Open your Bibles with me this
morning to the book of Jeremiah, chapter 12. This is a passage
of scriptures I was reading through. I came to it and I stopped about
after the And so I'd like us to look at the first five verses
of this chapter, and we'll just look at it verse by verse. We'll
kind of just read as we go. So in verse one, Jeremiah says,
and this is Jeremiah speaking unto the Lord, he says, Righteous
art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee. Yet let me talk with
thee of thy judgments. Wherefore doth the way of the
wicked prosper? Wherefore, are all of they happy
that deal very treacherously? Jeremiah starts us off where
we must start. He says, righteous art thou,
O Lord. Because if the Lord's not righteous,
if we don't have his word, if it's not his holy word, then
what do we have? So we have to start there. The
Lord is righteous in all things, in the good, in the bad, in the
easy, and in the hard. That's kind of what we're going
to look at here Jeremiah's reactions to some of the things that he's
seeing and he's talking to the Lord. We have to believe that
the Lord is righteous. Apart from that, we can't understand
scripture. There's no way for us to comprehend
what scripture means apart from seeing the Lord is righteous.
When Abraham, when the Lord and Abraham were talking, he told
Abraham, I'm going to destroy Sodom. And Abraham's response
to him was, you know, Lord, if there be a few in there that
are, you know, that are righteous, will you save the city? And he
kept coming back and forth with the Lord, you know, trying to
save more. And he said, will you slay the
righteous and the wicked? He said, be that far from thee. Why did Abraham know that? Why
did it know that it was far from the Lord to destroy the righteous
and the wicked? Because he knew that the Lord
was righteous and that he was just. He said, shall not the
judge of the earth do right? So he knew and had an understanding
that the Lord is righteous. Just like Jeremiah did here when
he said, righteous art thou, O Lord. He's righteous in his
deeds, but he's also righteous in his character. And that's
where his nature is. So if his nature is righteous,
then that which he will do can only be righteous. So righteous
art thou, O Lord, when I plead with thee. I thought that was
interesting, plead with thee. Plead here is not one who is
pleading for something. It means to strive or to contend. In other words, we could use
his complaint. So he's complaining of what?
He said, Lord, you're righteous, but I want to register a complaint
about some things that you're doing here. There's some things
here that I just don't understand. And then he goes on to say, let
me talk with thee. And that kind of floored me that,
you know, how he approaches the Lord. He's saying, let me, as
a man, talk with thee. Consider who you are, Jeremiah.
Consider who the Lord is. But yet we find we do this in
our own ways and manage when we complain and find fault with
the way things are going. We don't understand. We have
certain feelings. And this is what Jeremiah is
expressing here. So let's not be too hard on him
because we do the same thing. May not be the exact same way,
but when we complain or disappointed, these are the same things. So
what we consider here is when he says, let me talk with thee. I consider who am I and who is
the Lord. You'll turn back a few chapters
or a few books to Ecclesiastes chapter 5. Let's read two verses. In Ecclesiastes 5.1 he says,
keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God and be more
ready to hear than to give the sacrifice of fools for they consider
not that they do evil. And what is the sacrifice of
fools? It's right here. Be not rash
with thy mouth. Let not thy heart be hasty to
utter anything before God. For God's in heaven and thou
upon the earth. Therefore, let thy words be few.
So it's saying, careful what you say. The Lord is who he is. You are who you are. You're a
man. You're upon the earth. Let your words be few. Complaint is kind of our way.
That's just what we as men and women do. Job, when he was going
through the great afflictions that the Lord put him through,
he said, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. He's saying,
I'm just going to say, I know I shouldn't say it, but I'm going
to say it because I'm bitter. I'm going to say it because I'm
going through something tough. He's hurt. He's disappointed.
He's saying, and what we're really saying is, I would do it differently. You don't understand what's going
on with me and how this affects me, that there's a different
way that I would do it. That's what we say when we complain
against the Lord's providence. Why haven't you blessed me with
a good job? Why haven't you blessed me with
good health? Why haven't you given me peace in my life or
a believing spouse or believing children? Don't you see these
things that I'm suffering with here? That's what he's saying.
So here is what his complaint is and what he's reasoning with
the Lord. Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?" He's
saying they're totally contrary to you, yet it seems in all they
do they're prospering. I don't understand it. It does
not make sense. David felt this way. David said
the same thing in Psalm 73. He said, I was envious when I
saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have an easy time until
they die. There's no ban from their death. They're not in trouble. They're not plagued as other
men are. They wear pride as an ornament about their neck, and
violence as a cloak. Their eyes stand out with facts,
and they have more than their heart could desire. So David
is seeing this in the same way Jeremiah is. He sees the prosperity
of the wicked, and he's complaining, saying, why is it, Lord, that
you know me? You know that I'm a righteous
man, that I'm a servant of you. But yet you prosper the wicked. It just doesn't make sense. And
I think this gets to the heart of it, the last verse here, verse
1. He says, wherefore are all they
happy that deal very treacherously? I think this is the root of the
problem, which is they're happy. I don't think Jeremiah was happy
at this time. He's referred to as the weeping prophet. And he,
in this case, is not happy about something. and seeing the prosperity
of the wicked. I can identify with that. I can
understand how life is hard and there's sometimes you just don't
feel happy. You can't see beyond your own
situation and you see, I'm just not happy right now. And he goes
on to say, Lord, you planted them in verse 2. They've taken
root. They grow and they bring forth
fruit. Thou art near in their mouth,
but far from their reins. He's saying, Lord, not only am
I not happy, But you're the one that did it. You're the one that
planted them. And not only did you plant them, they've taken
root and are growing and producing fruit. They're going even further
than just existing and being wicked. They seem to be prospering. And this just is hard for me
to understand. I don't know. So he says you're
near in their mouth, but far from their reins. They say your
name. It's Jesus this, Jesus that.
They use your name. They use words, the same words
that we use, but when you look at what they're doing, clearly
you're far from their reigns. It's far from what they're doing
that seems to be serving you at all, not serving you at all.
So he's saying that you're near in the mouth, but far from what
they're actually doing. So in verse three he says, But
thou, Lord, but thou, O Lord, knowest me. Thou hast seen me
and tried my heart toward thee. Pull them out like sheep for
the slaughter. and prepare them for the day
of slaughter. How often do we forget this blessing, that the
Lord might know you. Lord thou knowest me. What a
blessing to know that despite what all is going on, the way
that I see things and I may not be happy about something, but
yet the Lord still knows me. This is a blessing that we don't
want to forget. How many claim to this and are
not known? There are many that say that
they know the Lord and the Lord knows them, the Lord doesn't
know them. The Lord doesn't love them. He said, you've seen me
and you've tried my heart. He said, you made me and inclined
my heart unto your ways. Lord, I'm walking after the ways
which you've shown me. What did Joshua say? He said,
as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord. That's
it. His heart was inclined to the
Lord. But then Jeremiah tells him, he said, pull them out like
sheep for the slaughter. Just wipe them all out. I don't,
you know, I'm not happy with them. They seem to be prospering.
Lord, just come in and wipe them all out. Get rid of them. If
you'll turn with me over to James chapter five, I thought this
was an interesting description on this. Verse one, he said, this is the
Lord saying, go, go to now, you rich men. Weep, and howl, for
your misery shall come upon you, your riches are corrupted, and
your garments are moth-eaten, your gold and your silver is
cankered, and the rest of them shall be a witness against you.
You shall eat your flesh as it were fire, and you have heaped
up treasure together for the last days. Behold the hire of
the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of
you kept back by fraud. and the cries of them which have
reaped are entered into the Lord's Sabbath, and you have lived in
pleasure upon the earth, and have been wanton, and you have
nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter, and you have condemned
and killed the just, and he hath not resisted you. Be patient,
therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the
husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath
long patience for until he received the early and the latter rain.
Be ye also patient. Establish your hearts, for the
coming of the Lord draweth nigh." And what he's saying here is,
with regard to what we just read in the scripture here, he's drawing
them out of sheep for the slaughter. He's saying that there's nothing
that is going on right now on the earth that the Lord doesn't
know about and that the Lord won't repay. But yet, Jeremiah,
He's missing this right now. He's caught up in his own trial
and being upset. And in verse four, he says, How
long shall the land mourn and the herbs of every field wither
for the wickedness of them that dwell therein? The beasts are
consumed and the birds, because they said, Ye shall not see our
last stand. He says, How long, O Lord? How
long are you going to allow the land to mourn? Jeremiah's not
being very patient here. That's what we read in James
5. It said, Be patient unto the coming of the Lord. The Lord
will do this in his own time, not in our time when we think
it should happen. But the Lord's not going to let
anything that's happened go by unpunished. And so he's going
to take care of that in his own time. You consider how long will
the Lord allow us to endure and allow the wickedness in this
earth to endure. I have to travel a lot with my
job, and often when I'm flying into a city, I'm looking out
the window, just come by the window, and I'll see just the
millions and millions of houses. And it seems to me that it's
more evident when you come in at night, you see the lights
on in the houses, smoke coming up, and you start to think, how
many of these people here know the Lord and love Him? How many
of these people here even have heard the Gospel before? And
there's one, and how long will the Lord endure the sinfulness
and the wickedness of this earth? If smoke rises up, you wonder
how many more days do we have here? But we know that the Lord
has given us this window of grace to exist until he calls all his
people out. He's still calling some out.
And that gives me some confidence that he might call me out. So
I think we should take note here in regard to Jeremiah's protest
for the prosperity of the wicked here, we need to stop worrying
about what everybody else is doing. If we're looking at everybody
else and wondering why they're blessed and why I'm not, why
they have something and I don't, that's just piling misery upon
misery. And there's going to be no repentance
in that. It's just going to harden you. If someone else is blessed,
I ought to be happy for them. Even if I don't think they deserve
it or not, I ought to be happy for them. That's hard to do.
It's hard to You change the way you feel when you know you feel
another way, but you try to be happy for them. We are all little
lawyers and judges, and we try to each determine what is right
and what's fair and what's just. And if the Lord gave you what
you deserve, where would you be? And that's kind of what I
have to call into my mind when I start looking at somebody else
and start thinking, you know, why do they have that? They don't
have any business having that. You know, you have these feelings
and I think that we're not considering ourselves in terms of how the
Lord looks at us. What we have every day is grace.
And so, I'm to look at this every day as if the Lord gave me what
I deserve, what would I have? I'd have nothing. And so, this
is Jeremiah's complaint. He's upset at the prosperity
of the wicked. He's upset that they're happy.
Now we find in verse 5, the Lord's response, and this is where we're
going to spend the rest of our time. The Lord says unto Jeremiah,
If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then
how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace wherein
thou trustest they have wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in
the swelling of the Jordan?" So the Lord said to the disciples,
If you then be not able to do that which is least, why take
ye thought for the rest? These are the small things, Jeremiah,
saying if you've run with the footmen and they've wearied thee,
how are you going to contend with horses? These are the small
things of life. There are small trials in this
life that you can't get yourself tore up about. You're not looking
at the big picture here, Jeremiah. These are the footmen. Who were
the footmen? The footmen were, you think of
this as, when you talk about footmen and horses, I thought
of an army. and more so past what we have
today, but that in the past you had infantry, the people that
go in first. These are going to be the people
that go in that are fighting on foot. So these are the footmen.
They're not going to be the strongest. They're not going to be the mightiest.
Those are the horses. They send those in after to run
over after the infantry's gone in. So if thou hast run with
the footmen and they read thee, you just wait until the horses
come on. You haven't even seen it yet. You haven't been through
trial. How can thou contend with horses?
The horse and the rider were the most feared part of a battle
in their day, where they were much higher, much stronger, they
could move people out of the way, and they could swing down
on people. So they were one of the most deadly things in their
day in terms of a battlefield that you could face. And so I
believe that's what he's saying here. You don't want that, and
you're looking in the wrong direction, Jeremiah. You're looking at others.
You're looking at the prosperity of the wicked and what they have
and what they don't. And then you're looking back
at yourself and say, and then wallowing in your own unhappiness.
These are temporary circumstances and these are the little things
that are coming along in this life. And then he says, if in
the land of peace, wherein thou is trusted, they wearied thee,
then how wouldst thou do in the swelling of the Jordan? In the
swelling of the Jordan is another word for the rising of the Jordan.
So the Jordan River during the harvest time would rise up. The waters go up and it would
water all the land around there. It became very fertile and then
they would be able to get crops. So he's saying during the rising
of the Jordan, that's when things got flooded out. What are you
going to do when that happens? So there's two things I see here
I'd like us to look at in terms of the footmen and the horses
and then the land of peace and the rising of the Jordan. First,
it's what can I do? That's the footmen and the horses.
And secondly is, what do I trust in? This is the land of peace
and the rising of the Jordan. I can't do anything to impact
the land of peace or the rising of the Jordan. But I can look
at what I can do in terms of the footmen and the horses. So,
much of our time is spent in our life in doing something.
And it seems like a race. It seems like we're running from
one point to the next. times where we're successful
in something, then we have disappointments. And then we fret and we worry.
We're physically and mentally exhausted, day to day, jumping
from one thing to the other. I know even more having little
kids. It seems like I don't have a minute of the day to even be
able to function. I don't even know half what I
don't know my wife has to do with. But we look around to see
others who have no care and no concern and no love to God. It
seems so easy for me. This is what we see in our own
life. Jeremiah talked about the wicked at his day. How is it
any different today? It's not. It seems so easy. I
can barely keep up. It doesn't seem fair. I wish
I had it easier. The Lord says, if thou shalt
run with the footman, and they weary thee, what will you do
when real trial comes? That's the horses. You can't
contend with them. You see, I looked at it in this
way. The Pharisees kept the outward law. And what an effort that
that must have been to go through all the things that they had
to do to keep the law. Just a few of them I wrote down
here. So the feasts, the sacrifices,
the tithes, the thou shalt not, the thou shalt, the things that
were clean, the things you could eat, things you couldn't eat.
It would absolutely wear you out to have to think about that
every aspect of your life to keep some kind of law, to keep
from being found in sin. And let's just say on the surface
that they kept all that. They didn't, but let's just say
on the surface, that's what they wanted people to see. Let's just
say on the surface they kept all that. Now, what about the
same law applied to the heart? What about the inward man? What
about your motives? What about your thoughts? What
about the commandment of love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, soul, mind, and thy neighbors, thyself? Try that one on. Where
do you stand before that? Now, do it perfectly. There can
be nothing imperfect in the way you keep the law. Don't covet
in your heart. Don't hate. Don't lie. Don't
glory in anything but the Lord. This is given to show us how
frail and how weak we are. We can't keep one law one time. Whether it be the outward law
or whether it be the inward law. We can't do any of these things.
And so I see right now I'm in a race that I can't finish. I
can't even start because I can't even keep the first law. I'm
tired, and now, Jeremiah, come the horses. So, if you can't
even contend with the footmen, how are you going to handle the
horses when they come? How will you contend with the
rest? And, what about the land of peace? You think you dwell
securely there, so he says, if in the land of peace we're in
thou trust that they weary thee, how will you do in the rising
of the Jordan? You think you dwell securely in the land of
peace? This is what you trust in. trust in a land of peace.
It's good to have a land of peace where we don't have to worry
about, I mean, you look at what's going on right now in the world,
how many of these Middle Eastern countries have these wars and
things going, you know, even civil wars going inside. That's
awful to have to live in that. We have our own set of problems
here, but we don't have that. We can at least know you lay your
head on a bed at night and know that somebody's going to not
try to blow your house up. So, in the land of peace where
you dwell securely, this is picturing what we trust in. There was a
story in the New Testament about the rich man whose barns were
very full. And he said, so thou has much
good laid up for many years. Take thine ease, eat, drink,
be merry. God said unto him, for what he
trusted in, his barns being full, having plenty of money, plenty
of goods, in terms of this earth, you know, getting along in this
earth, that's really most of what you can need to get along
in the day to day of this earth. But God said thou fool. This
night thy soul shall be required of thee. Then whose shall those
things be which thou hast provided? And it's typical here that he
says that thou hast provided. This is what you've provided.
And what good will that do you in that day when your soul is
required of you? What will you do then in the
rising of the Jordan? You've dwelled in the land of
peace and that wearied you. You're in the land of peace.
What will you do when the Jordan rises? Jordan is always pictured
in the scriptures, almost always, as death. Any time you read about
Jordan, you can look at it as a picture of death. What will
you do when you come to die? What is it that you trusted in
the day that you die? I read some commentaries on this
and Spurgeon had a great one on this passage. You ought to
read it if you haven't before. He was talking to his congregation
and he said, Some of you have not considered death. And well,
you should. He's saying that this is something
you really should be thinking about that maybe you've never
thought about. You should consider your death. And you don't think
about it. And he gave the illustration
that your soul is compared to the crying baby being held over
Molech's arms. Molech was that big brass idol
that they had where they would They've talked about the Amorites,
where they would cause their children to pass through the
fire of Molech, they'd heat this big brass idol and then put a
baby on top of those red hot arms and sacrifice a child. And
he's saying that your soul is this crying baby that's over
Molech's arms, it's crying, yet you don't hear it, because you're
beating the drums of the cares of his life, and you're drowning
out the cares of your soul crying out. You're so concerned with
what's going on in your life, you're not seeing that your soul
is suffering. Listen to what your soul is saying
and stop beating the drums for the cares of this life. So when
he says, some of you never think of dying, yet you should, he
makes a point. The Lord said this to Martha
when he said, Martha, Martha, thou art comforted about with
much serving. You're comforted about with many things, many
cares of this life that really don't matter. This life will
end for everyone. And then what? What will you
do in the rising of the Jordan? When death comes calling, where
are your concerns then? All the things that we get concerned
about and really torn up about in our day that we've got to
do, none of those things matter in the end. What are you going
to do in the rising of the Jordan? Ought we not to have diligently
considered these things before that day? And so the picture
here of the of the Jordan being death, and what are you going
to do in the rising of the Jordan? So when the Israelites crossed
over the Jordan into Canaan, so that's what separated the
promised land, Canaan, where they had to walk all the long
journey before to get to. The Jordan River is what separated
them. So the priests were going to
carry the ark over first. So the priests carried the ark
to the edge of the Jordan. The Jordan parted as soon as
they stepped to the edge of the water. And they walked out into
dry ground in the middle of the river and allowed all the Israelites
to cross over. And Joshua called out to the
twelve, he called out and said, each man of you of the twelve
tribes of Israel, take one of you. Each one of you, you get
a stone at the middle of that river, at the middle of the Jordan
River, where the priest stood on the firm, dry ground. And
then you take that stone and you carry it to the other side.
And it's going to be a memorial to you about this day. What this
is picturing is there were 12 stones carried to the other side
of Jordan, which is dead. These 12 stones represented the
12 chosen tribes of Israel. This is God's elect. This is
God's chosen people that he saved. But the thing is that there weren't
just 12 stones in the bottom of that river. There were a lot
of stones. They took 12 choice stones and
they carried them over. But there were many stones that
had to stay in the Jordan. They weren't chosen. Death kept
them. All the stones at one point were
under death. There was not one stone that
wasn't under the river. They were under death. But some
were carried to the other side. And this is given as a picture
of when we, who are the chosen, the elect of God, are raised
in His likeness on the other side. He's brought it to the
other side. So that's what this picture is,
is taking these stones to the other side. What will you do
in the rising of the Jordan? What do you trust in? Well, I'm
trusting in Christ. I'm trusting in his person to
save me. He's already run the race. He's
already finished it. He's already done the works.
He said it's finished on the cross. He finished all the work
that the father required to be done. That's done. I don't have
to run that race because he's already finished it. And He's
already come into this life and lived and died and endured the
rising of the Jordan and has carried me in His person to the
other side. And one day I'll awaken His likeness
and see that. After the Jordan takes me over,
takes my body, everybody's going to die, but some are going to
be carried over. That's what we're going to see.
For me, He endured those things for all His people. And He's
now living for me as my righteousness. What a picture that is. All that
I complained about, all that I didn't understand, I see now. These things were ordered for
my good, for His glory. I didn't see those things at
that time, but maybe one day it will be revealed to me and
I can see those things for what they were. How else will I have
seen my need for Christ apart from Him putting me through these
things? that were difficult and hard. When things are going easy,
the Lord's the last thing we remember. He's the first one
we forget. When things are easy, we don't
need anything, we're happy, we've got plenty of money, everybody's
healthy, we're doing well, you forget about the Lord. But when
He puts us through these trials, that causes His children to cry
out to Him. It shows us how much we can't
provide for and we have no control over providing for. Shall my
Lord have suffered, and I not also? So the Lord puts us through
these things because he's doing it for a reason. It's all around
the salvation of his people. Why divide up what parts of salvation
were to my credit in this life and then some to his? After all
the love, the sacrifice, the mercy that he showed me and I
not honor him because he didn't do all according to my will,
for my satisfaction and for my pleasure in this life. That's
criminal after he gave his son for ransom. May the Lord give
us grace to endure hardness as good soldiers of the Lord, that
it may be so, when we contend with the forces, we're not weary,
because our race is already won. Christ finished the work. And
when the rising of the Jordan comes, when death comes that
day, I'll not fear. You see, because you're dead
already. Your life is hid in Christ. And
when Christ, our life, shall appear, then shall you appear
with Him in glory. What will you do in the rising
of the Jordan? There's a verse in Psalm 37,
I thought that summed this up well. It says, commit thy way
unto the Lord. Trust also in him and he shall
bring it to pass.