All right, brethren, Jeremiah
44. Jeremiah chapter 44. Now this
is Jeremiah's last message to the children of Judah. That's
about all I could find to make this a last sermon for 2019. But I hope this sermon is received
better than Jeremiah's was. And I trust it will be. But these
words are important. This is an important thing for
us to learn no matter what time of the year it is. And the reason
is because every sinner has a responsibility to obey God's word. Every sinner has a responsibility
to obey God's Word. Now, the natural man cannot obey
God's Word. He won't receive it, nor can
he even obey it. He won't submit to it. But that
doesn't change the fact that he's responsible. Inability does
not negate responsibility. People say, well God wouldn't
have given a law that his people couldn't keep. If I came to you
and I decided I'm going to show these people that they can't
stack marbles. And I came to you and I said,
now if you stack these marbles, I'll give you all the money in
my bank account. Well, everything I said was true. If they could stack them, I wouldn't
give them all the money in my bank account. But that doesn't
mean they can. They didn't mean they can. But when God gave His law, even
though we couldn't keep it, He didn't change the fact that we're
responsible to keep it. But then the believer who's been
regenerated by God, he's given a new heart, he's given faith,
and he's made willing to obey God's Word. He's made willing
to cast all his care on Christ as his only righteousness, as
his only holiness, trusting Christ alone. And he's made willing
to love his brethren. Now, God's saints don't obey
perfectly. That's why we can't ever look
to any obedience of ours for righteousness or holiness or
acceptance with God. We don't obey perfectly. Sin
is mixed with all we do, with everything we do. We look to
Christ alone. And when we do not obey our Master,
God chastens us. We're going to see Him pouring
out judgment. right here, punishing these children
of Judah. God doesn't do that for those
Christ redeemed. He chastens us and turns us from
our error to keep us partaking of Christ's holiness. We saw
that Thursday night. The Holy Spirit gives us a heart
in the new man and makes us willing to be like Mary. Remember Mary
said concerning Christ, she said, whatsoever He says to you, do
it. Whatever He says to you, do it.
And that's the heart He gives His child. Whatever Christ says,
I want to do it. I want to obey Him. I don't want
to disobey Him. Now in that first message, we
saw a gospel precept. We saw something that Christ
commands His people for the good of His people, for the good of
His church, to receive our brethren. To not judge our brethren, to
not try to discern what their heart is, and we can't do that,
but to trust them to Christ. He tells us that when your brother's
fallen, he's overtaken in a fault, restore him in the spirit of
meekness. Consider it in yourself, lest
you also be puffed up. These are gospel precepts that
Christ teaches His people to obey. And the Spirit of God gives
you a heart to obey. Not perfectly, not without sin,
but He gives you a heart when it's needful and He's going to
keep you from He will keep you bearing the burden of your brethren. He will give you the strength
and the wisdom to do these things He has called you to do. And
so, with that being the case, I thought it good to look at
this message because here we behold God's Word going forth
to a people who did not obey. These people did not obey the
Word of God. And we see here what God did
to those who do not obey. His word. And I will try through
the course of this to show you some mercy and grace in the middle
of all this judgment. Now it begins here and it says,
the word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews which
dwell in the land of Egypt, he names some cities there in Egypt. Now, this was the word of the
Lord. This was the word that came to
Jeremiah to go preach to these people from Judah who were now
in Egypt. Now, we've been going through
Exodus and we've seen over there that God delivered the children
of Israel and the children of Judah. He delivered them out
of Egypt. But now, here they are and they fled back to Egypt. They fled back to Egypt. Egypt
typifies that from which Christ has redeemed us. Egypt typifies
that which Christ delivers us from. Idolatry, sin, the bondage
of the law, the bondage of our flesh, this ungodly world. These
are all the enemies that Christ has redeemed us from. That's
what Egypt pictures. And these Jews who had been delivered
from Egypt and now go back They are a picture of somebody who
professes to believe on Christ, professes that he has been redeemed
from all his enemies, and yet in time goes back to that which
he was professing to be redeemed from. What caused him to go back
to Egypt? God sent a trial. God is going
to try faith. And if a person's faith is not
the genuine gift of God, then that person is going to do what
they did. When God sent this trial, He
sent it to judge Judah, Jerusalem, because of their idolatry. For His people, He made them
obedient. They bowed to the King Nebuchadnezzar. He took them into the land of
Babylon, a picture of Christ there. God purged them of their
idolatry, He corrected them by His chastening hand, and He brings
them back to Jerusalem, and they worship God. But these people
here, they didn't have faith. They didn't have true faith.
They claimed to, but when the trial came, it exposed them.
Rather than looking to God for salvation, rather than hearing
God's word and bowing to King Nebuchadnezzar as God commanded,
they tried to save themselves by fleeing back to Egypt. Fleeing
back to Egypt. So they typify those who profess
faith in Christ, but go back into the world, back into idolatry,
back to the law, back to the sin, proving that they never
were truly Christ-redeemed. That's what they prove by that.
So God asks a question of them. Wherefore commit ye this great
evil? Wherefore commit ye this great
evil? Now, if there's anybody here
who would disobey our Lord Jesus Christ, anytime that you're faced
with a situation and you know that if you do this thing, it's
going to be directly contrary to what God's Word teaches us
to do. You know you're going to disobey
God if you do this. I want us to ask this question,
wherefore commit I this great evil? What is the reason why I am committing
this great evil? And I'll show you in context
to this passage some things that why he says wherefore. Wherefore
looks back to some things he said. Why did he say wherefore
have you committed this evil? First of all, wherefore commit
I this great evil when I have seen God's judgment upon the
disobedient? I've seen God's judgment upon
the disobedient, so why would I disobey God? Look here in verse
2. Thus saith the Lord of hosts,
the God of Israel, and he keeps calling himself that because
he's in control of everything going on here. He's the Lord
of hosts. He's the God of Israel. You know what I found remarkable?
At this time that He's calling Himself the God of Israel, He
has destroyed Israel. They've been besieged, Jerusalem's
been destroyed, Israel's been destroyed, and they don't even
really exist. They're in bondage in Babylon.
But He is the God of His spiritual elect Israel, and that never
changes. That never changes. But look
what he says here. Ye have seen, you've seen all
the evil, the judgment that I have brought upon Jerusalem and upon
all the cities of Judah. Behold, this day they're a desolation. No man dwells there. Because
of their wickedness, which they have committed to provoke me
to anger. How'd they do it? They went to
burn incense and to serve other gods whom they knew not, neither
they, ye, nor your fathers. Now listen to this Word right
here. I should think, when I know I'm fixing to disobey God's Word,
and I'll tell you something about our sin, it's all willful sin. When you disobey the Word of
God, you and I do it willfully. We do it willfully. We don't
sin against our will. We sin willfully. And usually
we know exactly what God's Word says, and we do it anyway. And
when that's the case, brethren, I should ask myself this question.
What does God call disobedience? He calls it here wickedness. He calls it wickedness. He says
it's that which provokes him to anger. Now their disobedience
was idolatry. But brethren, anything contrary
to God's word is sin. Anything contrary to God's Word
is wickedness, and it provokes God to anger. You and I have
seen God's judgment upon the disobedient. We've seen it. In history, from Adam all the
way up to our present time, we have seen the judgment of God
upon the disobedient. We've seen it. God poured out
judgment. We're looking at it here in our
text. He poured out judgment on Jerusalem until they were
a desolation. He poured out judgment on them
until there was no man left inhabiting Jerusalem or any of the cities
of Judah. Well, just beholding that judgment
is not going to make us obedient to God. It's not the judgment
of God that brings a sinner to repentance. What is it? It's
the goodness of God. And you know what it's going
to take to make you and I turn from evil? It's going to take
God coming to us and making us see God's judgment upon the disobedient
by looking to Christ. When we look to Christ on the
cross, Remember this. Christ saw the judgment of God. He knew the judgment of God from
eternity. He knew holy and just God and
He knew the judgment of God. He is God. He knew the destruction
that would be poured out on all who disobey God. He knew this.
And He knew that judgment would come from the hand of His Father
who He loved. And yet our Lord Jesus Christ
entered into everlasting covenant with the Father to come to where
His people are, just like He sent Jeremiah into Egypt, God
sent His Son into this Egypt that we live in. And our Lord
Jesus Christ entered covenant to come into this world, and
the sinless one agreed to bear all the disobedience of His people. to bear all the wickedness of
His people, to bear our idolatry, and our adultery, and our murder,
and all our sin, all the sins of thought that we have. You
imagine how much sin Christ bore. You and I can't even count the
sins we've thought, much less the ones we've committed. That's
just one sinner. Christ bore the disobedience
of every single elect child of God throughout history. Talk
about a weight. Talk about a weight. That's what
He bore. And in love to His people, He
went to that cross and we see on that cross the judgment of
God justly poured out on the disobedient. We see Christ taking
our punishment, the punishment of God's elect in our place,
in our room, in our stand. Now if He blesses that to our
heart, that will make you and I not want to disobey our Lord
Jesus Christ. That will make you and I receive
our brethren and be long-suffering to our brethren and restore our
brethren in meekness. That will make us say, wherefore
commit I this great evil seeing that I've seen God's judgment
poured out on Christ in my room instead. That's what it will
make you say. Now secondly, We brought to the point of not to
sin against God. We should say, wherefore commit
I this great evil when I've seen God's judgment upon all who ignore
and reject God's Word? Why would I sin against God when
I've seen what He does to those that reject His Word? Look here
in verse 4. God says, Howbeit I sent to you
all my servants the prophets, rising early, sending them, saying,
O do not this abominable thing that I hate. But they hearkened
not, nor inclined their ear to turn from their wickedness. They
kept burning incense to other gods. Wherefore, my fury and
mine anger was poured forth and was kindled in the cities of
Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, and they are wasted and desolate
as at this day. Though Israel and Judah disobeyed,
God continued to send His prophets to them. He continued. He sent His prophets immediately
when God saw that they needed to be corrected. He says, rising
early and sending them. God sent them immediately when
they needed to be sent forth. God spoke His Word clearly and
plainly to them through these prophets. He said, Oh, do not
this abominable thing that I hate. Now brethren, in all of that
we see four really good things that should constrain us from
sin against God. Four things. One, God sent to me His preacher
speaking God's Word. He sent His Word to me. And God has told me in His Word,
whatever sin it is that I'm about to commit, God has said to me
in His Word, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate.
But not only that, think about the fact that disobedience to
God, think of what it is, what God says it is. It's an abominable
thing. That means it's a stinking thing. I don't want to be found with
stinking spots all over me when my Savior returns. Remember Peter
said, he said, seeing that you're looking for these things, be
diligent that you may be found of Him without spot. I want to
be found of Him not having my own righteousness, but the righteousness
which is of Christ Jesus my Lord, so that I don't have any abomination. That's how I want to be found
when He returns. And then another thing to consider is how God
regards sin. God says here, I hate it. I hate it. Will we love that
which God says He hates? Will we love that wickedness,
that sin that God says He hates? And here's a fourth reason. God
didn't just do for me what He did for these people. He sent
them His prophets. And they spoke God's Word. But
God didn't give them a new heart. He didn't bless that Word to
their heart. He left them to do what they would with God's
Word and to show you and me exactly what we did with God's Word before
God made it affectionate in our heart. We turned our back and
rejected God's Word. But God sent the Spirit to us
and gave us spiritual life and faith and made us believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and trust Him. And when He did so, He made
us see this. For these folks, God poured out
His fury on them. He poured out His wrath upon
them until they were desolate, totally desolate, totally destroyed. And yet, here we are exactly
like them. Exactly like them. No difference.
Disobeyed God's Word all our days of rebellion. And yet God
poured out grace and mercy on us. He poured out grace on us. Justifying us. Justifying us
freely from all our sin. That is the constraint of a believer. That's the constraint that makes
a believer say, wherefore am I committing this evil? I see
what God's done for me by His grace. Thirdly, we should ask
ourselves, wherefore commit I this great evil when disobedience
not only hurts me, but it also hurts my children. I'm not the only one that's hurt,
though I am, it also hurts my children. Look here in verse
7. Therefore now thus saith the
Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel, wherefore commit ye
this great evil against your souls? against your own soul,
to cut off from you man and woman, child and suckling out of Judah,
to leave you none to remain. You provoke me unto wrath with
the works of your hand. You burn incense to other gods
in the land of Egypt, whether you're going to dwell, that you
might cut yourselves off. That you might be a curse and
a reproach among all the nations of the earth. You bring in reproach. On God he's saying. Have you
forgotten the wickedness of your fathers? The wickedness of the
kings of Judah? The wickedness of their wives?
And your own wickedness? And the wickedness of your wives?
Which they've committed in the land of Judah and the streets
of Jerusalem? They're not humbled. They're not contrite even unto
this day, God said. Neither have they feared nor
walked in my law nor in my statutes that I set before you and before
your fathers. When I disobey God's gospel precepts,
anything God teaches a believer in the New Testament, when I
disobey His gospel precepts, my sin is not only against God,
it's not only against Christ Jesus my Lord, I'm sinning against
myself. I'm sinning against myself. I'm
cutting off myself by this. Sin is the cause of everything
sorrowful. Sin is the cause of everything
sorrowful. It's the cause of us, by nature,
not having any spiritual discernment. It's the cause of division. It's
the cause of destruction. It's the cause of every disease.
There's nothing but sorrow that comes out of sin. God said, through
James, He said the end thereof is death. When sin is conceived
and brought forth, it brings forth death. But not only does my sin hurt
me, my sin hurts my children and their children. You know,
Scripture says whenever Moses saw God's glory, he said, God
said, I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. Now, that
doesn't mean that God makes the children bear the punishment
for the sins that the fathers committed. That's not what He
means by that. What did God say in Ezekiel?
That's what the children were complaining about. They were
saying, we've had the fathers ate sour grapes and our teeth
are set on edge. That was a proverbial saying
they had. And it meant our fathers sinned
and we're having to pay the price. We're having to be punished for
it. God said no. God's just. He said the soul
that sinneth, the individual soul that sinneth, it shall die. You're not going to die for the
sin of your father, you're going to die for your own sin, God said. Well, here's what he means by
that though. Due to their idolatry, due to
the idolatry of the fathers, brethren, God cut off the fathers. His punishment was to cut off
the fathers by destroying Jerusalem and destroying all the cities
of Judah. That's how He punished the fathers. And because He did
that, Their children didn't get to grow up in Jerusalem. Their
children had to grow up in Egypt. They had to grow up in Egypt. Their children and their wives
became idolaters like their fathers. They followed in their steps.
The fathers passed to their children the results of their own judgment. What God gave them, it passed
it on to them as well as teaching them idolatry and thus bringing
judgment on themselves for their own sin. Let's see if I can illustrate
this. You take a father, robs a store,
gets caught, goes to prison. Well, his children are going
to grow up without a father. That his iniquity is being visited
on them in that regard. They don't have a father. They're
going to have to quit school so they can go to work and support
the family. And since they're not getting
an education, and they're working and not making much money, they'll
probably end up following their father's step and robbing a place
too, just like him. You see what he means? That's
how your sin never just affects you. You're the only one that will
get punished for that sin. But now, for God's child, we
don't get punished, we get corrected. He doesn't pour out justice on
us. He already did that. He corrects us. But, whatever
that correction involved, that's going to affect my children. You know, David sinned with Bathsheba,
had her husband killed. God took the baby. And God told
David, the sword will never leave your house, and it never did.
And so everybody in his house had to suffer that sword not
leaving the house, which was David's punishment. But they
felt the effects of it. That's what God means by the
visiting the iniquity. And He said, yet after all this
judgment upon them, He said the fathers nor their wives were
humbled in heart. And so neither the children nor
their wives were humbled in heart. There was no gospel. There was
no gospel there. And God said this is a heart
issue. Your hearts are not humbled.
Believer, here's how we're made obedient. Here's how we're made
obedient. Our Father, our everlasting Father,
The last Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, lived before God as our
representative head. They saw their fathers live in
sin and disobey God, and they bore the effects of it. Here's
our constraint. We see our Father live in holiness
of heart, humble before God, in perfect righteous obedience
to God. They sinned against themselves,
and the judgment God poured out on them, they were cut off. Our
Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross, and He bore that judgment
for us. I don't have time to read verses
11 down through here, but what you'll see is God set His face
against them. God said, you've turned your
face from me, I'll set my face against you. Well, God set His
face against Christ in the room instead of His people. God poured
out judgment on Him in the room instead of His people. The sword
was awakened and was pierced into God's own Son in place of
us, instead of into us. The sword of justice. And God
says what Christ did, we did. When He was cut off, He says
there, look there in In verse 11, 44 verse 11, he
says there, I'm sorry, verse 45. He says, from the least to the
greatest, by the sword, by the famine, there shall be an execration,
an astonishment, a curse, a reproach. He said, I'm going to cut off
every one of them. I'm going to cut off every one
of them. And brethren, that's what God did in Christ for His
people. In Christ, every elect man, woman,
child, and suckling was cut off in Christ. When Christ was cut
off. I am crucified with Christ. I am. I am. I was crucified with
Christ. So when I'm tempted to disobey
my Savior, Let me ask myself, why, wherefore am I committing
this great evil seeing I'm crucified with Christ? My old man has been
destroyed. You see, just like God destroyed
all those in Judah, all the children, from the least to the greatest,
He's going to destroy every sinner in this world. He has to. But
the difference for you and me who He chose, He destroyed us
in Christ. He cut us off in Christ. So that
now the life I live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who
liveth in me. That same One who loved me and
gave Himself for me. I need to constantly remind myself
of this. I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless,
I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And everything I'm
doing now that's true and right, I do it by one. I do it by the
faithfulness of Christ living in me, controlling me, constraining
me, turning me, directing me. It's all of Him. I can't turn
my back on Him and commit this sin. Now lastly, When we're brought
to this place, we should say, wherefore commit I this great
evil when Christ has saved me from the bondage of my sin nature
and continues to do so? How can I commit this evil when
not only has He saved me from justice, He keeps saving me from
my own sin nature, from myself. The wives heard Jeremiah indict
them. As Jeremiah was preaching, he
indicted these wives. And they stood it long as they
could stand it. And they finally, they were proud,
they were arrogant, they were stiff necked. And they finally
stood it long as they could stand it. And so they looked God's
prophet straight in the face. And they said this to him, verse
16. As for the word that thou has spoken unto us in the name
of the Lord. And I'm sure they said that sarcastically. Because to them, all they saw
was a man standing there. And they said, we will not hearken
unto thee. We won't. We're going to certainly
keep our vows to our idol God, but we won't hear a word you
say in the name of God. And then, not only that, verse
19, they said, furthermore, They said, when we burned incense
and poured out drink offerings, did we make these cakes to worship
her and pour out these drink offerings unto her without our
men? You're sitting here accusing
us women of sin. Did we go and worship this idol
and did not have our men right beside us? You know what they're
doing? They're doing what sin does. Two things. One, they're
justifying themselves for their idolatry. And two, they're throwing
their husbands under the bus. That's the arrogant, proud heart
we had while we were dead in trespasses and in sin. That's
the exact same heart we had. And sadly, brethren, as believers,
as believers, we still have this sinful flesh to deal with. We praise our idols for providing
for us. Don't we? They said when we were
offering these things, our idols provided for us. But when we
stopped offering, we were wanting then our idols to stop providing
for us. They attributed this to their
idols. Don't we do that? Let me see. We praise our cleverness. We praise our business acumen. We praise our professions. I'm
talking about our jobs. We praise our children. We praise
our riches. These are all our idols, things
that we praise and think have provided for us, provided something
for us. But you know what? While we're
praising our idol, And we're saying about how we, boy I was
wise in how I handled that situation. Look how far ahead I come out. Look how I provided for myself
and all the money I'm making now. Well we praised our idols. Just like Hosea did for Gomer. Laying the oil and the wool and
the flax at her door. And Gomer praised her idols for
doing it. All my lovers have been good
to me. That's what we did. And all the while it was our
Lord Jesus Christ providing for us. And He continues to be the
one to provide for us. Christ is a faithful husband
to His bride. He's a faithful husband to His
bride. And He's a faithful loving father
to His children. How was he faithful to his bride
and to his children? He raised us up under the preaching
of the gospel and saw to it that we heard the truth. That's what
a faithful father does. That's what a faithful husband
does. Our Lord Jesus, our husband, our father raised us up under
the gospel and made sure we heard it. He interceded for us. He prayed the Father on our behalf
for the Father to send forth the Spirit and give us life.
And the Father did just that. He sent forth the Spirit. He
put fear in our hearts. He gave us faith in Christ. And
Christ clothed us in His righteousness. Christ feeds us the bread from
heaven. And He provides temporal things
for us too. He said, don't you worry about
what you're going to eat and drink like the Gentiles do, like
the unbelievers do. He said, your heavenly Father
knows you have need of these things. He provided Christ, He'll
provide these things for you. And He keeps providing for us,
and as we need it, He continues to correct us through the preaching
of the Word. I hope right now somebody is
being corrected by the preaching of God's Word. This is what He
does through the preaching of His Word. He's a faithful husband. He's a loving father. And He
chastens the children whom He loves through His Word. Now if
He had done for these women in our text, if He had done for
them through Jeremiah's preaching, what He's done for you and me.
They would have loved Christ and they would have loved Jeremiah.
They wouldn't have talked to Jeremiah that way if God did
for them what He's done for us in our heart. The man God used
to preach the gospel to me, he could do no wrong. He could do
no wrong. He was a sinner. Oh, he said
and did sinful things, but not in my eyes. In my eyes, he could
do no wrong. That's the man God used to preach
the gospel to me. He was my grandfather and he
was a grandfather to me. And he was also my pastor. And
anything he needed, I was there. If he needed anything, he needed
help, I was there to help him. Why? Because He preached the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to me. God puts His love in our
hearts, love for Christ, and love for our brethren, and love
for those who minister the gospel to us. It's all of God. He did it all, but He used a
worm like me to preach it. And God gave me a heart for that
worm and the other worms that were in that congregation. Because
that's what God's love does. It unites us with Christ and
with one another. Now, when He chastens us, you
know what we do? We praise our husband for any
ability we have. Even ability to believe. They
said, was it not our husbands that were with us? And we say,
is it not Christ our husband with us that makes us to to come
and believe on Him and to love one another. Doesn't He give
us the ability to do anything good? He gets the praise and
the glory for it. God told them, verse 21, He said,
Did not the Lord remember your idolatry and came it not into
His mind? But He says to you and me, I
remember your sins no more for Christ's sake. I've forgiven
them and I don't remember them anymore for Christ's sake. Now
you go forgive your brethren. That's what He says to us. Since
they had sworn to keep their vows, God said, Behold, I have
sworn by My great name, and I am setting My face against you,
and your name won't ever come out of My mouth again. My name
won't come out of your mouth again. You know what He has done
for us? Because He could swear by no
greater, He swore by Himself, saying, Blessing I will bless
thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. Due to their sins,
verse 27, God said, I'll watch over them for evil and not for
good till they be consumed. Due to Christ, God says, I'll
watch over you for good and justify you and keep you until I bring
you home to glory. What He did for them in judgment
is just the opposite of what He does for us in grace. He gave
him a sign. He said, you just know this,
that my words are going to stand. You're going to find out who's
true, God or you. And he said, here's how you're
going to know it. You ran to Egypt trying to escape the king
of Babylon, because I let the king of Babylon take Zedekiah,
the king of Judah captive. So you ran to Egypt trying to
save yourself from that. He said, I'm going to turn the
king of Babylon and make him go in there and attack Egypt
and conquer Egypt and bring you out of there and bring you into
bondage too. And then you're going to know this was God's
Word. God's Word is true, not mine. But you know what He does
for you and me in Christ? He's given you and me assurance
in that He's raised Christ from the dead. And He's given us the
earnest of the Spirit or the Holy Spirit, which is the earnest,
the guarantee of our inheritance until Christ returns to redeem
His purchased possession. So believer, what I'm trying
to show you is this. Christ has delivered His people
from Egypt. Let us not disobey His Word and
run back and get into bondage in all of that which He's delivered
us from. Instead, let us call out to God
to save us. Let's call out to Christ to save
us. And when He gives you His Word,
as Mary said, whatsoever He says to you, do it. If it's in this
book, it's for your good, and it's for His glory. Do it. Do it. And when you do, give
Him all the glory, because that's the only way you did it.