"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 toward 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.

The Disastrous Rejection of God's Message

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.

It's 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. They 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, O 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.

Let 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, O 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. You 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.

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 this 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.

The Devious Rejection of God's Messenger

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 and 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 to 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. A testament to that is there's 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?

A seemingly logical refusal to be dominated by the message of a single person is actually a smokescreen for the rejection of God's authority. In 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 unto 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 in 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 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 the louder an idea is blared and the more people bark it out through their megaphones, the more significant and true it is.

Do 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 sense 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. Hullabaloo 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 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 Jeremiah.

Neither did Jeremiah. While we're talking about the rejection of a messenger due to his looks and his loneliness and his lisp, let's go ahead and be clear about not accepting the labels that are foisted upon us.

Let us not ascribe to the folly of authority simply by volume. Morality, wisdom, and truth are in Christ, and he is authoritatively revealed in these holy scriptures by the Holy Spirit, and should all men everywhere cease to give him the praise that is due his name, the rocks themselves will cry out hallelujah to the Lord of glory.

The worthiness of our king, the worthiness of our king is the only authority we need to stand in stark minority and voice his holiness and his worthiness, his wisdom and his truth, and to do so in his love.

Jeremiah is being rejected by the people, and they are doing so through devious plans. In verse 12, Judah had declared, we are going to follow our own plans, and in verse 18, we get to hear about some of those plans.

They are so opposed to the message of God, they seek to silence the messenger. So priests and counselors and prophets all conspire together. They have one tongue, it says, with our tongue. They will speak in unison with one voice to conduct a smear campaign against Jeremiah.

They hope to bring him up on charges before King Jehoiakim. They hope to get him into so much trouble with the authorities and make him so loathsome to the people that no one will ever listen to Jeremiah ever again, and they're not going to have to string a bow or loose an arrow to assassinate him.

They'll just let their words and their tongue incite others to do it for them. Jeremiah knows what's going on, and so in Jeremiah 19, the last part of that, he says, do give heed to me, O Lord, and listen to what my opponents are saying.

Should good be repaid with evil, for they have dug a pit for me. So I know there's slander. I know there's a conspiracy just out of my sight, but I know it's happening. He knows his opponents are setting him up for either a royal execution or a posse's lynching, and he's living in this anxiety about his enemies operating freely and talking about him and conspiring against him, and yet even as he worries about this, he finds comfort in the sovereign all-knowing God.

He says, they have dug a pit to capture me and hidden snares for my feet, but look at this comfort. Verse 23, yet you, O Lord, know, yet you, O Lord, know all their deadly designs against me. God and Judah are no longer on speaking terms, but he still knows everything going on behind the closed doors.

He knows what they're saying against his servant, Jeremiah. He knows what's going on, and as they reject the one that he sins, and so they reject how he seeks to save, as the last mediator is targeted for murder, Jeremiah looks to the Lord for comfort, because he knows.

Comfort in God's Sovereign Knowledge and Christ's Rejection

There's a whole lot of fear. There's a whole lot of fear in the Christian church today. We fear the conspiracies of the world. We fear the growing strength of an anti-Christ hegemony that systematically isolates us, seeking to neutralize the gospel.

Some may respond with hostility toward those that Christ calls us to love. Some pay the toll of compromise to be allowed access to the highways of acceptance, but what will we do? What will we do? Jesus Christ is the one whom God has sent.

How do we respond as his followers if he is rejected by devious designs, and we, by extension, suffer? As we think about it, the religious leaders of Jesus' day did not treat him any better than the religious leaders of Jeremiah's day and how they treated him.

It's a good opportunity for us to brush off Psalm 2 and Acts 4 and Genesis 50 and Romans 8 and make some applications to our own situation. For instance, by many devious plans, by displays of force, by conspiracies and contrivances, the peoples devise a vain thing.

The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers took counsel against, counseled together against the Lord and against his Christ, against Jesus. And yet he who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord scoffs at them, for truly in that city of Jerusalem they were gathered against God's holy servant Jesus, the one whom he had sent, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, and they did whatever God's hand and God's purpose predestined to occur.

Acts 4. So, as followers of Christ, as those who are often the target of evil designs, we, like Jeremiah, should take comfort that the Lord knows all these plots and plans, and he's not bothered by them.

And according to Genesis 50, when some intend something for evil, God turns it for good. And in fact, Romans 8 promises that God works together all things for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purpose.

And if we are safe in his victorious hand, then we can rest in his faithfulness. I want us to be clear this morning on this messenger. We see that the messenger is rejected by devious plans, but just who is this Jeremiah?

Jeremiah is not a grumpy gust preacher, panicking for more attention, and so notching up his condemning speech. This is not who Jeremiah is. God commissioned Jeremiah from the womb. He promised to put his words into Jeremiah's mouth so that Jeremiah would preach faithfully to the people the words of God.

The words that Jeremiah preaches are the words of God. These are the words that Judah no longer wants to hear. But Jeremiah is the one that God sent. He's the one with God's words in verse 18. He's the one to whom God pays heed in verse 19.

He's the one who intercedes for Judah. Look at verse 20. Should good be repaid with evil? 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.

Look at what Jeremiah has been doing. He's been preaching the word to the people as the messenger of God, but he's also bringing the people before God and interceding for them. God have mercy. God forgive.

God turn your wrath away from them. And in response the people seek to murder him. We need to recognize that the rejection of Jeremiah as the one whom God sent, as God's messenger, as the mediator God sent.

The rejection of Jeremiah is the rejection of Christ. First Peter 1 11 says the spirit of Christ was in the prophets preaching the word of God to all those generations. And what they did not want to hear were the very words of Jesus Christ and his gospel.

And this is what they rejected. Turn in your Bibles to Luke 11. Take a look there at verses 49 through 51. As things are heating up between Jesus Christ and the religious rulers of Judah, as it becomes more and more clear there's going to be a fatal interaction.

That Jesus is headed, heading toward the cross. This is what he says to this people, to this generation. Chapter 11 and verse 49. For this reason also the wisdom of God said I will send to them prophets and apostles and some of them they will kill and some of they will persecute so that the blood of all the prophets shed.

The blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation. From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who was killed between the altar and the house of God.

Yes I tell you it shall be charged against this generation. How so? How does that work? How is that fair? All they did was murder Jesus. But it was Christ preaching through all the prophets of all the generations since the foundation of the world.

And so as they murder Christ they join in as accomplices to all those who murdered the prophets in previous generations. Jesus even had the heart to joke in verse chapter 13 verse 33 that he must hurry on to Jerusalem for it should not be said that a prophet died outside its walls.

Jeremiah's mediation, his service as the one whom God sent. He's preaching the word of Christ and he is foreshadowing Christ. And so as the people reject him, as they reject the word of God, the messenger of God, they're rejecting God himself.

And that's why you have such awful things being envisioned in verses 21 to 23. God made this covenant with his people and said if you will obey me, if you will follow me, if you'll be faithful to me, there'll be blessings.

But if you reject me, if you abandon me for idols, these are the horrible things that will come upon you. That's exactly in what Jeremiah is praying about in verses 21 to 23. But let us be clear on the one whom God has sent, God's messenger.

God has sent us his son. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. He is the word. He is the executor of God's will. He not only brings the will of God to light, he also brings the will of God to pass.

And no one has ever seen God at any time but the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the father. He has explained him. And so as the word incarnate, Jesus Christ is the official interpreter of the word in scripture.

He is the final and the full and the ultimate revelation and revealer. Hebrews 1 says God after he spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days has spoken to us in his son whom he appointed as heir of all things through whom also he made the world.

And he the son is the radiance of his father's glory and the exact representation of his nature and upholds all things by the word of his power. And when he made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

This is the reigning king Jesus. The word. The one whom God has sent. If we reject the one whom God sends, then we abandon the way that God saves. Many things that we should be aware of. I read in verse 18 that the rulers conspire together with one tongue to ignore Jeremiah to say, look, we have the Torah, we have the writings, we've got some of these other prophets to read.

Why do we have to listen to Jeremiah? They thought that they could turn off Jeremiah whenever they wanted to. Oh, I don't like his static. I'm going to change the channel. Are we in any danger of doing the same with the one whom God has sent Jesus Christ?

Do we treat him more like good morning America than the king of the universe? Choosing when and how we're going to listen. I see that as a danger. It's also a danger if we think we've already arrived, if we've already got it all figured out.

Because Jeremiah was coming and he was preaching the law and the prophets and the writings and they said, oh no, no, no, no, you've got it all wrong, Jeremiah. We've got it right. But when God's messenger comes and he reads the Bible differently than we do, are we going to shut him down?

Are we going to change the way we read the scriptures? Jesus Christ is the official interpreter of the word and he has all wisdom. He is the word of God himself. He is the son of God. I figure he knows what the Bible means a lot better than I do.

I stand ready. I stand ready to be corrected and moved in my opinions about what I think the Bible means. If Jesus says it means something else. I've got to pay attention to what he says and how he reads the Bible.

Also, I think we should stand with this messenger that God has sent, Jesus Christ, the one whom Isaiah says was rejected by men. Let us stand with the one rejected by men because in him and only in him are we accepted by God.

The Final Warning Against Rejecting God's Son

Now I'm going to read for us verses 21 through 23. This is vitally important that we feel the brunt of this. But I want you to know, if we're clear on who Jeremiah is and what words he's speaking, Jeremiah is being rejected, is ultimately Christ being rejected, ultimately God being rejected.

This response from Jeremiah in verses 21 through 23 is not the response of wounded pride demanding revenge. This is consistent with God's own holy nature and the application for that is this. If, that's a big if, if our loved ones and if our neighbors reject the one whom God sends, let's just make sure it's not us in our prideful rudeness that it really is Jesus in all of his glory and his truth and his holiness and his love that they're rejecting.

So let's listen to what Jeremiah prays as he mediates the holiness and the anger of God. 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.

Let 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, for they have dug a pit to capture me, the hidden snares for my feet.

Yet you, O Lord, know all their deadly designs against me. Do 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.

That kind of prayer from God's mediator only makes sense with the character of God if you've read the whole story and you've seen how many hundreds of years and how many generations God has been long suffering and patient and sending his prophets and making opportunity for forgiveness and repentance.

And at a certain point, though God is long-suffering, he is not eternally permissive and he says, this is the line. That's the catastrophe in verse 17 when he turns his back on them and not his face.

Here's the concern that if you reject the one whom God sends, you reject how it is that God saves. If you keep on rejecting God, this is the great catastrophe awaiting. The next rejection, when God says it's enough, that once mercy is burned at the stake, only the ashes of judgment remain.

And that's what we're reading about. When all of history is sorted out, there's only two crowds in humanity. When all of history is sorted out, there's just two crowds in humanity and one crowd cries crucify him and the other crowd cries crown him.

What will it be? What will it be? How will we respond to the one whom God sends? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the time you've given us in your word. What a challenging message. We thank you that you do hear us, that you, for the sake of your son, that you hear us and you love us and you accept us.

And God, there's this clear warning about rejecting your son and I pray that warning will go deep in our hearts. For those who have not repented of their sins and turned to Christ, Father, I pray today is the day of salvation and that you would birth faith and repentance in the hearts of those who hear.

And for those of us who cling to Christ and Christ holds us fast, I pray that this message will find deep root in our hearts that not only will thanksgiving, not only will thanksgiving arise in our lives to you, a God of grace who saves, but also a great zeal and concern for those who seem to always shut their ears to the message that you have sent and to the one that you have sent.

We pray these things, trusting that you will answer us for the sake of your son.