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"How Long, O Lord (Part 2) Jeremiah 12:1-17 Nov 26, 2017
Let me pray for us. Father we come before you this morning and we just thank you for this opportunity to gather together around your word to worship you to rejoice in the gift of your son and by the power of your Holy Spirit we are united with Christ and made into one body.
I pray that you would help us to truly worship this day to give you honor and glory. I pray that you would have your way in our hearts today through your word that you would give us a clear view of your son Jesus Christ in whom was all our hope.
We pray these things in his name. Amen. You'll notice from your bulletin that I have a very uh have a big handicap in predicting where I'm going to be. It's not Miss Marsha's fault it's mine. We are in chapter 12 not chapter 13.
Though I do hope that the preview of the titles to come will keep you interested. We will eventually make it to chapter 13 someday. The Holy Spirit is as living and active as his word and he gives us a bounty in every portion of the scriptures revealing to us Jesus Christ.
We're going to be in Jeremiah 12 verses 7 through 13 this morning. When we began to look at this passage we noted Jeremiah's questions. He's asking questions of God. He wants to discuss matters of justice with God.
He is frustrated that those who deal in treachery are at ease. He is concerned that the wicked are prospering. He is frustrated but he is also a man of faith. His questions are not skeptical questions.
They are confessional questions for he confesses that God is righteous. That's why he would speak to him about matters of justice. He confesses that God is sovereign and so he wants to know God when will you show your power.
He confesses that God is all-knowing and therefore he's looking to God for wisdom to know how to handle the opposition and the difficulties of his day. He looks for answers from God. I think it is instinctive.
It is part of being made in the image of God that we have concerns about justice. We have an alarm that goes off. It may not be an accurate alarm. It may be very myopic, nearsighted, only about ourselves but we can tell when some kind of injustice has been done.
It's part of being made in the image of God that we have that sense about us and very often people question issues about justice and righteousness and they end up denying God. Look at all the evil in the world today.
Look at all the horrible things that have happened and there is no justice and there is no righteousness and how could a good God who's all-powerful really exist if the world is in such a shape as it is in.
That's what makes the questions that Jeremiah asks so important. They matter to all of us and how we answer them matters a great deal for our souls. Listening to the radio the other day and lo and behold Ratko Mlodic has been sentenced to life in prison.
He is the butcher of Bosnia. The Bosnian war is a long time ago you say 20 years ago that Mlodic ordered Sarajevo to be bombed and the civilians there to be killed. 20 years since he said burn their brains.
He's finally been arrested. He's finally been on trial and at the age of 74 he's received a life sentence leaving everybody wondering has justice really been served. We ask these questions. Atheists ask these questions.
Agnostic ask these questions. People from all different kinds of world religions ask these questions because we have been made in the image of God. We have that sense about us. Where is justice? Where is righteousness?
Jeremiah is asking these questions from God and God is answering him and the first answer that Jeremiah gets is one of reproof. We saw this last time in verses 5 and 6. God tells Jeremiah and in so many words buckle up.
If you get wore out running with footmen just wait till the horses get here. If you're getting worn down and frustrated and giving up when in struggle with your own countrymen just wait till the Babylonians get here and watch what they do.
He's basically telling Jeremiah buckle up there's worse things coming and what you're going through now is important for what's yet to come. The second illustration he gives reinforces the first and I managed to completely skip it two weeks ago.
If you fall down in a land of peace how will you fare in the pride of the Jordan or the thicket of the Jordan? The idea is Jeremiah living in Anathoth just north of Jerusalem and in Jerusalem and he can look out he can see the plains of the Shephela rolling away from him a land of peace a land of shalom a green nice level land.
God says if you're going to fall down in that kind of turf what's going to happen when you're in the thickets and the bramble of the Jordan valley? And the idea is that's exactly where everyone would be running when the Babylonians showed up.
They would be running away from the land of peace to the Jordan river hoping to find some place to cross to get away from the Babylonian soldiers and God is saying worse things are coming Jeremiah you've got to buckle up and you've got to beware and he warns him to not listen to those who are deceiving him by telling him what he wants to hear.
He should listen to God instead. So there's the reproof that God gives to Jeremiah. Now if any of us lack wisdom if any of us lack wisdom we must ask God in faith. We must ask God in faith. For Jeremiah first of all that means submitting to the reproof.
Submitting to the reproof that God gives him as part of the answer. We're going to look more at more of the answer this morning but I want us to be sure that we ask in faith. Perhaps you have issues with the way the world is.
Maybe you ask God questions about justice. God where is righteousness? Where is justice? Why do the evil prosper? Why do these things happen in this way? Why do I have to suffer? Why did this have to happen in such this way that I am full of sorrow and lamentation?
If you ask questions from God you're going to be ready for his answers and we'll be asking faith. We'll respond in faith. We need answers from God. Let me read for us verses 7 through 13. God's second kind of answer to Jeremiah and it's a lament.
God's own lament. Verse 7, I have forsaken my house. I have abandoned my inheritance. I have given the beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies. My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest.
She has roared against me therefore I have come to hate her. Is my inheritance like a speckled bird of prey to me? Are the birds of prey against her on every side? Go gather all the beasts of the field.
Bring them to devour. Many shepherds have ruined my vineyard. They have trampled down my field. They have made my pleasant field a desolate wilderness. It has been made desolation. Desolate it mourns before me.
The whole land has been made desolate because no man lays it to heart. On all the bare heights in the wilderness destroyers have come for a sword of the Lord is devouring from one end of the land even to the other.
There is no peace for anyone. They have sown wheat and have reaped thorns. They have strained themselves to no profit but be ashamed of your harvest because of the fierce anger of the Lord. Those who have ears to hear let them hear God's lament.
I find that we like to be entertained by the celebrations and the sorrows of others. Take sports for example. The TV cameramen do their job and they do it well. They want to entertain so people will watch, so people will see the commercials, so everyone gets paid.
They put the camera where they think it'll be most entertaining for the viewers to watch and inevitably they will be panning the crowd at some critical moment, perhaps even the conclusion of the sporting event, of the end of the game, and you will see one group of people ecstatic and joyful and one group of people with their mouths hanging open or wearing very solemn expressions.
That's entertaining for people at home to see the celebrations and the heartbreak of those who came to watch the sporting event. We are entertained by the celebrations and lamentations of others and we can see that in more than one way.
But we only truly love when we enter into the joys and the sorrows of others. We only truly love when we enter into the joys and the sorrows of others. In Romans 12 15 we are told to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep.
An instruction given in the transition between how we're to love one another as the church and how we're to love others in our community. This is an expression, this is an instruction that that works whether we are with brothers and sisters in Christ or whether we're trying to minister to our neighbor.
That we would rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep because we can only truly love when we enter into the joys and the sorrows of others. To extend the application just a bit, do we truly love God?
When we ask these questions of God about justice, about righteousness, and whether these things are should be so and whether these things are fair, are we actually entering into the joys and the lamentations of God?
Do we delight in the things that he delights in? Do we grieve about the things that cause him sorrow? And now I must qualify what I'm saying. The Bible will very often talk about God in a way that makes it seem he's a whole lot like us.
In other words, he has a right hand of power or he sits on a throne or his eyes see everything on the earth. Yet God is a spirit and does not have a body like man. He has no eyeballs and he has no index finger and he can't sit on a throne.
He's a spirit. But why does the Bible talk about him in those ways? These are man-shaped words, man-shaped words, and God is revealing himself in a way that we can understand. In other words, to borrow from another theologian, God is getting down on one knee and he's talking to a two-year-old in ways that we might possibly begin to understand what he's saying.
Similarly, we can read about God's emotions, that he rejoices, that he delights, that he grieves, that he sorrows. And this is also man-shaped words, but about emotion, about emotion. We relate the highs and lows in life to our own mortality, to our own changing nature that sometimes things are good, sometimes things are bad, and we just kind of have to go with the flow of whatever's happening.
But God is unchangeable and he's all powerful and he's all knowing, so how could it be that he would rejoice or that he would sorrow? And yet these are ways that God expresses himself to us. We begin to understand who he is, that he approves of some things and he hates other things, that some things cause him delight and other things cause him sorrow.
And we're not to fit God into our box, but we are to recognize that we are made in his image, he's not made in ours. Having said all that, verses 7 through 13 is a lament from God given by his prophet to his prophet.
A lament. As I read verses 7 through 13 and I read it again and again, it seems to me that God's lament in some ways echoes Jeremiah's frustrations, but then really kind of just drowns it out, utterly overwhelming it.
Jeremiah has his frustrations and he's concerned about the things that he sees, but it seems to me that as God reorients Jeremiah's questions to his own perspective, that God is communicating with Jeremiah, you may be frustrated and you may be concerned, but you're not frustrated enough and you're not nearly concerned enough.
You've got some issues with what's going on, you're not even beginning to get where I'm at with this whole thing. We read about Jeremiah being, we think about Jeremiah being the weeping prophet, but we are reminded here again in the book that Jeremiah is a weeping prophet of a grieving God.
And the challenge to us is whether or not we are a weeping people of a grieving God. We may be frustrated with the things the way they are. We may get frustrated about the prosperity of the wicked and those who deal with in treachery that they seem to be at ease and everything's just fine for them.
And we may grow very bold in our complaining about how Christians are treated in this country and many other countries around the world, but we have not even begun to grieve and to mourn and to lament sin as God has.
We may be bothered, but we're not bothered enough. We may be frustrated, but we're not frustrated nearly enough. Do we aim in God's heart? Do we think God's thoughts after him? Do we know the grievousness of sin?
Look at what sin does. We should lament sin because of the division that it causes. Verses seven through nine. The I have forsaken my house. I have abandoned my inheritance. I have given the beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies.
My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest. She has roared against me. Therefore, I have come to hate her. Is my inheritance like a speckled bird of prey to me? Are the birds of prey against her on every side?
Go, gather all the beasts of the field. Bring them to devour. I hope that you hear very clearly the primary kind of division that sin brings about. A breach between God and those whom he made in his image.
A breach between God and us. A breach between God and Judah. He has forsaken his house. Not just a physical structure. Not just the mud walls and the thatched roof, but those who live inside the household.
He's as one who walks away from one's home. The family is all there, but he leaves. He says he abandons his inheritance. A focus upon the children and the grandchildren of this large family. And he not just abandons them, but the term is that he casts them away.
This is an intensifying of the forsaken. It's not just that he walks away, but that he casts away. And it gets worse. He says, I have given the beloved of my soul. Think of a marriage, a betrothal. I have given the beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies.
Not just that I've walked away, not just that I've cast away, but I have betrayed them into their own enemy's hand. The most stark expression of division that could be composed. A threefold intensifying picture.
God, surely you didn't do that. Surely this is hyperbole. This is exaggeration to make a point of some kind. And why would you ever do that to Judah? Why would you do that to anyone? Verse eight, my inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest.
She has roared against me, therefore I have come to hate her. Here's the reason I've walked away and cast away and given her over into the hand of her enemies, because she in her idolatry, in her sin, as we've seen throughout the book of Jeremiah, in her spiritual whoredom, she has become like a beast.
She is subhuman. And when I approach her in the forest to call her back to me, she just roars at me and would have me at the throat. And after so many approaches from so many prophets, and again and again, he calls them to repentance.
And the roaring of the beast who hates him, he has come to hate her as well. What has caused this division? It is the sin of Judah. It is her idolatry. It is her injustice. It is her betraying of God.
It has caused an absolute division between her and God. Notice what he says about her future, about her stability. He says, having abandoned her, having cast her away, is it true that Judah sits like a little bird in the field on the lower end of the food chain?
Is she now surrounded by birds of prey ready to feast? Is that really so? Yes, indeed. Dinner time. Call all the beasts of the forest to come out. It's time to feast on Judah. There's not really any wiggle room here.
You're not left with any kind of sense that God is vacillating about the decision. And really, the only way to receive this in the sense in which it's intended, to understand the passion behind it and the reality behind it, is to read Jeremiah 1 -11.
To bring yourself up to speed about the turmoil that has been in this relationship between God and Judah. But there's this breach with God. Sin brings a division between God and his image. But there's also a division between Judah and others.
She's at war with other nations. The birds of prey against her on every side. The beasts that come to devour. These are other nations that are coming around her. We read in other parts of this same passage, verse 12, the destroyers who come.
Verse 14, wicked neighbors who strike at the inheritance, at his inheritance, Israel. All these are indicators that she is at war with those around her. This is no holy war. She's not acting in righteousness as the instrument of judgment that God would send against idolatrous nations.
She is as idolatrous and wicked as they are. And she's in conflict with them because of her sin. And she's in conflict with herself. Chapter 11 is full of the conspiracies of the men of Anathoth seeking to kill the last true prophet in her midst, Jeremiah.
We read about the injustices being done to the widows and the orphan and the refugee in chapter 7. And so there is this opposition. The image of God, as it were, in Judah's corporate existence is totally broken on every level.
Broken in the relationship with God. Broken in her relationship with others. Broken in the way that she is handling the created order around her because she's idolatrous and covetous. This is what sin does.
Sin fractures your relationships. Consider your own humanity. Consider your own humanity, your own life. How many relationships have you been in and still have with parents, siblings, children, grandchildren, other relatives, neighbors, co-workers, ex-church members, current church members?
Just list all the relationships you're in. How often do you find sin fracturing those relationships? Pride, selfishness, sin continually fractures our relationships with others. It certainly fractures our relationship with God.
Do we really know what sin has done to us? Do we really grieve with God? We have a need to grieve. Turn in your Bible to 2 Corinthians chapter 7. 2 Corinthians chapter 7 and we're reading in verse 8 and the following.
It is good that we read in Jeremiah that God laments sin and its devastating consequences in the lives of his people. It is good that we read about those consequences and God's lament. We need to know what grieves God so that we may in faith confess and amen that grief with our own.
2 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 8. Paul says, For though I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it. For I see that that letter caused you to sorrow, though only for a while.
I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance. For you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.
Now listen, for the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation. But the sorrow of the world produces death. For behold, what earnestness this very thing, this godly sorrow, has produced in you, what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what avenging of wrong, and everything you demonstrated yourselves to be innocent in the matter.
Listen to verse 10. The sorrow that is according to God, the godly sorrow, produces a repentance without regret. In the Greek, it's the same word twice, produces a repentance without repentance. A turning away from sin, but that turning away is not repented from, so that the person goes back to sin.
The godly sorrow that Paul seeks for this church is the kind of sorrow that will lead to a repentance that leaves them in confessional agreement with God about that sin, and they will not go back to it, because they feel about that sin the way God feels about it.
That's what it means to have a godly sorrow. A sorrow according to God is that we confess and agree with his grief about sin, his lamentation of sin. We say amen, and we sing the same song from our heart.
We need that. We need to see what sin does and agree with God about how he feels about it, so that we would grieve with him and be delivered from the sin, be delivered from that way of life. We need to see more of it though.
The division leads to something very natural, but ultimately worse is the desolation in verses 10 through 13. We must lament because of the division that sin brings, and we must lament because of the desolation that sin brings.
You can see the theme very clearly in the text. Verse 10, many shepherds have ruined my vineyard, they have trampled down my field, they have made my pleasant field a desolate wilderness. It has been made a desolation, desolate, and mourns before me.
The whole land has become desolate, because no man lays it to heart. And all the bare heights in the wilderness destroyers have come, for a sword of the Lord is devouring from one end of the land even to the other.
There is no peace for anyone. They have sown wheat and reaped thorns, they have strained themselves to no profit, but be ashamed of your harvest because of the fierce anger of the Lord. What a scene, a ruined vineyard, the broken down walls, the scattered stones, the mess of dead vines, a field not green and crisp, but dead and trampled down and made a ruin.
They have made my pleasant field a desolate wilderness. Who? Isn't that the question that we ask so often when it comes to matters of justice? Who is responsible for this tragedy? Who is responsible for this evil?
And we want them to be held responsible, don't we? Who? The shepherds. Many shepherds have ruined my vineyard. In the book of Jeremiah, shepherd is very often a term for some national leader. And in this sense, I think it is about the shepherds of Judah, those who were called to lead Judah to God and according to God's word.
But Jeremiah 10 21 says, the shepherds have become stupid. Why? They have not sought the Lord, therefore they have not prospered. And in the Hebrew, it's done well according to wisdom and all their flock is scattered.
They have not sought the Lord. They have not lived according to wisdom and therefore they have become fools and they have ruined Judah. So the leaders are responsible, but the people are responsible too.
Verse 11, desolation, desolate, desolate. Why is the whole land a desolation? Because no man lays it to heart. None of the people seem to be affected by it. They don't care. They don't care because they don't even notice.
It's just the way things are. It doesn't mean very much to them. I mean, the land mourns. Verse 11 says, the land is mourning. The land is grieving. The land is weeping. Just look at it. It's dressed in its mourning clothes.
It's got its sackcloth and ashes on. But what about the people? No. Back in chapter 9, God tells Jeremiah, call up the wailing women, all of them, the professional mourners. Have them instruct their daughters because there won't be enough.
Bring up the whole brigade of wailing women to wail the consequences of the sin of my people. Maybe they will be able to prime the pump of repentance. It didn't work. They don't lay it to heart. Who else is responsible for the desolation?
Well, Babylon and the other nations are, aren't they? Verse 12, on all the bare heights in the wilderness, destroyers have come. They lay the land desolate, but they are just the instrument of the Lord.
For a sword of the Lord is devouring from one end of the land even to the other. No peace for anyone. All this is because of the fierce anger of the Lord, verse 13 says. Ultimately, God is the one who's bringing this judgment.
God is sovereignly and righteously responsible for this, for he brings about the fitting judgment because of the sin of the people. He exiles his image from his life and he brings the shameless to shame, verse 13.
Be ashamed of your harvest. They need to be ashamed. Chapter 6, verse 15 says that the people had forgotten how to blush. Sin meant so little to them that blushing about anything is totally absent from their culture.
Sound familiar? No blushing anymore, no embarrassment about sin anymore, but there needs to be shame. So God brings judgment. The question, I think, is seeing that sin desolates our souls, desensitizing us to the realities of sin and holiness, seeing that sin desolates our bodies and our relationships and our own world.
Do we lay it to heart? Do we lay it to heart? Do we enter into God's lament about sin? Sure, we're frustrated about some things. Sure, we're bothered about other things, but we're not frustrated nearly enough and we're not bothered nearly enough.
We need to enter into God's lament. That's what God is saying to Jeremiah. Jeremiah, you want to discuss matters of justice? See things from my perspective. See things from God's perspective. No man lays it to heart.
That phrase comes from Isaiah 42. It would do you well to put eyes on that. Isaiah 42, beginning in verse 18. This is a remarkable passage. This is in the Servant Songs of Isaiah. As the identity of the servant is clarified from the foggy notion that we find in Israel to the clear and crisp, bright image of the servant in Jesus Christ.
We begin in verse 18 after the condemnation of the idolatry of Israel and Judah. Verse 18, Hear you deaf and look you blind that you may see who is blind but my servant. Notice the lowercase s if your translations do it right.
Or so deaf as my messenger whom I send. Isn't that terrible? A blind servant, not going to be very helpful. A deaf messenger, that's not going to be very helpful. Who is so blind that he is at peace with me or so blind as the servant of the Lord?
He's got a deaf and blind servant, God says. He's saying my servant Israel is desensitized to me. Blind and deaf. Okay, so what is he going to do? He's got to bring judgment to get their attention. Look at verse 23.
Who among you will give ear to this? Who will give heed and listen hereafter? Who gave Jacob up for spoil and Israel to plunderers? Was it not the Lord against whom we have sinned? Listen to Isaiah pleading.
In whose ways they were not willing to walk? In whose law they did not obey? Here's what Isaiah says. Look, verse 25. So he poured out on him. So God poured out on his deaf and blind servant messenger.
God poured out on Israel the heat of his anger and the fierceness of battle and it set him a flame all around. Yet he did not recognize it and it burned him, but he paid no attention. Literally in the Hebrew, he did not lay it to heart.
God sets his deaf and blind servant on fire and he didn't even notice. Didn't lay it to heart. Do you see what sin does? Oh, do we see what sin does? Contrast that to the true servant, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.
Dearly beloved, he did lay it to heart. He did lay it to heart. He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. Upon him was laid our iniquities and our transgressions and he did lay it to heart. And it pleased the father to crush the son that by his righteousness that we would be saved, that we would be justified before God.
Christ did lay it to heart. He did notice. He did feel it. If anyone, Christ knows what sin does. Do we not hear him on the cross as he screams the scream of the damned? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
If we want to know what sin does, if we want to enter into the lament of God, that we would be moved by godly sorrow to forsake our sins, we look at the cross and we say, my God, my God, look what it does.
There are some who think the gospel message of grace alone leads to the kind of idea that we can live however we want because Jesus has paid it all. But the truth is this, we do not become cavalier because of Christ's sacrifice.
It is only by looking at the cross and only by looking at Jesus Christ and what he suffered for us that we even begin to understand what sin does. We must be instructed there and by that grace we are brought into God's lament.
Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, you know what we need. So often we pray to you and we are amidst our frustrations and we are rightly bothered by the evil of the world. We are rightly concerned about the spread of lies and the fertility of wickedness.
But you are so good as our heavenly Father to give us the answers, not that we may want to hear, but that ones we need to hear. And you remind us that these trials are various and necessary for other things yet to come and you give us your own perspective on sin, that we may enter into your grief, into your lament, that we would agree with you.
And Father, I pray that you would give us a healthy sorrow, a healthy hatred of sin, that we would delight in our Savior Christ who bore our guilt and laid our punishment to heart, that we would be saved.
And pray all these things for his sake. Amen.
