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Reading Jeremiah 4:19-31 where the Lord continues to reveal to Jeremiah the punishment that will soon come upon Judah, which fills Jeremiah for lament for his people. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Jeremiah wept for the people that he lived among because he knew the judgment of God was coming upon them and they would not repent. We must have hearts that go after the people that we live among as well when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.
Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Jeremiah, we're in the second half of chapter 4 today, where the prophet Jeremiah is in anguish because of God's judgment that is going to come against Judah for their sin.
They have rebelled against God. They have turned to false gods. And so the Lord is going to bring another nation against them, an enemy that will bring the punishment of God upon them, exile them out of Judah and into captivity.
And so we begin with the prophet's anguish here in verse 19. I'll read through verse 26. Hear the word of the Lord. How long must I see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet? For my people are foolish.
They know me not. They are stupid children. They have no understanding. They are wise in doing evil. But how to do good they know not. I looked on the earth, and behold, it was without form and void, and to the heavens, and they had no light.
I looked on the mountains, and behold, they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked, and behold, there was no man, and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked, and behold, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before His fierce anger.
For thus says the Lord, the whole land shall be a desolation, yet I will not make a full end. For this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above be dark. For I have spoken, I have purposed, I have not relented, nor will I turn back.
And then there's a final closing there that we'll get to, verses 29 to 31, here in a moment. Now that section in the middle, verse 22, the words of the Lord, that's kind of the theme of the passage that we're looking at here today.
God saying, my people are foolish, they know me not. They have stupid children. They have no understanding. They are wise in doing evil. But how to do good they know not. And far be it from us to become a people that that could be said of.
And as a people, I'm talking about not really the nation that we live in, because of course, any nation you live in is going to have many unbelievers in it. The nation itself is not God's people. Who are God's people?
It's the church. It's those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. And so those who would be under a banner of Christ, yet to be ignorant of his word and the ways of God and follow after his instructions, they would be foolish people.
God would say of a church that has gone astray, my people are foolish. They know me not. They are stupid children. They have no understanding. And may that not be said of us. May we desire the word of God and not only to hear it, but to do what it says.
So let's come back up here to verse 19, where the prophet proclaims my anguish, my anguish. I writhe in pain. Oh, the walls of my heart. This is Jeremiah longing for his people to repent and come back to God in obedience.
In in humility. The apostle Paul has a similar expression at the beginning of Romans 9. When in tears, he longs for the Jews, his fellow kinsmen, to turn from their wickedness, their rebellion, their rejection of the Savior, that they would come to know Jesus Christ and live.
But he knows that God has caused their hearts to be hardened, to reject the gospel so that it may go out to the Gentiles. Paul knows that, that that is the very Lord's work. Yet he still in his heart, he knows that they don't believe and he wishes that they would.
Jeremiah, same thing. He's been told by God exactly what's going to happen to this people. It doesn't it doesn't provide him any less sorrow. It causes him anguish to know that the Jews are not going to repent and turn back to the Lord.
This destruction is rightly deserved. But how I wish it wasn't that it wasn't going to come upon them, that they would repent and not perish in judgment. And may we have hearts that sympathize for the people that we live among the same way.
If you're going to go out to the people that you live around and share the gospel with them, you've got to have a heart that breaks for them. Right. I know this people is going to hell. They're going to hell in the only way that they can be saved from that judgment that they deserve because of their rebellion against God.
But they must turn from their sin to the Lord Jesus Christ only by faith in him. He who died for our sins and rose again from the dead and whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
Only he is our only salvation from God's judgment, his wrath that is burning against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of man. So may we have a heart and a longing for the people that we live among.
So it would incline us, it would motivate us to want to share the gospel with them, knowing that it's only the gospel of Christ that will save them from an eternity in hell. And so here's Jeremiah saying, my anguish, my heart, it's beating wildly.
I cannot keep silent for I hear the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. I hear I hear the ones that God is going to use to bring against Judah to punish them and exile them and kill many of them. I hear it close.
It's coming. And knowing that it's it's almost at the gate, Jeremiah is just vexed, filled with sorrow. Our Lord Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane before he was about to go to the cross and die as an atoning sacrifice for sins, taking on the wrath of God upon himself when he died on the cross.
He, too, was filled with anguish in the garden. And prayed to the Lord, Lord, if there if there would be any other way, he he prayed to God, Father. Let this cup pass from me, not as I will, but as you will.
And so Jeremiah goes on. Crash follows hard on crash. The whole land is laid waste. Suddenly, my tents are laid waste. My curtains in a moment. How long must I see the standard and hear the sound of the trumpet?
The standard meaning the battle flag. That nation is coming and you can see them from a distance. You can see their logo. Their insignia. The flag of their nation. We see it right there. We know who it is.
It's coming. How long do I have to look at that? How long does this trumpet have to sound? And it's also in reference to the fact that Jerusalem, there was going to be a siege that would be laid upon Jerusalem.
So it's not like they came against the city and conquered it in a moment, but they encamped around it, laid siege to it. And yet you'd have to stare at those flags the whole time. We're surrounded by this foreign nation that God has said is going to destroy us, is going to bring punishment upon us.
You know, I grew up in charismaticism. Well, I didn't really grow up. I started attending charismatic churches when I was about probably 18 years old, and it continued in charismatic churches for 10 or 11 years until I was maybe 28 or 29.
And I heard a lot about prophecy attending those charismatic churches. I listened to it a lot afterward, too. And in some of the other churches that I was exposing for false teaching, and you hear all that charismatic jargon about how to do prophecy.
God is still revealing prophecy. If you're going to hear God's voice revealing prophetic things to you that you're going to pass on to somebody else, here's how to do it. Here's what you got to be listening for.
And it's always got to be good news. Always heard that. You don't have to go far to listen to that. Most services that would probably come out of Bethel Church or somebody like that, if you were to listen to their service, you would probably hear them say, hey, if you're going to prophesy over somebody, it has to be good news.
Don't bring these omens or these dreadful predictions. It's only positive and uplifting things. Positive, encouraging, K-love. That's what our prophecy needs to be like. Don't be a downer. Don't be a Jeremiah or don't try to create a Jeremiah by telling them about this dreadful thing that is going to take place.
It was always supposed to be positive prophecy. That's nothing like what we have from the prophets in the Bible. Yeah, there were prophets that proclaimed good news, definitely, but the good news always came after the bad.
They would first proclaim these horrible judgments that would come upon either the people of God or another nation or something to that effect. That's what the prophet was there for. To speak the word of God, warning the people of the judgment that is to come so that they would repent and turn back to the Lord.
Every time. And these prophets today, where do they even get that from? Where does it say in Scripture that your prophecies can only be positive? Are you disobeying God somehow if your prophecies are not positive?
Well, now it's more than just charismaticism. It's legalism, too. You're adding to God's word things that it doesn't say. Matt Chandler is another one of these guys. I've heard him talk about that very thing.
You wouldn't think of him as part of, like, the New Apostolic Reformation, not like along with Bethel Church or Michael Brown or IHOP or any of these others, Bob Jones, anybody else. But even he has said, even he's talked about this, how you prophesy to somebody else, how you listen for the Holy Spirit to say something to you, a positive word that you may pass on to somebody else.
Where is that in the Bible? Prophets largely delivered bad news. God giving warnings to a people so that they would repent before His judgment comes. And the ministry of a prophet, like what we see here from Jeremiah, is filled with sorrow.
Because he knows he's going to see a people that will refuse to repent and will come to judgment. For Samuel, for the prophet Samuel, was even his own sons. His own sons were disobedient. Aaron, think about Aaron, who himself was a prophet as well.
His sons, Nadab and Abihu, that offered up strange fire to God and the judgment of God came upon them. How hard would that have been? Can you imagine that? But this was, this was the life of a prophet.
How long must I see the standard? How long must I hear the sound of the trumpet? I mean, a true prophet of God in today's age, there aren't modern prophets. But if there were, he would be filled with sorrow over the evil and the wickedness that are going on in the world all around him.
And if he was truly hearing from God, he would be giving warnings to people. Here's what's going to happen to you if you don't repent. God saying for my people are foolish. They know me not. Those that are making these prophecies that don't really come from God.
Yeah, that's them. They're foolish. They do not really know the Lord. They're claiming to hear things from God that are just their own stupid thoughts. They are stupid children. They have no understanding.
They are wise in doing evil. But how to do good, they know not. The Apostle Paul said to the church in Rome, even in the book of Romans, that they needed to be innocent as to what is evil and wise as to what is good.
So don't be experienced in knowing what that evil is like. Don't even go do it. But be wise and experienced in doing the right thing according to what God says is good. Verse 23, I looked on the earth and behold, it was without form and void and to the heavens.
And they had no light. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Where does that?
What does that sound like? Genesis one. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was formless and void. And so here, Jeremiah is looking at the earth and he's seeing it without form and void.
What is he looking at? He's looking at a place where the judgment of God has come against it and has laid everything to waste. So he's seeing the totality of the destruction of God. When he wants to bring judgment, he will.
And if he wants to completely decimate, he can. Verse 24, I looked on the mountains and behold, they were quaking and all the hills move to and fro when God is going to bring his judgment against a people.
Not even the land can stop it. Jeremiah, Jerusalem probably thought of itself as fortified, not just because of the walls that were around it, but also because it was on a hill. So it put it as at an advantage over these other nations that wanted to come against us.
Already this had happened. The king of Assyria had tried to lay siege to Jerusalem and couldn't do it. That wasn't because of their high place or their high walls. It was because God came down and struck down 186 ,000 of their soldiers in the middle of the night.
That was why Assyria failed to take Jerusalem. But here, as Jeremiah is talking about the mountains quaking, he's seeing that there's this massive army that's coming and not even they can be held back because they come with the force of God.
God is using them to bring judgment on Judah. I looked and behold, there was no man and all the birds of the air had fled. I looked and behold, the fruitful land was a desert and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord, before his fierce anger.
So this is as if Jeremiah is being shown an outcome to this thing in which the land is completely decimated by this judgment that God brings. But hear what God says in response to this vision that Jeremiah recalls.
Here's verses 27 and 28. For thus says the Lord, the whole land shall be a desolation, yet I will not make a full end. He's not going to bring a full end upon this people. The whole land is going to be desolate.
They're all going to be driven out. There won't be anybody left. But God is not going to make a full end of it. And this is going to come back into play later on in Jeremiah as well. As a matter of fact, it's the very theme of the most popular verse in the book of Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 29, 11. When God says, I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, a plan to prosper and not to harm you, but to give you a future and a hope. He's talking about the fact that he's not going to annihilate them in exile.
They will come out of this exile. They will come back to their land. But in the meantime, they're going to have to go through this punishment. Because they rebelled against God. For this, the earth shall mourn, the Lord says, in the heavens above be dark.
For I have spoken, I have purposed, I have not relented, nor will I turn back. That's similar to words we had heard from the prophet Isaiah as well. Isaiah 14, 27. For the Lord of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it?
His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back? If God has purposed it, it cannot be undone. And now here's the closing that we have to this particular chapter. The last three verses, 29 to 31. At the noise of horsemen and archer, every city takes to flight.
They enter thickets. They climb among rocks. All the cities are forsaken, and no man dwells in them. And you, O desolate one, what do you mean that you dress in scarlet? That you adorn yourself with ornaments of gold?
That you enlarge your eyes with paint? In vain you beautify yourself. Your lovers despise you. They seek your life. For I heard a cry as of a woman in labor. Anguish as of one giving birth to her first child.
The cry of the daughter of Zion gasping for breath. Stretching out her hands.
Woe is me.
I am fainting before murderers. So while Judah should be covering itself in sackcloth and ashes and mourning over the sin and rebellion that they have committed against God. Instead, they beautify themselves.
They have a party. But it's not going to last because as God brings this judgment, their disposition is going to completely change. Now they're laying on the ground. Now they're lifting up their hands.
They're crying out in anguish. Woe is me. I am fainting before murderers. These killers that are coming against us. You know, it's interesting about the wording that we had there in verse 29. At the noise of horsemen and archer, every city takes to flight.
They enter thickets. They climb among rocks. All the cities are forsaken and no man dwells in them. Kind of similar to the picture that Jesus paints in Matthew chapter 24, right? He talks about how when these days come, you need to flee from the city and run into the mountains.
Kind of has a picture of this was like when Babylon came against Jerusalem hundreds of years before. So it's going to happen again when Rome would come against Jerusalem in 70 A .D. and the temple would be destroyed.
So Jesus gave a very similar warning, probably borrowing from those words right here in Jeremiah 4 when he said this to his disciples in Matthew 24. And these things both, the destruction of Jerusalem here and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A .D.
These are both pictures of a greater judgment that will come later on. And this judgment will not be localized. It won't be particular to a specific place. It's going to be global. When the judgment of God comes upon the earth on that last day when Christ returns.
Now everybody's going to have to stand before God and give an account. Whether they die before that day or whether they're still alive when that day comes. So while it is still called today, today is the day of salvation.
That people turn from their sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and live. Once again my friends, if we care for the people that we live among, we must bring them the gospel. It's the only way that they can be saved.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for what we've read. Ancient texts, ancient words as the old hymn goes. That guide us into all truth. That show us who you are. The holiness that you demand. But has been accomplished and given to us in Christ Jesus.
And so I pray that we turn to Jesus Christ. Forgiven our sins and we have everlasting life. And Lord, this same gospel that was preached to us so that we might live, may we take it to the world. So that others would be warned of the judgment that is to come and put hope in Christ and live.
It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
This has been When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabriel Hughes. For all of our podcasts, episodes, videos, books, and more, visit our website at www .utt .com. If you'd like to submit a question to this broadcast, or just send us a comment, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
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