Take your Bibles with me and turn to Jeremiah chapter 26. Remember, this is not a sermon series through the book of Jeremiah. It's not a chapter-by-chapter, verse-by-verse study in Jeremiah. We're in the middle of a seven-year series of Bible stories, and we're covering four or five of them that come from the book of Jeremiah and the story of Jeremiah.
Last week we looked at an overview of Jeremiah and talked about the difficult time he had to live in and the difficult mission God gave him. He had to preach an unpopular message that frankly no one wanted to hear. He was rejected and had to watch the nation he loved be utterly destroyed in judgment from God.
But God promised that He'd take care of Jeremiah. God said it wasn't going to be easy, but He would look out for him and protect him.
The story we're going to look at today picks up on that same theme. We're going to see part of Jeremiah's rejection, God's protection, and ultimately that God's word stands even if we don't like it.
The king Jeremiah started his ministry under was King Josiah—a godly king. When Josiah died, his son Jehoahaz became king. He was not a godly king. He was wicked and tried to undo everything his father had done. He only reigned about three months before Pharaoh Necho of Egypt deposed him and carried him off to Egypt.
Egypt then put another of Josiah's sons on the throne: Jehoiakim. He's the king in the stories we'll look at tonight. He reigned eleven years, and he also did evil in the sight of the Lord. (Further down the road, Babylon would carry off Jehoiakim's son Jehoiachin and install yet another of Josiah's sons—Zedekiah—but that comes later.)
Are you in chapter 26? Let's go ahead and read verses 1 to 6.
[1] In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah came this word from the Lord, saying,
[2] Thus saith the Lord; Stand in the court of the Lord's house, and speak unto all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the Lord's house, all the words that I command thee to speak unto them; diminish not a word:
[3] If so be they will hearken, and turn every man from his evil way, that I may repent me of the evil, which I purpose to do unto them because of the evil of their doings.
[4] And thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord; If ye will not hearken to me, to walk in my law, which I have set before you,
[5] To hearken to the words of my servants the prophets, whom I sent unto you, both rising up early, and sending them, but ye have not hearkened;
[6] Then will I make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.
Jeremiah 26:1-6 (KJV)
What we see in this chapter is really the same kind of temple message recorded in more detail earlier in the book, in chapter 7. God gives Jeremiah a specific message to preach. He wants him to go to Jerusalem during the busy time and preach this message to as many people as he can. God says something to him: "Do not diminish a word. What I tell you to preach, you are to say all of it."
Now why would God say that? I think the reason the Lord would say that is because Jeremiah was tempted to diminish the message. It was not an easy message. It was not a popular message. It was not a message that people wanted to hear. He was tempted to say less than God told him to say, and so God said, "Don't diminish a word."
The first kind of point that jumps out to me from this story tonight is that
1. Sometimes the hardest job of a preacher is just to say what God says
There are many times in my study where I read the Word of God and I understand what it says. I am honestly less than enthusiastic about preaching it because I know that it won't be popular. I know that sometimes it will cause people to turn against me. You preach faithfully, maybe you lose people. Maybe you even lose your job.
But my job as a preacher is to preach the whole counsel of God. My job as a preacher is to do the same thing Jeremiah's job was: to give it to you straight. I do you no favors if I try to make the Word of God more palatable—if I try to make the Word of God softer.
Paul told Timothy that in the latter times there were going to be people who heaped to themselves teachers having itching ears. That is one of the signs of the end times. I believe we've been living in the end times for a long time. People are going to find preachers that will tickle their ears and tell them exactly what they want to hear. Those preachers existed in Jeremiah's day. Let's keep reading. You'll see this.
[7] So the priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the Lord.
[8] Now it came to pass, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak unto all the people, that the priests and the prophets and all the people took him, saying, Thou shalt surely die.
[9] Why hast thou prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying, This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate without an inhabitant? And all the people were gathered against Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.
[10] When the princes of Judah heard these things, then they came up from the king's house unto the house of the Lord, and sat down in the entry of the new gate of the Lord's house.
[11] Then spake the priests and the prophets unto the princes and to all the people, saying, This man is worthy to die; for he hath prophesied against this city, as ye have heard with your ears.
[12] Then spake Jeremiah unto all the princes and to all the people, saying, The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city all the words that ye have heard.
[13] Therefore now amend your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will repent him of the evil that he hath pronounced against you.
[14] As for me, behold, I am in your hand: do with me as seemeth good and meet unto you.
[15] But know ye for certain, that if ye put me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent blood upon yourselves, and upon this city, and upon the inhabitants thereof: for of a truth the Lord hath sent me unto you to speak all these words in your ears.
[16] Then said the princes and all the people unto the priests and to the prophets; This man is not worthy to die: for he hath spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God.
Jeremiah 26:7-16 (KJV)
So Jeremiah obeys God and goes to the temple and preaches this message. I believe it's the same message that's recorded in detail in chapter 7. We're just given a short piece of it here—kind of a summary. He preaches this message, and immediately the priests and the prophets are angry at him. They arrest him and want to put him to death.
Did you catch that? Who's mad at Jeremiah? It's the priests and the prophets. It is the religious leadership of Judah.
A second takeaway principle from our story tonight is...
2. Sometimes the biggest critics of what God is doing are the religious leaders who should know better.
Some of the greatest persecutors of God's people throughout history have been religious leaders—people that claim to represent God.
This was true, of course, for the Lord. It was the high priests, the Sanhedrin, and the Pharisees that got together in a kangaroo trial and decided that Jesus needed to die. They were the leaders of his persecution. Rome carried it out, but did so reluctantly. It was the religious people that led the charge.
In the early church it was the religious people who led the charge of persecuting Christians. It was people like Saul of Tarsus who stoned Stephen and rounded up Christians to persecute them.
In the Middle Ages it was the Roman Catholics that turned the heat up hottest against Bible-believing Christians. You had the Inquisition, where thousands of people were persecuted for their faith in Christ.
When the Pilgrims came to America, they weren't primarily fleeing the king and the sheriffs. They were fleeing persecution put in place by the religious leaders of England. They got here and became religious persecutors of the Baptists.
When Spurgeon and Moody had their remarkable ministries in London and Chicago in the late 1800s, their fiercest opposition didn't come from the crooks or the politicians of their cities. It came from established church leaders.
I would say it is generally true that whenever God is doing a great work in this world, there are usually a bunch of preachers who should know better and who are the biggest opponents of it.
Jeremiah came under this persecution by the religious leaders—by the priests and the prophets. They were going to kill him. There's this great uproar in the temple, and the civic leaders, the princes, hear what's going on and rush to find out what's happening.
This mob of angry people is mad at Jeremiah because of what he's preached, and the religious leaders are mad at Jeremiah because he's preached. It's actually the civic leaders, the princes, who come to Jeremiah's defense. They hear Jeremiah boldly say that he is just preaching what God told him to preach, and that he's not trying to hurt them. He's trying to warn them against the destruction that's coming. They can do with him what they want, but if they kill him they're going to have innocent blood on their hands.
These civic leaders stand up in his defense. They tell the story of Micah the prophet, who about a hundred years earlier—when Judah was threatened by Assyria under Hezekiah—stood and preached a message that was very hard on Jerusalem and prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem. Instead of killing him, they listened, and God spared them. They also told the story of Urijah, a more recent prophet, who ran away to Egypt, and whom the king extradited back and killed.
But it's because of these princes that Jeremiah is spared. He's only barred from the temple—kicked out, not allowed to go in there and speak anymore. Earlier in chapter 1, when Jeremiah is commissioned, God said that he was going to protect him.
In Jeremiah 1:8 God said:
[8] Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.
Jeremiah 1:8 (KJV)
And God did deliver him. A third principle we can take from this story is...
3. God will keep his promises to you.
It might not always be easy to obey God, but you can rest in His promises. You can rest in His protection and His provision. If God tells you to do something and you obey Him, He is going to take care of you. These religious leaders who were so hard on Jeremiah would very soon be utterly destroyed by the Babylonians, just like Jeremiah said they would. God was going to protect Jeremiah and extend his ministry for many years after that.
Now remember, Jeremiah is stuck out of the temple. He's barred from the temple and he can't preach there anymore. What we're going to find out is that God gives him a new way to deliver his message. Jeremiah goes from a primarily speaking prophet to a writing prophet, and he writes his message for somebody else to read.
God gives him somebody named Baruch, who becomes his scribe—but more than his scribe, he becomes his mouthpiece. Turn to Jeremiah 36, because here's where we see this happening. This is only a few years after the events of Jeremiah 26. We're going to see one of the next things God tells Jeremiah to do here.
In the first part of Jeremiah 36, God tells Jeremiah to take a scroll and have his message written down. It's a message of the destruction that's going to come to Jerusalem. It's another warning, another thing that people don't want to hear.
Jeremiah has Baruch write down this message, and then Baruch goes to the temple and preaches that message. He goes and reads it aloud for everyone to hear in the temple. We're not really told how the people in the temple responded to this new message from Jeremiah. One guy, Michaiah—who is probably a scribe related to the princes and the princely caste—hears it and says, "You need to come and read this message to the princes and to the leaders."
Baruch goes and reads this same message again to the princes and to the leaders. They hear it and tell Baruch, "Okay, we're going to take this from you. You and Jeremiah need to go hide now. We're going to take this to the king." At this point, the king is at his winter house. He's in a place where it's a little warmer, and there's a fire roaring there. One of the scribes comes and reads this word of God to King Jehoiakim.
Look at Jeremiah 36:20.
[20] And they went in to the king into the court, but they laid up the roll in the chamber of Elishama the scribe, and told all the words in the ears of the king.
[21] So the king sent Jehudi to fetch the roll: and he took it out of Elishama the scribe's chamber. And Jehudi read it in the ears of the king, and in the ears of all the princes which stood beside the king.
[22] Now the king sat in the winterhouse in the ninth month: and there was a fire on the hearth burning before him.
[23] And it came to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with the penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth.
[24] Yet they were not afraid, nor rent their garments, neither the king, nor any of his servants that heard all these words.
[25] Nevertheless Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah had made intercession to the king that he would not burn the roll: but he would not hear them.
[26] But the king commanded Jerahmeel the son of Hammelech, and Seraiah the son of Azriel, and Shelemiah the son of Abdeel, to take Baruch the scribe and Jeremiah the prophet: but the Lord hid them.
Jeremiah 36:20-26 (KJV)
This wicked king hears the word of God and, just as he hears it piece by piece, he takes a knife, cuts it up, and throws it in the fire. The guy reads a little bit more, and he cuts off a little bit more. He throws it in the fire. Just unbelievable disregard and disrespect for God's word.
This brings me to a fourth point.
4. Disregarding the Word of God doesn’t make it any less true.
You know, you can plug your ears to God's word, but it's still God's word. It's still going to be true while every man is a liar. It's still going to stand forever.
Disregarding the Word of God is like disregarding gravity. You can go up to the top of a tall building and pretend gravity does not apply to you. You don't believe in gravity—but if you step over the edge, gravity is still going to pull you down to the earth.
Just because you don't like a truth doesn't mean it's not true. Our world may have collectively decided to disregard parts of God's Word. We might have decided we're not going to believe what God's Word says about:
- creation
- marriage
- sexuality
- morality
- ethics
Just because we pretend as a people that these things are not true doesn't mean they're not true. It doesn't mean that we get to escape the consequences.
King Jehoiakim probably thought he had heard the last of this scroll—the last of this Word of God—but that's not how it works. Let's keep reading.
[27] Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, after that the king had burned the roll, and the words which Baruch wrote at the mouth of Jeremiah, saying,
[28] Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah hath burned.
[29] And thou shalt say to Jehoiakim king of Judah, Thus saith the Lord; Thou hast burned this roll, saying, Why hast thou written therein, saying, The king of Babylon shall certainly come and destroy this land, and shall cause to cease from thence man and beast?
[30] Therefore thus saith the Lord of Jehoiakim king of Judah; He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost.
[31] And I will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity; and I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them; but they hearkened not.
[32] Then took Jeremiah another roll, and gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah; who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Jehoiakim king of Judah had burned in the fire: and there were added besides unto them many like words.
Jeremiah 36:27-32 (KJV)
God just gave the same message to Jeremiah again. He just wrote it again and made another roll. This time he had more to put into it. There were very specific things about how King Jehoiakim was going to die, and many other warnings and prophecies.
A final principle we can learn from this is...
5. God’s word will stand no matter what man tries to do to it.
Throughout history there have been so many men who have tried to make the Bible go away.
The Catholic inquisitors tried to stamp out anyone translating the Bible into the native tongue of the people. They hunted William Tyndale all across Europe—and today a huge percentage of our King James Bible comes right from the translating pen of Tyndale.
I think it was Voltaire who boasted that within a generation of his death, the Bible would be a forgotten memory—and today his house is associated with the work of a Bible society.
The communists in Russia and China tried to erase the Scriptures—and the more they tried, the more Christianity grew.
No one will make God's word go away, because it is God's word.
Jehoiakim thought the fire on the hearth was the end of the matter. Cut it. Burn it. Problem solved. But God just said, "Write it again"—and he added more. You can disregard the Word of God, but you cannot destroy it. You can plug your ears, but you cannot make it untrue. You can oppose the messenger, but you cannot cancel the message.
So what will you do with this Word tonight? Don't be the king with the penknife—picking the parts you like and feeding the rest to the fire. Hear it. Believe it. Obey it. Where you've been cutting and ignoring, repent. The same God who kept his word of judgment keeps his word of grace: he sent his Son, the living Word, and men tried to silence him too—and he rose. God's word will stand. Make sure you're standing on it, not fighting it.
Let's pray.
