Sunday Morning, January 5, 2020 AM

The Prayer for God’s Help and Sanctifying Word

Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, I thank You for gathering us here today. You are a good God. You know exactly what we need. Father, I thank You for providing so abundantly for us. This last year has been filled with many, many ups and downs.

Father, You have always been the same. You have always been the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shifting.

Shadow.

And I thank You at this first Sunday of the new year, the 2020th year of our risen and reigning Lord Jesus Christ. We may gather here and turn back to Your Word and have a sure and living and active and powerful Word that will affect us by the power of Your Spirit to conform to Your Son, to hear His words, to know His truth, and to bow the knee.

So You are good to have ordained all of this, and we ask that You would help us today, help us to understand what's going on here and in the times of Jeremiah and the way in which You preserve this text to instruct us and to shape us and to sanctify us.

So we ask, Father, that You would do the work only You can do in filling us with Your Holy Spirit so that as the Word is read and considered and proclaimed, that there would be by Your Holy Spirit a sanctifying amen in all of our hearts here today.

We pray these things for Christ's sake.

Amen.

Jeremiah 36 and the Meaning of Written Authority

I invite you to open your Bibles to Jeremiah 36, and we'll be looking, hopefully, through the end of the chapter. I'll be reading verses 9 through 24 in a moment, which is a very good section of the story, the heart of the story, and I think we'll be well-instructed in the way in which God works through His Word.

The title of this morning's sermon, as it was last week, is Written Authority, which is a little bit different, I think, than just plain old spoken authority. We tend to give a lot more consideration to the written word than we do the spoken word.

If we don't trust someone, for example, if we don't trust someone and we're worried about a family member or a friend doing business with this somewhat not trustworthy person, we say what? Get it in writing.

Why?

Because it matters that much more.

It's the way that God made us.

It's the way that God made the world, that the written word is of that kind of importance. And in our story, we have God's written authority being brought to bear on those, especially the king, on those who are in authority, and the real question is how do we as human beings, as those made in God's image, how do we respond to the written authority of God, to the written.

Word?

The Jews had not been responding well. Their nation was in a mess. Their city was about to fall. The prophet Jeremiah was in jail. Everything was about to fall apart, and we see this in earlier chapters of Jeremiah.

Right now, we're taking a tour, a looking back, if you will, at all those times that the Jews had opportunities to repent, that God gave them time and opportunity after time and opportunity to consider their ways, to return to the old paths, to repent of their sins and to get things right with Him.

And so, we're surveying all of those compassionate, long-suffering acts of God, and we're seeing how important it is that the people of God listen to the word of God as soon as we begin to tune out the word of God, we go massively astray.

We know what it's like to tune out certain noises. Mothers and children especially, and this goes also for husbands and wives, but mothers and children, I have noticed, have a way of they hear each other's voices so often that sometimes the mother can completely tune out the chatter of the children when she needs to focus on something, and the children, when they would rather not do something, completely tune out the voice of their mother, and it's amazing that they can't hear each other.

I, of course, hear everything my wife always says to me. I do not. She's watching right now. I do not. But we can get so accustomed to hearing a voice, we can get so accustomed to hearing something that perhaps we begin to tune it out, and we need the grace of God to continually focus afresh upon the word of God, that we not tune out His written word, that we do not tune out His voice, which He has given to us faithfully in the Holy Scriptures.

And that's what we were thinking about this morning. I'm going to read verses 9 through 24. I would ask you to stand as I read for us the word of God. Jeremiah chapter 36, verses 9 through 24. Now, in the fifth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month, all the people in Jerusalem and all the people who came down from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem proclaimed a fast before the Lord.

Then Baruch read from the book of the words of Jeremiah in the house of the Lord, in the chamber of Gemariah, the son of Shaphon, the scribe, in the upper court, at the entry of the new gate of the Lord's house to all the people.

Now, when Micaiah, the son of Gemariah, the son of Shaphon, had heard all the words of the Lord from the book, he went down to the king's house, into the scribe's chamber. And behold, all the officials were sitting there, Elisha, the scribe, and Dariah, the son of Shammaiah, and Elnathan, the son of Achbor, and Gemariah, the son of Shaphon, and Zedekiah, the son of Hananiah, and all the other officials.

Micaiah declared to them all the words that he had heard when Baruch read from the book.

To the people.

Then all the officials sent Jehudi, the son of Nethaniah, the son of Shalamiah, the son of Cushita, Baruch, saying, take in your hand the scroll from which you have read to the people and come. So Baruch, the son of Nariah, took the scroll in his hand and went to them.

They said to him, sit down, please, and read it to us. So Baruch read it to them. When they had heard all the words, they turned in fear one to another and to Baruch. We will surely report these words to the king.

They asked Baruch, saying, tell us, please, how did you write all these words? Was it at his dictation? Then Baruch said to them, he dictated all these words to me, and I wrote them with ink.

On the book.

Then the official said to Baruch, go, hide yourself, you and Jeremiah, and do not let anyone know where you are. So they went to the king and the court, but they had deposited the scroll in the chamber of Elisha, the scribe, and they reported all the words to the king.

Then the king sent Jehudi to get the scroll, and he took it out of the chamber of Elisha, with the scribe, and Jehudi read it to the king as well as to the officials who stood beside the king. Now, the king was sitting in the winter house in the ninth month with a fire burning in the brazier before him.

When Jehudi had read three or four columns, the king cut it with a scribe's knife and threw it into the fire that was in the brazier until all the scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier.

Yet, the king and all his servants who heard all these words were not afraid, nor did they rend their garments. This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

The Fear of God Versus the Fool

We began talking last week about the distinction, the contrast that is made time and again throughout the Word of God, not just in Proverbs, but throughout the Word of God, the difference between the fool and the God-fearer.

The difference between the fool and the God-fearer, and how important it is that we fear God. That when we, for instance, when we read in Romans 3 verses 9 through 18, the compendium of depravity, the full description of what it means to be dead in trespasses and sins, the natural state of man in sin.

After all the different things that were said about the sinfulness of sinful mankind, the final thing said, the summary thing said is this, that there was no fear of God before their eyes. No fear of God before their eyes.

This is truly the missing ingredient to what it means to being fully human. What does it mean that we are made in the image of God? How is it that the image of God is corrupted? What is missing from us that things are not working right?

What is it that needs to be restored to us? The fear of God. The fear of God is what we need. And fearing begins with hearing. Fearing begins with hearing. And sometimes what we hear is impossible not to hear.

For instance, around here on Saturdays, I don't know what day it is in your part of the city or the state, but around here on Saturdays, the tornado sirens all go off at noon every single week, whether we want them to or not.

And they are increasingly louder. I think they built a new one nearby. And it gets to the few minutes, but no, it's more like five minutes of testing. And my dogs start howling and add to the sound. And there's no way to get away from it.

I can go inside. I can try to stuff my ears. No matter what I do, I'm going to hear it. Now, God's Word, in some sense, is like that. In some sense, God's truth, the truth of God is like that. It is unavoidable that everybody whom God has made knows there's a God.

Romans 1 tells us this, that what is known about God is manifest in all of those whom God has made. And that all the evidence that anybody ever needs that God exists is inherent in everyone whom He has made.

This is what the Bible tells us. But we suppress mercy in His grace, sends forth His people with His Word to proclaim it, to put it in front of those who are suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, to come face to face with the facts of who God is.

Additionally, the tornado siren is going to say actions about how to be saved. That comes through something else, some special instructions. Here's what you go do. And in this way, when we have the written authority of God, with the written Word of God, when that comes, there are specific instructions, specific examples about who God is and who we are and what we need to do.

And in particular, the written authority that was given here, the written Word that was given here in Jeremiah 36 was for the purpose of repentance. We see this in the first eight verses, that God's goal to His people is that they would repent, that they would consider their ways, that they would consider their sin, that they would forsake their sin and follow Him, follow His Word.

The Word for All the People, the Leaders, and the King

Now, the Word in verses 9 through 26, who is God's Word for? Well, if you read the text, and I didn't read verses 27 through the end, but I want to trace for you what happens in the transmission of God's text, God's Word, the written authority.

So, here's the train. God sent this Word to Jeremiah, who dictated it to Baruch, who wrote it down on a scroll, which he then read to all the people, including Micaiah. Micaiah went and, in his own words, proclaimed the truth of the scroll to the officials.

And then the officials sent for Baruch, and he came and he read to them everything that the Lord had said to Jeremiah, which he dictated to Baruch, which he wrote down on the scroll. Baruch read that to the officials.

The officials then sent word to the king, and in their own words, proclaimed the truth of what was on that scroll to the king. The king then sent Jehudi to get the scroll and bring it to him, and Jehudi read to him everything on the scroll, which the king then burned.

And then the Word of the Lord came back to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah dictated all of the words again, plus a little extra for the king, to Baruch, who wrote it all down again onto a scroll, which was preserved and kept, and I just read it to you.

This is the Word of the Lord. And the proclamation of the Word, who is it for? Well, it's for all the people. It was for everybody to hear. It was also for the religious leaders, that they needed to hear.

And it was also for the king, and the king needed to hear it. And so we see that the Word of God was for everyone. Let's think about verses 9 and 10. Look at the emphasis on the Word of God being given to everyone.

Now, in the fifth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month, this is December in our calendar, all the people in Jerusalem and all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem proclaimed a fast before the Lord.

Then Baruch read from the book the words of Jeremiah in the house of the Lord, in the chamber of Gemariah, the son of Shaphon, the scribe, in the upper court, at the entry of the new gate of the Lord's house to all the people.

So this was the instructions that the Word spoke about Israel, spoke about Judah, and spoke about all the nations.