LESSONS FROM JEREMIAH – PART 24 – NEVER, NEVER REMOVE THE GODLY WAYS GOD MAPPED OUT FOR US – LISTEN AND REPENT
PART 24 - Jeremiah 6:16-19
CHAPTER 6
[B]. THE WILFUL REJECTION OF THE PEOPLE TO GOD’S CALLING
{{Jeremiah 6:16 Thus says the LORD, “Stand by the ways and see, and ask for THE ANCIENT PATHS where the good way is, and walk in it, and you shall find rest for your souls, but they said, ‘We will not walk in it. Jeremiah 6:17 “I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet,’ but they said, ‘We will not listen.’ Jeremiah 6:18 “Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them. Jeremiah 6:19 Hear, O earth. Behold, I am bringing disaster on this people, the fruit of their plans because THEY HAVE NOT LISTENED TO MY WORDS, and as for My law, they have rejected it also.”}}
(a). VERSE 16
Here we have an important verse in 16 for its universal truth applies to all ages. Through Jeremiah the nation was told to stand in the ways, that is, where the paths meet, and there observe, and then he had to ask for the ancient paths (“old paths” AV), literally “the eternal paths” which were declared to be where the good way is, and hen he had to walk in that way.
This is according to the word of God so it is most valuable for us. There were many paths being mapped out by the people all criss-crossing and confused, but among these paths were the good ones, the ancient paths, the ones designed by God. The early Christians were known as “the people of the way” and they followed the way given to them by the Lord Jesus Christ and by Scripture. That is the ancient way, because it was initiated by God, and His way is righteousness. Scripture speaks of a way that seems right unto man but the ways thereof are the ways of death. That is man’s self-religion his own way of attaining God like Nimrod building in arrogance and disobedience.
There are the ways of man and the ways of God and they are so different because one leads to eternal death and the other to eternal life. The ancient paths were the ones charted by God for the good of human beings and declared through His holy patriarchs of old and through His Law of old. These righteous men of the past walked in those ways as they followed God and we don’t have to guess how to do that because the instructions are clearly given by God Himself. We only need ears and/or eyes. But Judah chose to forge new paths inspired by human wisdom and sin. Those paths lead to death, and Judah sadly encountered that.
Once deviation occurs from the declared path given by God, then man has cut his own path in the wasteland. Today we live in a world with an unbelievable number of paths, ones forged by individuals, but worst of all, those legislated by Governments and by any in authority. As a result God’s ancient paths on marriage, gender roles, discipline, homosexuality, punishment, righteousness, creation/evolution in the school curriculum, and so many more, have been either reversed or expunged.
(Americans take note also – this applies to you, or it will soon). It is alarming the way successive Governments in Australia since 1975 have been overthrowing the edicts along the ancient paths as they bulldoze them out, and is it little wonder now that the nation is lost and is in all sorts of economic and moral and terrorist problems. Gentleness and discussion is replaced by belligerency and treacherous arrogance. What is declared to us through the Bible has been mapped through the collective wisdom and experience of the righteous men of the past with God’s instruction, but modern man glibly dismisses all that for his own modernity.
Even the ancient paths of culture and history have been slaughtered. Artistic talent and artistic discipline up to the end of the 19th century, produced works of absolute majesty in line with appeal and skill, so grand, it was as if the hand of God had painted the works. Whether it was a biblical portrayal or a portrait or landscape, the works appealed to goodness and a sense of harmonious balance, but in modern art, so called, anything goes, even to the most disjoint and confronting rubbish, and it is declared art.
People like Andy Warhol produce a whole canvass of repetitive baked bean cans and it is considered a masterpiece. Others who are abstract in their brains because of the maze of modern paths they tread (along with altering drugs), produce such weird abstract paintings, and others like Jason Pollock can throw paint at a canvass while drunk and that is considered art, and woe betide you if you criticise it. I was in the Australian National Art Gallery in Canberra and on one wall were two very, very large framed “paintings” or “works of art”, maybe 4 metres by 4 metres (13 feet square). Both were painted white all over and one had a straight vertical strip of a colour traversing it, and the other was the same, but a differently coloured strip. It must have cost the taxpayers a lot for that and they call that nonsense, art. Indeed, we have lost our ancient ways.
The ugly is promoted over the appealing; the discordant is promoted over the harmonious; the darkness is promoted over the light; and the occult is promoted over the godly. That is our world at the end of the Church age.
Music used to be a relaxing and harmonious craft but has become a discordant, grating cacophony in many cases, with lyrics in the rock and heavy metal area being perverted, satanic and a way to promote drugs, sex and homosexuality. Classical music was trampled by those walking the new paths, and we have even a form called “minimalism” like the drivel vomited out by their chief exponent, Philip Glass in the United States. Literature also has been affected with sensational, perverted, blaspheming, foul-mouthed trash pumped out by writers and publishing houses chasing the quick dollar, and some of these degenerate books have become part of the High School literature curriculum. Rarely do you see a modern, well-constructed and crafted novel based on decency and skilful writing like the classics of the past. And those great classics of yesteryear along with much of the great English literature have been discarded.
The second half of verse 16 is where the Lord says that the ancient paths are the good way, and when the bible does this, it means that all other ways are bad. There are not many ways to God; there is only ONE. The Lord taught that too, with the broad way and the narrow way, and the narrow way will always be the unpopular way. The broad way is broad because it has a multitude of paths, ones people make for themselves to appease their own fallen appetites, but the narrow way has only one path, the ancient one, and it is that one God tells Judah to seek and to travel on.
If they walk in that ancient path, they are promised rest for their souls. They had no rest and were in turmoil, but they loved their turmoil for it meant deception and they were practising all sorts of evil that they would not relinquish, so they paid no attention to God’s promise of rest for their souls. Would they listen though? Would they listen to the gospel and the way of righteousness in The White House? Would they listen to the same in The Lodge (residence of the Australian Prime Minister) (especially as there they hate Israel)?
What Judah was promised in Jeremiah’s messages by Jehovah, was exactly what the Lord promised to Israel when He was with them – {{Matthew 11:29-30 “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you shall find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy and My load is light.”}} The Lord Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life. He is the ancient Way, the Path in which to walk. The way for Judah is Jehovah’s way, and the way for Israel is the LORD’s way, and the way for us is just the same. It is all exactly the same way, the way to rest and peace, but Judah defiantly said, “We will not walk in that way” and chose to continue on their own ways, paths that led to destruction not long after.
I never cease to be amazed at the attitude of people in the Tribulation that will come. Just imagine for a moment that you and a companion are hiking in the bush/countryside/woods but you have to go along a narrow path that treks on the edge of a cliff. As you proceed, parts of the path start to crumble under your feet. You go a bit further and small portions of it begin to fall away and drop about 1500 metres downward (about 4800 feet). What do you do? My guess it that, assessing the situation, you are going to retreat, return, go backyards. Using the word correctly I could say that, “You are going to repent,” a word that means you will change your direction.
Biblical repentance is changing your direction, turning from sin and to the Lord. In the Tribulation when one sees the dramatic things that are happening, what would you expect the people would do?
At the end of chapter 6, there will be a great earthquake, the sun turning black like sackcloth hair, the moon becoming like blood, the stars falling to earth, the sky will split apart, and all the mountains and islands will move out of their places. What would you think the people would do? Cry to God? Repent? Well, the answer is NO. They desperately try to hide – {{Revelation 6:15 “The kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains,”}}
This state continues even through fire, hail and blood being cast to earth, and 200 million of the most horrible demons being released on earth. How would that affect the people’s repentance? Do they all come to the Lord? Here is the answer – {{Revelation 9:20-21 “THE REST OF MANKIND WHO WERE NOT KILLED BY THESE PLAGUES, DID NOT REPENT OF THE WORKS OF THEIR HANDS, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood which can neither see nor hear nor walk, and they did not repent of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their immorality, nor of their thefts.”}}
[b]. VERSE 17
Jeremiah 6:17 “I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet,’ but they said, ‘WE WILL NOT LISTEN.’
The next thing God did was to set over the nation faithful watchmen such as the prophets to watch out for the people, and to watch out for the enemy. In a way it is like the lifesaver guards. They watch out for the people, the swimmers in the surf, but they also watch out for the enemy, the prowling sharks. In Judah’s case, the Lord set over them watchmen to sound the trumpet, the rams’ horns of alarm. Now the alarm would be for two reasons with the first being to alarm the people to their own sinful behaviour so that, being convicted, they might repent; and the second, to warn the people about the enemy’s approach. In both cases, Judah was warned by faithful watchmen sounding the alarm, but what did sinful Judah do? Verse 17 says that the people’s response was, “We will not listen.” “We will not walk in God’s path, and we will not listen.”
What more could God do that He had not already done for them. They were like a bent axel that could not be straightened no matter what, and in the end, it had to be discarded. Judah was discarded, but the Lord did work with some of His faithful Jews over the centuries until the time of the Saviour, and after that, “behold, we are turning to the Gentiles” (Acts 13:46), and these last 20 centuries have been the Times of the Gentiles, with the discarded axel of Judah seemingly abandoned, waiting in a scrap metal yard. However in the not too distant future, God will retrieve that bent axel and work it so majestically that it will again be the perfection of God.
VERSES 17 AND 18. There are three groups called to hear what God’s divine will was. The heathen nations are asked to see what was among them; what Jehovah had decreed in judgement against Judah where heathen nations would become spectators of the outplaying of His divine purposes. The Gentile/heathen nations are told to hear, and the congregation (all mankind which includes Judah) are told to know; and lastly the entire earth, which may even include Nature, is told to hear. This momentous event they are to know, is the way God will judge Judah so all witnesses may know she is without excuse. What is among the nations to be seen and known, is either the height of the wickedness of Judah, or the severity of the judgments they will encounter, or both.
The “fruit of their plans”, (“thoughts”, AV) is the ripened judgement they have earned and worked towards. All their plans were evil and they will reap what they have sown. God will bring disaster on the nation, which is their ripened fruit of sin, falling to the ground, and it was to be for two reasons. They had not listened to Jehovah’s words and they had rejected His Law. The Law and the prophets had spoken, but the “uncircumcised ears” were tightly shut. The only time their ears would be open was to hear the Chaldean army reaping destruction in their land.
