"No Longer on Speaking Terms" Part 2 May 6, 2018 AM

You would receive our praise as we listen to your text that we would turn our hearts towards you.

We pray all these things for the sake of Christ whom you are well pleased.

I invite you to open your

Bibles and turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 18. Jeremiah 18 we're going to pick up the passage in verse 18 through the end verse 23.

Last week we were looking at the first part of this message that traces back to verse 12 and considered the disastrous rejection of God's message the disastrous rejection of God's message.

When the word of God is rejected by the image of God that's no natural disaster that's an unnatural disaster that's a man -made disaster and the corollary to that the flip side of the coin to that is when the word of God is removed from the image of God this can be seen as God's judgment as God's judgment.

The true catastrophe is spelled out for us in verse 17 where we find

God and Judah are no longer on speaking terms when he says like an east wind

I will scatter them before the enemy I will show them my back and not my face in the day of their calamity.

As we've heard as we read together from the Psalms God is long suffering God is slow to anger he is compassionate he is forgiving and he has been speaking to Judah over and over again in the first 11 verses of this chapter 15 times we are told to pay attention to God's voice

God's words God's sayings he's been speaking he has been talking to them and then they say in verse 12 but we have our own plans and we're going to live in accordance with the stubbornness of our own heart.

We're not going to say we're not going to listen to this anymore so they reject the message of God and the result is disaster as is spelled out in verses 13 through 17 because they rejected what

God says they rejected how God saves. So now for part two you would stand with me as I read these few verses verses 18 through 23 this is the word of the

Lord then they said come and let us devise plans against Jeremiah surely the law is not going to be lost to the priest nor counsel to the sage nor the divine word to the prophet come on and let us strike at him with our tongue and let us give no heed to any of his words do give heed to me oh

Lord and listen to what my opponents are saying should good be repaid with evil for they have dug a pit for me.

Remember how I stood before you to speak good on their behalf so as to turn away your wrath from them therefore give their children over to famine and deliver them up to the power of the sword and let their wives become childless and widowed but their men also be smitten to death their young men struck down by the sword in battle may an outcry be heard from their houses when you suddenly bring raiders upon them they have dug a pit to capture me and hidden snares for my feet yet you oh

Lord know all their deadly designs against me do not forgive their iniquity or blot out their sin from your sight but may they be overthrown before you deal with them in the time of your anger this is the word of the

Lord may be seated last time we started off with a story about Jehoshaphat Ahab and a prophet named

Micaiah Ahab did not like Micaiah he says

I hate him because he always says bad things about me how we feel about a messenger spills over into how we feel about the message.

Herod was amused by John the Baptist he was amused by John the

Baptist his wife his illegitimate wife Herodias was not so amused and she arranged for John the

Baptist to be imprisoned nonetheless Herod saw this to some advantage to himself he often had

John taken out of his cell and brought before him so that he could listen to what John the Baptist had to say not because Herod valued the truth of what

John was preaching but he enjoyed the novelty of it Herod liked being surrounded by yes men he liked to hear only praises to his name this got him into trouble after rejecting

John the Baptist and the message that John preached preparing the way for Jesus Christ Herod also rejected

Jesus and found him to be no fun because Jesus would not speak at his trial before Herod.

Herod also slew James and he imprisoned Peter and planned to execute him had

Peter not been rescued by angel and then one day Herod found himself being petitioned by the people of Tyre and Sidon they knew that their fate hung in the balance about this one king's opinion and so they decided to go for flattery and not just any kind of flattery the best kind of flattery and so when

Herod rose to address them they interrupted him and began chanting the voice of a God and not of a man

Herod enjoyed that and acts says because he did not give glory to God the

God who had been preached to him by John the Baptist he was struck by an angel and died being eaten by worms

Herod rejected the messenger and because he rejected the one whom

God sent he rejected how God saves rejecting who

God sends means rejecting how God saves God sent many prophets to Israel and to Judah and time and again they were rejected so that God's salvation was turned away repeatedly

Jeremiah was no exception to the sad story and that's what we're reading about here in Jeremiah 18 and so beyond the disastrous rejection of God's message we now have the devious rejection of God's messenger and we have in verse 18 all the ingredients to the rejection of the one whom

God sends then they said come let us devise plans against Jeremiah surely the law is not going to be lost to the priest nor counsel to the sage nor the divine word to the prophet come on let us strike at him with our tongue and let us give no heed to any of his words before we get to the nature of their devious plans and the content of those deadly words let's consider how it is and why it is that Judah is rejecting this one whom

God sent and the how is very obvious they say we're going to give no heed to anything he says

Jeremiah is a prolific writer and prolific speaker he had many messages to preach to the people of Judah testament to that is this 52 chapters in Jeremiah don't lose heart

Lord willing we will complete it before Christ comes back he's got a lot to say and they in return say we're not going to listen to anything you say when

Jeremiah darkens a city gate or stands in a marketplace or speaks out into the temple courts they're just going to ignore him they're going to pay no attention to him they're going to give his speech no significance his message would bear no weight for them his words to them will be like cotton fibers on a gale immediately whisked away into forgotten oblivion why they have their own sources of authority why do they need

Jeremiah's thus saith the Lord when they've got their own thus saith the

Lord who does Jeremiah think he is anyway so what if he is from a priestly family and has a clever way of speaking and fancies himself a prophet who is this one man who is this one man to stand against the entire priesthood who is this one man to try to silence the council of sages who is this one man to cast shame upon the whole school of the prophets when everybody within these three sources of truth in Judah are saying one thing when they're all saying one thing and this crazy man

Jeremiah is saying something different why listen to the one when the many are in agreement seemingly logical refusal to be dominated by the message of a single person is actually a smoke screen for the rejection of God's authority

Isaiah 30 verses 9 through 11 we have the sense of what's going on God says this is a rebellious people this is a rebellious people false sons sons who refuse to listen to the instruction of the

Lord who say to the seers you must not see visions to the prophets you must not prophesy to us what is right speak to us pleasant words prophesy illusions get out of the way turn aside from the path let us hear no more about the

Holy One of Israel and that spirit of the age than in Isaiah's day is in full bloom and Jeremiah's day let us hear no more about this

Holy One of Israel we don't want to hear any more about how God is holy and exalted and right and in charge and we're the ones who need to change like Micaiah standing standing against 400 false prophets like Elijah standing against 850 false prophets of Baal and Asherah like Noah standing against his entire generation here is

Jeremiah and he stands as the single voice of what is moral what is wise and what is true the people say we're not going to listen

I think this is a relevant question for us is morality wisdom and truth determined by volume is morality wisdom and truth determined by volume that that the louder an idea is blared and the more people bark it out through their megaphones the more significant and true it is we believe in relevance by volume as folks in our culture march in approval of sexual immorality and infanticide chant the folly of pluralism and tolerance shout the lies of Darwin Marx Freud and Nietzsche it seems that those who lovingly and faithfully amen the plain authoritative meaning of the scripture are in shorter supply and yet those within the church who ascribe to relevance by volume since the need to either shout back in counter protest or start marching chanting and shouting in concert with the world so their voice will not be lost in the hullabaloo either way hullabaloo often thought to have a

Scottish origin likely arises from the Persian and Urdu hamla meaning to attack and the

Hindi verb bolna meaning to utter or to say hullabal is actually still used in Indian English to describe a type of public demonstration using great noise this native

Indian term its origin long claimed by imperialist aggressors and left as an artifact of oppression in the lingual scars of the

Indian subcontinent enshrines the hostility of verbal attacks and thus ought never to be used as it is a racial slur bound to cause a big brouhaha and that's the kind of folly in which gnats are strained and camels are swallowed in the immoral majority of our nation but truth and wisdom and morality are not decided by volume and even when the message of Christ in the true glory of Christ and in the love of Jesus is rejected how do we respond we cannot allow the world's rejection of Christ to mask our reflection of Christ Jeremiah was being told to be quiet he was he was told to go away they were seeking to murder him to silence him the old -fashioned way but he was not allowed to stop we're not allowed to let the world's rejection of Christ to mask our reflection of Christ and we need to be clear on our role as followers of Christ we are messengers of God's word born again by the living and active enduring word of God we are to be filled with the scriptures in our hearts that we may be speaking to them to those who are in our lives the church is

God's messenger to the world we are called the pillar and the ground of the truth and we may not look like much or have many in our camp or sound very smart but neither did