Jeremiah, “the weeping prophet,” was one of the greatest (and most “unsuccessful”) prophets who crossed the pages of Scripture. He was arrested, thrown into prison, slapped in public, his writings were burned, and he almost drowned in muck and mud at the bottom of a well. No one listened to him. God commanded him to stay unmarried (16:2). He was alone in life without a companion, he was despised, and was seemingly friendless. Jeremiah saw Nebuchadnezzar’s army at the gates of Jerusalem as God’s vengeance coming down. He was despised and yet he did not take back one word or compromise his message and he wept over the sin of his people and their hard hearts.
Okay, Jeremiah. Okay, let's pray. Oh Lord, that you would not allow us to be like the people in the days of Jeremiah who were healed lightly but deeply. Oh Lord that you would take these words of this prophet to help us understand your ways, your redemption, your power. Amen.
Jeremiah, okay, so turn to the first chapter of Jeremiah. Jeremiah is one of the greatest prophets that ever appeared on the pages of Scripture. He was arrested, he was thrown in prison, he was slapped in public, his writings were burned, he was almost drowned in a bunch of yucky muck at the bottom of a well. Nobody listened to him. He's called the weeping prophet for a reason.
When we get to lamentations we'll see that even more clearly, but life was hard for Jeremiah. God commanded him to stay unmarried in chapter 16, verse 2, and there's a reason for it. I hope we'll get to talk about that reason. He was alone in life without a companion. He was despised.
I mean, he was seemingly friendless. He was marginalized, but he didn't take back a single word that he said. He was a strong man. He continued to back up his message. His heart's desire was that the people of God would return and that's why you find the word returned 47 times in 52 chapters of his prophecy.
There's a lot to learn from Jeremiah. Here are a few things. The truth hurts. Jeremiah brings a message of truth and it wounded the people that were listening to him, but the sword was turned back on him and he was wounded by the people. Another thing that we see here is that sin is its own punishment.
Nobody gets away with sin without some harm. We also learn that idolatry is the beginning of the end of blessing. We find his burdens, his feelings about the apostasy, His warnings about the consequences of turning from God. And in all of it, he's declaring that Jesus Christ will be victorious. And this is the theme of the Bible.
You'll see that grand theme woven throughout the prophet Jeremiah, where he speaks of the terrible results of sin, but also God's love and how he does rescue his people. And there's significant sections in here about God's saving grace and particularly the New Covenant. So you see the victory of Jesus Christ here, but it's cast in the midst of some of the greatest difficulties any man has ever endured. Let's talk about his name. His name is translated, Yah is my Appointer.
In other words, God is the one that has put him up to this. Or it could mean Yahweh throws in the sense of laying down a foundation, throwing down a foundation. But whatever it is, it seems like the thrust of the meaning of his name is that God is using him for his own purposes. He was a priest, he had an assistant, his name is Baruch, who helped him write. You know, think about how close you are to your 24th year in life.
Well, Jeremiah began his prophetic ministry at age 24. We often diminish the importance of young people and what they can accomplish, what can be in their hearts, the depth of the truth that exists in their souls. Jeremiah was one of those inspiring young people in the Bible who spoke clearly, definitively, and boldly about the things of God. His ministry spanned 40 years. He is called the weeping prophet.
Because he carried such burdens, he cared so much about the pains that sinners were enduring. And as a result of his understanding of the pain from sin, he preached judgment. Preaching of judgment's not very popular in any age, and it was just as unpopular in his age as it is ours today. And when you do preach judgment, you pay a price because people really don't want to be healed deeply. They really want to just have a nice shallow religion that doesn't mess with them.
But Jeremiah was not the kind of prophet that embraced that kind of religion. He desired to see the power of God working in a person's heart deep and wide, where it really made a difference in your life. And as a result, he was despised. The third item in your outline is the date. When did all this happen?
Well of course we know that Jeremiah lived in a time of decay. It was just before Nebuchadnezzar would invade Judah. He was the last prophet of the southern kingdom. You think of the various prophets that have come. Now we have come to the very last prophet that came out of the southern kingdom and.
He prophesied about 60 years after Isaiah. You'll notice many of the same things being said in Jeremiah that you find in Isaiah, but what you learn in this span of 60 years is that the people didn't listen. He's a contemporary of Zephaniah and Habakkuk and Daniel and Ezekiel and he had a long span of his ministry because he lived and prophesied during the reigns of the last five kings of Judah and those kings were Josiah, Jehoaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah. He prophesied across the reigns of all of those kings. And so he, very much like Isaiah, knew the kings and their children, and he was working his way in and out of their lives.
He knew Josiah. He knew the boy king. You know Josiah he turned the whole nation around, and then he died. Jeremiah saw Josiah's death, and he grieved at his death. And so that's really where Jeremiah enters the scene.
He enters the scene about halfway through the reign of Josiah. So he's seeing this great revival but he also sees the shallowness of it as well. Josiah is the last good king of Judah and so he's prophesying in the middle of his reign. And then Jeremiah, near the end of his life, he sees Nebuchadnezzar at the gates of Jerusalem. And so he's alive to see the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecies about Nebuchadnezzar coming in to destroy Jerusalem and then vengeance came down and Jeremiah weeps.
So he's seeing this whole ramp up of the apostasy and then the final destruction that God brought and he wept. There are three stages of his ministry. You'll see this item number four on your outline. Stage one is from 627 to 605 BC, and during that time he was like Isaiah, proclaiming the coming judgment. And stage two was from 605 to 586 B.C.
And during that time, he's proclaiming judgment when Judah was being threatened and invaded, because there was a period of time where Nebuchadnezzar was rattling his sabers. And so the second phase is, you know, when the fear starts to rise, when people understand this is going to happen, Babylon is going to come in and destroy us just like Isaiah prophesied. And he's ministering during that time of being threatened and invaded. And then the third phase is his ministry after the invasion. And Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, becomes the comforting prophet for those who are left in Jerusalem and also in Egypt.
So those are the three phases before the coming of the king of Babylon and the destruction of Jerusalem, during it, and then after it. And he lives through this whole spectrum of time. You know, during this time he prophesied 40 years and he didn't see any success. How would you like that? No success.
No earthly success. He's very much like the Lord Jesus Christ in this sense. When the Lord Jesus Christ was beaten, when He was scorned, when He was slapped, when He had a crown of thorns slapped upon His head and He was hung on a cross, the people looked at him and said, he's not a Savior, he's nothing. He does nothing for us. I think Jeremiah was a little bit like that.
On the surface, from all the measures of outward success, Jeremiah was a failure, but he wasn't a failure with God, and God is the most important. You know, you can be a failure with everybody else in this world, but if you're a failure with God, then everything is different. Let's talk about the imagery. You know, as you read this, look for some of the beautiful and dramatic imagery, because there are many parables, there are many dramatic scenes here. There's a branch in an almond tree, there's a boiling pot facing away from the north.
Remember that, because you'll learn why it's facing away from the north. There's a gate of the Lord's house. There's a girdle. There's a basket of figs. You know there are stocks that Jeremiah is put into.
There's a dungeon. There's mire. There's all kinds of really fascinating images that help us understand what God would be communicating through this man. The sixth item in your outline is his pain. I just want us to recognize this was a man in pain.
He lived, he suffered, he hurt deeply, and I've listed several places where you see his pain. As you read it, look for the pain and ask yourself, do I have any of this kind of pain? What do I do with my pain? But Jeremiah was subjected to significant rejection and pain. If you met Jeremiah, while you would know that he was a bold man, you'd also know that he was a very sensitive man.
His heart broke and he felt pain. Let me just read you one place in chapter 15 verses 17 and 18. Jeremiah says, I did not sit in the assembly of the mockers, Nor did I rejoice. I sat alone because of your hand, for you have filled me with indignation. Why is my pain perpetual and my wound incurable, which refuses to be healed?
Will you surely make me to be like an unreliable stream as waters that fail?" This is pretty representative of the way that Jeremiah felt in his day. He felt the pain very, very deeply. Now I've listed some key verses. We won't stop there because we'll stop at some of these when we go through the book here in just a short time, but you'll see these key verses here. Chapter 1 verses 17 through 19, chapter 3 verse 16, chapter 23, 5 and 6, chapter 31, verses 31 to 34.
Those are critical markers of the whole message of Jeremiah. Now Christ appears in Jeremiah as he does in all the books of the Old Testament. You'll read of Christ in chapter 23 1 through 8, But when you get to particularly four chapters, chapter 30 through 33, you'll find significant disclosure of the New Covenant and what happens to the person who trusts in Jesus Christ. It's some of the most beautiful language you can imagine. You know Hebrews chapter 8 speaks of this New Covenant.
Chapter 8 verse 8, behold the days are coming says the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. And then in verse 10 the writer of Hebrews writes, For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. None of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more." You'll find mentions of this type of language that we see in Hebrews.
Okay, let's get into the book and I'm just gonna stop you at some of my favorite places that I hope are representative of what's in this book. There's an outline in front of you and I've used the ESV Study Bibles outline and so I'm following that. You can see it. One of the things that it's critical to understand about Jeremiah is it's not chronological. So don't look for a historical record that moves from late to early.
It's not chronological. So let's go to chapter 1. You see the historical setting in chapter 1, verses 1 through 3, and I'll just read these verses. The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Ammon king of Judah in the 13th year of his reign it came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah until the 11th year of Zedekiah the son of Josiah the king of Judah until the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month. Well, with that, you get an idea of when this happened.
He states when his ministry was happening. And then there's Jeremiah's call. Now, I love this part. And I remember reading it many, many years ago as a young man. And I love these words and I love them just as much today.
Beginning in verse four. I remember Jeremiah is 24 years old. He's not far off from your own age. Think about hearing these words. Well, what you really should do is personalize them.
Think of them for yourself. Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you. I ordained you a prophet to the nations. Now verse five is critical that we understand, and that is that God is the one who ordains life from the womb.
I formed you in the womb. Here you have God declaring that life begins in the womb. We live in a time where millions of people don't believe that it's a person in that womb. And as a result, we've created a culture of bloodshed and murder, where we're chopping up and crushing the body parts of children and now we're learning that organizations like Planned Parenthood are selling the body parts. They're selling the heads and the livers and they're selling the pancreas and they're selling the heart.
They're saying there's a heart, there's a head, and they're getting a lot of money for these body parts. And it's being exposed that yes, these are children. They have hands. They have little feet. They have ears.
They have hearts. And this is what verse 5 is saying. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." This is consistent with what the Apostle Paul said, that we were predestined before the foundation of the world. That God knew you before the foundation of the world. You're not an accident.
God was wise in putting you in the world. And you can say this about yourself that Jeremiah says, or we can say this about ourselves, what God says about him, before I formed you in the womb I knew you and listen to this before you were born I sanctified you in other words I set you apart this is a miracle it's such a marvelous thing You can know that God has put you in this world for his own glory. It was his wisdom that did it. And then notice Jeremiah responds, then I said, Ah Lord God, I cannot speak for I am a youth. But the Lord said to me, 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 very much like the Lord's kindness to the prophet Isaiah in verse 9, we read that 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. See, I have this day set over you, the nations, and over the kingdoms to root out and to pull down, to destroy and throw down, to build and to plant. So in this disclosure, what we find is that God is telling Jeremiah that he knew him before he was born and you can be assured that God knew you before you were born. He knows you.
He's set you in this world for his own glory, just like Jeremiah. And we also recognize that Jeremiah had a unique ministry in the world. Verse 10, to root out and pull down, to destroy and throw down, to build and to plant. This is what the people of God actually are designed to do. We are born into this world, we're born into these corrupt and pagan cultures that are in the world, and our first responsibility is to pull down everything that contradicts the beauty and the goodness of Jesus Christ, to turn away from every worldliness, to pull those things down, to pull down all idols that you see that were part of this world that you were born into, and then to destroy them, to throw them down, and then to build and to plant, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to bear fruit, to look to God for all of your life.
And as a result of looking to him you become a builder and a planter and there's fruit bearing. And then we see God's protection of Jeremiah in verses 17 and 18 and this is critical to see because Jeremiah was going to face such opposition. God says to him, Therefore prepare yourself and arise and speak to them all that I command you. Do not be dismayed before their faces, lest I dismay you before them. For behold, I have made you this day a fortified city and an iron pillar and bronze walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against his princes, against its priests, and against the people of the land.
They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you. For I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you." Jeremiah was sent in to speak the Word of God and not to be afraid of the face of man. The fear of man is one of the greatest problems that we have And God was warning Jeremiah that he would protect him. He said, I've made you a four to five city and an iron pillar. In other words, I'm going to protect you.
I'm going to walk with you. And then after this introduction to Jeremiah and his life, we see Israel's adultery. They turned away from the covenant. And Israel has been a faithless spouse. And we see that in Chapter 2, beginning in verse 1.
Look at it with me. Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Go and cry in the hearing of Jerusalem, saying, Thus says the Lord, I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the love of your betrothal, when you went after me in the wilderness in a land not sown. Israel was holiness to the Lord, the first fruits of his increase. All that devour him will offend. A disaster will come upon them, says the Lord." This is a cry of remembrance.
Remember the days when Israel had her heart turned toward the Lord. It was the kindness of your youth. You know, this is something that happens in youth. I think this imagery here is meant to teach us something about the faith that youth often have. It's a very precious and a kind faith.
It's a hungry faith. And it's described here, the love of your betrothal, you went after me in the wilderness. This is a sign of revival, is when young people like Jeremiah have a desire for the Lord and they seek the Lord. And he's using this as an illustration for all believers to help them recognize where they are with the Lord. And then there's a fascinating statement here in verses eight and nine.
And it's something that we should always remember and all the prophets say the same thing and it's this basic thing if you obey the law God will bless you if you don't you'll fall apart And what we learned from these two verses here is that your handling of the law determines your destiny. I'll say that again. The way you handle the law in your life determines everything about your destiny. And you cannot get away from that message in the Bible. If you don't like that message, Understand that it is the message of the Holy Scriptures.
I'll read it. Chapter 2, verse 8. The priests did not say, Where is the Lord? And those who handle the law did not know me. The rulers transgressed against me.
The prophets prophesied by Baal and walked after things that do not profit. Walking after things that do not profit. God desires to bring profit to His children and the way that He does that is by blessing them because they love the law and they keep the law of God. And there's a punishment for those who turn away from the law. Verse 9, Therefore I will yet bring charges against you, says the Lord, and against your children's children I will bring charges.
And then just a few verses later in chapter 2, we see a great tragedy. It's the great misjudgment. It's the most critical thing in all of life. He says, For my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." All of our troubles can be traced to the forsaking of the fountain of the living waters.
You know, Jesus Christ is living water and to forsake the fountain of living waters is the greatest tragedy in a person's life. And then he speaks not only of forsaking the living waters, but then he says, and hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that hold no water. In other words, it's a life that just cannot be filled. It's a life that cannot be fulfilled. It's a broken cistern.
It holds nothing of value. It's always leaking. You know, the people who do not turn to the Lord, they become leaky cisterns. They become leaky pots and they cannot ever be filled and it's a great tragedy. God desires to fill your cup to overflowing.
That's why David said, my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Well God desires to fill your cup to overflowing, but when you forsake the fountain of living waters, you don't have anything in the cup. You have a broken cistern. And then in chapter 3, there's a disclosure of the whole doctrine of salvation.
And while there are so many things to identify here in Jeremiah, I think this is really worth pointing out. And let's pick it up in Chapter 3, verse 6. This is an explanation, or it's rather an illustration of how it is that salvation is not by works. It's a very dramatic illustration. The Lord said to me in the days of Josiah the king, have you seen what backsliding Israel has done?
She has gone up on every high mountain and upon every green tree and there played the harlot. And I said, after she had done these things, Return to me! But she did not return to me. Now this is about Israel, but you see this last phrase, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. So now we're talking about Israel and Judah.
Judah sees the apostasy in Israel. Verse 8, then I saw for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear and went and played the harlot also." So here God says, I divorced the northern kingdom and Judah saw it and they didn't fear. They didn't learn from Israel the northern kingdom's mistakes. Verse 9, So it came to pass through her casual harlotry that she defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and trees. And yet for all this her treacherous sister has not turned to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, says the Lord.
Then the Lord said to me, backsliding Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah." Now, here's what I want us to see. Judah was worse than Israel, the northern kingdom, but God chose Judah. God did not choose Judah because she was righteous. God chose Judah because He wanted to glorify His love through election. This section completely blows away any idea of salvation by works or that God somehow favors you because you're a nice person.
Everywhere you go in our society, there are all these nice people. They think that'll save them. Being nice has nothing to do with your salvation. It depends on one thing and one thing alone. God's mercy.
God says, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. And then there is some language that helps us understand even more about our lives. Jeremiah uses the imagery of the ground quite a bit and he speaks of breaking up fallow ground and I'd like you to look in chapter 4 verse 3 for thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem break up your fallow ground and do not sow among thorns Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and take away the foreskins of your hearts you men of Judah and 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. He's picturing a heart that's like hard ground, and it needs to be broken up.
And it's the Word of God that breaks up the heart. It's the Word of God that discerns the good and the evil that causes repentance. That's how your heart changes. It's when the Word of God comes and it breaks up the ground. You know, like a plow would break up really hard ground.
And God is saying that it doesn't matter how hard your heart is, God can break it up. And so he says break up your foul of ground. That means that you do something about it. Yes, God initiates it all, but when He does, He causes you to change and to take action, and you begin to set aside the worldly things that cause the ground of your heart to be so hard, and then your fallow ground is broken up and then you begin to bear fruit. There's a great verse in chapter 5 verse 25 that speaks of the true nature of sin.
I'm gonna call sin the happiness depriving force in the world or the good-depriving force in the world or the blessing-depriving force in the world, and here's why, 525. Your iniquities have turned these things away, and your sins have withheld good from you. This is what sin does, it always withholds some good. There's so much blessing in God, and yet here it's told to us so clearly, your sins have deprived you of good. And then we see God's rejection of His people in chapter 6, verses 1 through 30.
And there's just a very sad picture of people in the apostate church. And we read about it in chapter 6, verse 14. And it's really the result of leadership. They have healed the hurt of My people slightly, saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. You know, what does it mean to be healed slightly?
It means that you have people around you that just tell you how marvelous you are and they say everything is peace when really it's not true and so there's no healing And so when the ministers of God only bring a message of peace, peace, then the people are healed slightly. And I can't think of a greater tragedy in a church than to find people being healed slightly. That the power of the Word of God isn't going down deep and really changing people and comforting people and giving them the joy of the Lord. And then there's this long section in chapter 7 to the end of chapter 10 of the false religion and the idolatry that we see. Here you see a picture of fake religion in Jeremiah 7 verse 4.
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 is this all about? This repeating of the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord? He's talking about people who live a life of disobedience to God, but they keep talking religious talk. They use spiritual language.
They use Bible words. And you've probably known people like this. They just sound so pious and they talk about the temple of the Lord but they have no real internal hunger for God and they really don't have any interest in holiness. They still go back to the pig slop and it doesn't bother them that much, but they keep talking about the Lord and church and what they're doing at church and it's all about the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, and all their activities that are religious, but they're totally meaningless. And you can have a really religious people where they have a faith that's completely meaningless, and that's what he's talking about here in chapter 7.
Now, Also in chapter 7, there's this illustration of whole families being involved in this kind of life, where the whole family is caught up in a fake religion. This is a really interesting section, chapter 7, verse 17. Do you not see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke me to anger." Now, here's a picture of a whole family involved in idolatry. And they're involved in the whole, you know, ministry of the high places.
And, you know, you have the children, they're involved, and the father's involved, and the mother's involved, and everybody's doing it. What's that a picture of? It's really a picture of a whole family that's bathing itself in idolatry. And it's really bathing itself in worldliness. We always have to remember what the high places are all about.
This is about serving the high places, the altars, the poles, and the ashra poles, and this kind of thing. What were those things? Those were places where sexual activity was going on. This is very much like a family sitting in their living room and watching profane things on their television. That's what it is.
You're watching interesting profane things and your whole life is wrapped around these interesting and profane things. That's what the high places were all about. The places of Baal worship were fascinating because there were naked people running around, okay? And this is exactly what you have here with the whole family that's involved in worldly profaneness. And they have no sensitivity to purity or holiness at all.
Verse 19, do they provoke me to anger? And then verse 28, So you shall say to them, This is a nation that does not obey the voice of the Lord their God, nor receive correction. Truth has perished and has been cut off from their mouth. And then God commands Jeremiah to do something, to cut his hair. God commands Jeremiah to cut his hair.
Verse 29, cut off your hair and cast it away and take up a lamentation of the detestable heights for the Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath." And then we see how Judah rejected the Word of God. It says that they were ashamed of the Word of God in chapter 8, verse 12. And then in chapter 8, verse 21, here's another picture of Jeremiah's pain. 8 21, Just let this sink in. For the hurt of the daughter of my people, I am hurt.
I am mourning. In other words, he sees the hurt, the pain, the sadness. He sees the broken lives, the messed up families. He looks around and he says, I am hurt. He sees hurt and he is hurt.
He says astonishment has taken hold of me. And then in verse 22, he says, Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no recovery for the health of the daughter of my people." Jeremiah is broken for the pains of people. He's a very sensitive, weeping prophet who cares very much about the people that he's with in his nation.
And when his people hurt, he hurts. He's not harsh in that sense. There's another picture of Jeremiah's pain in chapter nine, verse one. Oh, that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. Really, the longing of his heart, the impulse of his life is to weep for all the pains.
You know, when we think about the evils going on in our culture, we think about the broken lives, the dead babies, the ruined relationships as a result of idolatry, as a result of this whole entertainment culture that we live in that takes people in that direction. Do we weep? Are our hearts broken? Are we just mad? Jeremiah leads the way in helping us to see how we ought to respond.
Now there are two verses in chapter 9 that I don't want to pass by. Like I said, I'm trying to take you to my favorite verses in Jeremiah. Here are two more, 9 23. Thus says the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, Let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches. But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord exercising loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth.
For in these I delight, " says the Lord. To know God, to desire Him is the greatest glory that man can ever know. And so as we move on, we get to chapter 10, and there's another critical statement in chapter 10, which has to do with who you learn from. We're always learning from someone and you know you can you can pretty much tell where somebody's learning from. You can look at the way people dress and the way that they talk and you can tell who they're learning from.
Here's what Jeremiah says, Thus says the Lord, Do not learn the way of the Gentiles. And skipping down to verse 3, for the customs of the peoples are futile. For one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workmen with the ax. In other words, do not learn the customs, the patterns, the ways of living of the Gentiles. Don't look to the Gentiles to make your life.
Don't look to this world. Look to God. Have a life that descends from heaven. And like Jeremiah, to be satisfied with that. Do not learn the way of the Gentiles.
We're always learning something from someone. And this is why it matters what you read, what you listen to, and what you watch. Those things are instructive. Nobody ever beat the system. You always become like what you see and what you hear and what you appreciate.
If you appreciate something, you'll become like it. If you appreciate things about the world, you will become like it. It's like your life will be locked in a gravitational pull. You can't change that. What you look at is where you're going.
What you appreciate is what you're becoming. And that's what he's saying here and this is why he says, Do not learn the way of the Gentiles. Learn my ways, says the Lord. Learn of me. You know, Jesus Christ said, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
For I am gentle and humble in heart." To learn from Jesus Christ rather than from the Gentiles is the most life-giving thing you can do. And he gives a reason for it in verse 14 in chapter 10. He says there's a reason you should learn from the Gentiles because the Gentiles will just make you stupid and ashamed. That's 10-14. Everyone is dull-hearted without knowledge.
Every metalsmith is put to shame by an image, for his molded image is a falsehood. There's no breath in him. It's futile. A work of errors in the time of their punishment they shall perish. So the reason it's so unprofitable to learn the ways of the Gentiles is because you're going to be ashamed of the ways of the Gentiles.
They might look so interesting today. They won't look that way before the judgment of God. You'll hate them. And then there's a pretty convicting verse about family prayer here in chapter 10 verse 25. And with this verse you should ask yourself, do we pray in our family?
Are we a family that is saturated with prayer? You know, the reading that we have in the book, the Theology of the Family, is an article about family prayer. It's really convicting. We read it the other night. It took our breath away.
It was extremely convicting. We all realized how we'd fallen from a pattern of prayer that was really the best. But what's prayer like in your families? Well, here's God's view of a prayerless family. Chapter 10 verse 25, pour out your fury on the Gentiles who do not know you and on the families who do not call on your name.
Pour out your fury on the prayerless family. For they have eaten up Jacob, devoured him and consumed him, and made his dwelling place desolate." In other words, a prayerless family makes for a desolate life. As you read through Jeremiah, you'll see all kinds of things that will hit your family, it'll hit your practices, it'll hit various things you're involved with in your life, but as you go home, think about your family and your prayer life. You know, could the Lord use you to stimulate prayer in your family? Maybe you're just relying on your father to make all the prayer happen.
Maybe your prayer life as a family would be more significant if you encouraged it more. But notice this, pour out your fury on the families that do not call on your name. That's a terrifying verse. And then Jeremiah struggles with God and with Judah in chapter 11 to chapter 20, and he speaks about the wicked prospering. He says in chapter 11, verse 1, why does the way of the wicked prosper?
Why are those happy who deal so treacherously? And of course then he speaks of how God is going to destroy them, but there's this outward appearance of success. It's really It's a fake outer shell. It's a sham, and it will come to nothing. And then there's a parable of the sash in chapter 13.
The Lord said to me, go and get yourself a linen sash and put it around your waist, but do not put it in water. So anyway, God commands him to do something with this sash, and when you read it, you'll see what the whole illustration meant. There's a really famous verse in chapter 1323. It talks about change, about the changing of your life, and there's this verse, can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard at spots? Then may you also do good who are accustomed to do evil." He's speaking about the difficulty of change.
But God can change a person. But God can change a person in the same way that an Ethiopian changed his skin, or a leopard changed his spots. God does that. But it's not humanly possible. In chapter 14, verse 10, there's this language of loving to wander.
They have loved to wander. They have not restrained their feet. Chapter 14, 10 teaches us something about life, and that is that a person needs to restrain his feet in order to have a holy life. And People today don't want to restrain anything, but God is telling us in 1410 that restraining your feet is a blessing to you. In chapter 15 verse 6, there's trouble in families.
We find Jeremiah being renewed by God, even though God commands him not to marry. He takes one thing away and gives him something even greater. Jeremiah is burdened by the constant opposition that he faces as well. In chapter 17 verse 5, thus says the Lord, cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord. He shall be like a shrub in the desert, trusting in man." You know Isaiah said don't trust in man whose breath is in his nostrils.
Jeremiah is saying the same thing, trusting God. Now one of my favorite sets of verses in Jeremiah is in chapter 17, where he says, "'Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed. Save me and I shall be saved. For you are my praise. As for me, I have not hurried away from being a shepherd who follows you, nor have I desired the woeful day.
You know what came out of my lips. It was right there before you. Do not be a terror to me. You are my hope in the day of doom." This is an honest man standing before God and saying, Lord, you know me. You know what I've said.
You know where I've gone. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts." And he says, heal me, oh Lord, and I shall be healed. Those are great words to pray. 1714 through 16.
Great set of verses to use in your private prayers. You know, in chapter 17 there's a cry for obedience to keep the Sabbath. This is a really powerful section. The Bible speaks of the keeping of the Sabbath as being such a critical thing. In fact, the Babylonian captivity happened because Israel refused to keep the Sabbath and have their worship regulated by God.
If you think the keeping of the Sabbath is a small thing, read Jeremiah chapter 17 and Nehemiah 13 and Isaiah 58 and Exodus 20 and a bunch of other places like that. You're gonna read about the potter's house. I went down to the potter's house. What do you learn in the potter's house? Here's what you'll learn in the potter's house.
God made you. He's the potter and we are the clay. And He does with us what He wills. And if you think about your life right now, just recognize this is what's happening to you. You might not understand what's happening to you, but what is happening to you is that you are on the potter's wheel, and God is spinning a pot, and he's putting pressure on you here and there and you're spinning and spinning and spinning and he's making you into a pot for his own glory.
And so God tells Jeremiah go down to the Potter's house. It's such a beautiful section in the book. You can see the outline in front of you. You can see how God glorifies himself through all these trials and tribulations. You'll read more than once about the voice of gladness and the voice of the bridegroom and the sound of the millstone and the light of the lamp.
That's a really interesting thing to ponder. What happens to a people that turn away from God? All those blessings slip away. They die. And let's take the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.
You know increasingly people aren't getting married like they used to. If you go to Sweden, nobody gets married anymore. The voice of the bridegroom is gone. No voice of the bride. No voice of gladness.
No mirth. You know, no happiness at the wedding celebration. When you turn away from God, all good things are turned away from you. And this is a very prominent message in this book. You'll find various judgments against the nations in chapters 46 through 51.
And then the conclusion of the book is the fall of Jerusalem and how King Zedekiah was blinded. Okay, now we're at the end of the book right now. We're in chapter 52. This is the conclusion of the matter. Notice the scene.
King Zedekiah is 30 years old and Nebuchadnezzar attacks. Jeremiah is right there watching the whole thing. Zedekiah was afraid of the attack So his army slipped out the back and was running away from Nebuchadnezzar, and Nebuchadnezzar caught them. And Nebuchadnezzar took Zedekiah, and he took Zedekiah's sons and lined them all up, and he killed all of his sons right before his eyes and then he turned and he put Zedekiah's eyes out. The last thing he saw was the murder of his sons.
It's such a remarkable picture but at the very end the son begins to come out. There's a slight glimmer of restoration in the final verses of Jeremiah, where the king of Babylon turns and begins to deal kindly with King Jehoiachin and he takes him out of prison and he speaks kindly to him and he gives him a prominent seat there in Babylon. And then Jehoiachin changes out of his prison garments, and he eats bread regularly before the king all the days of his life. This was the beginning of the Restoration. And it's a picture of the freedom that comes after judgment.
In the final verse we read, And as for his provisions, There was a regular ration given to him by the king of Babylon, a portion each day until the day of his death, all the days of his life." And so the book of Jeremiah ends with a picture of God sustaining his people. He brought his people into judgment. He sent prophets to announce the judgment that was coming, and he took them through this terrible time of chastisement. But with chastisement is not the end of the story because God is preserving a people and this is why Jeremiah ends the way it does. It ends with a picture of breaking light upon the people who've been harshly judged by God And all the days of his life he is provided for there in Babylon.
And then the people return and rejoicing returns to the land. So there you have it. The prophet Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, the prophet who was unsuccessful his entire life long before the face of man only, but not before the face of God. He was a great prophet. You would have loved to talk to him.
He was a highly sensitive, highly passionate, bold man that wasn't afraid to stand in the face of evil. And his face was like the face of Jesus Christ. It was like a flint to Jerusalem. He was a man you would have loved to have known. Well, there will be a day that you will know Him.