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Jeremiah 11:1-8 Pastor Michael Dirrim
I'm going to talk a little bit about that today, in the coming week or so. I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 11, verses 1 -8. We have finished up something of a minor section in Jeremiah, the first 10 chapters.
Jeremiah chapter 1 is a great chapter to read if you want to know all about the book. Every theme is anticipated there in the first chapter. If you ever need to refresh your course, you don't have to read all 52, just read the first one.
You will reorient yourself about the person and the message of Jeremiah, what God wanted him to do. Someone once wrote that Jeremiah chapter 1 anticipates every major theme of the book and foreshadows the course the word of the Lord will follow over the next 30 years and 50 chapters.
30 years as in Jeremiah's preaching ministry, not the amount of time it will take me to finish preaching through this book. Jeremiah chapters 2 -6 gives us a metaphor of a broken marriage between God and Israel.
It really projects this image across the rest of the book. As we read the final portions of chapters 2 -6, we find some stunning poetry with fierce emotion that brings to mind this idea that Jeremiah indeed is the weeping prophet of a grieving God.
Chapters 7 -10 begins with Jeremiah's famous temple sermon where he called the people not to a love for the temple, this they had, but rather a love for the God of this temple, the one true God. To stop worshipping the temple, to stop worshipping religion per se, but to actually worship the one true God.
He begins to preach this and we see the fallout, the rejection of that message through the rest of the passages in chapters 7 -10. We now come to chapter 11 where the Lord calls Judah to account using his word as the standard.
To this word we are to give an Amen and to say Amen O Lord. Would you mind doing something different than we normally do? Would you mind standing with me as I read the text? This is the word of the Lord.
The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Hear the words of this covenant and speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and say to them, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, Cursed is the man who does not heed the words of this covenant which I commanded your forefathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt from the iron furnace, saying, Listen to my voice and do according to all which I command you, so you shall be my people and I will be your God.
In order to confirm the oath which I swore to your forefathers to give them a land flowing with milk and honey as it is this day. And then I said, Amen, O Lord. And the Lord said to me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear the words of this covenant and do them.
For I solemnly warned your fathers in the day that I brought them up from the land of Egypt, even to this day, warning persistently saying, Listen to my voice. Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked each one in the stubbornness of his evil heart.
Therefore, I brought on them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but they did not. This is the reading of the word of the Lord. Thank you. You may be seated. Now, let me pray for us as we begin.
Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the truth. The truth of. Of these words. And how altogether they speak your word. Your word is given to us of your son, Jesus Christ. I pray, Father, you give us a clear view of your son today.
We would follow him. We would be conformed to his image that we would be changed. We would know the blessing. Of knowing you more and submitting to you. Father, we ask these things. We entrust ourselves to you today.
Amen.
In the comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, there are a few similar scenes which all give witness to humanity's rebellious streak. In one of them, Calvin tries to connect the dots in a connect-the-dot picture, but then he begins to complain that it's all a mess.
Hobbes, his imaginary tiger friend, sanguinely points out that he is to connect the dots in numerical order. To which Calvin grumbles, rules, rules, everything's got to have rules. You know, our basic aversion to external authority, we don't mind being our own authority, but our aversion to external authority began when Adam and Eve fell in the garden.
Sin became our nature, our way, our exile from God, and we wander about seeking our own authority. It's the essential issue at stake when Adam and Eve try to take the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
That they would begin to define for themselves, as their own deity, what right and wrong would be. But really, when we try to do things our way, our lives look a mess. Our lives look a mess. The whole point of God's orderly revelation is that we would flourish in our submission to him.
In our fallen condition, we walk, each one of us, in the stubborn condition of our own evil hearts. So committed are we to asserting our own authority that we don't really even care that much about the ultimate outcome.
Just so that here and now, I may determine who I am and what I do. In a similar strip of Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin is once again the artist, and he has a paint-by-numbers set. And he is happily sloshing paint all over the board, and Hobbes again cautiously advises, aren't you supposed to match the paint to the numbers?
And Calvin says, no, I like to do it my own way. And again, it looks a mess. In our passage this morning, God is really calling us out of a mess. He's calling us out of a mess into his blessedness. One that is entirely dependent on whether or not we amen his gracious and special revelation of himself through Christ.
To enjoy the blessing of God, we must amen the revelation of God. And as I was studying and reading through this passage, it seems to me to be an excellent opportunity for an extended meditation on the doctrine of scripture.
What do we have? What has God granted us? And why must we give an amen? My first and only point, and the other three will be some other time, Lord knows when. The first point is this, what God has revealed must be proclaimed.
What God has revealed must be proclaimed. And I think the key sentence for this entire passage is at the end of verse 5, where it says, Jeremiah says, then I said, amen, O Lord. And in many ways, this sentence captures everything we need to know about these eight verses.
And in one particular way, I think it's very helpful that when Jeremiah says amen, he's saying, so be it. And in some ways, he's saying what we all wanted to say to Caleb, just a moment of encore. Encore.
Let's do that again in similar fashion. And if you notice there at the end of verse 5, when Jeremiah says, amen, O Lord, verse 6 begins much the same way as verse 1 does. And if you read it, you hear a parallel that there is an echo, there is an encore in verses 6 -8 of verses 1 -5.
I think that's important for us to recognize as we begin to work our way through this passage. And I will be showing you the parallels and the important differences in both halves of the text. So I'm going to read for you in verses 1 -3 and verse 6 in a moment.
But even before we get there, let's think about what is going on in Jeremiah's life. Jeremiah was born around the time of King Josiah. Josiah was a wonderful king of Judah. Unlike many of his idolatrous fathers, Josiah called the whole nation to come back to the one true God, to worship him alone.
And what really sparked this reform movement was the discovery of the book of the law in the dilapidated temple grounds. And so that Josiah heard the reading of the law, the book of Deuteronomy, and he took it himself, and he read it to all the people, calling everyone, calling the whole nation to come back to God.
But Josiah died an early death. And the brightness of Josiah's reign has now been darkened by the eclipse of Jehoiakim's idolatry, the king who came after. And all the momentum of this reform movement has dissipated.
All the toilsome labor of pulling the nation uphill toward a true monotheistic devotion, all of it seems to be for naught. The oxen have stumbled, the project has toppled, and God is about to break out against his profane people.
Nonetheless, the revelation of God must still be proclaimed. No matter who is on the throne, no matter who the people worship, no matter how the national mood shifts, what God has revealed must be proclaimed.
Though all the people walk, each one according to the stubbornness of their own hearts, their only hope for blessing is to hear God's word proclaimed so that they may amen his revelation. That is the great hope of our text.
Let me read for us, once again, verses 1 through 3, and then verse 6. See if you can hear the similarities. The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Hear the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and say to them, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel.
Now, go down to verse 6. And the Lord said to me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear the words of this covenant. They sound a lot alike, and there are some important differences.
Let's ask a few questions of the text. We may hear the answers well. First of all, what came in verse 1? What came? Verse 1 tells us that the word came. The word from the Lord came to Jeremiah and began to speak to him, to hear the words of the covenant, that he would then know those words, and then preach those words to the people.
In verse 6, the Lord said to me, Proclaim all these words. How do we take these two verses, these two introductory formulas, and understand them? It seems to me that the attentive ears of those who have been initiated into the revealed mystery of the gospel, that our ears should perk up when we hear that the word came from the Lord to declare the words of the Lord.
The word came from the Lord, and then the word speaks to Jeremiah, the words of the Lord. Sounds a whole lot like the word who became flesh. John chapter 1 and John 14 verse 24. He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me.
Sounds a whole lot like the word who comes from the Father, the Son who comes from the Father to declare the words of God. And what he proclaims as a whole message is understood to be the word, small w, word of God.
Why are we pointing this out? Because we have this imperative in our outline. What God has revealed must be proclaimed. Well, what is it that he has revealed? The word of the Lord has revealed the words of the Lord.
And because of who he is and whom he has sent and what he has said, his words must be proclaimed quite simply. Christ we proclaim. And the word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord speaks the words of a covenant.
And we ought to think about which one. Which covenant? In verses 1 and 2, the word comes from the Lord to instruct Jeremiah saying to the prophet, Hear the words of this covenant. He has to hear them so that he may preach them.
The duty is urgently pressed upon Jeremiah in verse 6. The Lord said to me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem saying, Hear the words of this covenant. Proclaim it he must, for he must warn the people that cursed is he who does not do or does not heed the words of this covenant.
Failure on Judah's part to keep the covenant according to verse 8 means that God must bring upon them all of the words or all of the curses of the covenant. Even if they don't keep their part, he will do his part.
Now all of this combined with the rest of the text gives us an indicator of just what covenant is being referenced. Our passage speaks about God delivering his people up out of Egypt. And it was then in the wilderness that he called them into a righteous and holy loving relationship with him at Sinai.
It was at Sinai where the law was given, where the mountain burned and where God feasted with the elders of Israel. Jeremiah is to hear and he is to proclaim the words of this Sinai covenant. And with about a dozen quotes and allusions to the book of Deuteronomy in 8 verses, I think we know which scroll he had in front of his eyes and in his heart.
He's preaching Deuteronomy. He's preaching it. And it is appropriate for Moses was calling the people to covenant renewal. Calling them to live as the people of God, for the glory of God. And so many of the same terms that Moses uses, especially in the latter chapters of Deuteronomy, here Jeremiah picks up and he uses as well.
We'll see more of that as we explore the passage further, but I want us to think about the covenant at Sinai. God's covenant with Sinai at Israel, like every other covenant that God made with man, whether Adam or Noah or Abraham or David, it is always designed for our good and for God's glory.
These are divinely enforced relational structures that reveal the perfections of God and seem to highlight the needs of man. And every covenant that God has ever made with man has to do with God giving himself in some fashion to man and then setting man apart unto himself.
And these divinely conceived and enforced relational structures are all very similar to creation in this way. That there is a man-shaped hole at the center. God made everything he made in the creation week just so, situated around where he would put mankind.
His own image. And then he says, very good, and the same is true of every covenant that he makes. It is always situated around this man-shaped hole.
Why?
Because God seeks his own glory and so he would put his image at the center. The covenants may be the vehicles which move along the freight of the gospel story, but it is the image of God. It is the imago dei that is always in the driver's seat.
Man's role in creation as well as in the covenants is this, to so mediate the goodness of God that he manifests the glory of God. And that is true of God's covenant with Israel at Sinai. God says to Israel, I am your God, you will be my people.
And you will live in such a way to show my glory to everyone. You will be the light among all the nations. And they were to live as the corporate image of God. As the image of God in mass. The most human of all humanity.
They were to show all the nations what it was like to live for the creator who made them. And so they were to mediate God's authority. They were to mediate God's holiness. They were to mediate God's truth.
They were to mediate God's wisdom. And all of God's authority and holiness and truth and wisdom was to come through Israel and spread out and be a witness to all the nations. Israel was instructed in the law to love God supremely, love others rightly, steward their possessions responsibly.
This was Israel's role. They were to know the great blessing of living by faith, following God and being renewed in his image. And they failed. And they failed miserably as they turned to idols. And they began to image forth the idols in all of their deadness.
Israel's failure and Judah's failure does not negate the importance of this covenant or the need for obedience to its stipulations. The curses must fall because of sin. And the blessings must flow because of righteousness.
And both meet in Christ upon the cross. For he bears our curse. And he has achieved all righteousness. And if you want to know where the curses fall, brothers and sisters in Christ, it is on Christ that the curses fall.
And if you want to know why the blessings come, it is again that we must look to Christ. It is his righteousness and his obedience to the Father is the reasons why we would have his blessings. We who believe in Christ and trust in him.
The glory of the Sinai covenant and all the others is revealed in Christ who is the image of God. His shape fills and fulfills every covenant God ever made with man. It is Christ who is in the driver's seat.
He is the most human of all humanity and he carries the weight. He carries all the weight of David, Israel, Abraham, Noah and Adam combined. So much so that we say that all of God's promises are granted to Christ for all of God's people who are gathered in Christ.
We say all this because God's revelation must be proclaimed. And the word comes from the Lord revealing the words of the covenant and so we must proclaim Christ. The word, the revelation of God from whose frame as the image of God hangs all the fabric of God's covenants sewn together in glory.
Why is that important? Because if we are going to enjoy the blessing of God, we must aim in the revelation of God. And that revelation is supremely given in Jesus Christ. What are we going to aim in? Let us aim in and say so be it and give our voice of confirming praise to Christ.
Who cares?
Not the men of Judah. Not the men of Judah. Not the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And there are many, many, many who do not care.
Who cares if Jesus is the Son of God? Who cares if God sent him to be our Savior?
Jeremiah is facing a tough crowd. Those who do not obey or incline their ear but walk each one in the stubbornness of their own evil heart. Jeremiah was to hear the words of the covenant. This covenant with the Christ-shaped hole in the middle of it.
He is to preach the gospel in shadow and call for repentance and faith. He was to warn the people of Judah that God's curses would fall on them if they failed to turn back to him. Jeremiah preached the long history of God's grace towards his people that he pulled them up out of the iron furnace of Egypt.
He is preaching to a crowd that no longer weeps over their sin. He is preaching to a crowd that have entirely forgotten how to blush. They don't know how to cry about their sin. They don't even know how to blush about their sin.
Their consciences have been seared. This is, as you may remember, an incredibly religious people. Who go to the temple regularly and declare the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.
So it burdens me for us here. Is it possible that in our religious gathering that we have people here who do not weep over sin? Who have forgotten how to blush about their sin? Could it be that consciences here have been seared over by idolatry and injustice?
That our ears have been doled by pop preaching and false doctrine? If you find yourself not caring about who Jesus is and what he has come to do. You are in this crowd that Jeremiah preaches to. If you don't care, if you just don't care.
You don't cry over sin. You don't blush over sin. Let me challenge you. This is not the norm. There is something wrong. You were created in God's image for God's glory. How can you bear to live your life without regard to God, your maker and his son whom he has given for your salvation?
How can you bear to live without acknowledging him and submitting to him and praising him for what Christ has done? Do we see what goes on in the text? Jeremiah is soon reduced from preaching to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
Verse two, to preaching only to the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. Verse six, there is this shift from preaching to people to preaching at places. It's always a bad sign. It's always a bad sign.
When nobody is listening and there is no one left to preach to, God's prophets keep preaching at the places. When there was no one worth, only one or two maybe, but maybe just one righteous person in all of Sodom and Gomorrah.
There was no people there who would hear the message and so the judgment came against the places. When there was no people who would believe in Christ, he preached against Chorazin and Bethsaida. When it's the places in view, it's a warning sign rather than the people.
So why call out? Why give a gospel plea to those who don't care? Do you know that wisdom does not cease to be wise when she calls out to the simple and to the naive to come in and feast at her table and no one comes?
That wisdom has not ceased to be wise? She's still wise. Do you know that faithfulness is never seen as foolishness in God's eyes? No matter what the results might seem to be, we are too easily swayed by our American philosophy of pragmatism.
But even if no one is listening favorably, even if our theme is a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others, what the Lord has revealed must be proclaimed and that's why we ought to call out. The whole thrust of the persistent preaching in our text surges with this confidence that there's no other way.
To enjoy God's blessings, we must amen God's revelation, indeed Christ himself. Yet how shall they amen him whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?
You and I are sent. You and I are sent. To those who have been reconciled, to us has been granted the ministry of reconciliation. That we would insist on talking about what God has said. Jeremiah, his response at the end of verse 5 is this,.
Then I said, Amen, O Lord. Amen, O Lord. What does that entail? What does that entail? In the most basic of terms, Jeremiah amens the revelation of God. The word comes to Jeremiah from the Lord speaking the words of the covenant, calling Jeremiah to proclaim these words to the people.
And to that revelation, and to that assignment, Jeremiah says, Amen, O Lord. Now that term, amen, is not here an interjection expressing the overflow of religious affections. It is not the kind of cheerleading, which I don't mind at all, but the amen, brother, come on, preach it.
It's not that. It's not that. It is a worshipful, meaningful confession of faith and repentance all in one breath. The question before us is, will we give the same amen? Will we give the same amen to what God has revealed?
At the very least, this means a reverent reception. A reverent reception, which is why under conviction, I wanted us to stand and read the text, which is not something that I have been accustomed to do, but it's worth thinking about.
What are we receiving? What are we receiving from the scriptures? And are we receiving it reverently? We must receive the proclaimed revelation of God as the word of the Lord, as the very authority of Jesus Christ, King of kings, Lord of lords, enthroned at the right hand.
So how do we receive it? We must reverently submit ourselves to the revelation that God has given. We must say from our hearts, even as Jeremiah said, amen, oh Lord. Now what God has to say to us may seem very agreeable, or it may seem very disagreeable.
It may feel like a soothing balm. It may feel like a knife. But it is the physician's balm, and it is the surgeon's knife. And what God has to say is good. We are not to be like Jeremiah's audience and only accept what we find pleasant and reject what we cannot abide.
Jeremiah's audience really loved the passages of scripture that said peace, peace, even though there was no peace. But they would not accept anything that ran contrary to their plans or even their personalities.
We often fail to amen the words of the Lord. Andrew Shedd says we try to get behind these words and alter their message to fit our understanding of history or our understanding of theology or our understanding of ethics.
But rather we must read these words very carefully. Indeed, they are fully human words. We must press them for meaning. And as we do, we must make sure that our close reading is always determined by the word we hear in the reading of the words.
For Christian readers, this word is ultimately the revelation of God in the person of his incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. We are to, in a posture of humble repentance and vigorous faith, say Amen, O Lord!
In the terms of saying we are in agreement with what you say and why you say it, how you say it, and you give it to us. Your Son is the brightness of this revelation. The word is not our tool for politics.
The word is not our trump card in relational conflicts. The word is not our formula or equation for financial success. The word is not our weapon in culture wars. The word which comes to us with the very words of God is our high eternal king advancing his kingdom.
And to him we must give a reverent reception. Let's also take care that our appreciation for the preaching of the word is not to stop at hearing only. Thomas Watson, the Puritan, said, Many love the word preached only for its eloquence, but not to have their lusts subdued or their hearts bettered.
He compares this to a foolish woman who paints her face but neglects her health. He reminds us that a gracious soul wears reproof like a jewel on the ear. Proverbs 25 .12 says, As an earring of gold, so is a wise reproof upon an obedient ear.
An earring of gold, what's the image? That the word of God very often will pierce, sting, and draw some blood, but the end result is that our lives are adorned by the grace of God. We must give a reverent reception.
And, if we're going to amen, we must give a prolific proclamation. To amen God's proclaimed revelation is to follow suit with Jeremiah and take up these words brought to us by the word and proclaim them to our neighbors, to our countrymen, to the refugee, to the alien, to go to all the earth, teaching all men all that Christ has taught us.
Now look at verses 6 and 7. Verses 6 and 7. The Lord said to me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Here are the words of this covenant, and do them.
For I solemnly warned your fathers in the day that I brought them up from the land of Egypt, even to this day, warning persistently, saying, Listen to my voice. So it seems to me that Jeremiah was to proclaim everything that God had said to everyone to whom God had sent him and to follow God's example of warning persistently every day.
Everything to everyone, every day. The word came from the Lord with the words of the covenant, calling Jeremiah to proclaim these same words, everything God revealed to everyone he was supposed to go to and to preach it every day.
And our Amen, O Lord, will necessarily entail the same prolific proclamation of what we aim in. So what are we doing exactly? What God has revealed must be proclaimed. God has revealed himself through his Son, Jesus Christ, faithfully, unerringly, eternally in the Scriptures.
Christ we proclaim. So take up the Scriptures. Now hang with me, youth, because you're not going to believe me when I say it. Some people present here today and some people who are often present with us have read the Bible more than 30, 40, and 50 times.
Are you challenged? I'm challenged. But we read the Word. We read the Scriptures, don't we? We study the Scriptures. We meditate on the Scriptures. We memorize them, don't we? We hear them read to us.
We hear it preached and taught to us. What are you to do with that? Take up those Scriptures that you read and you study and you memorize and you hear and you meditate on and take them up into your mouth.
Take them up into your mouth and begin to talk about everything that you know about Christ from the Scriptures to everyone to whom God has sent you, and that's a whole lot of people, and make that your everyday persistent habit.
Listen, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, by definition He has called you to help other people follow Christ. That's who you are and what you are to do. If you're really a follower of Christ and you're called to help other people follow Christ and there's only one way to do that, only one place where they're ever going to see who Jesus is and what He's all about, and that is in the Scriptures.
So what do you spend your breath upon? What is it that you always have to talk about before you turn away from that moment of communication and interaction? Let's make sure that Christ is our theme. Let's leave Scripture in each other's ears before we part.
Let's not let the communication pass without sharing some truths from the Bible in just the most natural, normal, everyday way we need to proclaim Christ. I want to conclude by paraphrasing Thomas Watson on this matter.
And he was speaking about preaching, but what he says about preaching is the same about discipling, or in other words, helping other people follow Jesus. The word is a hammer. Every blow of the hammer is to fasten the nails to the building.
So your words are to fasten others the more to Christ. Be willing to weaken yourselves, to strengthen and settle others. That is the grand design of discipleship, not only for the enlightening but for the establishing of souls, not just to guide in the right way but to keep in the right way.
And if we are to say amen, O Lord, to God's revelation through Christ, we must receive His word reverently and then commit ourselves to that grand design of proclaiming everything to everyone every day.
And I think this is a marvelous way to enjoy the blessings of God. Let's close in prayer. And after we sing a hymn, we're going to have another prayer. So don't run off. Father, I thank you so much for bringing us together.
And I just thank you for the power and the truth of your word. I pray that you would help us to give from our very souls this amen, that our whole lives would be committed and in agreement and in alignment with what you proclaim concerning your Son.
Lord, we give you the praise. And we do it through your Son, Christ, with whom you are well pleased.