GOD KNEW
The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin:
To whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.
It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah the son of Josiah king of Judah, unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month.
Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.
But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.
I realize it is Mothers’ Day, and I am supposed to preach an encouraging message to you Moms out there in the cyber world of online services or FM Radio, and I want to acknowledge you, I really do.
We would be nothing without you.
· God protected us
· God provided for us and
· God predestined our course in this life
before we were ever born.
No one in this world has nurtured us, loved us and looked after us more than our moms.
And we own an eternal debt to you.
I want to use that as a springboard to preach today about a preacher
· Called by God before his birth and
· Ordained by God to preach a difficult message at a difficult time.
Jeremiah was just a young man when his ministry began.
He God urged him to not see himself as a child.
He was called of God.
· His age wasn’t the issue
· His credentials weren’t the issue
· His experiences in the world wasn’t the issue.
God told him before he ever began that the people weren’t going to like his message.
He wasn’t even supposed to look at their faces, lest their stares intimidated him and swayed his sermon.
· God knew him before he was even formed in the belly
· God ordained him while he was still in his mother’s womb
And God knew.
I. GOD KNEW THE STATE OF THE WORLD
Jeremiah 21:2 (KJV)
Enquire, I pray thee, of the LORD for us; for Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon maketh war against us; if so be that the LORD will deal with us according to all his wondrous works, that he may go up from us.
Nebuchadnezzar … maketh war against us….
The way I understand it, this was quite the upset in the apple cart.
Only a few years earlier
· Isaiah was the prophet
· Ahaz was the king and
· Assyria was the threat
In those days, Babylon was a tribal group under tribute to Assyria.
Assyria was a huge threat.
They conquered all of the Northern kingdom of Israel and essentially wiped them off the face of the earth.
To this day a Jew knows he’s a Jew, but if he is from one of the ten northern tribes, he has no idea which tribe.
Isaiah told Ahaz, Assyria was not a threat and even gave him a sign not to worry about them.
In the days of king Hezekiah, Isaiah still serving as prophet, Sennacharib the king of Assyria and Rabshakeh, his general laid siege to Jerusalem.
Isaiah and Hezekiah prayed, and Assyria went home defeated.
The Jews had a very rich history of victories like that.
God fought for them and they knew it.
But now
· The king is Zedekiah
· The enemy is Babylon
· The prophet is Jeremiah
And the message from God is surrender.
Notice Jeremiah 21:3-7 (KJV)
Then said Jeremiah unto them, Thus shall ye say to Zedekiah:
Thus saith the LORD God of Israel; Behold, I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight against the king of Babylon, and against the Chaldeans, which besiege you without the walls, and I will assemble them into the midst of this city.
And I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath.
And I will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast: they shall die of a great pestilence.
And afterward, saith the LORD, I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and such as are left in this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those that seek their life: and he shall smite them with the edge of the sword; he shall not spare them, neither have pity, nor have mercy.
Isaiah prayed against Sennacherib and his soldiers wok up dead.[1]
Only a few decades later, Jeremiah is the preacher and God told him to say God was fighting for the enemy!
I would have preferred Isaiah’s job to Jeremiah’s.
But God knew.
II. GOD KNEW THE CONDITION OF JERUSALEM
Jeremiah 2:5-13 (KJV)
Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?
Neither said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt?
And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination.
The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit.
Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the LORD, and with your children's children will I plead.
For pass over the isles of Chittim, and see; and send unto Kedar, and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing.
Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.
Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the LORD.
For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
God said of them in Jerusalem,
Jeremiah 7:24-26 (KJV)
But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.
Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this day I have even sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them:
Yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck: they did worse than their fathers.
They had gotten so used to God’s blessings that they had gotten hard to God.
· Their kings
· Their people even
· Their preachers[2]
Had gotten proud, stiff necked argumentative and difficult.
Years later, after the seven years of captivity in Babylon, some enemies of the Jews wrote to Artaxerxes and said,
Ezra 4:12-13 (KJV)
Be it known unto the king, that the Jews which came up from thee to us are come unto Jerusalem, building the rebellious and the bad city, and have set up the walls thereof, and joined the foundations.
Be it known now unto the king, that, if this city be builded, and the walls set up again, then will they not pay toll, tribute, and custom, and so thou shalt endamage the revenue of the kings.
Frankly, the Jews had a bad reputation in their world and it wasn’t because “all who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”
They had a bad reputation because they behaved badly.
God knew.
God had every intention of correcting it.
Jeremiah was the preacher called of God to tell them correction was coming.
Jeremiah 21:8-9 (KJV)
And unto this people thou shalt say, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death.
He that abideth in this city shall die by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence: but he that goeth out, and falleth to the Chaldeans that besiege you, he shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey.
In New Testament parlance it might sound like this, 1 Peter 5:5-6 (KJV)
Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:
Who doesn’t recognize that America is:
· stiff necked,
· hard hearted,
· proud, and
· godless
Forty years ago someone told me that Billy Graham had said, “If God doesn’t judge American, He’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”
I think instead of bristling our backs and running our mouths, we would be better off to “humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt us in due time.”
To the people under the sound of my voice right now.
Especially to you who are members of Bible Baptist Church Puyallup
Humble yourselves before God and submit to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake.
Obey the laws as best as you understand them
· At work
· On the streets
· In your neighborhoods
I ask you this, if we routinely break these shelter at home orders in every day life, how will we ever be able to answer, “we ought to obey God rather than men.”[3] when it comes to church?
They will be absolutely correct to assume that we are just unlawful.
I am willing to worship God as I believe He has taught us to do, even if that means I have to do it without permission.
But I do not believe God will bless us if we do everything else unlawfully.
God knew the state of the world
God knew the condition of Jerusalem
Then
III. GOD KNEW THEY NEEDED SURRENDER
Jeremiah 38:17-18 (KJV)
Then said Jeremiah unto Zedekiah, Thus saith the LORD, the God of hosts, the God of Israel; If thou wilt assuredly go forth unto the king of Babylon's princes, then thy soul shall live, and this city shall not be burned with fire; and thou shalt live, and thine house:
But if thou wilt not go forth to the king of Babylon's princes, then shall this city be given into the hand of the Chaldeans, and they shall burn it with fire, and thou shalt not escape out of their hand.
Jeremiah said that the way to save the city of Jerusalem, God’s city,[4] the place where His Temple was, the place where every Jew was taught to go to worship the LORD, was to leave it.
· If they would go to Babylon, God would save Jerusalem
· If they resisted, God would give it to the enemy to burn to the ground
God knew,
A. It would disrupt their way of life
Everything they had ever know would change.
· Their livelihoods
· Their homes
· Their routines
· Their friendship possibly
Tell me, isn’t that what you are most frustrated over?
You don’t get to do what you want to do!
God knew,
B. It would destroy their cherished temple
At least in the sense of them worshiping there.
In Babylon, the Jews prayed looking toward the east.
They could not be in their Temple, where God had ordained them to worship Him.
So, they longed for it in their hearts.
It would be good for you to study the Psalms of exile.[5] These were written by the Jews while in Babylonian captivity.
Psalms 137:1-5 (KJV)
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
Is it possible that we could learn to love the house of God, which is the church of the living God as we have never known it possible before?
But not if we are angry and upset and spending all of our time complaining that things aren’t like we want them to be.
God knew
C. It would be for a determined time
Jeremiah 25:11-12 (KJV)
And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the LORD, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations.
Israel had, from their earliest days, disobeyed one of God commands. They were supposed to let the land rest from crops every seventh year.
For 490 years they had ignored what we might think is a trivial piece of Bible.
God did not think it was trivial. He determined the captivity would be seventy years to give the land its deserved rest.
Once the seventy years was over, so was their captivity.
God knew,
D. It would reset their spiritual direction
The Jews did return to Jerusalem seventy years after they were captured.
But life was different.
Their temple had been destroyed.
They built a new one. They eventually even built a bigger one
But the practice of synagogue worship had developed out of the necessity of those days.
This shelter order is going to come to an end.
I don’t know for sure when – probably not that long.
But when we get back to church, I pray that we will all have a reset.
I pray that we will have:
· a change in priorities and
· a change in what we love about church
· a change in what is important to us in church
Conclusion
· God knew Jeremiah before he was even formed in the belly
· God ordained Jeremiah while he was still in his mother’s womb
And God called Jeremiah to preach surrender to the people of God and help reset them worship God aright.
God knew we would live through this day.
· Let’s humble ourselves and
· Let’s reset our hearts to worship God well when we are in His church.
[1] Isaiah 37:36 (KJV)
Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.
[2] When it came to preaching surrender and humility Jeremiah was all alone. All of the rest of the preachers advocated for resistance and war.
[3] Acts 5:29
[4] Psalms 122:6 (KJV)
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.
[5] Psalm 44, Psalm 74, Psalm 79, Psalm 80, Psalm 85, Psalm 89, Psalm 102, Psalm 106, Psalm 123, Psalm 137
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