Jeremiah #02
Sad sermons for stubborn Saints
Jeremiah 2-6. 07/23/06
We are still doing a survey of the book of Jeremiah that we started last Sunday. I won’t do a verse by verse study but an overall survey of the book.
In the first chapter of Jeremiah, we talked last week about his call to be a prophet. That must have been quite a shock for Jeremiah because he thought he was going to live the quite life of a priest. For Jeremiah to be called to be a prophet was different than he was expecting. A priest got his messages much like we do today through study, prayer and much prayer. Then the priest would go to the church and preached his message.
Now a prophet on the other hand was different. He got his message immediately and would most of the time share it with whoever he was around immediately. He would be the mouth piece for God. A prophet would represent God to the people, while a priest would represent the people to God.
As we come to chapters 2 through 6, we have a series of messages that was preached by Jeremiah to the Israelites. The Lord said in chapter one, “I’m going to put my words in your mouth and you are to say what I tell you to say.” You can understand something about how hard these messages were going to be because here was a group of people that was caught up in apathy. His messages were going to be disliked by the entire congregation. I know it would be bad to preach a message and none in the congregation would like it. That is the reason I like large crowds when I preach. I know that with a large crowd there may be one or two that will like the message. But that wasn’t the case with Jeremiah; none of the crowd that was left back in Jerusalem was going to like his message. Jeremiah goes down in history as the most unpopular prophet in the Bible.
I have wondered how Jeremiah would have been received with the feel good crowd today. Today, we have this feel good religion. People want to come to church and have someone who has graduated the seminary to tell them how good they are. I believe the Scripture when it says there is none good, no not one. I believe if there is any good in us it isn’t us but the God in us. So there wasn’t a lot of clapping going on when Jeremiah was doing his preaching.
It is believed in chapters 2 through 6 is the sermons that Jeremiah preached the first five years of his call. In chapter 2, we find he talks about the SINS OF THE PEOPLE.
Jeremiah was a good preacher and how I know is that he sort of paints his messages with pictures. In verses 2-7, there is the picture of the peoples sins is like an unfaithful wife.
He goes back to the beginning days when Israel fell in love with God. He compares it to the engagement days and the honeymoon days. You remember that don’t you? That is the time when you don’t want to be separated but be together all the time. But something happened. They started to take God for granted and begin ignoring Him. There love for Him started to diminish.
I want to tell you Christian friend we had better keep a check on our love for the Lord. If we aren’t careful, we will take the Lord for granted and ignore Him and first thing you notice you will miss His house failing to assemble yourself together as we should. I want to tell you something about when the devil will tempt you to start ignoring the house of God. It is when you have a child that is getting to the time in his or her life that he is listening to the preacher and being convicted of their sins. It is a time when you may not even know it but your husband is beginning to think about this church business and all of a sudden you stop going. You listen to this preacher; when you are tempted to stop attending God’s house, it isn’t of God but of the devil and you can count on something is going on with a loved one in your house hold.
Look at what the Lord says in verse 13, “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” To put it into today’s language, they have traded living water for a mud hole. Many have given up their place in God’s house for the mud of the world.
In chapter 2 Jeremiah describes the sins of the people. In chapter 3, we see the Lord’s SUMMONS TO THE PEOPLE.
In this chapter there is a repetition of a couple of words. The first is return. Look at verse 1. The second word is backslide. Look at verses 7,8,11,12,14,22.
In the book of Hosea, chapter 4, there is a good definition of what backsliding is all about. In verse 16 it says, “For Israel slideth back like a backsliding heifer.” Have you ever seen a cow backslide? It is evident that the Lord has and He compares our backsliding to that of a cow. Sometimes the Word of God isn’t complimentary to us.
I was raised on a farm and I had to think about what a backsliding cow acted like. Have you ever tried to load a cow in a trailer? If the cow doesn’t want to load, it will stiffen its front legs and you cannot do anything with it. That is the reason the cow handlers have what is called the hot stick. You can pock a cow with a hot stick and get out of the way if you are in front because you might get run over.
Now what the Word of God does is to compare the backslidden Christian to that of a backslidden cow. I want you to know that Jeremiah was not winning many friends and influencing people with kind of preaching.
Now when you look at verse 22, you find that God is appealing to His people to return to Him and He would heal their backsliding. Backsliding is a disease and here is a disease that can be cured and it is cured by returning back to God.
Warren Wiersbe tells about a church member that always ended his prayer in church by saying Lord clean out the cobwebs in my life. There was a man in the church that heard that quite often and it would irritate him. Every time the man was called on to pray, he would end by saying, “Lord clean out the cobwebs in my heart.” The man was called on to close in prayer after the message and he finished it by saying Lord clean out the cobwebs in my life. The irritated man said and after you do that Lord kill the spider.
Now when you move to chapter 4-6, we have another picture. He says in the final point SOW NOT AMONG THORNS.
Now what you are taught in this chapter is that God does not sow His blessings in hearts that have not repented. We are told something about how the heart is compared to ground in Matthew 13. There in that chapter you have the parable of the sower and the soil. You are told how that the seed will not take root in hard ground, stony ground and uncultivated ground. God wants us to break up the fallow ground.
God was calling among the people to repent and return. Now how were they to repent and return? By allowing the Spirit of God to break up that hard heart by plowing through it conviction and getting it ready to receive the Word or the seed. The best thing that can happen to a lost person is that you are in such misery that you know you have to do something and do it today. The best thing that can happen to the backslidden Christian is that you are in such misery about the way you are living that something has to be done and done today. Do you know Jesus?
