Rout 66: Jeremiah - God's Case Against His People

Turn to the book of Jeremiah.

The book of Jeremiah is the book we'll be looking at tonight as we carry on this overview series of all the books of the Bible.

We're in Jeremiah tonight, so you can turn to Jeremiah, chapter 1.

Jeremiah 1 · chapter mention

That's in our Old Testaments, the second of what Pastor Doug had brought out as what are sometimes called the major prophets Isaiah and then Jeremiah.

I want to read Jeremiah 1, verses 4 and 5, to start out.

Jeremiah 1:4

The word of the Lord came to me.

I chose you before I formed you in the womb.

I set you apart before you were born.

I appointed you a prophet to the nations.

Let me just briefly pray again, lord.

We're seeking you tonight that you would speak through this prophetic word, that we have this word as a more sure and certain thing than even the Mount of Transfiguration, and we do well to pay attention to it.

So pray that you would give me attention to it in my heart.

Give all of us attention to it tonight, in Jesus name, amen.

God says he's appointed Jeremiah to be a prophet to the nations, and particularly to Israel.

What's his message?

The book of Jeremiah reminds me of one of those sleazy daytime TV shows.

Those sleazy daytime TV shows.

Now why do I say that?

Don't run me out on the street.

You can say a few things after 10 years that you wouldn't say the first time you were preaching.

God's inspired his word.

It's good and it's pure.

But here's why I say that A lot of those daytime TV shows it seems like it's always about who is suing who or, in other courtroom dramas, who is sleeping with who.

Those are always there In the book of Jeremiah.

Two of the controlling themes and images of the book is the image of a lawsuit and the image of adultery.

Now there are some key differences In those daytime shows.

Part of the probably sinful curiosity is you don't know who's telling the truth.

This person's doing that person and you said you were going to fix the car, but you didn't.

Who's telling the truth when it comes to God's word and his lawsuits?

We know that he's always speaking the truth.

He's always in the right.

Another difference is some of those talk shows, things like that.

They're really just trying to entertain you, and that's a sad thing.

When they bring someone out on stage that was secretly having an affair, they're trying to kind of entertain you.

What a sad way to do that.

The Lord, when he uses this metaphor repeatedly in the book of Jeremiah of adultery, he's not Not seeking to entertain but to shock and move us to repent and turn to him.

So in the book of Jeremiah, god is bringing a covenant case against his adulterous people.

That's what we're going to see tonight.

God is bringing a covenant case against his adulterous people.

Let's look at chapter two, and again we'll be looking at different passages in this book.

Chapter two, verse number nine and the translation I have tonight, same as your pew Bible there, and the translation I have tonight, same as your pew Bible there, says therefore, I will bring a case against you.

This is the Lord's declaration.

I will bring a case against your children's children.

The ESV says I will contend with you.

The NIV says I'll bring charges against you.

We're in this realm of a legal metaphor.

Look down at verse number 29 of chapter 2.

Just getting some samples here, some soundings Verse 29, why do you bring a case against me?

And he goes on.

There's also the language of the Lord standing as a judge.

Look at chapter 2, verse 35.

You claim I am innocent.

His anger is sure to turn away from me, but I will certainly judge you because you have said I have not sinned, said I have not sinned.

And then you don't have to turn there, but listen to chapter 25, verse 31.

The tumult reaches to the ends of the earth because the Lord brings a case against the nations.

He enters into judgment with all humanity.

As for the wicked, he gives them over to the sword.

This is the Lord's declaration.

As for the wicked, he gives them over to the sword.

This is the Lord's declaration.

Now, in that verse I just read, it talks about all humanity.

So is it his people or all humanity?

Well, it's primarily his people, but he's going to indict all the nations too.

So we're not going to span beyond our theme just right now.

We are going to come back to that at a later point.

So we've got this contending language bringing a case against them language.

We've got God as judge coming in here.

And why does God bring this case against them?

Well, you're still in chapter two.

Look at verse 29.

All of you have rebelled against me.

There's the general description, but let's get a little more specific.

Turn over to chapter 11.

Chapter 11, beginning with the first verse.

Chapter 11, beginning with the first verse this is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord.

Listen to the words of this covenant and tell them to the men of Judah and the residents of Jerusalem.

Tell them.

This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says.

Let a curse be on the man who does not obey the words of this covenant which I commanded your ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace.

I declared obey me and do everything that I command you, and you will be my people and I will be your God.

In order to establish the oath I swore to your ancestors to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as it is today.

I answered amen, lord.

As it is today.

I answered Amen, lord.

The Lord said to me proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.

Obey the words of this covenant and carry them out, for I strongly warned your ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt until today, warning them time and time again obey me.

Yet they would not obey or pay attention.

So he's bringing a case against them because they've rebelled.

And now he specifies that rebellion is rebellion against the covenant he had with them.

That's why I said he's bringing a covenant case against Israel.

So hundreds of years before God came and spoke, through the prophet Jeremiah, he brings the people out of Egypt and, if you remember, he's talking about it right here.

Through Jeremiah, looking back on what's happened At the base of Mount Sinai, he enters into a covenant with the entire nation.

He gives them 10 commandments there are many other laws that come along with that and he says here's what I want you to do Obey me in these ways, I'm going to bring you into the promised land.

And they say, yes, all that Lord has spoken, we will do.

There's sprinkled blood and they have this covenant.

But as Jeremiah speaks and the Lord through him reminds the people over and over again, throughout the centuries they failed to obey and a part of that old covenant was bringing you into the land, keep obeying me.

There's going to be all these blessings.

If you disobey, there's going to be all of these curses.

And here these curses are starting to come into effect as Jeremiah speaks of Babylon, who's going to come and take them into exile.

So he's bringing a covenant case against the people.

And I mentioned that other significant image, the image of adultery, as really almost a controlling metaphor in this book for the nature of their sin.

Let's sample a few passages in relation to that.

Let's go to chapter 3.

Jeremiah 3.

I want you to see it yourself.

Don't just trust me, but make sure we're looking at scripture together.

Jeremiah 3, verse 1.

Jeremiah 3:1

If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him to marry another, can he ever return to her?

Wouldn't such a land become totally defiled?

But you, you have prostituted yourself with many partners.

Can you return to me?

This is the Lord's declaration.

Chapter 9,.

Turn over to chapter nine, verses one and two.

If my head were a flowing spring, my eyes a fountain of tears, I would weep day and night over the slain of my dear people.

Jeremiah is sometimes called the weeping prophet for a passage like this, verse 2.

A solemn assembly of treacherous people Jeremiah 23.10.

Turn over to Jeremiah, chapter 23.

Jeremiah 23 · chapter mention

For the land is full of adulterers.

The land mourns because of the curse.

The grazing lands and the wilderness have dried up.

Their way of life has become evil and their power is not rightly used.

Adultery, adultery, adultery, prostitution, prostitution, prostitution.

You say, well, were they committing a lot of physical adultery?

Yes, that's part of what's going on.

You can listen to this passage Jeremiah 29, verse 23.

Jeremiah 29:23

They've committed an outrage in Israel by committing adultery with their neighbor's wives.

So there was physical adultery going on.

Jeremiah will also speak of the high places.

In the ancient world, often various cultures had shrines to their gods and they would put them up in mountainous regions, part of their kind of worldview, and often at these mountainous shrines there would be temple prostitutes of various sorts.

Jeremiah mentions the people engaging in worship at the high places, like the surrounding nations.

There was also likely sexual immorality happening at those places.

So, yes, there is physical immorality going on here.

But then why did I say that there's this controlling image of adultery?

It's like actual adultery adultery.

Well, I say that because through this prophet, jeremiah, the Lord categorizes all their sin as adultery.

It's not merely the people that commit the physical act.

It includes that.

But it's broader than that.

Many of the prophets will use this image.

When we come to Ezekiel, you'll probably hear more of this.

There's even more graphic language in the book of Ezekiel than there is here in Jeremiah about the horror of that sin.

I'll give you an example, and you can again listen to this In chapter 2, verse 32, god says a bride doesn't forget her wedding sash, but his people have forgotten him.

There's the wayward wife imagery, but then in verse 34 of chapter 2, jeremiah goes on to say your skirts are stained with the blood of the innocent poor.

What does trampling on poor people and taking advantage of them have to do with adultery?

Because it's a sin.

It's a sin against God's covenant and God is viewing adultery, all of these sins against his covenant, as a kind of adultery.

You can see in chapter 7, jeremiah cataloging many of these sins.

Maybe write that down and look at it later.

They worship false gods, they steal, they murder, they swear falsely, they receive false prophets, they ignore God, they trust in mere rituals and it's all prostitution, it's all adultery.

Why?

It's because it comes.

Those sins come in the context of a covenant violation.

They're not just doing wrong things in the abstract, they're doing wrong things against the Lord, who bought them and loved him.

He pictures that old covenant at Sinai as though he's entering into a kind of marriage with the people so that when they sin against the law they're sitting against him, their husband it's a very personal thing their husband.

It's a very personal thing If someone's on trial for stealing a motorcycle and have the trial and the judge bangs the gavel and says you're guilty.

Seven years in prison, you filthy prostitute, kind of like whoa.

Where did that come from?

I stole the motorcycle.

Why do you got to like launch at me like that?

But if you knew, this person stole the motorcycle in order to go to a seedy part of town and get drugs and let other people abuse them, all while their spouse was waiting at home with the wonderful meal they cooked.

That starts to reveal the intensifying personal nature of it.

That's what this kind of sin is against the Lord.

And it's even more twisted when you have a perfect spouse.

None of us have perfect spouses, but the Lord is a perfect spouse.

You couldn't ask for anyone better than the Lord, and yet the people still sin against him.

So in chapter 23, 14, and go ahead and turn to chapter two, you might still be in chapter two.

We've gone to a bunch of places.

Turn back to chapter two.

But in chapter 23, verse 14, god says that Jerusalem's residents are like Sodom and Gomorrah.

In chapter three, verse 9, he says it's as if they're committing adultery with stones and trees, like it's so ugly.

It's not even a satisfying thing, and if you look at chapter 2, I've got to get there myself, sorry.

Look at verse number five.

This is what the Lord says.

What fault did your ancestors find in me that they went so far for me, followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves?

Look down at verse 11.

We'll read verses 11 to 13.

Has a nation ever exchanged its gods?

But they were not gods.

Yet my people have exchanged their glory for useless idols.

Be appalled at this, o heavens, be shocked and utterly desolated.

This is the Lord's declaration.

I like to hike.

I like waterfalls on hikes, but you don't always know what you're going to get.

Sometimes the rainfall can affect how much waterfall there is and occasionally you'll have people talking up this hike and there's this amazing waterfall and da-da-da-da-da, you do the hike and you get to the waterfall and it's like drip, drip, drip and you're like, well, this was a letdown.

This is not what I expected, god says.

You got so excited to go after these foreign nations and worship their gods and disobey my covenant.

What did you actually get out of it?

You didn't get what you were hoping for.

Tim Keller has that image where he would say sometimes you know, our sin is like you wake up in the morning and it's Leah.

It's not what you expected it would result in.

Look at chapter 17, verses 5 to 8.

And this is going to start to really reveal the heart of the issue here.

And the heart of the issue is the issue of the heart, chapter 17,.

Look at verse number five.

This is what the Lord says.

Cursed is the person who trusts in mankind.

He makes human flesh his strength and his heart turns from the Lord.

He will be like a juniper in the Arabah he cannot see when good comes, but dwells in the parched places, in the wilderness, in a salt land where no one lives.

The person who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord, is blessed.

He will be like a tree planted by water.

Sounds like Psalm 1 there, doesn't it?

It sends out its root in its stream.

It doesn't fear when heat comes, its foliage remains green.

It will not worry in a year of drought or cease producing fruit.

The heart is more deceitful than anything else and incurable who can understand it?

And incurable who can understand it?

The Lord is heartbroken over his people.

And if Chad Driscoll, if you're listening, he's not heartbroken in the exact same way that we are, but he's heartbroken over his people, and you can see, even in some of the language of Jeremiah.

Here, if you look at your Bibles, you'll notice that our translators have given a different type setting.

Some of it's very paragraphed.

In most of your Bibles, no matter what translation you have, it's very paragraphed.

And then there are large blocks that are not really paragraphed.

They look almost more poetic, and so the translators are trying to kind of help us distinguish narrative blocks from poetic blocks.

And there's a lot of poetry in Jeremiah.

It's not the kind of poetry that we're used to, kind of sing-songy and with rhymes, but it's a focused and artistic way to express this anxiety and heart burden.

So the Lord is heartbroken, he's angry, but he's not flying off a out of control.

This is a pointed and fixed grief and Jeremiah shares with the Lord this intense grief.

That's put into poetry, just so hard to express all of the emotion.

But they're doing it in a very controlled but pointed way and we'll actually see in the book of Lamentations in two weeks I believe we're off next Sunday night In two weeks.

Lamentations especially has that poetic thrust to grief.

So we'll consider more of that here.

But the Lord is yearning over his people and he recognizes, as he knows, all things, he recognizes the issue of their heart.

So they're going to go to Babylon and he's going to give them hope we're going to come and help, just a minute here that they're going to be brought out of Babylon.

But then if the problem is their deceitful heart, is it?

What's difference is the location going to make?

They were in Egypt, then they came out, then they were in the promised land.

Then they're in Babylon, then they'll be back in the promised land.

Well, I, then they were in the promised land, then they're in Babylon, then they'll be back in the promised land.

Well, I'd rather be in the promised land than a slave in Egypt.

I'd rather be in the promised land and have some freedom than kind of be under the thumb of Babylon.

But if it's that deceptive heart that's going to travel with me no matter where I go, and that's what's happening with the people, so they need something more.

And towards the last portion of the book, jeremiah indicts not just God's people but other surrounding nations, even Babylon itself.

So God will use Babylon to judge Israel.

But then Babylon willingly chose to murder and kill and destroy, and God's going to judge them too.

So all of us who are here today as people made in God's image.

We might not be part of this specific covenant in its historic setting that God made with the group of people, the Israelites, but if we're made in his image, there's a sense in which we belong to God and we owe him obedience and loyalty.

And all the nations are facing judgment.

We're facing judgment.

It's not just Israel that has this deceitful and wicked heart.

All of us have this deceitful and wicked heart.

So God brings a covenant case against his adulterous people, and they're guilty.

He speaks of the certificate of divorce that he wrote for Israel, the Northern Kingdom, and threatens it for Judah and Jerusalem, the Southern Kingdom.

Because they didn't learn they acted just the same way.

But that's not the end of this inspired courtroom drama.

The final word is not a word purely of judgment.

There's a word of hope.

So turn to chapter 31.

Chapter 31, even after all of this covenant indictment and graphic language of the people's sin, god in his marvelous mercy, gives them hope.

Chapter 31,.

I'll pick up the reading in verse number 31.

Look, the days are coming.

This is the Lord's declaration when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

I'm going to pause there.

It's so fitting that these words would be in Jeremiah, because Jeremiah has outlined God's covenant case against the people.

They broke the terms of the old covenant.

They have this deceitful heart.

They kept breaking the old covenant.

The curses are rightly being carried out.

What's the solution?

Well, jeremiah says good news there's a new covenant coming.

This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.

My covenant they broke, even though I am their master.

The Lord's declaration.

So this is not like the judge saying okay, you stole the motorcycle, seven years in prison and then, once you do the seven years, we'll give you another chance.

See if you can go without selling a motorcycle.

God is not just telling the people okay, you're going to take him to Babylon and then you're going to get kind of a fresh start when you come back into the land and let's see if you can carry out the old covenant this next time.

This is something new.

It is in some senses unlike that old covenant Verse 33,.

Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, the Lord's declaration.

I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts.

What is the whole problem here?

The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.

Is the whole problem here?

The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.

Moses had even said you've actually got to circumcise your heart.

Jeremiah brings that up too, and the Lord says I'm going to do it, I'm going to give you the new heart you need.

He knows they can't circumcise their own heart.

He knows they can't fulfill this old covenant, but he says I'm going to come and make it happen.

I will be their God and they will be my people.

Verse 34,.

No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother saying know the Lord, for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them.

This is the Lord's declaration, for I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.

If you've been coming here at all on Sunday mornings, we're going through the gospel of Matthew and we've come to the crucifixion, the burial of Jesus Christ, which we heard about this morning.

Jesus himself inaugurates this is the new covenant in my blood.

Jesus is fulfilling God's plan prophesied through Jeremiah.

Jesus comes and completes all that Israel, and all that we failed to do so.

This new covenant is not God saying boy, that old covenant, I was a little harsh with that, let's wind it back and lower the bar a bit.

I'm a nice guy, let's wind it back and lower the bar a bit, I'm a nice guy.

It's not that he is saying the old covenant was wrong and he's just going to kind of erase it.

It's righteous and it will be fulfilled.

It's just not going to be Israel, the nations that are the fulfillers of it, that are the fulfillers of it.

They're rebellious children, but his son always had a listening ear.

His son was never rebellious.

His son perfectly measures all of the terms of that covenant.

So when you come to the book of Hebrews, in chapter eight, the writer of Hebrews speaks about that new covenant and says the new covenant is for all who come to Christ, jew or Gentile in Christ, that true fulfillment of all that Israel was intended to be.

We participate in the new covenant not by our own works.

We participate in the new covenant not by our own works but by receiving and embracing the work of Christ.

I'm going to take you last passage for tonight here in Jeremiah.

Go over to chapter 23 of Jeremiah.

The prophets move through kind of back and forths of judgment and hope for mercy and different kinds of judgment, and then mercy whispered and sprinkled it in different ways at different sections.

So he in chapter 31, jeremiah, brings out this hope of the new covenant.

But he's already before that talked about how something like that could be possible, because chapter 31 doesn't give us all of the details of how the new covenant is affected and how the Lord fulfills it, but chapter 23,.

We have a little bit more of that.

Verse one woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pastor.

This is the Lord's declaration.

Therefore, this is what the Lord says, the God of Israel says about the shepherds who tend my people.

You've scattered my flock, you've banished them.

I'm about to attend to you because of your evil acts.

Then look at verse five.

Look, the days are coming this is the Lord's declaration when I will raise up a righteous branch for David.

David is dead when Jeremiah is prophesying.

But King David, people had hope in him, but he didn't bring ultimate salvation.

His son, his branch sometimes lineages and even nations are described as trees or branches or vines.

His son didn't bring that.

But God says there's a branch coming and it's going to be a righteous branch, unlike all the unrighteous people.

He will reign wisely as king and administer justice and righteousness in the land.

And then, in case you were uncertain, verse number six in his days, judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely.

This is the name he will be called, the Lord Yahweh.

All caps there.

The Lord is our righteousness.

So Jeremiah brings together the coming branch of David with the Lord himself.

It's not we are the righteousness or David's son.

Merely from a human vantage point is our righteousness.

It is David's son, it is true human, but it's God himself, the Lord, who gives the gift of righteousness, and he does this.

He says even earlier in Jeremiah he's going to act for his namesake.

That's our final lasting hope.

If it's just the covenant case against us, we'd have to say yes, I'm an adulterous person, no matter what the specific sin is, that we struggle with the nature of who we are to be unfaithful to the Lord.

That's me.

But the case has been closed and our verdict has been secured as not guilty because of the Lord, our righteousness, jesus, the righteous branch.

So Jeremiah is a book with a lot of weeping, but ultimately hope in God's Messiah.

Let's pray, lord, give us a staggering horror at the reality of our sin, that we wouldn't talk about it in meager terms and light terms and just mere terms of wrong choices or mistakes, but to see how foolish we are when we turn from a fountain of living waters to try to dig out pitiful, muddy, broken cisterns that don't hold water.

And yet, for your own namesake, you've acted, you've called us to yourself, you continue to be at work in us, and we want more and more this experience of forgiveness and the credit of righteousness.

We do want to transform our lives, that your law would be written on our hearts more and more.

So do that, do that in a way that binds us to you in love.

That we'd act not out of mere fear or duty, but out of love for our master, love for you, our husband Jesus Christ, our bridegroom, who is soon coming again.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.