Sunday Morning, February 2, 2020 AM

False Comforts, True Comfort, and the Burden of Jeremiah 37

We've spent a couple of weeks looking at verses 6 through 10, as it is the heart of this passage in which God censures false comfort. And likens, we are reminded of the illustration that Rabshakeh used in taunting the Jews, that their trust in a false comfort, namely Pharaoh, was like a wounded man leaning upon a broken reed, which would soon shatter and pierce them.

So we spent some time thinking about how God mercifully sends his prophet to his people intervening to warn them away from false comforts. We considered the method of that, to expose the false comfort and then end it.

We thought about the godliness of that work, to censure the false comforts that we might ourselves rely on and to encourage others to do the same. And we've considered the compassion of it, that it is no compassion to sit by quietly and allow those who are under damnation to remain there without any sense of anxiety.

And now we're going to look at the rest of the chapter, verses 1 through 5, and the following material to consider the origins of false comfort. Where do these things come from? Can we shut it off at the source?

We also need to think of the evils of false comfort, all the things that happen in our lives when we allow false comforts to remain entrenched in our thinking. And I want to conclude by thinking of the blessings of true comfort, and there I want us to consider a different sense of the image, the image of a broken reed.

Let me pray for us. Father, I thank you so much for the time that you've afforded us this morning. I thank you for the great hymns that we sang today that focused us upon your son. These hymns are jealous for the glory of Christ.

May we be the same. May we suffer no rivals in our hearts. May our unity here, may our love here be focused and fueled by the glory of Christ. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen. Jeremiah chapter 37, I want to read for us verses 11 through 21.

If you're able, I invite you to stand as we hear the word of our Savior and Sovereign Christ through His Spirit, through His prophet. Jeremiah 37, beginning in verse 11. Now, it happened when the army of the Chaldeans had lifted the siege from Jerusalem because of Pharaoh's army, that Jeremiah went out from Jerusalem to go to the land of Benjamin in order to take possession of some property there among the people.

While he was at the gate of Benjamin, a captain of the guard whose name was Arijah, the son of Shalamiah, the son of Hananiah, was there, and he arrested Jeremiah, the prophet, saying, you are going over to the Chaldeans.

Jeremiah said, a lie. I am not going over to the Chaldeans. Yeah, he would not listen to him. So Arijah arrested Jeremiah and brought him to the officials. Then the officials were angry at Jeremiah and beat him, and they put him in the jail in the house of Jonathan the scribe, which they had made into the prison.

For Jeremiah had come into the dungeon that is the vaulted cell, and Jeremiah stayed there many days. Now, King Zedekiah sent and took him out, and in his palace, the king secretly asked him and said, is there a word from the Lord?

Jeremiah said, there is. Then he said, you will be given into the hand of the king of Babylon. Moreover, Jeremiah said to King Zedekiah, in what way have I sinned against you or against your servants or against this people that you have put me in prison?

Where then are your prophets who prophesied to you, saying, the king of Babylon will not come against you or against this land? But now, please listen. Oh, my Lord, the king, please let my petition come before you and do not make me return to the house of Jonathan the scribe, that I may not die there.

And King Zedekiah gave the commandment, and they committed Jeremiah to the court of the guardhouse and gave him a loaf of bread daily from the baker's street until all the bread in the city was gone. So, Jeremiah remained in the court of the guardhouse.

This is the word of the Lord, you may be seated. I remember a few months ago, I experienced something that I assume all novice woodworkers have in the process of trying to build a door and laboring a long time over all five boards.

I brought them all together and stared with wonder at the abstract art before me. Tracing the problems back to their source, I discovered a sour concoction of bad techniques, inaccurate instruments, and misaligned tools.

I guess it's a common experience, isn't it? Gardeners take up diseased plants and wonder. Engineers surveyed failed systems and shake their heads. Entrepreneurs examine red balance sheets and can't sleep.

Teachers grade flunking students and wonder where it all went wrong. Parents pray over rebellious children. Elders weep over apostate church members. Now, what is the question that we all ask? Where did it all go wrong?

What's the origin? What's the source? And the point of it is what? This exercise is all about learning from the failure. We want to grow in wisdom. We don't want to repeat the disaster. And after a time, we hope to grow in prudence so that we will foresee the problem and avoid the issue, taking the necessary actions.

Proverbs tells us it's only the fools that just go on and suffer for their simplicity, who don't learn from their lessons but just keep on. We need to press into this chapter, especially at the beginning, verses 1 through 5, and consider the origins of these false comforts that had plagued Jeremiah's people.

And this will help us in stopping false comforts, but our ability to stop false comforts at their source will be matched with the desire to be free of their evils. And we'll see that in verses 11 through 21.

All this is for the point of knowing, knowing the blessings of a right hope in God. We are to lay aside the false comforts that we may know the true comfort of Christ. This is the goal. So, in verses 1 through 5, we have the origins of false comfort.

We learn a little bit about Zedekiah, the situation that they're in, the way that the people respond to Jeremiah. It doesn't appear to be a lot there, but we do see the origins of the false comforts that are keeping Jeremiah's people from repenting and turning to the Lord as they should.

I wonder if you've asked these questions of someone, or perhaps you've asked them of yourself. So where are you with God? Do you think you'll go to heaven when you die? You say that you're a Christian, but how is it that you know Christ and follow Him?

What do you mean to say that you're saved? What does it mean that you're a follower of Jesus? What does it mean that you're a spiritual person? And what do we think of the following statements, the following claims, the following comforts that may be cited in response to questions like these?

Here are some things that are often said for various reasons. I've said the sinner's prayer. That's a one-use rosary by another name. I've walked an aisle during the altar call at the end of a service.

Muslims pilgrimage to Mecca. I've had deeply personal spiritual experiences. So did Joseph Smith. I got baptized. So did Judas Iscariot. I make a great effort to be a good husband and a good father, so many other men don't even try.

Or I'm a productive member of society. I try to be generous. I tithe. I've been a member of Baptist churches for years. Yeah, so were the Clintons. Everything I've just listed are things that I can boast in, personally me.

I could say all of these things, and they would be true of me. But not a one of them is any kind of comfort for my everlasting soul. It's a temptation to trust in these things. These are things that I could boast in, but none of them can bear the weight of my soul.

All of them together cannot sustain my eternal life. And this bruised reed that I've concocted would easily splinter and pierce my heart should I lean on it. Who is he that can stand before God, Job asks.

There are many other false comforts that may soothe the heart in the dark, but they all writhe ludicrous in the light of God's examination. Patriotism. Wokeness. Denominationalism. Homeopathy. Oppression.

Environmentalism. Traditionalism. We could name them. We could name a lot more. But what are these? They're just cheap trading cards with a bit of gloss. They'll soon flicker into curls of ash scorched by God's testing fire.

Let us not lean on these broken reeds. Where do these things come from? How do they infest our soul? How is it that sometimes when people talk to us about our faith and what is it we believe, that we begin talking in this way?

That the first things out of our mouths are things that are not true comforts. Let's think about what's going on in Jeremiah's time. Notice verse 1, how it begins. Now, Zedekiah, the son of who? The son of Josiah.

False comforts can often arise in our hearts through dishonoring a godly pedigree, dishonoring a godly parentage. It is worth remembering at this point that Zedekiah's real name was Mattaniah, and he was the son of good king Josiah.

How good was Josiah? Well, 2 Kings says, Before him there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might according to all the law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.

How about that? Good king Josiah. And such was the righteousness of Josiah that although God did not completely remove his judgment from the land because of the sins of Manasseh, it was delayed during Josiah's reign.

Now, his son Mattaniah was later named Zedekiah, and this son did not follow his father's footsteps. He did not fear God. He seemed to think that whatever happened next would turn out okay. He'd be safe and sound, but his father's faith was not his.

It's very clear. Not everyone has had the blessing of a godly upbringing. It's true. God-fearing parents, however flawed, are a massive advantage to a child. The true privilege is gospel privilege for which grace we ought never apologize and one which all Christian parents should labor to provide their children.

I heard some nonsense when I was... Beck and I were first married, didn't have any kids yet, and there was some...at the church we were at currently there was some very, I suppose, attempting to be noble-minded young parents who vowed they would not raise their children Christian on purpose, but they would let them grow up in kind of a neutral environment, let them decide for themselves.

My father had no Christian upbringing, but his children did, his grandchildren do. Children raised in the fear and the admonition of the Lord are given a bountiful stewardship. Do you have a godly upbringing?

That is a bountiful stewardship to you. And dishonoring that godly pedigree is one way that false comforts originate. You can dishonor it in one of two ways. Well, there's probably more, but one way is children, if you have God-fearing parents, I'm not saying perfect parents.

If you have God-fearing parents, if you let them do all the praying and all the fearing of God and all the reading and all the worshiping for you, that's dishonoring to them. That's dishonoring to the godly pedigree that they are giving you.

And then it leaves you open for just letting them be the connection to God for you. And that's a false comfort. God-fearing parents do not want to be the mediator for their children. They want Christ to be the mediator for their children, and they want their children to follow Christ.

Also, you can dishonor a godly parentage by casting aside their faith and bitterness due to their faults. That's more directly dishonoring. But it can open you up to all manner of false comforts because of the overreaction.

Christian parents can greatly fail their children. But if there's any theme at the heart of the gospel message, it's what? Forgiveness and reconciliation. And this will honor a godly upbringing and clarify one's hope in Christ alone, if you will forgive your parents.

Well, false comforts can arise by dishonoring a godly pedigree, but also by disregarding God's punishments. Notice how verse 1 continues. Now, Zedekiah the son of Josiah, whom, notice, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, had made king in the land of Judah, reigned as king in the place of Canai the son of Jehoiakim.

Who are all these other people? You see, it's not just that Zedekiah reigns in Jerusalem. There's a reason why he's currently king. Jehoiakim, Mattaniah's brother, Zedekiah's brother, Jehoiakim reigned after Josiah died in battle at the age of 39.

And Jehoiakim was killed for his wickedness by God. God judged him for his wickedness, and Jehoiakim died. And then Zedekiah's wicked nephew, Jeconiah, the grandson of the good king Josiah, then reigned all of three months before he was taken into exile by Zedekiah, by Nebuchadnezzar.

And then Nebuchadnezzar, who is the instrument of God's judgment, looks around for somebody else he can put on the throne, and he sees Mattaniah over there, and he says, Okay, now you're king, and I'm changing your name to show that I own you, and you are going to reign in the place of your nephew and your brother and your father.

You will be on the throne. But why is he there? Think about this. Zedekiah, who never expected to reign as king of Judah and Jerusalem, currently now rules due to God's judgment on his brother and nephew.

And yet he has so little regard for God's truth. He fears man way more than he fears God, as we'll see more and more examples with this king. False comforts come and remain by disregarding God's punishments, by disregarding God's judgments.

How many times had God brought severe judgments, expressions of His covenant curses upon the people? How could they just keep on going on saying, Peace, peace, when there was no peace? They disregarded God's judgments.

The famines didn't get their attention. The diseases did not get their attention. The raids from the surrounding nations upon them did not get their attention. Even the rolling armies of Assyria and Babylon did not get their attention.

All of these, an expression of God's covenant curses upon them, but they would not turn from their wicked ways. Perhaps they do like we do, and see every single disaster and problem in some sort of naturalistic, atheistic explanation.

And we give no accounting to the work of a sovereign God, bringing punishments and disasters and judgments because, yes indeed, because of sin upon His own creatures. Do we pay attention to God's punishments, or do we disregard them?

If we disregard them, then we will remain in false comfort, saying, Peace, peace, but there is no peace. Thirdly, false comforts can come by dismissing God's proclamations. This is the main problem in verse 2.

But neither He nor His servants nor the people of the land listened to the words of the Lord, which He spoke through Jeremiah the prophet. They just wouldn't listen. All of the false comforts that this nation had, would have been blessedly struck down and shattered had the king and his servants and the people listened to God's proclamations through His prophet.

Think about the way Christ preached in His day. Certainly through His Spirit, He preaches against false comfort here in our text, but also the incarnate Christ, as He preached in His day. What did He often speak against?

False comforts. He spoke against men's favor, against formalism. He spoke against fastidiousness. He spoke against trusting and flourishing and fatigue. He condemned the desire of the best seats. He condemned pompous routines.

He condemned straining gnats while swallowing camels. He condemned the association of wealth with salvation. And did He not remind Martha that Mary had chosen the good part? If we will listen to the words of our Lord, if we will gladly adhere to the proclamations of Christ, we would stifle false comforts.

But if we pay no attention, false comforts remain. Superstitions remain. Mysticism remains. Paganism remains. Rather, let us listen to the words of the Lord. A fourth way that false comforts remain and originate is dissembling godly pursuits, verses 3 and 4.

King Zedekiah sent Jehuchal, the son of Shelemiah, and Zephaniah, the son of Mosiah, the priest of Jeremiah, the prophet, saying, Please pray to the Lord our God on our behalf. Verse 4, Now Jeremiah was still coming in and going out among the people, for they had not yet put him in the prison.

Now, Zedekiah sends word and says, Hey, pray for us. But there's no real desire here to be right with God. There's no real desire here to know his deliverance according to his promises and calling to repentance.

This deliverance had been detailed. God had told them, Here's how you'll be delivered. You surrender to the Babylonians. Give up the city. Give up the temple that you worship, that you idolize. Give up this city.

Leave this city. Surrender to the Babylonians, and you will retain your lives. You'll go into exile. And I've got a great plan for you in exile. You're going to go there. You're going to build houses.

You're going to live in them. You're going to get married and have children. Make sure they get married. And you're going to multiply and not decrease. And then you're going to pray for the prosperity of the city in which you live.

And then at a certain time, I'm going to bring you all back. What a great plan. So surrender to the Babylonians. You'll live. You'll go out. You'll thrive. You'll be a part of this great promise that I've given you.

But they didn't want to surrender. They didn't want to give up the city. They didn't want to give up the temple. So Zedekiah is not really interested in what God has to say. He's just sending words saying, You pray to God, and this is really what he's after.

Will you pray to God that he will deliver us in some other way than he has specified? I didn't like plan A for deliverance. I want something else. It didn't really fit my needs. Please give me some other kind of salvation.

I don't like the one that has been offered. This isn't a genuine seeking after the Lord. Zedekiah would as soon let Jeremiah rot in prison as to ask him to pray for him, which is evident by the next chapter.

But notice Zedekiah, by pretending to pursue God, by playing the part, by playing the part, one may feel that he has made great progress. But there is danger here. There is real danger, you see, in mystical experiences.

They are easily manufactured. They are easily set up as learned patterns of behavior. And think of the small things in how we operate this way. When we say things like pray for me or I'll pray for you, it's all dissemblance unless we actually do.

Pray. You may don the costume of the evangelical subculture, and that may give you some comfort, but it is of nothing to God. Nothing. Number five, origination of false comforts is distorting God's providence.

Notice verse five. Meanwhile, Pharaoh's army had set out from Egypt, and when the Chaldeans who had been besieging Jerusalem heard the report about them, they lifted the siege from Jerusalem. And this is at the point which God immediately sends word by Jeremiah that this temporary respite is not deliverance from judgment.

This is not an answer to the pagan desperation to be delivered from his judgment. God speaks directly and promptly to the people who are witnessing the Babylonian armies marching away from Jerusalem that they will not then think, Ah, we're delivered.

Ah, this is a sign from God. Very often false comforts come from a faulty interpretation of our circumstances. We must be careful about reading our diaries like tea leaves. And seeking to divine some way forward through the crystal ball of our daily encounters and errands.

Just because we've prayed for something and it kind of looks like maybe God is answering, it doesn't necessarily mean that he has or that it's some word from God about how to act next. What about prayer?

He does answer, and he does answer directly. He can heal all of our diseases as well as forgive all of our iniquities. He can hold back the rain, and he can let it come in droves. Our God sits in the heavens, and he does whatever he pleases.

But we must not pretend that we can read the circumstances of our lives and come up with the will of God. We'll be falsely comforted if we do that and deeply pierced through by self-deceptions. Rather, we must rely upon the word of God, as Jeremiah makes clear.

Those are the origins of false comforts. I want us to turn attention now to verses 11 through 21 to consider the evils of false comforts. False comforts are evil, and they are full of evils. How could they not be?

Who is the father of lies? The devil is the father of lies. False comforts will soon enough become piercing troubles. False comforts will soon enough become piercing troubles. False comforts are the devil's straitjacket, and the devil's straitjacket is a few inches short of a body bag, and that's what he's trying to sew up.

How did the evils of false comforts manifest among Jeremiah's self-deceived countrymen? They had eyes which could not see, verses 11 through 14. Now it happened when the army of the Chaldeans had lifted the siege from Jerusalem because of Pharaoh's army, that Jeremiah went out from Jerusalem to the land of Benjamin in order to take possession of some property there among the people.

While he was at the gate of Benjamin, a captain of the guard, whose name was Erijah, the son of Shalamiah, the son of Hananiah, was there. He arrested Jeremiah, the prophet, saying, You are going over to the Chaldeans.

Jeremiah said, A lie. I am not going over to the Chaldeans. Yet he would not listen to him, so Erijah arrested Jeremiah and brought him to the officials. False comforts blind your eyes. I find it darkly humorous that Erijah, at the same time, totally misunderstood Jeremiah's intention, but totally nailed the exact course of repentance which he should himself be taking.

Jeremiah had said, The way to salvation, folks, the way to avoid destruction in this city, is to go over to the Chaldeans. Jeremiah had not been given leave to do that, as he was God's prophet who must remain and continue preaching the truth, specifically that truth, surrender to the Babylonians before it's too late.

And Erijah accuses Jeremiah of doing the very thing that Erijah should be doing. And if Jeremiah had been doing it, as any other citizen of Jerusalem, it would have been a good thing. Everything that these people should be hearing and considering about safely surrendering, about the promise of diligent increase and future restoration and a new covenant through God's Messiah, everything that they have been hearing so far in Jeremiah's preaching, all of it is obscured and hid and maligned behind approved newspeak.

We're not allowed to say anything positive about Chaldeans. Nobody can even hint at all about surrendering to them. That's not allowed. It's not in the approved text. Stay with the script. The king, his servants, and the people have become just like the idols that they worshipped, meaning they had ears, but they could not hear.

They had eyes, but they could not see. That's what happens when you worship idols. You become like them. Isaiah 44, 18 through 20, they do not know, nor did they understand, for he has smeared over their eyes so that they cannot see, and their hearts so that they cannot comprehend.

That is judgment. One, no one recalls, nor is there any knowledge or understanding to say, here's a man with a hunk of wood. He's chopped it off a tree. He says, I have burned half of it in the fire and have baked bread over its coals.

I roast meat and eat it, and then I make the rest of it, the other half of the hunk of wood, and I make the rest of it into an abomination. I fall down before a block of wood. Take the same block of wood, use half of it to cook your meal, and another half you turn into your god.

He said, this is what it's like to be idolatrous. He feeds on ashes. The deceived heart has turned him aside, and he cannot deliver himself, nor say, is there not a log in my right hand, eyes which cannot see, ears that cannot hear.

That is the evil of false comfort. Another evil of false comfort is crooked paths, verses 15 and 16. Notice what happens. The officials were angry at Jeremiah and beat him, and they put him in the jail in the house of Jonathan the scribe, which they had made into the prison.

For Jeremiah had come into the dungeon, that is the vaulted cell, and Jeremiah stayed there many days. Look how crooked things are. False comforts make your ways crooked. Jeremiah was convicted without a hearing, beaten without a verdict, all because of his person and his beliefs, which ran counter to the establishment.

We just read out of Deuteronomy 1. In the very first section of Deuteronomy 1, we hear about court cases and how they're supposed to be handled. There was no speedy trial by his peers. This was a jeering mob beating up an unpopular preacher because they couldn't beat up the Babylonians.

The process of justice was not a process, and it wasn't justice. Those who chanted, peace, peace, were full of hate for God's servant, and vitriolic foaming at the mouth of posers to God, nothing new.

Isaiah 59, 7 through 8, their feet run to evil. They hasten to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts of iniquity, devastation, and destruction are in their highways. They do not know the way of peace, and there is no justice in their tracks.

They have made their paths crooked. Whoever treads on them does not know peace. This is the way that false comforts make everything skewed. In my previous woodworking project, when I was making crooked doors, I was also making crooked shelves.

And I remember trying and trying to make a shelf, and I kept on cutting and cutting and cutting, and I was getting less and less wood. Eventually, I didn't have a 90-degree corner or a straight edge on the whole thing.

If I kept going, I may have had a circle. I don't know. When you live your life by false comforts, wrong standards, crooked ways, you deceive yourself in the most important matter, where you stand with God, who God is, what he made you for.

Everything else then goes crooked. If you don't have a 90-degree angle, everything comes out skewed and crooked. A third evil of false comforts, stiff-necked, verses 17 -19. Now, King Zedekiah sent and took Jeremiah out, and in his palace, the king secretly asked him and said, Is there a word from the Lord?

Jeremiah said, There is. And he said, You shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon. Moreover, Jeremiah said to the king Zedekiah, In what way have I sinned against you or against your servants or against this people that you have put me in prison?

Where then are your prophets who prophesied to you, saying, The king of Babylon will not come against you or against this land? Zedekiah knows what the message is. He's been told several times by this point.

Jeremiah has explained to him in painful detail what is going to happen due to his sin. Zedekiah has already received the message of the Lord. So why is he asking again? Well, Jeremiah did get beat up and thrown into prison.

Maybe the message changed, right? Maybe he softens his tone. Maybe some of the details change. Perhaps when they hit Jeremiah so hard he saw stars, he got the point, and he's going to stop talking about Babylon's inevitable victory.

Jeremiah is innocent of these charges. In fact, if he really was going to the Chaldeans, he'd make a good analogy for the protagonist of Pilgrim's Progress fleeing the city of destruction, fingers in his ears, screaming, Life!

Life! Eternal life! He'd be doing exactly what he would want the others to do, fleeing the judgment, fleeing the destruction. But Zedekiah has no capacity, nor his servants, nor his people, to see Jeremiah's proclamation as salvation.

All they take it is as it is condemnation. The very message of salvation they take as condemnation. They will not turn out of their way. They are stiff-necked. They can't turn one way or the other. They are stiff-necked.

Jeremiah has done nothing wrong, but the Jews find him in their way. And you would think, as Jeremiah points out, you would think that after all the false prophets who had told the king exactly what he wanted to hear, and in fact, as he's talking to Jeremiah, after Jeremiah's gotten beat up, and he's essentially saying, Jeremiah, would you like to tell me what I want to hear now?

Jeremiah brings up the prophets of old, the prophets of just a few years ago, the prophets who had told the king and told his servants and told the people exactly what they wanted to hear. Oh, Babylon will never come against you.

They had told him exactly what he wanted to hear, and Jeremiah says, well, where are they now? Where are they now? The evidence was crystal clear. But when you're stiff-necked, whatever evidence you're given is simply twisted and moved away.

You may have heard the story about the man who was tired of working and weary of going to work, and so he settled on a false comfort, namely that he was dead. And he would not get out of bed, and he would not go to work, and when his wife and his children questioned him, he said, well, I can't.

I'm dead. Dead people don't work. And so they were really concerned about him, and so they took him to a psychologist, and the psychologist tried to reason with him, and he couldn't make any progress, and so finally he said, look, we're going to have to take you to a medical doctor, and maybe he'll help you figure out that you're not dead.

So the dead man went to the doctor with his family, and the doctor reviewed the facts of normal physiology, and he said, now, dead men don't have a beating heart. Is that correct? The dead man said, yeah, yeah.

The heart doesn't beat if you're dead. He says, well, that means that you're not going to bleed if I poke you in the finger with this pen. Is that correct? He said, oh, yeah. I mean, dead men don't bleed.

If you poke my finger, no blood will come out because I'm dead. And so the doctor said, do I have permission to poke your finger? He said, oh, go ahead. So the doctor poked his finger, and out comes the blood, and the man looks at it and says, what do you know?

Dead men do bleed. That's stiff-necked. That's stiff-necked. No matter what evidence is given, no matter what is said, just hunkering down and not deviating from the false comfort, holding on to it irrespective of the truth of God's Word.

What about this stiff-necked King Zedekiah? He listened to Jeremiah's request in verse 20. But now, please listen, O my Lord the King, please let my petition come before you, and do not make me return to the house of Jonathan the scribe, that I may not die there.

Then King Zedekiah gave commandment, and they committed Jeremiah to the court of the guardhouse, and gave him a loaf of bread daily from the baker's street, and to all the bread in the city was gone. So Jeremiah remained in the court of the guardhouse.

Interestingly, the fourth evil of false comforts is being tossed to and fro. Think of Zedekiah for a moment. And before we bake Zedekiah a big pan of brownies for being so nice to Jeremiah and getting him out of the dungeon, we should read the next chapter where the very next appeal which came to him was to throw Jeremiah into a big pit to die of starvation, and he said something valiant and heroic like, sure, whatever, I can't stop you.

And so we see that Zedekiah, one day he'll give Jeremiah a haven, and the next he'll give him up. That's the whimsy of government, isn't it? How is it that someone who is so stubborn and stiff-necked can be so unstable and all over the place?

Here it is. When we are stiff-necked with regard to God's word, and we just go our own way instead of listening to God's word, we leave ourselves exposed to rapidly degrading fables. And falsely comforting ourselves, for instance, with the favor of men, leaves us rattling about according to the favor of men.

When wanting Jeremiah to think well of him, Zedekiah says and does one thing. When wanting others to think well of him, he says and does the opposite. Without the objective standard of God's word, people are left with, well, whichever way the wind blows the smoke must be the best way.

And thus, tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine which blows. These are the evils of false comforts. But we must turn our attention to the blessing of true comfort, the blessing of true comfort. There is another image of a broken reed in Scripture.

It is not the one that Rabshakeh and even God himself used of the false comfort of Egypt or Pharaoh, the one that you would lean on and you would be pierced in your hand. The image of a broken reed in this case is not one of false comfort, but the broken reed is a picture of one who is in need of hope.

A broken reed is one who is in need of healing. In Jeremiah, here is the definition of a bruised reed, isn't he? Here he is beaten up and in prison. God's stylus is battered. He is beaten up by those consumed with deceit.

Here is a broken reed. Now, in one sense, a broken reed is no comfort to lean on, but here is another question. What comfort may broken reeds know? What comfort does Jeremiah have in prison? Where is his comfort?

How about this? God's Word is true. Don't you hear that when he tells Zedekiah, where are your false prophets now? What is he saying? I know that God's Word is true. His promises are sure. What he says comes to pass.

There is his comfort. And because God's Word is true, his promises are sure. And here is a comfort. Here is a promised comfort to bruised reeds. Isaiah 42. Behold my servant whom I uphold. Bruised reeds, here is a comfort for you.

Behold my servant whom I uphold. My chosen one in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry out or raise his voice nor make his voice heard in the street.

Listen, verse 3. A bruised reed he will not break. And a dimly burning wick he will not extinguish. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not be disheartened or crushed until he has established justice in the earth.

And the coastlands will wait expectantly for his law. The bruised reed in Isaiah 42, verse 3, that word bruised is the very same Hebrew word for the bruised reed of Pharaoh. So when we're speaking of bruised reeds, let's consider this bruised reed.

This passage, Isaiah 42, verses 1 through 4, is the passage where Matthew quotes, saying this was to fulfill what Jesus was doing in his teaching and in his ministry, his gospel ministry. Matthew says this was to fulfill this passage.

Christ is God's servant whom we are to behold. God's chosen one in whom he delights, in whom we must delight. And Matthew quotes this passage as a fulfillment of what Jesus was doing, and in the context, it was exactly when Jesus had censured the false comfort, this is the beginning of Matthew 12, censured the false comfort of Sabbath observance, after he had healed all these people.

It's then that Matthew quotes the fulfillment of this passage, Isaiah's prophecy. So the blessing of true comfort is a real, live, vital union with Jesus Christ. It is a union through which we are transformed into his image, one by God's grace alone, through faith alone.

In Christ, we have eyes that actually see, ears that hear. With Christ, we know straight paths. He's a good shepherd. With Christ, we have pliant hearts. He's a great physician. With Christ, we are solid on the rock and have a vantage point where we may smile at every bitter wind, Spurgeon asks.