The Power Of Depravity

Jeremiah 44 and the Hardness of the Human Heart

This evening, once again, we look to the Word of God and we look to some difficult texts, some difficult passages that have been suggested to us in recent sermons. And, in fact, this evening we will start, we won't end here, but we will start back in Jeremiah chapter 44.

So, if you'll turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 44. And, once again, let us seek the Lord's blessing during our time. Our gracious Heavenly Father, once again, in these few moments that we have, we ask that by your Spirit you will meet with your people, that you will give us insight into your Word, that you will challenge us by what your Word says.

Give us wisdom as we seek to serve you in this coming week. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Last Sunday evening, Pastor Fry suggested that instead of the normal Exodus reading, which would have been a very detailed reading as we just had, that given the length of the section he was going to be dealing with, that I might read a certain section from Jeremiah chapter 44, which we did.

And, in this chapter, I'm sure you all remember clearly from last Sunday evening, and if you do not, we would not want you to actually inform us of that. Because we'd like to think that you would remember, only a week out, some of the details of what we have in this chapter.

And, specifically, the deliverance of Jeremiah to these Jews who have gone against God's Word. They have gone down to Egypt. They have trusted in the arm of Egypt. And God has delivered a message of judgment to them that, clearly, their hearts have not been changed.

That they have experienced this tremendous judgment. They have seen God's wrath poured out upon their people. Think about where these people have been. Think about what we've been hearing in the book of Jeremiah just over the past number of months.

Try to put yourself in their situation. From their perspective, so many of their neighbors and friends are gone. They're either dead, or they have been chained into long lines and dragged off to another nation.

All of their possessions gone. They're paupers. And only a few people have been left in the land. And the land has been desolated. The vineyards lie in a state of destruction. The walls of Jerusalem are down.

The beautiful temple has been burned. The great possessions of the people of God, some of which, you know, the tabernacle prefigured that, but you had the Ark of the Covenant, gone. All these things that people had trusted in, said the Lord would never allow destruction to come to this place.

Destruction has come. And you would think that, looking back, they would be able to see that, well, there was one group of prophets that said, peace, peace, peace. And then there was this Jeremiah guy.

And we didn't like what Jeremiah had to say, because he said that wrath was coming because of what we had done. And even when Nebuchadnezzar came and sort of made us vassals of his state, and started the 70 years, Jeremiah said, stay in subjection to Nebuchadnezzar.

The 70 years have begun. The punishment has begun. Your sovereignty has been taken away. But stay in, this is the Lord's doing. Stay in. We didn't do it. We continued to rebel. And basically everything that Jeremiah said has come to pass.

We didn't like it. You would think that if someone had been prophesying to you, this is what's coming, this is why it's coming, this is what you've done, this is the covenant you had made with God, you've broken all these covenants with God, and here's what He said.

Go back to Deuteronomy 27 and 28, blessings and cursings. You're not going to have the blessings. You think they're yours. You keep saying, bless us, bless us, bless us, oh Lord, bless our nation. We like the blessings, but see, blessings and cursings, they come together.

And those curses, God said, will eventually come. He's long-suffering. He sent all these prophets. What did you do with them? But you would think that just on a rational level, if people were just, if they just thought clearly, that you'd be able to stand back and go, he was right, he was right, he's told us this, let's listen to him.

And that somehow, just because of what people would see around them, they would be able to go, ah, this is clearly the judgment of God, and therefore, if I want to experience the blessings of God, I will seek to be obedient to Him.

And yet, what caught my attention, remember this morning I said these texts grabbed my attention, sort of distracted me a little bit as I thought about it, is what an incredible insight we have in Jeremiah 44 into the hardness of man's heart.

That you can see all sorts of spiritual realities around you, but if your heart has not been changed, if the Spirit of God has not brought regeneration, has taken out that heart of stone and given you a heart of flesh, you will not benefit from seeing the evidence of the existence of God and the activity of God around you.

Even people who possessed the Word of God, these were Jews. They attended, they remembered what it was like to go into the temple and to hear the Word of God spoken and read and the hearing of the people.

And yet, despite all of those advantages, what do we see? Jeremiah brings an oracle of judgment, and beginning in verse 16, remember the words of Jeremiah 44, as for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of Yahweh, that would have been the very same way He delivered all the other messages even before destruction, we are not going to listen to you.

Now, they're not going to be neutral. Oh no, no one's ever neutral to the message of the judgment of God. But rather, we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths by burning sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem.

For then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune. But since we stopped burning sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have met our end by the sword and by famine.

Now, when I read these words again, when I thought about what these people were saying, I was struck once again by how important it is for us to have a biblical view of man's nature, the impact of sin, and the absolute necessity of the work of the Spirit of God for anyone to have a true knowledge of God and His ways in this world.

And here is an incredible example. You would think if anyone would be able to see, ah, we have seen the judgment of God. We have seen this nation come down. We have seen the nation that we thought, because we were called by God's name, no one would ever touch us, but it's been destroyed.

And why? Well, that Jeremiah, he had told us we had profaned the worship of our God. We had joined together the worship of Yahweh with the worship of other gods. We had burned incense to the Queen of Heaven.

Sound familiar from this morning? Yeah, exactly. What had God said then? Someone comes to you and says, let's go after other gods. Do not listen to them and do not show them any pity. Cut out that cancer from the body of the people of Israel.

Well, they hadn't done that. And what happens when you don't obey Deuteronomy 13? You've got Jeremiah 44. Because once that syncretistic worship is allowed, once that profaning of the worship of the one true God is allowed, well, it grows.

And when the first generation shows no concern about purity of worship, the second generation, it becomes more natural. And the third generation, a little bit more. And the fourth generation, a little bit more.

Because when we listen to these people and we see the obstinacy, the rebellion, in fact, from our perspective, let's be honest, the stupidity. These are people that are hiding down in Egypt. They've reversed the exodus.

They've undone everything that God has done for them. And listen to their reasoning. You know, as long as we were burning incense to the Queen of Heaven, we had plenty of food. We didn't have misfortune.

Once we stopped doing that, look at what happened to us. You see, what had started, what would have started initially, with that same kind of syncretistic, you know, just a little variation from God's ways isn't all that important.

I mean, really, come on, is He that narrow? Is He so small that He's concerned about every little detail? Well, that first generation, those first people, they probably would have been offended had you said to them, you're abandoning the worship of Yahweh.

No, I'm not. I still make my offerings to Yahweh. I still acknowledge that He's God. But you see, I'm just not quite as narrow as you are. We need to be a little broader in our thinking, see. But then, the next generation, the growth is larger.

The cancer affects more and more and more until now, you see, in the days of Jeremiah, you have people whose entire view of God has become completely warped. And in fact, they actually think that the Queen of Heaven had given them the blessings that they had even when they were back in the city of God in Jerusalem.

What perversion! What utter depravity! We saw even the women went on to say, oh, what we did, we did. Our husbands knew. Even the women themselves who so frequently are a little less liable to run off in the way that men frequently will once the restraints are removed.

Oh, my. I can't help but think. Some of you remember. I know Brick might remember, but when I first started coming here, I was a fairly young fella, and I had an opportunity. I had many opportunities, dozens of opportunities, of being on the local talk show, talk station, KFYI, to discuss, well, I was on with some pretty weird people.

Let's put it that way. I was on with a lot of atheists and people like that. And in fact, some of you might remember Tom Likas. I was on with him a number of times, I think 12 times, something like that, with Tom Likas.

And one of the first people I encountered, some of you might remember, I was on a talk show for about two hours with a guy named Dan Barker. He's now, he and his, I think they're married for a while, a significant other, whatever that means.

But he and his, this woman, Annie Gaylor, I think is her name. Anyway, they are the head of the Freedom from Religion Foundation up in Madison, Wisconsin. And I've debated him a couple of times over the past couple of years in other locations.

After that radio program, I ran into Annie in the parking lot outside of KFYI. Something I'll never forget. I will never forget the acidic personality, just the vile nastiness, the hatred of God's ways and His law that just flowed from this woman.

And it struck me, and I remember to this day, it's one thing for me to talk to a man who's an atheist, who is profane and blasphemous and revels in it. It just seems so unnatural for a woman to be profane and blasphemous in that way.

And yet, what do we see in our streets? It's a sure sign of the withdrawal of God's hand of restraint. When that woman, who is made to be so gentle and motherly, becomes a blasphemer of God. Truly, God's hand has been taken off of a society where that happens.

And that's what has happened here. We look at this and we are amazed, but we shouldn't be. We really shouldn't be. Because, again, another text that Pastor Fry did mention, but just very briefly, came into my mind right before he quoted it.

That's one of the things I like about being around here is that very frequently I'll be listening to a sermon and I'll be hearing a point and my mind will sort of run ahead and say, well, you know, I think this text over here might illustrate that and that text over there might illustrate that.

And guess what? That's where we end up going. And no, Pastor Fry and I do not exchange e-mails during the week about upcoming sermons. He's not a big e-mail guy. In fact, I get the distinct feeling that the e-mails I get from him aren't actually from him.

I think they're from the detail person. But anyway, be that as it may, one of the cross references that was given was one I was thinking about and it takes us to the book of Revelation. Remember that amazing story of the sixth seal?

The sixth seal in the book of Revelation. If you don't remember, let me remind you. I looked when he broke the sixth seal and there was a great earthquake and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair and the whole moon became like blood and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.

The sky was split apart like a scroll when it was rolled up and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains.

And they said to the mountains and to the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come and who is able to stand?".

Where's repentance? I mean, you would think that when you see the entire created order being shaken and the orderliness of creation being disrupted and the divine power coming to bear and these people from great to small, what do they understand?

They understand this is the wrath... Did you catch that phrase? Of the what? It doesn't say king, does it? It doesn't say judge. It doesn't say God. It doesn't say Lord. What an amazing phrase. The wrath of the Lamb.

Those words don't go together, do they? I mean, that just doesn't make sense. That's like talking about the fast speed of the Nissan Versa. No, trust me, I've got one. That's an oxymoron. I mean, I can't tell you how many times getting onto the freeway, what I really hate about our freeway is it has the two lanes, you know?

So I got somebody behind me and they see what kind of car I've got and so they get over and right on by me because they know it's going to take me a little while. Zero to 60 in about a mile or so, you know, that kind of a situation.

The two words don't go together. And the wrath of the Lamb? That tells you something about how we need to be careful about allowing the Bible to define our presentations of who Jesus is. There's a lot of people that like the idea of Jesus as the Lamb, but they would never accept the idea of the wrath of the Lamb.

We need to think about that. But they know this is judgment. They know why this is coming. They know their sin, but no repentance. No calling upon God's mercy. From the wrath of the Lamb, mountains fall upon us.

Would the people who had fled from Jerusalem not hear the clear message of God's judgment? We're not going to listen to you. Here, we're experiencing the very wrath of the Lamb. And what do they do? We won't repent, but hide us from the wrath of the Lamb, the wrath of God.

What an amazing insight into the nature of man. Might it just be that the Bible is right when it describes faith and repentance? Faith and repentance. Absolutely necessary things. What's the first thing Jesus preaches when He comes into His public ministry?

Repent, first word, and believe. Repent and believe. Absolutely necessary things. Cannot be put off to the side. Anyone who preaches or teaches to you that repentance is a side issue is a false teacher.

There are many of them standing behind pulpits today. But it's a false gospel. But maybe there's something in the Bible about where these things actually come from. That there is such thing as a true repentance and a false repentance.

There's such thing as true faith and there's such thing as false faith. And what makes the difference? Remember, it was not too long ago that we were in Romans chapter 2. It's been a while. But Paul sort of said in passing in that second chapter, Romans 2 -4, Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God does what?

Leads you to repentance. We have to be led to repentance. God has to do something. Or our stiff necks, our hard hearts, all they'll do is call upon the rocks to fall upon us when the wrath of God comes.

They won't cause us to seek God. They won't cause us to break down in penitential tears. They won't cause us to turn from our sinful ways. Because, you see, that hard heart still loves its own autonomy.

And it loves sin. And all the judgments in the world will not cleanse that wicked heart. That's why the same apostle, when he wrote to Timothy, said, The Lord's bondservant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth.

God may grant them repentance. You see, when we are faced with the reality of what the Bible teaches about the irreparable damage of sin, irreparable from man's perspective, and really, when you think about it, it truly is.

Our hearts and our minds are not repairable. God doesn't put a patch on us when he saves us. One of the things that frightens me, I read a book this week. I read a couple of books this week, but one of the books that I read Friday morning, I believe it was, was by a man who describes himself as a disenchanted Calvinist.

Now, once you got into it, you found out he really was never really a Calvinist anyways, but that's not unusual. But, a disenchanted Calvinist. And what I was struck again by, as I read him, and as I thought about a number of well-known leaders in a large Baptist denomination in our land today, is the fact that they are willing to, in essence, maybe not purposely for some of them, but for some of them it is very purposeful, mock the radical nature of what God does in regeneration.

When he takes out the heart of stone and he gives the heart of flesh, when he takes the valley of dry bones and he raises them up, they mock that. It's a rewiring. It's a forced action from God's perspective.

He kept saying, forced regeneration was the phraseology he would be using. And it really concerns me. It concerns me a lot because what we see when we actually look at what the Bible says about the power of sin, about what the result of sin is, when we look at these texts, when we look at those men calling upon the mountains to fall upon them, we look upon Jews, possessors of the word of God, have heard God's truth, and they say, we're not going to listen.

We're going to continue doing what we're doing. When we see the power of sin and the depravity of man, we better believe in something really radical called regeneration. And we better not have the idea that it's something that we can work up within ourselves.

If we think that what we're supposed to do is we're supposed to walk up to these people, we're supposed to walk up to these people in Jeremiah's day and say, you know, you've got it within yourself to change.

You've just got to work it up within yourself. These people don't need a band-aid. They need resurrection. When you're talking to someone who is dead in sin, and a lot of people like to mock, see, they're not dead.

They're actually active in their rebellion against God. That's the whole point. They always will be. They will always be active in their rebellion against God. They're suppressing the knowledge of God.

And they will always be that way until the Spirit of God makes a radical change in their life. And that's why the Bible uses the language of resurrection. So many of them want to lessen the harsh reality, because if that's really the case, then who saves?

God does. It's not a synergistic cooperation. It's not God trying and we allow him to be successful. It's God's work. And we have no place for glorying. We have no place for inserting ourselves. We simply have to bow the knee before a sovereign God.

But you see, I know other folks. And I listen to them, and they see what the Bible says, and they see the necessity of holiness, and they see the necessity of repentance. It's right there. It can't be missed.

They want to preach it. They preach against the easy believism of our day, but because they're traditions. They don't want to actually affirm that, well, yeah, faith is the gift of God, and repentance is the gift of God.

And so they'll preach repentance, and they'll preach the necessity of faith, and they've got to be together, and they'll preach holiness, but since they don't see that it must be the work of the Spirit of God, they don't see Romans 8, those according to the flesh, they can't do what's pleasing to God.

They can't even work up a desire in that way. They're going to reject God's ways since they don't want to see the sovereignty of God. It inevitably leads to an imbalance and inevitably leads to a form of legalism.

How do you hold all this together? How do you take the full counsel of God in Scripture and bring it together? Well, that's why we're here and not in many other places. It's because those of us here have recognized that there are certain truths that are very offensive to certain people, certain traditions.

We simply can't embrace those things. What you can do is you look at the Word of God, you see what it says, and you don't have to shy away from Jeremiah 44. You don't have to lessen the impact of sin and the hardness of the human heart.

You can allow all those texts to speak that say that man in his natural state as a rebel against God, oh sure, there may be people who will do things, they'll seek after the benefits of God, but they won't seek after God.

They may become very religious, but they will not bow the knee in repentance and faith before the one true and holy God. We can take everything the Bible teaches and honestly look at it and say, see, it's not difficult to understand why man, even in the punishment of God in hell itself, remains defiant and filled with hate.

It's not difficult to understand why punishment goes on. Because where does repentance come from? It requires a change of the heart. So we see that. We don't have to lessen that. We see the absolute necessity of repentance.

Without holiness, no one will see God. Repentance, faith. How do you hold these together? It's hopeless. The standard's too high. Unless we see that it's God's intention to glorify himself and the salvation of a particular people in Christ Jesus.

He provides for everything they need. They don't deserve anything. They are absolutely deserving of God's wrath. In fact, my friends, if you sat here and you listened to the people in Jeremiah 44, I hope as a true believer the thought crossed your mind if it weren't for your mercy and grace.

I hope you didn't sit there and go, I'm not like them. I have spiritual insight. No. We're no better than they. We're no more deserving than they. Grace. God has taken out the very heart of stone that spoke in these words.

We won't listen! He's taken out that heart. He's given us a heart of flesh. And what did Deuteronomy 13 say this morning? Who are those who really worship God? You fear Him. You hear His voice. You cling to Him.

Because that's the natural response. The heart of flesh. But no heart of stone is ever going to voluntarily change itself to a heart of flesh. And what we see in the Scripture is all the punishment, all the beating, all the seeing of the wrath of God.

If the heart remains hardened, the response is always the same. The only time there's a change is when the sovereign grace of God changes that heart. There is truly the emphasis of the Scriptures upon the sovereignty of God and the deadness of man in sin.

And the reason we can avoid falling off that balance one way or the other, off into legalism or into despair, the reason we can stay balanced is because we see the whole counsel of God on this matter and we see the sovereignty of grace.

You know what the real antidote for any level of arrogance amongst reformed people? Well, there's many antidotes, really. I mean, the entire truth of God. But there's two. We have to see God as He is.

We need to ask the Lord, Lord, I remember that first time I saw Your sovereignty. It crushed me, but it glorified You. I saw myself for who I really am. But then, the other antidote is to really understand the depth and depravity of sin.

God's righteous wrath against it. Ponder, if you would, that phrase, if the Lamb has wrath, what does that mean? What does that mean about the righteous judgment of God against my sin? Not somebody else's sin.

It's real easy to go, oh yeah, you get them. But the true mark of regeneration is when the believer can honestly say, I truly deserve the judgment. And if it had not fallen upon my substitute, I would have no...

We think about these people. We know that God's judgment came upon them. The Queen of Heaven couldn't deliver them. And no form of idolatry has ever delivered anyone. We pray that in our day, as we hear these words, God will protect us from arrogance.

He will continually remind us of who He is, who we are, and why it is that we must rejoice in a perfect Savior. For aside from Him, we would never, ever be able to have peace. Lord, we confess that were it not for Your grace and for Your mercy, we with the people of old would have said we will not listen.

Oh, we might have been with some of the hypocrites who pretended to listen, but we know that Jesus Himself said that His sheep hear His voice. And we have heard, not because there's anything good in us, but because You, by Your sovereign grace, have opened our hearts and our minds.

We have no reason for boasting. We boast only in the Lord. Once again, Father, Your word humbles us. It challenges us. Lord, if any one of us have become apathetic so that we are not each day filled with gratitude for what You have done for us, Lord, remind us once again of what was truly our desert, what we truly deserved.

Remind us of the great grace in which we stand. If there be any this day who remain rebellious, who in their heart of hearts say, I won't listen, Lord, reveal Your power. Reveal their sin. And reveal the perfect Savior to them.

We pray in Christ's name.