Good evening, let's turn to Jeremiah
1. The calling out of this prophet
is in many respects similar to the Lord's calling out of His
own people. And Jeremiah here is a picture
of the believer, and it's my hope that the Lord will show
us these parallels this evening. Because what God has to say to
Jeremiah, He says to each and every believer, He says to you
and to me. So let's start, and we'll start
in verse 1. The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah of the priests
that were in Anathoth, in the land of Benjamin, to whom the
word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Ammon
king of Judah in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also
in the days of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah,
unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of
Josiah, king of Judah, unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive
in the fifth month. Then the word of the Lord came
unto me. In most of the prophetic books,
you'll find this phrase, the word of the Lord that came, the
word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the word of the Lord that
came to Jonah, and to Joel, and to Micah. And in Ezekiel, we
find this nuance, the word of the Lord that came expressly
to Ezekiel. The Word of the Lord comes with
power and with particularity. It comes particular to a person. And it comes with purpose. I recall a few years ago, a group
of us was helping Brandon and Megan Coffey move. And Rick Williams
and his son Isaac came to help. And I remember seeing Isaac take
the boxes and put them into the truck. And Rick said, Isaac,
grab those boxes on purpose. And you could just see Isaac
grabbing those boxes and putting them in the truck. And is that
not what the Lord does with us? He grabs us on purpose. And He
does so by sending His Word like a laser, like a beam, straight
into our hearts. And it grabs us. It grips us.
It reveals His Son in us, the only hope of glory and our only
hope of salvation. Jeremiah says, the word of the
Lord came to me. The word of the Lord coming to
a sinner is an individual experience. And I need God to come to where
I am, because I can't come to God. That coin didn't make its
way back to the woman. She had to sweep that house clean
until she found it. Friend, has the word of the Lord
come to you? Have you heard the written word,
the very words of this book? I don't want to hear the words
of a man, I don't want to hear the opinions of a man, because
in all things spiritual, he'll be wrong. He'll be wrong in every
case. I need to hear what the Bible says about God, that He
is sovereign, that He acts independently, of you or me. I need to hear
that God is holy, that he is completely other than we are. I need to hear what the Bible
says about me, that I'm evil only and continually, that outside
of Christ I am dead to Christ and dead in trespasses and sins. And I need to hear what the Bible
says about how God saves sinners, that He saves completely by His
grace through the shed blood of Christ. Have you heard the
word of the Lord preached? It's only through preaching that
God saves sinners. And the Apostle Peter says that
it's by the gospel that this word is preached. It's only through
preaching It's only through the context of Christ and Him crucified
for the sins of His people that this book can even be understood
at all. And have you heard from the Word
Himself? You know, God and the Word of
God are both one and the same, and you can't separate God and
His Word. And His Word is Christ. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. I need the
Lord to come to me and speak life into my soul. And if He's
spoken to you, Here's what the Lord says, here's what God says
to every single believer. Verse 5. Before I formed thee in the belly,
I knew thee. I hope the Spirit will impress
us with the gravity of these words. Before you were conceived,
child of God, the Lord knew you. And what is this knowledge with
which the Lord knows you? Because it's not simply that
he just knows that you exist. In Matthew 7, Christ said to
those workers of iniquity, I never knew you. Depart from me. He
said, he's saying, I never loved you. But what God is saying to
Jeremiah and what he says to all of us is I've loved you. When we were nothing more than
a thought in the mind of the Lord, He loved us. When there
was neither form nor substance to us, He loved us. And just
as Adam knew his wife Eve, so does the Lord know and love His
people in the most intimate way possible. he has made Christ
and his church one. I want to read you a verse from
Revelation 3 verse 21. Christ says, to him that overcometh
will I grant to sit with me in my throne even as I overcame
and am set down with my Father in His throne." So you have the
Father's throne, and then within His throne is Christ's throne,
and within Christ's throne is us, us sitting with Christ. And I know that's figurative,
but that's us in Christ, and Christ in God, and can you get
any closer to God than that? I love thinking about this, and
I can't help but think of those Russian dolls. When you open
one up, there's another doll that's the exact image of the
doll that it's in. And Christ is the exact image
of the Father. And when the Father sees us in
Christ, He sees a mirror image. He sees Himself. Have I been
so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?
He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. And in Christ is
all the love of the Father for God's people. And sometimes I
wondered, just how far back does God's love for his people go?
Well, you could answer that question with another question. How far
back does God's love for Christ go? And if you're in Christ,
that's how long the Lord has loved you. God has always loved
his people. There's never been a time when
the Lord has not loved his people. There's never been a time when
they've not been in Christ. They've always been in Christ.
If I could sum all this up, I would take the very words of Christ
when He was praying to His Father in John 17, 23. He said, Thou
hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me. And I don't even know
what to say about that, but I love it. And if those words did not
come from Christ himself, I couldn't possibly believe that. It's beyond
me that the Father could love a sinner like me in the same
way that he does his Holy Son. But if you're in Christ, he surely
does. And that's my salvation. Here's
what God says next to Jeremiah. And before thou camest forth
out of the womb, I sanctify thee. I sanctify thee. What does God
do for those he loves? He sanctifies them. And when
I think of sanctification, I can't help but think of salvation.
The two are so enswined. I mean, it's just perfect. How can you tell them apart?
Sanctification is a good word to describe salvation. Sanctification
is the Lord setting apart a people for his own special purpose and
use. He sovereignly selects a people
who were an otherwise ordinary people and he makes them his
own, choosing them in Christ. the scriptures call them peculiar
and unique. And this is no inherent uniqueness
or because of anything we've done, anything they've done to
make themselves special. This is the Lord's doing. You
know, the definition of a saint and a Pharisee are actually very
similar. The Pharisee seeks to separate
himself by his own works, declaring before all men what he's done
for his own glory. The saint is separated by God,
and he declares it is of God and that God gets all the glory
and not us. I want to show you how we're
really no different than anybody else. And whatever difference
there is, the Lord has made the difference. And every other distinction
between me and anyone else that I can come up with is just fleshly,
and at best, a superficial distinction. Turn with me to Ephesians 2. Ephesians 2 verse 3, among whom
also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of
the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. Now,
no child of God has ever been an object of God's wrath or ever
will be, so long as God is sovereign and the Lord Jesus shed His blood
for His people. But there is within us a nature
of pure evil and rebellion, and it's the same nature that the
unbeliever possesses. Whether believer or unbeliever,
they both possess that same fallen, sinful nature that Adam acquired
when he sinned against God. And there's no way to tell them
apart just by sight. They both look the same, they
sound the same, they act the same, they sin the same. And
I can't see, just by looking at anybody, a work of grace in
their hearts. I can't see anyone covered by
the blood of Christ. Only the Lord can tell one apart
from another because it's the Lord who has separated them and
sanctified them. This is the Lord's doing and
not man's doing. Sanctification is not a process
that happens over time. And it's not something you become.
You either are sanctified or you aren't. we do not become
holier and holier with each passing day, or become better and better,
or sin less and less. In fact, the only time the word
holier is even used in the Scriptures is in reference to looking down
upon somebody. You'll find these types of people
say, stand by thyself, you stay over there. Don't come near me,
for I am holier than thou. And here's what the Lord says
of these people. These are a smoke in my nose,
a fire that burneth all day. There is, however, something
we do grow and progress in, and it's called grace. While the
Pharisee thinks his growth in holiness is upward, the believer's
growth in grace is always downward. The self-righteous man sees himself
as sinning lesser and lesser. The saint sees in himself nothing
but sin. The Pharisee looks down on others,
the saint looks down on himself. He grows up in his view of Christ
and he grows low in his view of himself. He echoes what John
the Baptist said of Christ, he must increase, I must decrease. Now I want to show you three
ways the Lord sanctifies his people. Turn with me to Jude
1. Jude verse 1, Jude, the servant
of Jesus Christ, the brother of James, to them that are sanctified
by God and preserved in Jesus Christ and called. The very first
thing the Lord does before He even calls us or preserves us
is sanctifies us. And He does that through election. The Father sanctifies His people
through election. Turn with me to Hebrews 13. Hebrews
13, verse 12. Wherefore, Jesus also, that he
might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without
the gate. You see, this sanctification
is just not something we do ourselves. The only way you or I appear
different from anyone else in the eyes of God is under the
blood of Christ. And that's where I want to be.
Turn with me to 2 Thessalonians 2. 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 13, But
we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved
of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you
to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief in the
truth. While everyone else in this world
is dead in sins, God's people are alive through the regeneration
of the Holy Spirit. I want to look at one last verse.
We've looked at this a few times on Sunday. I'd like to look at
it one more time. 1 Peter 1, verse 2. 1 Peter 1 verse 2, elect according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification
of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ. Now tell me, where in that do
you see man's contribution? There is none, because sanctification
is entirely a work of God. The work of the Father is sanctification
and election, the work of the Son is sanctification through
His blood, and the work of the Spirit and sanctification is
to quicken those who were once dead in trespasses and sins. Back to our text. Here's what God says next to
Jeremiah, verse five, the last part. And I ordain thee a prophet
unto the nations. Jeremiah, I've got a task for
you. You're going to preach the gospel. And believer, your task might
not be to preach the gospel, but nevertheless, you've been
ordained a prophet. Turn with me to Isaiah 63, just
back a few pages. Usually when we think of a prophet,
we think of one who predicts the future. And yes, that's part
of what being a prophet is, but it's really not the main thing.
The true hallmark of every prophet is to speak the truth concerning
God, and every believer speaks the truth about God. Isaiah 63,
verse 8. For he said, Surely they are
my people, children which will not lie. So he was their Savior. Now in this world, It's filled
with lies. It's filled with people telling
lies about God, but there's one group of people who they tell
the truth, and they won't not tell the truth. Every child of
God tells the truth about who God is. He tells the truth about
his sinful self and he tells the truth about how God saves
sinners. Every believer tells the truth
about the sovereign God who does what he will, with whom he will,
when he will, where he will. Nebuchadnezzar put it best when
he said, and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing.
And he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and
among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his
hand or say unto him, What doest thou? Job himself said of the
Lord, But he is in one mind, and who can turn him? And what
his soul desireth, even that he doeth." Every believer is
quick to tell the truth about his wretched state. he readily,
willingly, and freely admits that he is nothing, nothing but
sin. Hear this, no one begging for
mercy ever came to God pretending to be something he's not, a good
person. No one ever coming to God pleaded
for mercy on the grounds of his own works. His own works is no
good with God. And no one ever coming to God,
asking for mercy, said, Jesus, I made a decision for you. No,
Lord, I don't even have the will to believe. I need you to make
me willing to believe. Every believer tells the truth
about who God is, who they are. and how God saves sinners, that
every believer rejoices to speak the truth of salvation 100% completely
of grace, grace alone, Christ alone, faith alone. Every believer
believes that salvation is a result of one singular work. The question is, by whose work
do you believe you're saved? That's always the question. And
every believer says, Christ, alone. And everything else is
a lie. And that do we all prophesy. Turn with me to Revelation 5. Maybe this sounds a little strange
that we're a prophet. Me, a prophet? I'm just a sinner. But look with me at Revelation
5 verse 9. And they sung a new song saying,
thou art worthy to take the book. and to open the seals thereof,
for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood
out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, and hast
made us unto our God kings and priests." We're kings and priests,
and we're prophets, just like our Lord. As inheritors of the
kingdom of God, His people are kings and reign with Him in glory. As priests, we have direct access
to the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ by faith. And we all prophesy who the Lord
really is, who we are, and how God saves. The Lord Jesus is
our prophet, priest, and king. And Romans 8.29 says we're predestined
to be conformed to the image of His Son. In all aspects is
the Father conforming us to the image of His Son. Alright, back
to our text. Let's skip down to verse 10. Here's Jeremiah's task, and here's
what the Lord does every time the gospel is preached to sinners. Verse 10. See, I have this day
set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out
and to pull down and to destroy and to throw down, to build and
to plant. There are six things that the
Lord is going to do as Jeremiah preaches the gospel. Four of
them seem negative and two of them positive. But all six are
for our good. Before you can build a building,
there must be an excavation. And before you can plant, there
needs to be a tilling of the soil and the pulling up of weeds. Now, literally speaking in this
passage, the Lord is going to scatter Israel and he's going
to bring them into captivity to the land of Babylon. And 70
years later, he's going to gather them again, and he's going to
build them and plant them. This whole world is a Babylon,
and the Lord has scattered his people throughout it. And here's
what I need the Lord to do for me while I sojourn here. I need
him to root out my self-righteousness. I need him to root out my thoughts
of vain glory and pride. I need every one of my thoughts
to be brought into the captivity of obedience to the obedience
of Christ. And I need the Lord to pull something
down. every imagination that I have of self-salvation. I don't want to deceive myself
into thinking that just because I'm a believer I'm somehow above
or immune to thinking that thinking that I can do something
to contribute to my salvation or that I can do something to
please God or to make myself a little holier and holier, I
need to constantly be reminded that Christ is all my salvation
and I need the Lord to pull down every thought contrary to that.
Here's what else I need. I need the Lord to utterly obliterate
and destroy my idols. We're not so much like the Old
Testament Israelites who made idols, who worshipped idols of
hand. The idols we tend to worship are the idols of our own minds,
and the idols we create in our own minds, and this is so insidious,
tend to resemble very much the God of the Bible. And here's
what this idol says. God loves everyone. Christ died
for everyone. And God's trying to save everyone. That's a God who can't save,
a God who can't hear, a God who can't see, and a God who has
no power. That's a God who is dependent
upon the idolater to let him have his way and to grant him
permission to save him. That's the idol that humankind
has created in the imagination of their wicked hearts. And that's
the worst kind of idol there is. I need the Lord to completely
destroy that idol. The Apostle Paul was thankful
that the Thessalonians had turned to God from their idols to serve
the true and the living God. And I need God to turn me to
himself, the true and the living God who saves from the false
and the dead God who's trying to save everybody but doesn't
save anyone. And the last thing I need done
away with is the Lord to throw down my tower of Babel. any attempt
of rebellion, any attempt to usurp his reign and say, look
at all the wonderful things, look at all the wonderful works
that I've done in your name, Jesus. Look at all the miracles
that I've done in your name. Look, I've cast out demons in
your name. I need the Lord. to throw down
that. I need him to throw down all
my thoughts of being in control and show me that salvation is
all together in his hands. Now these four things that the
Lord does They seem like the hard part. Nothing's too hard
for God, but in our experience, they seem like the hard part. The rooting out and the pulling
down and the destroying and the throwing down seem the most difficult
for us. It seems like it never ends.
It's a constant battle between the new man and the old man,
and it continually rages, and it seems to grow in intensity. The older we get, the more we
grow in grace, and we grow weary, and we just want it to stop.
It seems like the Lord is constantly performing an operation of grace
in our hearts. And it doesn't feel good to be
rebuked or to be chastened or to be humbled. But let me ask
you this. Do you want the Lord to stop? Do you want the Lord to just
ease up on you? No, if anything, you want the
Lord to completely, utterly slay you. Job said, though He slay
me, I will trust in Him. And unless He slays you, you
won't trust in Him. You will only trust in a God
who wounds you before He heals you. You'll only trust in a God
who first kills you and then makes you alive. I know we grow tired of this
old man constantly beating us down, constantly tempting us,
constantly trying to take our eyes off Christ, but one day
this strife between the new man and the old man, it'll end. The
rooting out, the pulling down, the destroying and the throwing
down will be finished. And we'll shed this flesh and
the last shred of our self-righteousness will be done away with. But while
we're still in this world, the Lord also performs a work of
reviving. It's a building and a planting.
And I've already mentioned how the Lord builds us down in grace. but he also plants us in Christ.
I need to be planted in Christ. Turn with me to Romans 6. Romans 6 verse 5, this is how
I need to be planted in Christ. For if we have been planted together
in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness
of his resurrection. I want to be planted in Christ
such that when the Father sees me, he sees me as being dead. having died in Christ. This is
the only way to be planted in Christ, to be found dead to yourself
and dead in Him. I want to be planted in Christ
such that when the Father sees me, He sees the blood of Christ. And He says, He's dead. There's
no sin in Him. There's nothing to punish Him
for. Turn with me to one last verse,
Psalm 1. Psalm 1 verse 3, And he shall
be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth
forth his fruit in his season. And these rivers of water is
Christ. And as a tree of God I want to
be planted by those rivers. I want to be planted by Christ
and receive all my life from Him. God's trees might not grow the
tallest, but their roots grow deep, and they're rooted in Christ. And on the Day of Judgment, every
tree that's not planted in Christ He'll be rooted out. He'll be
pulled down, destroyed, and thrown down. But every tree that's planted
in Christ, well, it'll be well with his soul. Thank you.