Flight JER01 - Part C

For Jeremiah, likewise, God's Word motivated him to keep on in ministry.

You know, D.L. Moody was a preacher in Chicago a century ago. He said, I know the Bible is inspired because it inspires me. Something about God's Word that gets me, yours truly, out of many a rut. God's truth is the motivation and foundation we need to keep going in this life. Today on Connect with Skip Heisig, Skip shares how God's Word motivated Jeremiah to keep living for the Lord and how it can do the same for you. Then, at the end of today's program, Skip and his wife Lenya share how you can take your walk with God to another level.

Depends on the condition of your heart, the location, you might say, of your heart. Is your heart right before God, humble before God? You draw near to Him and God will be as close to you as He was to anybody in the Old Testament. Thanks, Skip. If you want to hear more, please stay tuned after the teaching. Now we want to tell you about a great resource that shows why you can find great hope for today in Jesus' resurrection. The aftermath of 2020 has left so many of us wrestling with questions about the future and wondering, what's next?

Here's Skip Heisig. That's a question, by the way, that people ask any time there is a catastrophe, any kind of catastrophic event causes people to ask the question, what's next? If there's a car accident that happens, well, what's next? Am I going to be able to walk after this? If a disease strikes someone, what's next? Am I going to be cured? If somebody we love dies, we ask, what's next? Am I going to be able to go on? We want to help you live with confidence, no matter what the future holds, by sending you a powerful collection of Easter weekend messages from Skip Heisig on the hope of the resurrection.

Anything's possible. If the one who said he's going to die and rise again died and rose again, that means all of the promises Jesus ever made are possible and can come true. That's why it's called a living hope. The Morning That Changed Everything with Skip Heisig is a DVD collection of six life-changing Easter messages. And it's our thanks for your gift of $35 or more today to help connect more people to the living hope of Jesus Christ.

To give online securely, visit connectwithskip.com slash offer, or call 800-922-1888. Okay. We're in the book of Jeremiah as Skip Heisig starts today's study.

The first step or evidence that God is judging a nation is when He gives them over to what they so desperately say they want. You want independence from me? You want no morality? Do what you want? Sleep with who you want?

Male or female or anybody or anything? Have it. When God gives you over to those desires, it's an indication that God is judging that nation. So I think it's already begun. Arnold Toynbee, who was a very renowned historian, said that out of 22 civilizations appearing in history, 19 of the 22 collapsed when they reached the present moral condition of the United States of America. He said that a generation ago.

19 of them in his expert study on human history collapsed. You might be witnessing now, like Jeremiah was witnessing, the very collapse of our nation under the judgment of God. I'm not trying to scare you, but I want to prepare you. There's hope for us as you know. Chapter 3 verse 14, return, O backsliding children.

I'll speed it up, I promise. Says the Lord, for I am married to you. There's another relational term.

I will take you one from one city, two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion. He'll bring them back. Go down to verse 22, return, O backsliding children, and I will hear your backs, hear your backsliding. 16 times in this book, one, six, 16, the word or term backsliding or backslidings appear. You're familiar with what a backslider is, right?

It just means to move backward. If you want to get an illustration of backsliding, have you ever tried to climb up a slide on a playground? If you try to climb it and you let go of the side rails, you will backslide. You'll slide backwards. You will lose ground.

You may try to gain ground, but you will more quickly lose ground. So this is a metaphor. And the book of Jeremiah is filled with a metaphor like this, 21 different pictures of judgment. And that's because Jeremiah was a good communicator. He didn't just help people hear it. He wanted people to see it.

So he chose very, very vivid language for that to happen. Here's another example. Chapter 4, verse 3.

See, we're making progress. For thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, break up your fallow ground. This is our agricultural terminology. And do not sow among thorns. Circumcise, different metaphor, obviously. Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and take away the foreskin of your hearts. You men of Judah, you inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my fury come forth like fire and burn so that no one can quench it because of the evil of your doings. Now, chapter 5 and chapter 6 happen to be during that reform I told you about. Remember, I mentioned King Josiah, the good king, who heard the law, tore his robe, humbled himself, turned to God in sincerity.

Some of the leaders did too, but it was really a superficial turning as far as the general population was concerned. You know, okay, man, the king's into this. We better get into it too.

Any pig can fly in a hurricane. And anybody can jump on a bandwagon. And it's like, man, there's a Jesus movement happening. I'm going to jump on. And there's a revival happening. Okay, I'm going to get in because, you know, the king, I want him to be happy with me.

So I'll do it too. So it was very superficial. It wasn't a national turning at all.

There was no real change. So chapter 6, verse 13 kind of isolates one of the problems here. It says, Because from the least of them, even to the greatest of them, everyone is given to covetousness. And from the prophet, even to the priest, everyone deals falsely.

They have also healed the hurt of my people, slightly saying peace, peace, when there is no peace. Now there's a couple of bad groups here. One group is politicians, which I generally find is a bad group anyway. Just honestly speaking, very hard to find a good one. I find good godly ones, very rarely. They're out there. But I also know God uses them.

I know God uses them and God sets them on thrones and brings them down raises them up. Bible says that and we're told to pray for them. Anybody in elected office, you should pray for whether you voted for them or not, whether you like them or not, whether you like their policies or not, whether you agree with their tweets or not. You're to pray for every single leader.

Is that right or wrong? Okay, yeah. So bad group number one, politicians here, and I'll tell you why in a minute, bad group number two, prophets. And as suspect as politicians are, preachers are often, I'm very suspicious of preachers.

I am one, but I'm still very, very skeptical of many of them, if not most of them. And in this case, you had politicians and prophets, preachers, who wanted the people of Judah to not be worried about the reports of Jeremiah saying the sky is falling, the sky is falling, a Babylon is coming. They wanted to quiet that kind of anxiety in the hearts of the people. And so politicians went to form alliances with other nations rather than trusting God.

We covered that last week. And prophets wanted to preach fun, feel good, happy messages. Enter Jeremiah the prophet, who brought truth, and they didn't want to hear the truth, and it will get him in trouble. So this bad group of prophets and politicians were trying to treat the real core problem of Judah superficially. They were, if I can use this metaphor, putting a band-aid on an arterial bleed, which the patient would bleed out.

They were quacks. I read a true story about a 50-year-old nurse. You think she would know better. She had ovarian cancer, very, very difficult form of cancer to eradicate. She was scheduled to go into surgery and chemotherapy afterwards, a lot of treatments. My wife had a very similar cancer, so I know the routine. But a doctor said, I found this ointment, this black salve that has healed many cancers, including my own. She canceled her surgery, submitted to his treatment, and after several months became far worse, and the area he treated with his black salve became highly infected, and she ended up dying. Jeremiah is the true doctor.

These other guys are quacks, and the nation loves it, because they don't want to hear the truth that you need surgery. So, chapter 7 through 10, Jeremiah goes to ground zero, and that is the temple of God itself. Chapter 7 through 10, we call them temple discourses. He is sent to the temple, the main worship center in Jerusalem, to preach sermons.

There's another temple sermons, there's another temple sermon in chapter 26, we won't get to that. Chapter 7, verse 2, God says, stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word, and say, hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter into these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Do not trust in these lying words of the false prophets and politicians saying, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these.

What does that mean? It means that these false prophets and bad politicians were saying, look around you, this is the temple built by King Solomon. This is the center of worship. God wouldn't let anything happen to this. Just like somebody would say, God would never let anything happen to the U.S. God wouldn't let anything happen to Judah or this temple, this is the temple of the Lord. And so Jeremiah has to go where all the people are gathering, maybe even on one of the three pilgrim feasts, like Passover or Pentecost or Tabernacles, and there's thousands of people coming in saying, don't trust in these lying words. Part of the problem is that the people retained the symbol of worship but left the substance of worship. The symbol is the temple, the substance is the Lord of the temple. There are many people who are content with ritual short of a relationship.

They'll keep the ritual. Hey, are you a Christian? Do you know God? Are you a Christian? Are you a Christian? God, do you know you're going to go to heaven? Well, you know I was raised in the church.

Translate what they're saying. I believe in the ritual. I was baptized by my parents. I was confirmed when I was a child. My parents took me to church. They always taught me.

What about your relationship? So many like this trust in the ritual short of an actual relationship. Some look to a place as a holy place. Fast forward to the New Testament. Are there any holy places? Are there any holy places? Well, every place is holy in that sense. Wherever God is, that's holy. But are there holy temples that are holier than others? No, there are no holy places in the New Testament. God does not dwell in temples made with hands as the prophet said.

That's Stephen's sermon in the book of Acts. So there's no holy places, but there are holy people. So the holy place that God dwells in now are people. You're the temple of the Holy Spirit.

He lives in you. So they were looking to the place, but they didn't become holy people. So that is part of the problem. So it gets so bad that in verse 16, God tells Jeremiah not to pray for the people anymore. First time God ever gave that commandment to a prophet. He says, don't even pray for these people because it's a waste of your breath. I'm not going to answer it.

They've now crossed the line of no return. Chapter 11 through 20 is what I'm going to call performance prophecy. You saw a great performance by Cindy moments ago as she took the little clay and she molded it into a vessel. Here Jeremiah in chapters 11 through 20 uses visual aids to get people's attention. They would look, they would get the message as he would do certain things. So chapter 13, God becomes Jeremiah's fashion consultant and says, hey, Jerry, go take this piece of cloth, this sash and bury it in the muddy ground.

Then after a while, take it out and wear it. And that would be a prophecy, a symbol of Judah's pride that has become beat up and worn out and soaked and sullen and useless. In chapter 16, God says, Jeremiah, don't get married. Stay single. Don't you dare raise a family in this place.

Now, why would he do that? That's an unusual request because typically by age 20, all Jewish males were well-married by that time in that age, that day and age. By 20, they were married.

They were expected to be. In fact, a Jewish rabbi even said of all of the people who will not enter heaven is a Jewish man who has no wife. So they expected people to get married. God says, don't get married. Don't raise a family.

Why? Chapter 16 verse 2, you will not take a wife. You shall not have sons or daughters in this place.

Here's why. For thus says the Lord, concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, concerning their mothers who bore them and their fathers who begot them in the land, they shall die gruesome deaths. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried, but they shall be like refuse or dung on the face of the earth. They shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, and their corpses shall not be by the sword and by famine, and their corpses shall be meat, food for the birds of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth.

Now that's a good incentive to stay single. Chapter 18, Jeremiah is invited to pottery barn. That is the house of the potter, where he would go to the workshop, watch the potter make a vessel on the potter's wheel, watch as that vessel became hard in the potter's hands, watch as the potter then took that marred vessel and reshaped it into something different. In chapter 19, Jeremiah is told to take a pot from pottery barn, from the potter's house, go outside the city of Jerusalem, outside the gate, and smash it. And here's why, chapter 19 verse 1, that says, the Lord go get a potter's earthen flask, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests.

Then you shall break this flask in the sight of the men who go with you, and say to them, Thus says the Lord of hosts, even so I will break this people and this city, as one breaks the potter's vessel, which cannot be made whole again, and they shall bury them in tophat, where there is no, until there is no place to bury." There's several of these kinds of sermons in this book. I heard that when a speaker speaks, like I'm doing now, people who listen will retain, if they're listening very carefully, and some of you are, not all of you are, but some of you are, if you're listening very carefully to my words tonight, you're going to remember, at best, 10 percent. If you listen to this twice, that is, if you go home and go, I'm going to get on the computer and listen to it again, you'll remember 25 percent.

And that's very discouraging to a guy who speaks. If you want to up your odds, you show them. If they see something, people usually retain about 50 percent of what they see. I guarantee everybody who saw Jeremiah break this jar that day, remembered every detail of what they saw, and then they would be more inclined to remember the message that he gave. Now, Jeremiah gets discouraged because, and here's one of the reasons, chapter 20 verse 1, Now Pashur, the son of Imur, the priest who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things.

Then Pashur struck Jeremiah, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was in the house of the Lord. Now, what do you think Jeremiah is thinking at this point? This isn't in my job description. I didn't sign up for this. I'm not feeling it, man.

Maybe all the above. He was so discouraged, he wanted to quit the ministry. We understand that.

I understand that. Verse 9, Then I said, for all this bad turn of events, he's now in prison. Then I said, I will not mention, make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. This is Jeremiah turning in his resignation. He's quitting.

Jeremiah the prophet now wants to become a non-profit organization. I quit the ministry. I'm done for.

I'm out. Well, we're not done with the book yet. What kept him going? Verse 9 continues, But his word was in my heart, like a burning fire, shut up in my bones.

I was wary of holding it back, and I could not. There's something about God's word, and I had to look for an opportunity to get it out. Do you remember those two disciples who were discouraged on the road to Emmaus? They didn't know Jesus rose from the dead.

He walks up to them incognito. He speaks to them from the Old Testament. Once Jesus is revealed to them, they said, did not our hearts burn within us as he spoke to us along the way? What burned God's word? What burned God's word? What did he do?

Speak to them. He spoke to them the word of God. It burned within them. It motivated them. And for Jeremiah, likewise, God's word motivated him to keep on in ministry.

You know, D.L. Moody was a preacher in Chicago a century ago. He said, I know the Bible is inspired because it inspires me. Something about God's word that gets me, yours truly, out of many a rut.

Martin Luther put it this way. The Bible has hands. It lays hold of me. It has feet. It runs after me. It's like this living entity that grabs a hold of my life and picks me up when I'm at my lowest. So he's ready to quit.

And he doesn't. And we'll continue finishing, get this, the book of Jeremiah. And it's perfect because the very short book of Lamentations should be tacked on to the study of the book of Jeremiah. So we're going to take next week the book of Jeremiah, part two, and the book of Lamentations, where he is seeing Jerusalem falling and comments on it.

That's Skip Heiting with a message from the series, The Bible from 30,000 Feet. Now let's head into the studio with Skip and Lenya as they share how you can take your walk with God to another level. As you mentioned today, our Christian faith must go beyond a ritual to a relationship. God doesn't dwell in holy places. He now dwells in holy people. Skip, can we talk more about how this mindset can take us further into our walk with Jesus?

Sure. The old paradigm was about location. It was geocentric. It was driven by a place that you go. The new paradigm is about relation. It's theocentric.

It's driven by a person, not a place. It's a relationship you have with God and God has with you. So remember the woman at the well said, You Jews worship in Jerusalem. We say, This is the mountain where we ought to worship. Jesus said, Look, the time is coming when it doesn't matter where you go.

It's those who worship in spirit and in truth. In the book of Acts, Stephen said, The Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands. And then James just simply put, Draw near to God and God will draw near to you.

So it doesn't matter where you are, depends on the condition of your heart, the location, you might say, of your heart. Is your heart right before God, humble before God? You draw near to Him and God will be as close to you as He was to anybody in the Old Testament who went into that tabernacle and saw the Shekinah glory.

I love the thought of location, location, location. So that's really good. The other thing is you are a pastor and I'm a pastor's wife. So we do encourage people to go to church. And it's not that the place is special, but where two or more are gathered in His name than He's in the midst.

So of course, you can find Him alone on a hike or in your home, but it's so great to get to the house of God as well. Thank you, Skip and Lenya. We hope this conversation with Skip and Lenya challenged you to keep pursuing God and His truth. Now we want to share about an exciting way you can help encourage others by keeping teachings like today's broadcast going strong. Just visit connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

Again, that's 800-922-1888. Thank you. Tune in again tomorrow as Skip Heitzig talks about the covenants God made with His people, including the new covenant you are a part of today. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.