Jeremiah The Preacher

SERMON OUTLINE:

• Picture 1: A plundered slave (vs 14-19).

• Picture 2: A Stubborn Animal (vs 20).

• Picture 3: A degenerate vine (vs 21).

SERMON BODY:

Ill:

• If you want to embarrass a preacher:

• Just ask him how the first sermon he ever preached went.

• Most of can remember it well, because it was not a very enjoyable experience!!!

• Often during a preachers first sermon he is very, very nervous.

• Often you get very tongue-tied.

• And when you allow your nerves to kick in;

• It is easy to feel like you are the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time!

Ill:

• You may have heard of the expression ‘Spoonerism’.

• You will find it in the dictionary.

• A ‘spoonerism’ is an error in speech or deliberate play on words;

• In which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched.

• It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930),

• Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency.

• Poor old Spooner had a dreadful habit;

• Of confusing his message in the process of giving it:

(e.g.).

• At a wedding he told the groom, 'It is kistomary to cuss the bride.'

• Calling on the dean of Christ Church he asked the secretary; 'Is the bean dizzy?"

(e.g.).

• Giving the eulogy at a clergyman's funeral, he praised his departed colleague as;

• “A shoving leopard to his flock.”

(e.g.). In a sermon he warned his congregation

• “There is no peace in a home where a dinner swells'.

• Meaning, of courses 'where a sinner dwells”'

(e.g.). Speaking to a group of farmers:

• Spooner intended to greet them as “Sons of toil,”

• But what came out was. "I see before me tons of soil.”

Well, any preacher will have empathy & understanding for the Reverend Spooner:

• And as Jeremiah was about to learn a she starts off his preaching ministry;

• Preaching is not as easy as it sometimes looks!

ill:

• Story told of a preacher who asked his wife:

• “Should I have put more fire into my sermon”,

• His wife replied: “No darling, you should have put more of your sermon in the fire”.

ill:

• Welsh Preacher worked himself into a frenzy while preaching on Psalm 42:

• “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul thirsts after you”.

• As he continued he cried out to the congregation:

• “Yes, brothers & sisters, it’s your pants that he wants!”

• (in the U.K. ‘pants’ is also a vernacular term for undergarments)

Transition:

• We are breaking into the story of Jeremiah;

• As Jeremiah, the young inexperienced preacher is preaching his first sermon

• (The whole sermon starts at chapter 2 verse 1 and finishes at chapter 3 verse 5).

• Jeremiah’s sermon is not full of ‘spoonerisms’;

• But they were full courageous, compassion and conviction!

• With great confidence in his God and in his message;

• Jeremiah confronted the people regarding their sins;

• And he pleaded with them to repent and return to the Lord.

In this small section (vs 13-23) the theme is ‘rebellion’:

• In verse 13 we are told that the people have committed two sins:

• First: They have abandoned the Lord.

• The source of spiritual life and nourishment

• Second: they have turned to idols,

• These idols are useless, in fact he compares them to broken water cisterns.

Ill:

• Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author and media personality.

• On one occasion Svetlana (pronounce: shet-LAWN-ah) Stalin,

• She was the daughter of Josef Stalin.

• Josef Stalin. Was one of the most powerful and murderous dictators in history,

• Stalin was the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century.

• His regime of terror caused the death and suffering of tens of millions

• Stalin’s daughter Svetlana (shet-LAWN-ah);

• Spent some time with Muggeridge in his home in England,

• While they were working together on their BBC production on the life of her father.

• According to Svetlana (shet-LAWN-ah);

• As Stalin lay dying, plagued with terrifying hallucinations,

• He suddenly sat halfway up in bed, clenched his fist toward the heavens once more,

• Fell back upon his pillow, and was dead.

• The sad, incredible irony of his whole life is that at one time Josef Stalin;

• Had been a theological college student, preparing for the Christian ministry.

• Yet for some reason;

• He made a decisive break from his belief in God.

• And this break resulted in his hatred for all religion.

• The name Stalin, which means “steel,” was not his real name,