A Warning To Christians In A Dying Nation
Jeremiah
As you know, we are in our Sunday morning study of God's word in between 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy having completed 1 Timothy and imminently to begin 2 Timothy. I had thought about doing it this Lord's day but the Lord impressed upon my heart that I should share something other than that with you and will begin 2 Timothy next Lord's day morning.
I would like you if you will to open your Bible to the Old Testament to the prophet Jeremiah. And just be ready with your Bible open to Jeremiah to look together at several selected portions built around the theme which is before us this morning. I am going to attempt in a sense to un-bear my heart to your in the context of Jeremiah and to share with you a perspective that we no doubt as a church and as those who love Christ need to have.
I am convinced that we live in a day when God is genuinely and really ignored though there are some who would give him some tacit attention. I am also convinced that we live in a day that because our society has ignored God is a day when God has abandoned our society in a very real sense. To put it simply, I think we are on the edge of the death of a nation.
We love this nation in which we live. And there is much about it to love. We celebrate its vast freedoms and benefits. But in all honesty as we compare this nation with the standard of God it comes up infinitely short. And as you look around you, you would have to be blind, deaf, dumb and without sense not to perceive the decline of every viable, Biblical, God-ordained institution. They're crumbling all around us. Standards are perverted so far from the standards of God that there are no foundations left to which to return to reassert the standards that once were ours.
Life is consumed by sentimentality and sensation and we have replaced our minds with our feelings. We are a society that has plunged headlong into the expression of what Paul calls a reprobate mind. Evil abounds and we have seen it in massive proportions even in the church and even among those who claim to be the leaders of the church and its spokesmen.
And it's my personal belief that we have gone too far to avoid judgment. I believe that we stand imminently on the brink of it when I hear as I have this past week on the news that possibly 100 million people will die of AIDS. I have to confess I am not surprised. I suppose to be honest with you for several years I've been asking myself the question how is God going to choose to judge this nation. That no doubt will be one form of divine wrath.
And as I was thinking about this, rather than being drawn to all kinds of contemporary and extant statistics as to the problem, I was drawn to the book of Jeremiah because he stood in a very similar situation. And I thought that rather than seeing the problem through the eyes of contemporary journalists and social critics and analysts, rather than seeing the problem through the media or even through the perspective of leading Christian critics, we should look at the problem through the eyes of the prophet of God who stood at a very, very similar point.
Jeremiah was on the brink of the death of the nation of Judah. Judah was the chosen nation of God. The northern kingdom Israel already had gone into captivity from which it would never return. What was left was in Judah, originally constituted by the tribes of Judah and Benjamin but now populated also by people from every other tribe of the 12. It was the last remaining vestige of covenant people on the earth and it stood in imminent danger of being carried off into captivity.
Jeremiah sums up the rebellion of his people I think in very graphic terms. If you look at Chapter 5 and Verse 22 and 23, you'll see it there. Summing up the rebellious nature of his people who have forsaken God, he says, "Do you not fear Me? declares the Lord. Do you not tremble in My presence?"
Stop there for a moment. As if to say is it nothing to you to consider who I am. Have you forgotten My power? Have you forgotten My knowledge? Have you forgotten My sovereignty? Have you forgotten who I am and what I am capable of doing? Have you forgotten My standards? Are you living under some illusion that you can continually live any way you want without divine retribution?
And then he uses a graphic illustration in Verse 22. "For I have placed the sand as a boundary for the sea. An eternal decree so it cannot cross over it. Though the waves toss yet they cannot prevail. Though they roar yet they cannot cross over it."
God says the massive, surging, rolling, storming, billowing sea is bounded by a thin strip of sand. And that sand holds the sea in check. It may roar and it may raise as it were its waves to a fierce level, but it always recedes to the sand boundary. "I contain the sea," He says, "in its surging power by a thin strip of sand."
Verse 23. "But this people has a stubborn and rebellious heart. They have literally revolted and overflowed. I can't contain you," he says. "I can contain the sea. I can't contain you. I have put the boundary there," and that boundary is that boundary laid down by divine revelation and reinforced by prophets of God and teachers. "I can't hold you in check. I can't contain you. I can't put limits on you. You overstep. You rebel. You go beyond. Its as if you ignored My power and My restraint."
In a sense what God is saying is the rebellious heart of man is stronger than the surging sea. All God's promises, or all God's revelation, all His Word, all His covenants, all His love, all His forgiveness laid down cannot restrain the heart of a man that is bent on revolting. A man who is the progeny of Adam who given every good thing and no evil thing chose to overstep the boundary, forfeit the good, inherit the evil and leave it as a legacy to every person who would live on the face of the earth.
So is the history of man the story of unrestrained sinfulness. Unrestrained rebellion. Stepping over God's boundary.
And Jeremiah is now the instrument of God to say to the people you are on the edge of God's reaction. You are on the brink of holocaust. Your rebellion has gone as far as God will allow it to go and it is now over. You are doomed.
And Jeremiah comes to preach judgment at the hands of Babylon. Hard to understand in a sense because Babylon was a pagan nation and yet God often used the pagans to bring retribution on His people. Babylon was to be God's agent of slaughter. God's agent of destruction. God's agent of captivity. Slaughtering and carrying away the people of Judah. It was the end of the glory days. It was the end of all the wondrous works of God in their midst and all of His protection and insulation.
The late Dr. Morehead said, "It was Jeremiah's lot to prophesy at a time when all things in Judah were rushing down to the final and mournful catastrophe. When political confusion was at its height. When the worst passions swayed the people's hearts. And the most fatal councils prevailed. To see his own people whom he loved with the tenderness of a woman plunge over to the precipice in a wide, weltering ruin was Jeremiah's lot." He was the prophet in Judah's midnight hour.
Now Jeremiah preached for 42 years. That's a long time to call a people back to God. He was faithful to the preaching from the beginning to the end. He preached through the reign of five kings. Let me just have you take a brief look at them.
The one who was on the throne when Jeremiah began to preach was a man named Josiah. It was the end of the reign of Josiah. Josiah had brought to Judah a period of reform. Josiah sought to bring a revival. He sought to call the people of got back to God. But it never really quite happened. They were frankly enamored with Josiah. They were in awe of Josiah. It was under Josiah that the law of God was discovered. Josiah brought it out, read it to the people and pleaded that God would bring a great revival. And there were some initial indications that maybe the hearts of the people would truly turn to God and it would be lasting.
But then along came a woman by the name of Holda and God used her to speak His Revelation. And Holda told Josiah that no permanent result would come out of this reformation. That it was very temporary and very short lived. And the reason was - mark this - that the people were following Josiah out of love for him rather than love for God. So it was a period of reform.
And it was in the middle of that quasi-revival that Jeremiah begin to preach of doom and he seemed very out of touch with the times. From the vantage point of the people, they had a religious celebrity in power. They had a spiritual hero in Josiah whom they adored. And they had the feeling that this was real revival. And the fact was it was not at all revival. It was merely a form of spiritual celebrity-itis.
And when Josiah died the reformation was over. Within three months they had gone back into idolatry and immorality in a wholesale fashion. And the truth became obvious.
That speaks to our time, doesn't it? For someone to stand up today and say this nation is on the edge of the judgment of God. This nations stands on the edge of the brink of a divine holocaust might seem to some people a bit out of touch with reality. Since there appears to be some fast-moving, media-wide, nationwide, spiritual awakening. My own personal conviction is it's little more than a quasi-revival more like some kind of reformation movement led by a lot of spiritual celebrities. And people are more attached to the celebrities than they are to God Himself.
That can be readily witnessed in almost any local church by seeing the size of the crowd difference when you bring in one of the celebrities and when you call for people to gather to commune with the living God. See who shows up and you'll know where people's hearts are.
It was not unlike our time in Jeremiah's time. Josiah was followed by a king named Jehoahaz who only reigned for three months. He was followed by Jehoiakim and Holda's prediction came to pass. The three months of the reign of Jehoahaz having ended, in comes Jehoiakim and with him appalling evil and the people returning in a wholesale manner to every form of corruption imaginable. He was followed by Jehoiachin who also was deposed after three months. And he was followed by the last of the five kings during the ministry of Jeremiah - a man named Zedekiah, a vacillating, spineless, cowardly, milk toast weakling who saw the nation morals swiftly move down the steep slide of depravity and into ruin and extinction than any of his predecessors.
And through all of this Jeremiah was always the voice of God. It's sad to note, however, that his preaching in no way deterred the disaster. He never saw - are you ready for this - any impact on the nation from his 42 years of ministry. Yes, there were a few who believed. There is always a remnant that God calls out. Even as we saw in the sixth chapter of Isaiah when he was called to preach 80 to 100 years before Jeremiah and preached of the impending disaster to come. There was then a remnant - a tenth it says at the end of Chapter 6. And there were a few who believed Jeremiah. But the nation never changed.
And I want to say to you I believe we stand in a time very much like that. There is a remnant. There is a remnant of God's people much smaller than those who name the name of Christ. Much smaller than those who identify outwardly with the religion of Christianity. The true church here this morning is smaller than the congregation's size this morning. There will always be a remnant.
But I'm not under any illusion that by preaching to this dying nation we can stop the death process. We continue to preach because God has called us to preach. And be faithful because He's asked us to be faithful. And because we want to call out that remnant. But it is my own conviction that the death of the nation is imminent.
How do we respond to this? What are we to do? What are we to understand?
Well, let's look at Jeremiah and see what God wanted him to understand and what he did in terms of his ministry. The responsibility of confronting a dying nation finds its focus with regard to Jeremiah in three things. First of all, a divine mandate. A divine mandate. And for that we go to Chapter 1. And I want to draw your attention to Verses 4 through 10. And we're going to jump around. And to try to cover the whole of the prophesy of Jeremiah in one message is not an easy task. And we'll make a feeble effort to do even that. But to hit the highlights is essential.
Jeremiah - now, get the picture in your mind - stands as God's anointed preacher to confront a nation headed for imminent disaster with no possibility of return. Or of change. There will ultimately be return but no possibility of change. It's coming. That's how it is. That can't change. And in the midst of that, God reasserts to him at the very outset of the prophet and his ministry the divine mandate. In fact it comes in Verse 4 of Chapter 1. We hardly get started before we read these words.
"Now the Word of the Lord came to me saying."
We'll stop at that point. God first of all gives a message to Jeremiah before He gives a message through Jeremiah. He wants Jeremiah to understand what he must understand to be in the place where he must be, to speak what he must speak. There must be a compelling thing behind Jeremiah's ministry. Why? Because it will be 42 years long. It demands longevity. It will be basically fruitless. And to do it for 42 years without any measurable results is very difficult. So to under gird his faithfulness there comes this incredibly strong divine mandate.
I see three things. First of all, preparation by God. Notice it now in Verse 5.
"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And before you were born I consecrated you. I have appointed you a prophet to the nations."
God says Jeremiah, long before you were ever conceived, long before you were ever woven as the psalmist calls it in your mother's womb, long before you were ever born, I had decided that you were to be My prophet for a unique place, a unique time. In other words, you have been prepared by Me. That's a divine preparation. God gives in these very brief words the biography of Jeremiah. In fact I believe it's eleven short Hebrew words. But it's a life history. And it extends from eternity past to the time of Jeremiah's proclamation to the nations. He is a man called by God from before he was ever conceived to a divine mandate. That's a compelling thing. That's a driving force in the life of one who belongs to God. To know that long before we were ever born we were set for a certain purpose. That sense of mission is an overpowering and compelling thing.
Theodore Lache wrote years ago Jeremiah is an intensely human personality. He is a man whom we can understand and love and yet a person endowed with such mysterious power from on high that we at times are over-awed by his grandeur. So humanly weak and yet so divinely firm. His love so humanly tender and at the same time so divinely holy. His eyes streaming with tears at beholding the affliction about to come upon his people yet sparking with fiery indignation against their sins and abominations. His lips overflowing with sympathy for the daughter of Zion only to pronounce upon her almost in the same breath the judgment and condemnation she so fully deserved. An amazing man.
When men face a crisis inevitably they come up with a program. When God faces a crisis, he starts with a baby. Always. When God wants to deal with a crisis it is a man he calls. Unique and chosen and prepared and gifted. All in His sovereignty. And Jeremiah was by divine appointment of God the preacher of that time and that place. Ian Noman once said that whoever does not have a sense of being predestined by God to service will never work nor ever has worked any revolution for God. People who make differences in the world are people who are on a divine mandate. Who are bound in their spirit to the call of God deep and profound.
That extends to all of us, beloved. For you were predestined in Christ before the world began. You were chosen in Him from before the foundations of it. Your name was written in the Lamb's Book of Life before ever the world was spun into space. God not only designed that you should belong to him but designed that the Spirit of God would redeem you and gift you to serve within the framework of the kingdom in a unique way that no one else could match. Every believer in the Kingdom of God is under divine mandate to fulfill a task, an obligation, a ministry. We were created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk even in them.
And yet it's so tragic most people in the church have no sense of divine mission. Have absolutely no sense of mandate. It's as if all of life was a smorgasbord from which they could choose whatever they wanted. There are no compelling things. No compunctions. It doesn't make much difference whether you go to church or play golf. I mean it really doesn't matter. That's your choice. There is no sense of compelling. There is no overwhelming sense of mission. And we become so busy with creature comforts and so busy with fitting into the current fashion of the world that that sense of mandate just isn't there. People often say to me, "You know, you gotta cut back. You gotta stop doing." I don't have a choice about those things. There is a certain constraint in me that pulls me into what I do. I don't sit back and calculate and write down on a piece of paper a list of dos and don'ts to affirm to myself whether this is wise or unwise. I spend my life - and it may not be normative for everyone - being pulled by these compelling forces that I have believed up to now and continue to believe are the movings of the Spirit of God to do what I do. And frankly you get to the point where all the stuff in the earth and all the stuff of life either gets in the way or can be used as a means of attaining the spiritual mission you're really after. And if you see them as anything else, you've missed the point.
God help us to get the sense of mission. I was thinking about it this week. I don't know if you brought an unsaved friend or unsaved family to the concert. Perhaps you did. Thank you if you did. Perhaps you didn't. Perhaps it never even entered your mind to do that. Perhaps it's a concession that you're even here this morning. If you name the name of Christ and ask yourself if you're compelled in your service to God. Do you know what your spiritual gift is? Are you using that gift? Are you compelled to use it? Do you feel burdened in your heart and a sense of some shame if you are not using it? Are you left with a bit of guilt because you don't do what you really believe in your heart you ought to do and what God's Word says to do?
Jeremiah wasn't the only person who was to be a witness to the nations. The whole of his nation were to be witnessing to the nations. But they weren't doing that and Jeremiah stood out as absolutely unique. The failure of the whole nation is reiterated in Chapter 2 and Verse 18 in most fascinating terms. Jeremiah says the Word of God to them but now what are you doing on the road to Egypt? That's an interesting statement. To drink the waters of the Nile? Or what are you doing on the road to Assyria? To drink the waters of the Euphrates? Well, that's powerful stuff. You who have been chosen by God to be separated. You who have been chosen by God to be unique. You who have been chosen by God to be pure. You who have been chosen by God to confront the paganism of the nations around you. What are you doing entering into it? That's what he's saying. Why do you want free course with the pagans? Why are you traveling to Egypt and traveling to Assyria in your lifestyle? Why do you want to drink the muddy waters of the Nile? And why the muddy waters of the shallow Euphrates when you can drink the cool, fresh waters of the streams of Lebanon. That's the metaphor extended. Why do you want that? Because you have no sense of mission. You have no sense of mandate. You have no sense of separation. They fail to be separate. And so God had to raise a special voice.
It's my conviction in the day in which we live that the church has lost its separateness. The church has become "the world". We're so engulfed in it. We're so up to our ears in materialism and creature comfort and scheduling our life around the things we want to do rather than the things God wants us to do. That the Lord is going to have to raise up some special, unique people in these last days of a dying nation to speak his truth. That's one of the reasons I'm so passionately burdened about the Masters College and the Masters Seminary because I believe God has given us these as instruments to do just that. To raise up those kinds of voices.
And so you see back in Chapter 1 first of all the preparation of God. God had prepared a man to stand in the place of an unfaithful nation. Is it gonna have to be that way in the church? Is it going to be necessary for God to start picking up here and there certain chosen men who can do what the church in total has failed to do? Sense its mission? Christianity has become sort of a sick subculture in many ways. With people more concerned about their own feelin