If you would, turn with me to
Jeremiah chapter 32. Jeremiah chapter 32. As you know, last week we looked
at John the Baptist as a pattern of a true preacher. And I'm reminded
again of the words of Isaiah in chapter 40, as he foretold
the preaching of John the Baptist and the reason as to why he was
to preach. This is the reason that we preach,
to comfort God's people. Comfort ye, comfort ye, God said
my people, sayeth your God. The true preacher is to speak
comfortably to Jerusalem, to God's people, God's church. And how do we speak comfortably
to the people of God? Well, first, we've got to understand
who the people of God are. You see, the religion of this
world will tell you that it's the whole world, everyone in
the world. And John 3.16 is their proof. For God so loved the world
that He gave His only begotten Son. And of course, The first
question that comes to my mind is if God loved the whole world,
then the whole world's gonna be saved. There's not any that
God loved or any that Christ died for that will wind up in
hell, not a one. So who did Christ save? Who are
the people that God calls his? Whosoever believeth in him. They shall not perish, but have
everlasting life. God loves and calls those who
believe on Christ. That's who God calls His people. This is not speaking of everyone
in the world, you know that, but those who believe and trust
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Who are these whosoevers? Whosoever
believes in Christ. If the whole world believed on
Christ, then there'd be no cause No reason for a place called
hell. For God sent His Son not into
the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him
might be saved. He that believeth on Him is not
condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because
he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation
This is the reason men and women are condemned. That light has
come into the world and men and women love darkness rather than
light because their deeds were evil. Isaiah said, speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem. How does a preacher do that?
Well, God says, tell her that her warfare is accomplished.
There's nothing for her to do. It's all been accomplished. Just
trust and rest in Jesus Christ. Tell her that her iniquity is
pardoned. You know who that word pardon
means something to? One that's in prison. One that
is in bondage. This speaks of a full pardon
of sin. You know, a full pardon is defined
as an entitlement to an expunction, a removing, a complete removing
of all arrest records relating to the conviction and the conviction
itself is removed. A pardon from God means approval
from Him. It's to be accepted of God. And
according to Leviticus chapter 22, verse 21, it has to be perfect
for God to accept it. We cannot provide perfection.
Only Christ can. So if a sinner is pardoned by
God, then that sinner is made perfect and the only way to be
pardoned and the only way to be made perfect is to be accepted
in the Beloved and that Beloved is the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a very simple message.
So according to John 3.16, whosoever believes in Jesus Christ will
not perish but have everlasting life. Do you believe in Christ?
Do you believe on Christ? Is He your everything? Is He
your righteousness before God? Is the God of heaven and earth
trying to save? No. Does God, our Creator, want
to save but has to have our cooperation in order to do so? Well, knowing
something of myself, friends, my inability, my unwillingness
by nature to have Christ to rule over me, I don't find any comfort
at all in that. None at all. The only comfort
I find as a fallen sinner is to know beyond a shadow of a
doubt the salvation is of the Lord. It's the Lord's doing.
It's by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I never grow tired
of hearing that message. No believer does. It's knowing
that God has the power to save me. It's knowing that God can
give me the ability to believe, to make me willing to believe.
It's knowing that God can overthrow my will and His will be done. That's where my comfort is found.
It's found in knowing that God can do anything and everything. And I put emphasis on those two
words, anything, and everything. There's nothing that God cannot
do. Okay, Jeremiah chapter 32. In verse 17, the prophet Jeremiah
makes a very competent declaration concerning his great God. In
just a few short words, he proclaims the sovereignty, the omnipotence
of his God, and he proclaims that his God, he said, and to
his God, that there is nothing too hard for thee. You see that? Lord, you can do anything and
you can do everything. There's nothing that you can't
do. Do we believe that? Just a few verses later, the
Lord asked Jeremiah, the same prophet who had made this confident
statement, he asked him, is there anything too hard for me? Verse 27. And this is why a true
child of God never brags on their faith. The only bragging that
a believer does is in and on their Lord who is faithful. You see, we may believe as to
have no doubt about the Lord's ability to do anything and everything,
and yet because of the unperceivable unbelief that's within us, we
may not be prepared to put our faith into practice for ourselves. Jeremiah might say to the Lord,
there's nothing too hard for thee, yet deep within the recesses
of his own heart, there's so much mistrust that the Lord finds
it necessary to put him in remembrance in the form of a question to
ask him, is there anything? Is there anything too hard for
me? The Lord had given Jeremiah a great deal of insight concerning
his own heart. Speaking to Jeremiah directly
in chapter 17, the Lord said, blessed is the man that trusteth
in the Lord, whose hope the Lord is. for he shall be a tree planted
by the waters that spreadeth out her roots by the river and
shall not see when he cometh, but her leaf shall be green and
shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease
from yielding fruit." And then in the very next sentence, the
Lord warned Jeremiah and us of the enemy within. Did you hear
me? There's an enemy within us. And
he had him to write this, the heart is deceitful above all
things and desperately wicked. And then he asked a question,
who can know it? He said, I, the Lord, search
the heart. I try the reins even to give
every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of
his doing. And I've heard it said often
in my life that we are our own worst enemies. You know what? I believe that's
so. There's a great adversary within
us. What's an adversary? One's opponent
in a contest, conflict, or dispute. According to the Lord God of
heaven and earth, there's nothing more deceitful, nothing more
desperately wicked than our hearts by nature. So wicked, so deceitful
that God says deceitful above all things, everything. and that
we cannot know it. I hear folks say, I've said it
myself, well, I know my heart. Well, we don't really. We don't
know the depths of the depravity of our heart. Often the Lord
gives us a whiff of it and it's not pleasant. The Lord revealed
the same thing to Moses in the book of Genesis when he wrote
about man's wickedness in the days of Noah. Moses heard it
straight from the mouth of God and he wrote, God saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the earth. Why? Because it was
great in the man. And that every imagination of
the thoughts of what? The heart. Only evil continually. That's what God says our hearts
are by nature. I would say that our hearts are
a great adversary in their fallen state by nature. They're against
us. Outside of the believer's union
with the Lord Jesus, our hearts, our actions, our way of life
is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked and only
evil continually. And you hear these things all
the time. We talk about this. Brothers and sisters, this world's
religion gives way too much credit to Satan, and does not discredit
his rivalry enough. And when I speak of his rivalry,
my rivalry, I'm talking about me, myself, and I. That heart within me. And God
makes His people aware of who and what they are by nature,
and of who and what they are apart from Christ. We know little
about the unbelievers that we really are. Paul said, for I
know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth what? No good thing. Not one good thing. The apostle Paul said, for the
good that I would do, I do not. The things that I hate, that
I do. And what was Paul's conclusion
concerning himself? Oh, wretched man that I am. Not I was, but that I am. Job said, what is man that God
would be mindful of him? And then Job said this about
himself, I abhor myself. I hate myself because of what
I am. The greatest men and women of
faith will find a great deal of skepticism lurking within
their own hearts, waiting for the opportunity to show itself.
And only God can overrule. And only God can rule that within
and without. Lord, have mercy on us. He's plenteous in mercy. Well,
Brother David, I thought you were going to try to comfort
us. Well, I am. But we have to hear the bad news
before we hear the good news. And then there is no bad news
after we hear the good. I preached out of this text,
this passage, right at three years ago. It's a different message
than what I have prepared for today, but the story found in
this chapter gives us a great example of what I'm endeavoring
to say. So let me first give you a quick
background of Jeremiah chapter 32. A powerful enemy of Israel,
the Chaldeans, had surrounded Israel. Jerusalem had warned,
or excuse me, Jeremiah had warned the King of Judah that this would
happen. according to verse one and this
was a word of the Lord given to Jeremiah for King Zedekiah,
it wasn't Jeremiah's word to the king, it was the Lord's word
to the king and you know folks often get upset with the message
and they want to shoot the messenger, why? Because they can't get their
hands around the one who sent the message And that's exactly
what King Zedekiah did. He threw Jeremiah in prison for
prophesying and warning him of what the Lord had said. And this
prophecy from Jeremiah made King Zedekiah mad. And it made him
look weak as the protector of Israel. But you know what? Zedekiah
wasn't the protector of Israel. God was. The kings and presidents
and the leaders of this world today, well, they're not in control
of this world. God is. Jeremiah told the king
the truth, and the king threw Jeremiah into prison for doing
so. You know, I've discovered, I
know you have too, that people don't really want to hear the
truth. They want to hear what they believe the truth to be.
But what Jeremiah told the king came to pass. You know what?
What God says always comes to pass. Now, while Jeremiah's in
the prison, the Lord told him that his cousin, his uncle's
son, would come to him in the prison and want to sell him a
piece of ground and that Jeremiah was to buy it. And the Lord tells
him to buy it, and tells him for how much, and He tells him
to get all the paperwork filled out correctly. He tells him to
have these papers witnessed, notarized, whatever, sealed. He tells him to have everything
done according to the law, and have them put away in a safe
place. And naturally, and worldly speaking, this would not have
been a wise investment to make, It wasn't a great deal of money,
but it was a significant amount for a profit. And remember, Jeremiah's
buying a piece of property that would very soon become worthless
and would be taken from him pretty much as soon as he purchased
it. What sane and sensible man, what good businessman would buy
a piece of land that he knew was going to be immediately taken
away from him? This is exactly what preachers
who believe that you can lose your salvation do. I find no
comfort in that. If I can be saved by something
that I do, then I can be lost by not doing something that I
should or by doing something that I shouldn't. Do you find
any comfort in that? Not when God has revealed to
us what we are. and what we're capable of. We're
not saved by works of righteousness that we've done, but according
to His mercy He saved us. By the washing of regeneration
and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly,
the Scripture says, through Jesus Christ our Savior. That being
justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the
hope of eternal life. In other words, If we're saved
by the works and righteousness of Christ, then we cannot be
lost. I've told you many times that
Brother Henry was once asked if he believed in one saved,
always saved. You know, I've had people define,
quote, Baptist that way. Oh, you're one of them that believes
in one saved, always saved. And someone asked Brother Mahan
that once. And he said, well, it all depends
on who saves you. If you saved yourself, you can
be lost. And you can be. But if God saves
you, you can't be. Doesn't that give you some comfort?
If an omnipotent, sovereign God saves me, then the same God keeps
me. Because the Lord Himself said
none can pluck you from His hand. Believing, some will say believing
like that will cause you to live in sin. We already live in sin. Jeremiah buying this piece of
ground would show great faith in his God and in his God's word. And Jeremiah says again in verse
17, ah Lord God behold Thou hast made the heaven and the earth
by Thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing
too hard for Thee." But then, as I said, in 10 verses later,
we see that the Lord Himself reminds Jeremiah of what He had
Himself confessed. And in verse 27, the Lord asks
Jeremiah, is there anything too hard for me. Do you really believe,
Jeremiah, that there's nothing too hard for me? Do we really
believe it? I think it's a question we ought
to ask ourselves often. You see, beloved, the strongest
in faith, even someone like Jeremiah, has to be reminded over and over
and over again that God is an almighty, powerful God. He can do anything. He can do
everything. They have to be reminded that
their God is in the heavens. He's done whatsoever He has pleased.
They have to be reminded that whatsoever the Lord pleased,
that did He in heaven and earth and the seas and all deep places.
They have to be reminded that God works all things after the
counsel of His own will. And He does so for the good of
His people, Ephesians 1.11 and Romans 8.28. They have to be
reminded again and again that all the inhabitants of the earth
are reputed as nothing, or we'd be puffed up. And that He, God,
doth according to His will in the army of heaven and among
the inhabitants of the earth. And none can stay His hand. None
can question Him. None can ask God what He's doing.
What are you doing, God? Anything and everything I want
to. Nothing is too hard for Him. And that is why God's people
are often inclined to pray, Lord, I believe, but help thou mine
unbelief. We say that we could trust God
in a mighty storm on the sea, but we have trouble trusting
Him in the small winds that trouble us right now in the light affliction
that we experience. We say that we can depend on
God throughout death and eternity, but we have difficulty trusting
and depending on God now in the trifling matters that are bothering
us today. Is there anything great or small
that's too hard for God? God challenges us all with that
question. Is there anything too hard for
me? I ask you, is there anything
too hard for the Lord? First, we have to consider that
the hardest, most inconceivable things have already been done
by God. What about creation? Jeremiah
said there in verse 17, that Jehovah had made the heaven and
the earth by His great power and stretched out arm. So if
God can do that, nothing else is too hard for Him. You see,
there was a time when there was nothing and God dwelt alone.
There was no raw material out of which to construct the universe,
yet it pleased God to do so. Only a sovereign, omnipotent
God can create something out of nothing. What can He not do
after doing that? With whom did God take counsel?
Who hath instructed God? Of His own will, He piled up
the mountains. By Himself, He dug the fountains
of the deep. Everything was in darkness until
God said, Light be, and there was light. He alone divided the
land from the sea. He alone painted the sky with
the clouds. He bent the rivers to flow as
He willed. He held the oceans to their boundaries. They can come no further than
God allows them to come. The earth he created was void,
without form, darkness upon the deep. And God simply spoke, let
there be, and there was grass and herbs and trees and waters
full of fish and birds filled the sky. Then God said, let us
make man in our own image, after our likeness, and let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the
air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created
man in His own image. In the image of God, created
He Him. Male and female, created He them. If God can do that, He can do
anything. Whenever we doubt the power of
God, we ought to read the book of Genesis, the first chapter
anyway. Secondly, what about God's work
of destruction? Over and over again in the scriptures,
especially the Old Testament scriptures, the Lord shows us
how easily He can rid Himself of adversaries. When God's patience
and long-suffering in the days of Noah reached its limits, God
said, My spirit is not always going to strive with man. He
had enough. God got fed up. Down came torrential
rain with tremendous power, so much so that the mountains were
covered and the whole earth became a sheet of water. And God had
determined that He would destroy all flesh from off the face of
the earth except for a few, eight souls to be exact. And He housed
them within the ark. He put them in Christ. It was
the power of God and His anger that overthrew, in a moment,
Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring cities thereof with brimstone
and salt and burning. It was the power of God that
destroyed Egypt with the plagues and preserved His people without
so much a fly, a frog, a gnat being found in the land of Goshen
where God's people live. This is God's doing, friends.
That's why God raised up Pharaoh. Why? That he might show his power. And that his name might be declared
throughout all the earth. It was the Lord's high hand and
outstretched arm that He smote the firstborn in Egypt and brought
forth His people when they came to the Red Sea. It was the power
of God that parted the Red Sea for His people to cross on dry
ground, and it was the power of God that brought the waters
back together and drowned Pharaoh's army. This is the Lord's doing. Is there anything too hard for
Him? Thirdly, this is seen in the
sovereign power of providence. He led his people through the
wilderness for 40 years. All the while they never plowed,
they never farmed, they never gathered fruit or fig or olive
tree. God brought manna from heaven
for millions. and yielded a flowing fountain
of water from a rock that followed Israel from place to place. Who
but God could do that? Is there anything too hard for
Him? While their garments never got old, neither did their feet
swell. I can't get through a day anymore
without my feet swelling. Can you imagine 40 years of walking
in the wilderness? My, my. If God can accomplish
this great work, surely, He can take care of our small family. These are the great things that
God can do. And then, fourthly, we see that
God can do anything and everything, and that nothing is too hard
for Him in the great work of redemption. Every other display
of God's powerful work, dear friends, gotta take a back seat
to the Son of God coming to earth to be born of a virgin, sheltered
in a stable, and cradled in a manger. God Almighty came that way. It's the wonder of wonders that
God should take upon Himself the form of a servant made in
the likeness of man, made Himself of no reputation. You see, I
have no reputation. That's easy for me to do. But
God Almighty made Himself of no reputation? I am worthy of
nothing but being a servant. But God Almighty made Himself
a servant to serve the needs of a sinful people? My, my, what a wonder of wonders. An amazing steal He took upon
Himself. the sin of His people. He was
made sin so that we might be made the righteousness of God
in Him. God became a man to bear man's
awful transgressions. And Christ alone took the burden
of that punishment that you and I deserve, drinking the cup of
infinite judgment and wrath to the fullest in the believing
sinner's room and stand. Have you ever heard such? Never
was God's power seen and His omnipotence so potent as when
Christ died upon the cross that chosen sinners might live. Never
was His ability to save so powerfully seen as when He led captivity
captive and while Himself was bound to the accursed tree. Never was His power so displayed
when He defeated Satan, sin, and self, and conquered death
in His own body on the tree. Now my salvation and your salvation,
those who trust in Christ, is certain because nothing's too
hard for our Lord and Savior. Nothing. He can do anything. And He can do everything. And
then lastly, we can be assured of the things which remain to
be done. Why do we worry and fret so?
Why do we doubt? Full of unbelief. In our best
state, we're all together vanity. You find out all the difficult
things that you need to have done for you, and then you rest
in the fact that it's easy for the Lord to provide your every
need. And I again qualify what I say there. I speak of need,
not greed. There are many things that we
desire that we don't need. There's one thing needful, and
if you want it, you can have it. One says, well, it'd be a
great thing for God to deliver me out of all my troubles. After
all that God has done, do you doubt that He can? Some might
ask, well, then why hasn't He? In most cases, well, no, in every
case, it's good that we've been afflicted. Why? David said that
I might learn thy statutes. that we might learn God's divine
appointments. That's why it's good for us.
Our affliction teaches us something of God. Our trouble teaches us
who's in control and who has the remedy to our troubles. And
it causes us to cry out unto Him. It will be through much
tribulation that we enter the kingdom of God. Mr. Spurgeon once told a story about
a poor man that had no bread and no food for his family. And
one of his children, his oldest boy, said, you know, dad, I heard
in Sunday school class that one time God sent bread to Elijah
by a raven. Maybe he'll do that for us. And
the man who was just a poor cobbler, uneducated, said, yes, son, he
most certainly did. But God does not use birds that
way anymore. And he said, not long after that,
just a few minutes after the man had finished speaking, that
a rare bird flew in through the open window of his shop and he
caught that bird and he put it in a cage. And then just a few
minutes later, an employee of a wealthy man's wife came in
the shop and asked if they'd seen such and such a bird. And
he said, why yes, it just flew into my shop. I caught it, put
it in the cage, here it is. And that employee of the woman
said, well, there's a reward, a sizable reward for that bird,
for the one that finds that bird. And the man got the reward and
fed his family. You see, the bird didn't actually
bring the bread in its mouth, but the bird was the means to
feed the man and his family. And God did it all. God was behind
it all. So the question, again, that
the Lord challenges us with is, is there anything too hard for
the Lord? The Lord told Jeremiah to buy
that piece of gram. The world around him said, you
can kiss it goodbye. It's gone, Jeremiah. Your deed is worthless. Your
money is wasted. But the Lord said, you put that
deed up. It's going to be a while, but
that's your land. Don't you give it up. And don't
you give up hope. You're going to possess that
land. And I think it was 70 years. I may be wrong on that. They
were in captivity, but the Lord said that that piece of ground
is going to be worth a whole lot more than 17 shekels of silver. It's going to be priceless. Friends,
every believer has purchased a piece of ground just like Jeremiah
did, but it didn't cost us anything. The difference is the Lord bought
it with his own shed blood and the deed has been signed legally. in that same blood, and it's
bought and it's paid for. And we build our house upon that
land and our hope upon that precious real estate, which is Christ,
the solid rock. And the rain's gonna descend,
and the floods are gonna come, and the winds are gonna blow,
and that house on that land, on that rock, will not fall. It was founded upon Christ the
Rock. It's for sure. It's for certain. And it is forever. Why? The Lord told us. The Lord asked. He answered it. Often the Lord
answers us with a question. Is there anything too hard for
me? Oh, if you're going through a
struggle now, if you're having trouble believing God in any
way, rest in the fact that there's nothing, absolutely nothing too
hard for him. He can do anything and he can
do everything.