large assembly, including all the people who were living in Pathros in the land of Egypt, responded to Jeremiah saying, as for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you.

And so we see that Jeremiah, the prophet, he has been preaching the word of the Lord to all the Jews that are in the land of Egypt. And they come together to give him a unified response. They're all saying the same thing.

They're a homogenous majority. They're all in this together. It's all the men who knew that their wives were offering burnt offerings to the idols. All the idolatrous women are there. All the Jews who live throughout the whole land of Pathros are all there and they're all saying the same thing.

We're not gonna listen to you and what you say that the Lord says. And so we see that they have some backbone, don't we? They've got a lot of backbone. They have so much backbone stuffed up behind their head that they can't turn their head one way or the other.

They are dead set on being rebellious and they cannot even turn in the least. Proverbs 13 verse 19 says, desire realized is sweet to the soul. And now listen, but it is an abomination to fools to turn away from evil.

It's a horrid thought, an awful thought for fools to turn away from evil. And that's what they're saying here. So they are as one and they are the majority, the vast majority. There are many voices here speaking in unity over and against this single voice of Jeremiah and Baruch there helping him out and writing these things down.

So they have left Canaan for Egypt. They have settled here in Egypt in defiance to the word of God. They say they're not gonna listen to Jeremiah anymore. And they used to pretend to listen to him. They used to say, oh, Jeremiah, ask God what the word of the Lord is and we will listen to you.

They used to pretend that. Now they're not even pretending that. Whatever you say, we're just not going to listen. How are we to respond to that? It seems that many times if everybody agrees on a course of action, then how can it be considered wrong?

And what business does the church or anyone have saying that such an action is wrong and that it's under the judgment of God? But sin is still sin even if the majority of folks are doing it. Wallowing in it.

Bathing in it. Drowning in it. Truth is still truth even if there's one person left saying it. And indeed, Jesus says if all men were silenced, the rocks would cry out. So we cannot excuse sin because of the momentum of the culture and the weight of the majority combined as a freight train of wickedness.

Proverbs 19 .25 says the fear of man brings a snare. He who trusts in the Lord will be exalted. So we have to lay aside that excuse. We cannot use the excuse of the homogenous majority to say this sin isn't really as bad as we thought it was or it isn't a sin or it doesn't deserve the judgment of God.

All of the Jewish remnant come and speak to Jeremiah and say we're all in agreement about this together. We totally reject what you're saying. That doesn't mean that what Jeremiah is saying is wrong or that it is untrue.

So what if a majority of folks engage in some form of sexual immorality? So what if a majority of folks do not serve Christ? So what if a majority of folks are dishonest and selfish? So what if a majority of folks engage in all manner of unrepentant sin?

That doesn't make it any less sinful. And consider this, that if the excuse is, well, everyone is doing it and has done it for some time now, if that's the excuse, that only serves to prove the righteousness of God's wrath.

That just shows that he is just in finally bringing wrath. That doesn't prove the wrongness of it at all. The second excuse is one of experiential testimony. Experiential testimony, verses 17 and 18. But rather, they say, we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings, and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.

For then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune. But since we stopped burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have met our end by the sword and by famine.

You see here that when people come together, when people just, if they can just come together, if they can just truly unite, they can do amazing things. Behold the power of human solidarity. There's so much potential here.

They can seemingly do whatever they put their mind to, just like at the Tower of Babel. They can even, if they put their minds to it in agreement, they can even rewrite history to better reflect their current experiential understanding of the world.

They engage in revisionist history. What do they say? They say, verse 17, that their forefathers worshiped the queen of heaven, that all of their kings worshiped the queen of heaven. I don't remember Josiah worshiping the queen of heaven or Hezekiah, and that they all did this.

And when they did this, they had plenty of food. Everything was fine. But when they stopped, everything went bad. This is revisionist history. Their forefathers worshiped the queen of heaven? I don't remember reading that story.

I mean, I don't remember how Isaac stopped by Beersheba one day and Rebecca was like, honey, we're getting low in our supplies. We really ought to stop and pour out a libation and burn a cake to the queen of heaven so that we can have her blessing.

We're running low in our supplies right now. And Isaac was like, right on, let's do it. I mean, I don't remember that story of the forefathers of Judah worshiping the queen of heaven. I also do not remember this time they so fondly remember when there was a time of food, plenty of food, when they were well off and they saw no misfortune.

I can't quite recall that in their history, even their recent history. Was that before or after Manasseh for 50 years filled one end of Jerusalem with the other with innocent blood? Was that before or after Jehoiakim's brutal taxation of the people for his building projects and his death at the hands of successive raiding bands plaguing Judah?

Was that before or after the deposing of Jeconiah and the plundering of the temple? Was that before or after the sword famine and pestilence which brought Jerusalem to ruin? I don't remember that time.

Also, when was it that they actually stopped pouring out libations to the queen of heaven? When was it that they actually stopped offering cakes to the queen of heaven on the tops of their roofs night by night, day by day?

When was it that they actually stopped doing that? It was when Jerusalem was destroyed, the buildings and their homes all torn down and burned. That's when they actually stopped. And at that point, the scripture says that whoever was left was gathered to the God-fearing government official named Gedaliah at Mitzvah.

And he gathered them there and brought them into obedience to the word of God and he gathered in the summer fruit in great abundance when they had stopped worshiping the queen of heaven. So you can see, so you can see how unreliable, how unreliable experiential testimony is as the basis for our lives.

Here's the truth of the matter. Here's the truth of the matter. They didn't remember at all. They had deceived themselves. Their whole point to Jeremiah was that things were better when they worshiped the queen of heaven and worse when they did not.

And undoubtedly, should Jeremiah have directly challenged them on that matter, they would have had several stories, several anecdotes at the ready to prove their point. However, no objective survey of history from God's point of view would have sustained their claims.

And that tells us that experiential testimony is powerful only when settled upon the objective truth of God and only then it is the gilding, not the frame of our beliefs, our morality, or our ethics. Even if we were to take this claim head on, even if we were to bite the tongue and refuse to mock them as their folly so deserves, if we were to even listen to the claims of the sinner seeking to excuse sin and grant them their delight in it, it doesn't change the nature of sin.

It doesn't change the consequences of sin or change the wrath of God against sin. I remember one time when I was open air preaching one night in Tennessee, a young lady blurted out, homosexuality is awesome, and this reminds us that public schools have catechisms too.

And as I discovered later, she was friends with some who identified as LGBTQ and she said that they were so happy and so nice and so caring that it was her experience, you see, that taught her that homosexuality was, as she says, awesome and meaning not deserving of judgment.

But that doesn't change the nature of sin. Should someone deceive themselves, should you deceive yourself as to the attractiveness and pleasantness of sin, should you selectively remember and selectively notice what you want in order to reinforce your commitment to that course of rebellion?

That does not at all excuse the sin. And if you are in sin and cannot discern any kind of chastisement or judgment or any kind of consequence at all, it's either your inability to rightly perceive your condition and situation because of the nature of sin, or it's God's merciful long-suffering, his kindness leading you to repentance.

As an additional note, considering the matter of paganism versus truth, it is common for those becoming more and more paganized to become more and more experiential in their thinking about God. This is what was happening to the remnant of Judah there in Egypt as they had become progressively more paganized.

When they think about God or morality or anything else, they're just relying on their experience more and more, only their experience. And why is that? Because paganism is about oneness. It's about the self-understanding of the self.

It's about the self-understanding of God. It's the self-understanding of everything. Paganism is what abounds today as we are encouraged to think about everything from one's personal perspective. The new confessional language, the creed of our culture sounds this way.

And this is the creed, and it sounds soft, but it is as strict as it can possibly be. Here's the new creed. Well, personally, I feel things are a bit different, but that's just me. And that's the creed of today.

That's paganism.

That's ooze.

Marble pillars are thus exchanged for ooze. Both are ingredients to build societies, but not all societies are equal. This ooze also has a professional name, perspectivalism, and Christianity is not concerned with that at all.

Except labeling it as destructive. Christianity is concerned with truth. You know what truth is, don't you? It's that information which would be so even if you had never lived. That's what Christianity is interested in, truth.

That which would be so even if we had never lived. Truth is objective because God is eternal. Truth is knowable because God became man. Truth is obtainable because God has come to dwell with us. We cannot excuse sin due to our experiences.

We cannot excuse sin due to our experiences. So saying it doesn't bother me is not a cop-out for porn. Everything is just fine cannot justify abandoning the church. I'm happier now does not sanctify adultery.

What can you do does not hallow effeminate responses to sexual abominations. These are not excuses that are going to cover our sin and bring any kind of shade upon the wrath of God. Neither homogenous majorities nor experiential testimonies nor rebellious authorities.

Verse 19, notice verse 19. And said the women, when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and were pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that we made for her sacrificial cakes in her image and poured out drink offerings to her?

You see, what is the point of what they're saying here? They're pointing to authority in their lives and hiding behind it, saying how can you be against this? How can you say this is the wrong course of action?

God's wrath upon sin is indisputable. We can't indict God in the least, not only because we're the sinful creatures in the equation but also because he is unchangeably consistent in all of his ways with all of his character.

His authority is supreme and supremely perfect. So it does no good to point at some other authority in the world today, authorities under the rule of Christ himself and say, well, they said it was okay or they told me to disobey.

That doesn't work. So the Holy Spirit in this passage we see, sees fit to place emphasis upon husbands and wives and the consequences of sin. We see that listed in verse seven. We read about the cutting off of the family, the man, woman, child and infant.

We read in verse nine of God's insistence that wickedness is wickedness and that the men of Judah paid attention to their own sin, which also means they need to pay attention to the wickedness, not only of their wickedness but the wickedness of their wives, the wickedness of their own kings and the wickedness of their wives.

This is a growing emphasis in the text. Verse 15, we read about the men who knew that their wives were worshiping idols and that all the idolatrous wives were gathered to oppose Jeremiah. And now in verse 19, it is said again by the wives that their idolatry was with their husband's knowledge, with their husband's permission, with their husband's presence.

Now, usually God just deals with the men of Judah, but the highlighting of their wives in this situation is symptomatic of the issue. The spirit does not always retain for us what was said and by whom, but in this case, it is essential that we see the dynamic of the husband and wife in the sin of Judah.

The husbands knew their wives were engaging in this practice. They knew and they did nothing. They let it happen. The husband's responsibility, their presence, their participation in this idolatry is brought out and indeed, it's brought up by their own wives.

So what's their point? Why are the wives bringing this up? They are using the God-ordained authority of their husbands to ratify the rebellion against God. That's nonsense. Certainly, the wives are to submit to their husbands in everything, notice the text says in Ephesians, as to the Lord, as to the Lord.

No wife can simply state that her disobedience to Christ is due to her husband's instructions, endorsement or passivity. A husband is responsible for everything going on with his wife and in his home, and we'll see more about that in a moment.

But this maneuver is an excuse. This is hiding behind lesser authority in order to sin against God's higher authority, and does that really work as an excuse? A wife and children cannot excuse their sin due to a negligent or wicked husband and father, and why is that?

Because Christ is the head of every man, 1 Corinthians 11 three. But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. And a church member cannot hide behind the covenant, the leadership or decisions of a church, a disobedient church, like First Baptist Church Corinth, you know, when they let the incestuous man remain among them.

A disobedient church gives no cover to sinning church members, why? Because Christ is head over all things to the church, Ephesians 1 22. And residents, citizens, subjects cannot hide behind a civil government.

We cannot say that any form of abortion is moral, or that getting high on marijuana is just a matter of conviction, or that denying biblical counsel to families is upright, simply because a city, county, state, or nation says so.

And why is that? Because Jesus Christ has all authority in heaven and on earth. Jesus Christ is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead. He is risen. He is risen indeed, and he is the ruler, Revelation says, the ruler of the kings of the earth.

So he is the head of the family, he is the head of the church, and he is the head of all civil government. So there is no hiding behind any lesser government claiming shade for our sin. It is good for us to make a study of this, a study of sin and the excuses which often come, even unbidden to the forefront of our minds.

These things which boil over the top of our culture's cauldron. But all these maneuvers fail to deter, dilute, or discredit the wrath of God. God's wrath is indisputable. We can try to run for cover beneath the excuses of everyone's doing it.

We can run for cover under the excuse of saying, well, it doesn't affect me, it's fine, I feel okay. Or we can try to run for cover under the excuse of, well, this authority said it was all right or didn't stop me.

That doesn't work for us. That doesn't work for Jeremiah's countrymen. These very same maneuvers, these very same excuses have failed humanity, and they have failed from the very beginning. When the serpent tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, she gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.

You can hear the daughters of Eve and Jeremiah's generation making the same case. Was it without Adam that Eve entertained the lies of the serpent and rebelled against God? No, Adam was there, he was with her.

Did Adam's failed leadership cover the sin of Eve?

No.

And Eve was drawn into the temptation, notice, by her experiential leanings, she leaned more and more into her experience. Here was a talking serpent, now that's an experience. Here's a talking serpent, what a marvel.

The slithering, crafty serpent was pleasant to look at, a wonder to hear, and look at the fruit. It was good for food, a delight to the eyes. And if a serpent can elevate himself to talk, what might even Adam achieve?

They could be more than just made in God's image, they could be like God himself, determining their own good and their own evil. But was Eve's experience with the serpent, her experience with the tree and the fruit, did that cover her sin?

No, it wasn't an excuse that could cover her sin. And finally, when God came into the garden to meet with and to confront Adam and Eve, what did he find there? But a homogenous majority, the man, the woman, the snake, had all made an alliance of rebellion against their creator.

The fact was that literally everyone was doing it. But did that cover Adam and Eve's sin? No, these excuses failed our parents and they fail us. What will cover our sins? Not excuses. What will meet the wrath of God in its full holy fury and satisfy every last flickering tongue of its blazing flames?

The blood of Jesus Christ covers our sins. The brutal and blessed sacrifice of the Lamb of God in our place and for our sake. Away with all of our wilting, rotted, fig leaf excuses. I stand naked in my shame, bowed in my guilt, damned in my sins, but behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

It is His glory that evaporates all my excuses. No excuse for any other authority. He is the authority of all my authorities and He is thus because He is risen and reigning today. Away with any kind of experiential excuse.

No, He is alive today and He is the living bread who compels me to come and eat and be satisfied. Away with any excuse about the majority of numbers. He is alive today, gathering together as the good shepherd, a flock which no man can fathom.

His glory takes away all of our excuses. Now as we come to verses 15 through 25, we have here an opportunity to consider verses 20 through 25 in conversation with verses 15 through 19. How is it that Christ, through His prophet, responds to this excuse-making people?

We don't have enough time this morning to deal with the whole survey, but there is one thing that we should at least talk about this morning, and that's the matter of headship, headship. We've already noted the effort by the idolatrous women to find cover beneath their husband's failed leadership, but it is truly that failure which is the main point.

The women tried to bring up something as an excuse to cover and deflect God's wrath, but actually it's the justification for God's wrath. Now if this was an egalitarian worldview, the women would be addressed without reference to their husbands.

However, the scriptures are not egalitarian. The scriptures are federal. Adam is the federal head of the whole human race.

Why?

Precisely because he's the federal head of Eve, and thus the federal head of the children she bore from her womb. The scriptures make Adam, the husband, primarily responsible for everything that went on with his wife, not just his own actions, and Paul makes that clear when describing the proper order in the church, and we see here how family authority structures matter for church authority structures.

1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 2, 11 through 14. These are passages that many are engaged in constantly running away from, but we have no need to run away from them. We can embrace them because they're given to us by a good shepherd, Jesus Christ.

1 Timothy 2, verses 11 through 14. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was created first, and then Eve.

And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. What is he saying? He is saying that the woman cannot have authority over the man because in the family, it's reversed.

The man is responsible for everything that's going on, and so he cannot be brought under the authority of someone he's responsible for. That doesn't work, Paul says. There's a proper order in the family, which naturally flows over to the order in the church.

Husbands, you are responsible for your wives. You are not allowed to have a woman unless you have her as a wife. To take a wife unto yourself means to become covenantally responsible for her and bound to her until death.

To refuse to lead her is to treat her as another man's wife. To refuse to take responsibility for her, and what goes on in your home is to deny before God your duty as a husband. You do not love her if you passively let her go off deeper and deeper into sin, like these men of the remnant of Judah.

You do not provide or protect her if you do not lead her in the truth of Scripture. Old man, love your wife. Lead her. God says you're responsible.

Consider this.

Although Eve sinned first, although Eve gave birth to the next generation and thus all of humanity, although both she and Adam were made in the image of God, it was Adam who was held responsible. The husband is the head of the wife.

It is the husbands being held responsible here, in Jeremiah 44, and the women are addressed as well, but their husbands are being held responsible. Notice, for the vows of their wives. Verse 25, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, as follows.

As for you and your wives, you have spoken with your mouths and fulfilled it with your hands. The wives were the ones who had spoken it, but Jeremiah's saying you are responsible, husbands. You're responsible.

Where does he get that? He gets it from Numbers chapter 30. Numbers chapter 30, and it's a lengthy portion, but I'll just read verses 13 through 15 for you. Verses 13 through 15, and this will actually be very encouraging to you.

Every vow and every binding oath to humble herself, her husband may confirm it or her husband may annul it. All right, so if a husband makes a vow, the wife has to follow her husband in that, but if the wife makes a vow, the husband may confirm it or the husband may annul it because he's responsible for what's going on in her life, her spiritual life and everything else going on.

He is responsible for her. Now, verse 14, but if her husband indeed says nothing to her from day to day, he's just being passive, not leading. If he says nothing to her from day to day, then he confirms all her vows or all her obligations, which are on her, and he has confirmed them because he said nothing to her on the day he heard them.

But if he indeed annuls them after he has heard them, then he shall bear her guilt. In other words, if he has heard them and allowed them to take hold in her life, if he says, okay, that's fine, but then later on he tries to annul them, she will not be held responsible for breaking her vow.

He will be held responsible for breaking her vow because he is responsible for her. That is the weightiness, that is the glory of federal headship. Now, let's make the connection. He shall bear her guilt.

Let's make the connection. Ephesians 5, 22 through 27. Wives, be subject to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ also is head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body.

From heaven he came and sought her, and by his blood he has bought her. Verse 24, but as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her.