Bible Story: Jeremiah

Introduction

The book of Jeremiah is one of the great and sublime books of the Bible. In fact, I honestly and truly believe after 25 years of Bible study that Jeremiah was the second greatest preacher who ever lived. After the Lord Jesus Christ, the finest preacher I’ve ever read anything about was Jeremiah, the weeping prophet of Anatoth. He grew up in a village that turned out priests. And the people loved to have priests to do their talking for them. They didn’t want to hear a prophet who talked for God to them. Jeremiah was so unpopular that even some of his own kinsmen threatened to put him to death. Jeremiah 11 and Jeremiah 18. He was imprisoned.

1. His Words as a Burning Fire in My Bones

But he said his words were in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing and could not contain Jeremiah 20, verse 9. He was called unpatriotic because he said, When Babylon comes, surrender to Nebuchadnezzar, go on and take your medicine, spend 70 years in captivity and come back home. He said, It’s God’s will that you surrender to Babylon. Your sins have found you out. No wonder they hated him. They won’t do away with Jeremiah. They didn’t like that voice crying in the wilderness, incessantly telling them of their ruin. In fact, in Jeremiah 7, they said, You’re crazy. We’ve been to the temple, we’ve been to the temple, we’ve been to the temple. And as long as that temple stands, nothing’s going to happen to us.

2. My People Have Forsaken Me

In Jeremiah 2 32, he said, Can a maiden forget her ornament or a bride her attire? Yet my people have forsaken me days without number. In other words, he is saying, and you think of a woman who could forget what she wore on her wedding day, or a young maiden about to go out on an important date who wouldn’t take care to dress properly. He said, And yet, as foolish as that sounds, you’re like that. You’ve forsaken God. You’re no longer his bride, like you ought to be. You’re his gadding, unfaithful wife. In Jeremiah 3 25, in the greatest statement on sin I’ve ever read, he said, We lie down in our shame, and our confusion covers us. But we have sinned against God. We and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.

In Jeremia 1:9, God said, I put my words in your mouth, now you tear down and destroy evil, and then you plant and build. And a lot of times we’ve got to do like Jeremiah, we’ve got to clean up the debris before we can sow the seed of the kingdom, the word of God. Luke 8.11. Jeremiah was a powerful servant of God. He said to Judah, the southern kingdom, You haven’t learned a thing by the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. You’re guilty of doing the same things they did, and instead of following God as your true lover, you’re out like the wild beast looking for someone to love you other than the one that should. And he said, You’ve turned to every nation and want them to deliver you.

3. The Summer Is Ended, the Harvest Is Past

In the day of God’s wrath, they won’t be there to help you. They don’t care for you anyway, like God does. He’s cared for you as a nurse cares for children. In Jeremiah chapter 6, he said, You need to seek the old pass, walk therein, ask for the old pass. But the people said, We will not walk therein. And so, while they said, Peace, peace, when there was no peace, war clouds loomed on the horizon, and Babylon was just around the corner. Jeremiah warned the people just prior to, and at the beginning of Babylonian captivity, that they needed to turn to God. In Jeremiah 8:20, and this is why he’s called the weeping prophet, he said, The summer is ended, the harvest is past, and we’re not saved.

4. Marred in the Potter’s Hand

In chapter 9, he said, You’re strong in the Lamb, but not for truth, and I’ll weep for you as though my eyes were fountains of tears. In chapter 10, verse 23, he said, Don’t you know the way of man is not in himself? It is not in man that walketh to direct his own steps. And he said, What will you do in the overflowing of the Jordan? When Babylon comes from the north and comes down through the marshy ground around Jordan, what are you going to do? You’re not able to withstand. You can’t even walk fast enough, much less run with the horseman. You’re going to be overthrown because you’ve turned your back upon God. In Jeremiah chapters 18 and 19, we have the famous potter’s wheel, where Jeremiah is told to go down and observe the ancient art of making a pottery.

The potter represents God. The machine he works with represents the plan of God. Nothing wrong with God or his plan. That’s perfect. But the vessel representing you and me, and representing God’s people then, is marred in the potter’s hand because it’s impure. It doesn’t bend to the potter’s will as it ought to.

And so in this imagery which Jeremiah observed, God’s people, marred in God’s hand because they were stubborn, rebellious, and not pliable to his will, would be cast out in the valley of Hinnem and shattered and scattered like a broken piece of pottery. They would go into captivity because of their sins. In chapter 22, verse 29, the great evangelistic refrain of the Old Testament says, O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord. In Jeremiah 23, 29, he says, Is not his word like a fire and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? That was the piercing, powerful word that Jeremiah preached, and it shattered and scattered the people of God. In Jeremiah 13, he was told to take his belt that had been wrapped around him, so important a part of his dress, take it down to the Euphrates and hide in the bank of the river.

5. He Wore a Yoke Around His Neck

And then later he was told to go back and retrieve it, but now it was decayed and rotten and good for nothing. God said that means my people who were near and dear to me, wrapped around my heart of love, are rotten and decayed and good for nothing, and they’re going to spend 70 years in captivity. The vivid imagery of Jeremiah is seen also in chapter 28. He not only warned of the yoke of bondage, he wore a yoke around his neck. And as he walked among the people, they were reminded every day of the unpopular sermon that crazy man was preaching. And finally, a grandstander, a false prophet named Hananiah, took the yoke off Jeremiah’s neck and broke it in pieces in front of the people.

You can just hear them applauding. The popular one says, Ah, we won’t go into captivity. And if we do, it won’t be for 70 years, like old Jeremiah said, just be for a couple of years, and then we’ll be back. Jeremiah turned to Hananiah and said, Hananiah, this year you shall die. In Jeremiah 26, 27, 28, the people say to Jeremiah, You’re worthy to die. We’re tired of this message. One of the elders says, But do you remember that a hundred years ago, according to our writings and the prophets, that one of our heroes, Micah, predicted the very same thing that Jeremiah is saying is coming to pass. And we count Micah a great prophet. Why would we kill Jeremiah for saying the same thing Micah did?

6. The New Covenant Written Upon the Heart

Micah saved Jeremiah’s life a hundred years after Micah died, the power of the written word. And so the people said, You’re not worthy to die. And Jeremiah picks up that sermon and says, Why will you die? Why will you die in sin when God’s given you opportunity to repent? Jeremiah 31 is the greatest chapter in that book because it predicts the new covenant. In Jeremiah 31, while the Old Testament was still banding. Now get this point. In the heyday of Judaism, while the Old Testament was binding, God promised a new testament to be given, not written on tables of stone, not given to the Jews only, not applied from physical birth and in a family way, but a new covenant written upon the heart, given for all men, applied universally and yet individual in its scope.

And a covenant where sins were not retained but forever forgotten. Have you ever read Hebrews chapter 8 and the heart of the New Testament? That inspired writer quotes verbatim Jeremiah 31 and says, The new covenant of which Christ is the mediator is the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s promise and legacy. Toward the end of Jeremiah in chapter 36, an evil ruler named Jehoiakim, and this shows the king was not God’s servant, but the prophet, a wicked uh ruler, took the word of God and ripped it to shreds with his pen knife and threw it in his fireplace. He was sitting before it in the wintertime. But out of the burning embers arose the wrath of God, twice as fierce. You cannot flaunt the grace of God or the word of God, it rise up to haunt you in the day of judgment.

Conclusion

Jeremiah speaks in chapter 49, verse 8 of the calamity of Esau. Esau sought a place for repentance but couldn’t find it, Hebrews 12. And the calamity of Esau, wanting the reward of righteousness, but not being humble enough to repent, had overwhelmed Judah, and Babylonian captivity was the order of the day. Let Jerusalem come into your mind. Jeremiah 51 was the cry of this prophet. But he said, The whole land is full of sin. Write the sin of Judah with an indelible pen. Jeremiah 17:1, Jeremiah 51, 5. The prophet’s work was unpopular but necessary. And you can mark this down. Had it not been for the work of the prophets Isaiah through Malachi, Abraham’s seed would have been annihilated a long time ago, and Christ would not have come to fulfill prophecy and to save the world.