Jeremiah

Jeremiah said, I am in derision daily, and everyone mocks me.

Is this what it means to be faithful to you and to your worth, that if I'm faithful to you, I have to be hated by everybody? Jeremiah is often referred to as the weeping prophet, and he'll be R.C. Sproul's focus on this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Over the past few weeks, we've considered several of the Old Testament prophets, and these messages are from a much larger series, one of our most requested resources, Dust to Glory, an overview of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, 57 messages in total.

If you'd like this series on a special edition DVD, along with digital access to the messages and study guide, simply give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight, and you'll receive this time-tested resource as our way of saying thank you. Well, here's Dr. Sproul on the prophet Jeremiah and his unique role in the history of the nation of Israel. I remember when I was in graduate school in the Netherlands that I lived a super regimented life, got up the same time every day, and we had a small bedroom in the place where we were renting, and it had a little sink. And there was just room to squeeze in this little desk, wall in the sink, and then the back of the chair was up against the bed. And I used to sit at that desk for 12 hours every single day, and I had all this theological study to do. And I said to myself, self, if I'm going to have to study all this theology, there's something I want to add to it.

I want to be studying the Bible while I'm doing this. And so I had this routine that every day before I started my academic work, I studied carefully the text of one book of the Bible. And my companion for a year was the prophet Jeremiah. And ever since that experience, I sort of feel like Jeremiah is my friend.

I spent so much time with him in pouring over the contents of his book. And I was always awestruck by the courage, the faithfulness, and the devotion of Jeremiah. Because Jeremiah was also given the unenviable task, much like Isaiah, to announce God's judgment upon His own people and upon His own church. And sometimes we have this portrait of the Old Testament prophet as being some kind of stern, mean, ill-tempered person who took delight in announcing these dreadful, calamitous judgments that were about to befall the people.

But we recall that the nickname of Jeremiah was the weeping prophet because Jeremiah took no delight in giving bad news. He was a man with a broken heart who wept for his people and who wept for the city of Jerusalem. We also in those days used to go frequently to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and to see the marvelous paintings. The Rijksmuseum is perhaps second only to the Louvre in Paris in terms of its collection of great art. And they have this huge, great big room that was the Rembrandt Room, the largest Rembrandt collection to be found anywhere in the world. And we used to go and look carefully at all of these paintings of Rembrandt, but my favorite was a painting titled in Dutch, Jeremiah laments the destruction of Jerusalem. If you're familiar with that painting, you see the prophet leaning heavily upon the Scriptures. And in the background where the darkness and the light are intermingled in classic Rembrandt style, if you look very closely at the painting, you will see the city of Jerusalem in flames.

And Rembrandt, when he used to paint his paintings, did a thing that was similar to what Michelangelo did and others. He would make 30 or 40 sketches of the person's life if he were doing biblical characters before he would choose one to paint. And what he was looking for was a critical moment, a fruitful moment that he could capture the whole man and his whole mission in one scene. And that was his selection for Jeremiah, Jeremiah weeping over the city of Jerusalem. Well, Jeremiah was 20 years old about when he was called to be a prophet, and we have the record of his call found in the first chapter of his book. And it's important to understand that Jeremiah was the last prophet of Judah before the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the people of God to Babylon. We read in verse 4 of the first chapter, then the word of the Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet to the nations. It's interesting that he is called the prophet to the nations, or the prophet to the Gentiles when most of his prophecy was given to the Jews in and around Jerusalem.

His ministry would last approximately 50 years from this date. And he was from the tribe of Benjamin, and many, many centuries later another descendant from the same tribe of Benjamin would be ordained not as a prophet, but as the New Testament counterpart to the Old Testament prophet, an apostle. And this Benjaminite in the New Testament was also called the apostle to the Gentiles. And there's a real sense in which the ministry of Jeremiah in the Old Testament anticipates the ministry of the apostle Paul in the New Testament. Then said I, this is Jeremiah speaking of course, Ah, Lord God, behold I cannot speak, for I am a youth. It's been said of Jeremiah, as we will see shortly, that not only at the beginning but throughout his vocation he was a reluctant prophet.

And we see that reluctance at the very beginning when he says, I can't speak, I'm a youth. And the Lord said to me, Oh, I'm sorry Jeremiah, I must have come to the wrong address. You must not be the Jeremiah that I ordained from the beginning of the world or that I sanctified in your mother's womb. That's not what God said. When Jeremiah protested that he was too young, the Lord said to him, Do not say, I am a youth. For you shall go to all whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.

Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord. And then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me, Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. And see, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant. Now do you see the same thing that happened with Isaiah where Isaiah was given this grim task of announcing bad news all over the place? Nevertheless, Isaiah is known today for being the prophet of the gospel in the Old Testament. So in like manner, when God comes and puts His words in the mouth of Jeremiah, He tells him, He said, I want you to go and pull up and root up and tear down.

Why? So that you can plant and so that you can build. But before God was going to rebuild His nation and rebuild His people, first of all, He had to tear down the structures that had become so corrupt. And so these were the circumstances of the call of Jeremiah. And to catch a flavor of the difficulty of his task, God sent Jeremiah, not so much to kings as Isaiah had ministered to, but to the religious core of the nation, to the priests, and to the guilds of prophets in those days.

Chapter 7 gives us an insight into this mission. Beginning in verse 1 of that chapter, we read this. The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, 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 in at 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. But do not trust in these lying words saying the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these.

What's going on here? We've said that one of the things, one of the roles of the prophet in the Old Testament was to be that of the reformer. Now the prophet as reformer was not a revolutionary.

There is a difference. The prophets were not trying to be innovators to throw out all of the things that God had instituted in the covenant and in the religious life of the people. I've said many times that what happened to the worship of Israel in the Old Testament is that it degenerated into ritualism, externalism, and formalism where the people were just going through the motions outwardly, but their hearts were far removed from the things of God. They still had their religious activity, but it was purely external, superficial, on the outside.

It didn't penetrate into their hearts. Now what the prophets did was not get rid of the forms or the rituals or the externals, but called the people to understand the internal reality to which the externals were supposed to point and called them to repent from allowing their religion to be merely an external thing. And God says to Jeremiah, I want you to go right to the center of the town, to Jerusalem, to the temple, and tell the people to amend their ways and not to trust in lying words. And the lying words were in this formula that they recited. This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. On other occasions, I've stressed how important it is when we see repetition in Hebrew literature, because repetition signifies emphasis. And usually when something of great importance is mentioned, it is repeated. That is, it is said twice.

But here, it is repeated to the third degree. These people are being hypocritical to the superlative degree, saying this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. And Jeremiah is instructed to tell them, you are trusting in lying words, words that cannot profit. And later on he says, go to Shiloh and look at it.

Shiloh had been a place that had served temporarily as a central sanctuary in antiquity, and now was in ruins. Jeremiah says, go to Shiloh and look at it, because that's what Jerusalem is going to look like when God is finished with the visitation of His judgment. Can you imagine any prophecy that would be more incendiary than that one? Can you imagine the fury and the wrath of the priests and the religious leaders of the day that this man would have the audacity to say that God was going to destroy Jerusalem? It was hard on Jeremiah.

He was hated and persecuted by the priests, by the false prophets of his day, and being as sensitive a man as he was, he found it very difficult to continue in this mode. And I think one of the most poignant chapters that we have that describes his struggle is chapter 20 of his book. Chapter 20 verse 7 begins with these words, O Lord, you have induced me and I was persuaded. You are stronger than I and have prevailed. I like the older translation better than this, O Lord, thou hast deceived me and I am deceived, because it captures the spirit of this discussion, which seems to be an exercise in redundancy.

Because if God deceives a man, nothing could be more plain than that that man is deceived. And if God has overwhelmed him, then indeed he is overwhelmed. But now Jeremiah is saying, what chance do I have, God? I can't fight you. You're too strong for me.

You've seduced me here in this task. He said, I am in derision daily and everyone mocks me. I am persona non grata in all of Jerusalem. I'm the most hated man among my own people.

Is this what it means to be faithful to you and to your worth, that if I'm faithful to you, I have to be hated by everybody? For when I spoke, I cried out, I shouted violence and plunder, because the word of the Lord was made to me a reproach and a derision daily, daily, every single day. Jeremiah endures the reproach and the derision of his people because he's trying to be faithful to the Word of God.

Every pastor in every church needs to visit this text regularly. Then I said, I will not make mention of him nor speak any more in his name. Do you see what the depths to which Jeremiah has fallen here? I can't take it anymore.

I can't stand this hostility, this hatred, this derision. And so God, I quit. I'm turning in my prophets card. I will speak no more in your name. He says, but the Word of God was shut up in my bones like fire and I couldn't stop. That's what I like about Jeremiah. Here was a prophet that had fire in his bones, and it was a fire that was kindled by the Word of God.

I was weary of holding it back, and I could not. Verse 11, but the Lord is with me as a mighty, awesome one. Therefore, my persecutors will stumble and will not prevail.

They will be greatly ashamed, for they will not prosper, and their everlasting confusion will never be forgotten. Verse 13, sing to the Lord, praise the Lord. Verse 14, cursed be the day in which I was born.

Talk about ambivalence. Talk about vacillating between exaltation and joy of the praise of God and then cursing the day of His birth because of the misery that He has to endure. Chapter 23, verse 9, my heart within me is broken because of the prophets.

All of my bones shake. I'm like a drunken man and like a man whose wine has overcome because of the Lord and because of His holy words. For the land is full of adulterers, for because of a curse the land mourns, the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, their course of life is evil, and their might is not right. For both prophet and priest are profane.

Yea, in my house I have found their wickedness. And so, Jeremiah complains. He says to God, he said, Look, you tell me to call these people to repentance because judgment is coming upon this holy city.

And every time I preach, there are 15 prophets who come in behind me and tell the people, Peace, peace. God is with us. Don't listen to Jeremiah. He disturbs the unity of the church.

God loves you just exactly the way you are. Peace, peace. And Jeremiah cries to God. He said, Oh God, the message of these prophets, they heal the wounds of the daughter of Zion but slightly.

How can I get the people to hear your word when my voice is drowned out every day by the false prophets who are telling the people exactly what they want to hear, crying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace. What does God say to Jeremiah? Verse 25, I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. How long will this be in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies? Indeed, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart who try to make my people forget my name by their dreams. As their fathers forgot my name for Baal.

Now listen to this. God says, the prophet who has a dream, let him tell his dream. But he who has my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What's the chaff to the wheat, says the Lord. Is not my word like a fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. Jeremiah, quit worrying about the false prophets. I'll take care of the false prophets.

If they're dreamers, let them dream and let them tell their dream. But let the man of God preach the word of God faithfully and watch the power of that word. Now, just before this rebuke, we read this message at the beginning of chapter 23. Behold, the days are coming, saith the Lord, that I will raise to David a branch of righteousness. A king shall reign and prosper and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In his days Judah will be saved, Israel will dwell safely.

Now this is his name by which he will be called, the Lord our righteousness. And Jeremiah told the people that God promised them a new covenant and a new beginning. And even though he said that the temple would be destroyed and the people would be cast off into captivity, one of the last things that Jeremiah did before he was carried off was he bought a field. He invested in real estate in Jerusalem as a sign to his people that God would raise this city once more out of the ashes. These words spoken by the Old Testament prophets were not mere predictions. They were speaking the very word of God. And because of that, those things came to pass. You're listening to the Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind.

I'm Nathan W. Bingham. Today's episode highlighting the prophet Jeremiah comes from a much larger series called Dust to Glory. Dr. Sproul has said that he believed Dust to Glory is the most important teaching tool that Ligonier has produced.

It gives you the big picture, the major themes, events and people of the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. And until midnight tonight, for your gift of any amount, we'll send you the special edition DVD set that includes an audio CD with all the messages and a printable study guide. Plus, we'll unlock the series and study guide for you in the free Ligonier app. So perhaps donate the DVD set to your local church library to aid with adult Sunday school and small group studies. Visit renewingyourmind.org to give your gift or use the link in the podcast show notes. And if you would prefer not to receive the DVD set or you live outside the US or Canada, you can request only digital access when you donate at renewingyourmind.org slash global. But respond today as this offer ends at midnight. And thank you for fueling the daily outreach of Renewing Your Mind, now also available on our very own YouTube channel. Simply search for Renewing Your Mind and subscribe, turn on notifications and like the daily videos. Profit after profit came with warnings of the destruction to come. The people of Judah refused to repent of their idolatry. Next week we'll conclude this short series as R.C. Sproul considers the events that led up to Judah's exile in Babylon. That's next Saturday here on Renewing Your Mind. .