Jeremiah #17

The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.

One of the things we depend on is that God is not fickle.

He isn't one way today and another way tomorrow.

He doesn't have one standard today and another standard tomorrow.

He doesn't have one standard for leaders and a different standard for followers.

It was the Apostle James that said it.

He said,

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights,

with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

So we can ask, when a people go wrong,

a whole community, or even a nation of people.

Who does God blame, and how can we know?

There was a man named Jeremiah, and God came to him repeatedly with messages for all the

people about what they were doing wrong.

And I would have to assume, since God doesn't change, what he told them, well, it would

still be applicable to us today.

He sent Jeremiah down to a public place to tell all the people how God felt about their

lifestyles, and what was going to be coming down on their heads because of the way they

were living.

This went on for years, and Jeremiah recorded all this in his memoirs.

You probably have a copy of it right there in your house.

It's in the Bible.

There was something of a dialogue between God and Jeremiah at times in all of this.

We learn what God thinks and what God feels.

And like I say, if God doesn't change, if we can depend on him not to be fickle, we're

learning.

We're learning something very important when we learn how God feels about things in any

generation of man.

And we also read Jeremiah's completely understandable responses.

He's a human being, and boy, when some of this stuff comes down, Jeremiah is astonished

by it.

But we learn the answer to the question, who does God hold responsible?

And it's the same then as it is now.

God holds everyone responsible.

It doesn't help if you're a thief to tell God that your spiritual leader told you it

was all right to steal.

At the same time, there is a special responsibility laid on the shoulders of people like me who

presume to talk about God and about the Bible.

We had better tell you the truth.

James also said this in chapter 3,

Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach

will be judged more strictly.

Oh, yes.

Whatever it is we tell you that the Bible says, God is going to hold our feet to the

fire on the same principles.

Now, it's in this vein that God spoke to Jeremiah one night about the origins of the problem

in Israel.

And you'll find it in Jeremiah 23, verse 1.

He said this,

Serious stuff.

The religious leaders, the teachers of the word of God, the preachers, if you will, those

very men to whom the care of God's flock was given.

He holds responsible.

And this statement and what follows ought to give any religious teacher a case of the

shivers.

It may be that Jeremiah himself had not really seen the problem before for what it was.

But now it comes home to him.

And in verse 9, he speaks,

My heart within me is broken because of the prophets.

All my bones shake.

I.

I'm like a drunken man and like a man whom wine has overcome because of the Lord and

the words of his holiness.

For the land is full of adulterers.

For because of swearing, the land mourns.

The pleasant places are dried up and their course is evil.

All their force is not right.

Everything has gone sour, he says.

And why has this happened?

For both prophet and priest.

The priests are profane.

Now, in Jeremiah's day, what he is basically saying, both the preachers and the civil leaders

are all profane, both on the spiritual side and the civil side, because in his world,

the prophets were the preachers, the priests, well, they were the civil administration of

Israel at that time.

So both of them are all profane.

And he says, Yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord.

Wherefore, their way shall be to the Lord.

They shall be driven on and fall therein, for I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation, saith the Lord.

Now, it's a strange thing that God is saying here.

And what he is saying is that the religious leaders, the spiritual leaders, the preachers who talk to the people,

lie at the very core of this problem.

What have they done wrong?

How come it's happened this way?

Well, in verse 1, it says,

In verse 14, he says this,

I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem a horrible thing.

They commit adultery.

They walk in lies.

They strengthen the hand of evildoers that no one returns from his wickedness.

They are all of them to me like Sodom and the inhabitants thereof of Gezgomorah.

Who's he talking about?

He's talking about the preachers.

He's talking about the people who stood up before the people and said,

Thus saith the Lord, and told them what God's will was for their lives.

Meanwhile, they were committing adultery, and they were liars.

And they were telling people they'd be just fine following their own lifestyle, just like they were doing.

It was no big deal.

They didn't have to worry about how they lived.

And you know why it would be?

Can you ever imagine why it would be that a preacher would start going soft on the Ten Commandments?

Why would it be that a preacher would go soft on the Bible

and stop telling you in clear, crystal terms what God says is wrong?

Is it possible?

It's because in his own secret heart or his heart of hearts and the actions of his in the closet

that he is a pedophile?

Or that he is a pastor sleeping with a wife of a member of his congregation?

Or that he is a music leader who is sleeping with one of the lady members of the choir?

Is it because in their own life, in their own private life,

they have sinned and have not dealt with it?

Have not put it behind them?

Have not repented to the core of their being?

And you know, even when you have repented,

even when you're sorry,

there is still sitting in the back of your mind a terrible temptation

to justify yourself, to minimize your sin,

to pretend it wasn't as bad as you thought it was,

and all this stuff begins to feed back into the way you preach to people.

Jeremiah says,

It is the corruption in the personal lives of the preachers

that has corrupted their message from the pulpit,

and they speak to God's people.

Irreparable harm has been done to the gospel

by the failures of the men who preach it.

It's a fact of life.

God's allowed it to happen, and so we have to deal with it.

But the truth is,

people like me, who stand up before you and preach,

can do terrible damage if we don't live up to what we preach.

It's in our vocabulary.

Does the man practice what he preaches, or does he not?

And so it's very important that your preachers tell you the truth,

and that they even acknowledge the truth about their own human weaknesses.

For part of the problem, you have to understand this,

is people putting preachers up on pedestals

and thinking of men more highly than they ought to think.

Apostle Paul was really worried about this

because he knew that he was a man who had all kinds of personal problems.

He knew that he was weak.

He knew that he was a sinner,

and he was at some pains in talking to the people

and writing to the people he wrote to

that they would understand that he was a sinner

and that he was not speaking from some pedestal,

some platform that people had to look up to him.

It's one of the worrisome things about preaching.

Preaching almost inevitably starts sounding like you're talking down to people.

And some people seem to like it that way.

They'd like to think that this preacher is up on a pedestal.

They'd like to think that he is.

He's an example of holiness.

They'd like to imagine that he is that kind of a leader.

And so the people put preachers on pedestals.

And the more charismatic the preacher,

the higher the pedestal they want to put him on.

And then one day, they suddenly find out he's got feet of clay.

And the odd thing about it is,

when they do this, they start doubting God.

And that's strange.

Whenever the man who claims to speak,

for God, fails.

Why is it that we doubt God instead of the man?

Why is it that we can't go back to the Bible

and say the man was wrong?

Jeremiah continues,

Thus saith the Lord of hosts,

Don't listen to the words of the preachers that are preaching at you.

They're making you vain.

They speak a vision of their own heart.

They're not speaking from the mouth of the Lord.

They say to people,

People who despise me,

Well, God said you'll have peace.

And they say to everyone that walks after the imagination of his own heart,

No evil is going to come upon you.

What he's saying is this.

Your preachers are standing up there and justifying your conduct for you.

You don't even have to do it yourself.

They tell you you'll be all right.

They'll tell you it's not that important,

the kind of lifestyle you're living.

Never mind the fact that you're shacked up with a woman that's not your wife.

That'll be okay, the preachers say.

They're the people who follow the God of their imagination.

The true, awesome creator,

the one who is to be feared is unknown to them,

and the preachers seem reluctant to tell them about him.

For who has stood in the counsel of the Lord and perceived and heard his word?

Who's really listened to God?

Who has marked his word and listened to it?

Behold, a whirlwind of the Lord has gone forth in fury,

even a grievous whirlwind.

It shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked.

The anger of the Lord shall not return until he has executed,

until he has performed the thoughts of his heart.

In the latter days, you will consider it perfectly.

Boy, that's going to be a little late, isn't it?

We're finally going to get this through our heads.

In the latter days.

But there's an interesting sidelight to this,

and one that is easy to overlook.

I'll tell you about that

when I come back.

We'll be right back after this short message.

Now, let me tell you something that may surprise you.

There have been preachers out there

whom God has not sent,

who never heard a word directly from God,

and God wouldn't even speak to them or recognize them

or acknowledge them in the street, as it were,

who have still done some good.

It's based, and I say that based on verse 21 of Jeremiah 23.

Here's what God says.

I have not sent these preachers,

but they ran.

I have not sent them,

but they have not spoken to them,

but they prophesied.

But if they had stood in my counsel

and had caused my people to hear my words,

then they should have turned them from their evil way

and the evil of their doings.

Do you realize what he's saying here?

He is saying you may have no message from God,

nothing directly bestowed upon you from God.

God may not have spoken to you

in the secret places in your closet,

but if you will just do this one thing,

if you will make people hear my word,

you can turn them around.

God promises elsewhere that his word

will not return to him void.

He sends it out.

It does its job,

and the Bible will speak.

It can speak through nearly anyone.

This is one of the most stunning things I have ever read.

Even a false prophet could turn God's people back to him

if the prophet would just stay with the Bible.

Now, I take this very personally.

I'm not a prophet.

I make no pretense at being a prophet,

and therefore it's not possible for me to be a false prophet,

that being the case.

God did not whisper this message into my ear

and tell me what to say to you.

I have no divine authority of my own,

but I have this assurance.

If I cause you to listen to the words of God,

if I can get you to hear, to respond,

then even I can turn you away from your wrongdoings.

Even I can turn your heart back to God

if I will just cause you to hear what God says.

So let me shiver your timbers.

Let me cause you to tremble a little bit

at the word of the real God,

not the God of your imagination.

Let's look at the God of your imagination,

and let's see if he matches the God of the Bible.

He says,

in verse 23,

Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord,

and not a God afar off?

Do you think you can hide yourself in the secret places,

and I'm not going to see you?

Do I not fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord?

I have heard what the preacher said.

That preacher lies in my name, saying,

I have dreamed, I have dreamed.

How long will this be in the heart of the prophet,

that prophesied lies?

Yea, they are preachers of the deceit of their own heart.

I've been around a long time.

I've run in religious circles for many, many years.

And I have never in all that period of time

met a prophet who really turned out to be a prophet of God,

someone that God really had spoken to like he spoke to Jeremiah.

I have, on the other hand, encountered,

quite a few,

who pretended to dreams, to visions,

and claimed God's revelation, special revelation to them,

and have found every one of them to be

prophets of the deceit of their own heart.

Every one of them.

And they're out there.

They're all over the place.

You can probably find one in the street corners of your town somewhere.

He says,

They think to cause my people to forget who I am

by their dreams that they tell every man and his neighbor

as their fathers have forgotten who I am in favor of Baal.

They can't even tell the difference, he says,

anymore between who I am and who Baal is.

You go all up and down the streets of Jerusalem.

You walk right through my own temple.

God has already said this in Jeremiah.

And you will find all the accoutrements and instruments of worship

and the practices of Baal and Malak and Ashtaroth

all over this place.

And people forget who I am, what I stand for.

I have heard what these prophets say.

And I'm not going to stand for it.

I'm not going to stand for it any longer.

The prophet that has a dream, let him tell his dream.

And he that has my word, let him speak my word faithfully.

And you know, like I said, I'm not a prophet.

But I can read the prophets.

I'm not a prophet, but I got a Bible.

And so what I'm here to do is to speak God's word as faithfully as I know how.

And you will have to judge.

And you will have to judge if it's true.

God then says, what is chaff to wheat?

The chaff being the prophet's dream.

The wheat being the word of God.

Is not my word like a fire and like a hammer that breaks in pieces the rock?

And as a matter of fact, it is.

Any man who will open up the pages of the Bible and read long enough

will find a fire begin to burn inside of his soul.

If he will read it with an open heart and with an open mind,

and let God speak to him.

Therefore, God says in verse 30,

I am against the prophets that steal my words, every one from his neighbor.

And you know, this has been going on now for generations.

It started in the schools of German rationalism back in the 18th century, I believe.

As people began to undercut the authority of the Bible,

began to cut the Bible up into little bits and pieces,

these ideas and these doubts began to make their ways.

Down through the great universities and into the seminaries

and finally out on the pulpits of the land,

as people began to really doubt whether the Bible means what it says.

It's not that difficult.

You suddenly begin to find out a surprising number of preachers

who will stand in a pulpit on Sunday morning

and tell their congregations and preach to them whatever it is that's on their mind.

You go to ask them, do you believe what the Bible says about this?

Do you believe what the Bible says about that?

They will begin to equivocate.

They're not absolutely sure there's going to be,

there's going to be a real literal return of Jesus Christ to this earth.

A lot of preachers don't believe that any longer.

I could go down a whole list of things,

but the truth is it crops up in the newspapers all the time

and the chances are you've seen it yourself.

That the preachers no longer really believe in the Bible

and they undercut the authority of the Word of God.

They steal my words, God says, everyone from his neighbor.

Behold, I am against the preacher.

Sayeth the Lord that use their tongues and says,

well, God says, behold, I am against them.

They prophesy false dreams, sayeth the Lord,

and do tell them because my people make big mistakes by their lies and by their lightness.

I never sent these people.

God says I never commanded them and they are not going to profit these people at all.

When these people,

or a prophet or a priest asks you now,

God is,

I think speaking to Jeremiah,

what's the Oracle of the Lord.

You say to them,

what Oracle?

I will forsake you declares the Lord.

This is basically what Jeremiah is now told by God.

He said,

when people come to you and say,

well,

what's the Lord said to you today,

Jeremiah,

Jeremiah says,

all God's had to say is I will forsake you.

That's the whole story.

That's the Oracle.

If a prophet or a priest or anyone else claims,

oh,

this is the Oracle of the Lord.

God says,

I'm going to punish that man in his household.

Anybody stands up before you and starts proclaiming.

Oh,

I've got a big burden from God.

I've got a prophecy from the Lord.

I will punish that man in his household because all I have to say to this people is I'll forsake you.

This is what each one of you keeps on saying to his friends or his relatives.

Well,

what's the Lord's answer or what is the Lord spoken?

But you must not mention.

The Oracle of the Lord in quotes again,

because every man's word becomes his own Oracle and you distort the words of the living God.

Oh,

it goes on all the time as people begin to reinterpret and re explain and and create the God of their imaginations and forsake the God of the Bible.

Though you claim this is a burden from the Lord.

This is what God says about your burden.

You use the words.

This is the Oracle of the Lord.

Even though I told you you must not claim that therefore I will surely forget you and cast you out of my presence along with the city that I gave you and your father's and I will bring upon you everlasting disgrace everlasting shame that will never be forgotten.

This is what God says to people who want to set themselves up to be prophets.

And I guess all.

I can say to you is you'd better believe the Bible.

You'd better stick to the word.

You'd better stick to the time-tested book that has been passed down through us for all generations.

Read that book and find if you can believe the words that are there or not.

Because if not,

then what you're going to wind up following is yours or another man's imagination.

Stay with me.

I'll be right back for a free copy of this radio program that you can share with.

Friends and others writer call this week only and request the program titled Jeremiah number 17 right to born to win post office box 5 6 0 White House, Texas 7 5 7 9 1 or call toll-free 1 8 8 8 Bible 44 and tell us the call letters of this radio station next comes.

Well, an odd little vision.

God commonly uses visual images to underline his point to make it more vivid.

Jeremiah in chapter 24 says this.

The Lord showed me and behold two baskets of figs were set before the temple of the Lord.

This was after Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon had carried away captive the son of Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah.

He carried away a whole bunch of people.

Now the captivity of Jerusalem had two stages.

The Chaldeans besieged the city and took it.

And they carried off.

Jeconiah the king to Babylon along with him with Daniel and Ezekiel and others.

But that's another story.

They left many in Jerusalem and made Zedekiah king and tributary to Babylon.

So Jeremiah is in vision now and he sees two baskets of figs.

One basket had very good figs just like first ripe figs.

I can only imagine I've had some tree ripened figs that just to die for the other basket.

Had some very bad figs.

They were so bad they were rotting.

They could no way you could eat them.

And then the Lord said to me.

What do you see Jeremiah?

Jeremiah said well I see figs.

I see good figs that are very good.

And I see bad ones that are really bad.

And the Lord came to me again saying.

Thus saith the Lord the God of Israel.

Like those good figs.

So will I acknowledge them that are carried away captive of Judah.

whom I sent out of this place to the land of the Chaldeans for their good.

Now, you kind of would think, well, the people that went captive,

those were the bad people.

They were the no good people.

But you'd have to recall that earlier God has said through Jeremiah

that if you go ahead and surrender to the Chaldeans and go on into captivity,

you'll save your life and I'll take care of you.

But if you fight them and you stay in this city, you're going to die.

Well, the ones that went away included two of the greatest prophets of the Bible

who were among these people, Daniel and Ezekiel.

The people who stayed behind, well, they did include Jeremiah,

but they included some other operators as well as Jeremiah.

God says, I'm going to take these people into the land of the Chaldeans for their good.

I will set my eyes upon them for good.

I'll take care of them.

I'll bring them back again to this land.

I'll build them.

I won't pull them down.

I'll plant them.

I won't pluck them up.

I'll give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people.

And I'll be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

And boy, that really happened.

Those people who came back from Babylon had put idolatry out of their lives permanently.

They were wedded to the Sabbath day.

They realized that was one of the reasons why they had gone.

And the Jews, who after learning the bitter lessons, these people turned to God with their whole heart.

They would restore the Sabbath.

They would display a devotion to the Scriptures that would assure their preservation all the way to us today.

But the rotten figs, thus says God, they are so evil, I'm going to give them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, a later kingdom.

They're going to be destroyed.

They'll be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth, for they're hurt.

They'll be a reproach, a proverb, a taunt, and a curse everywhere I drive them.

And I'll send the sword and the famine and the pestilence among them until they're consumed off the land that I give to them.

And they're hurt.

The land would be cleansed of all the evildoers before the captives would be allowed to return.

You know, this two-stage thing that takes place here is representative of what God does with a prophet.

He sends along a prophet.

He sends chastisement.

He sends warnings early on so you can repent and none of the bad stuff will happen to you.

But if you don't respond, then as you go on down the line, worse things happen.

And finally, a kind of chastisement comes to really straighten you up and straighten out your life.

You can't have it easy.

You can't stay home.

You've got to go into captivity.

But I'll bring you back 70 years later and your children and everything will be just fine.

But to the people who still won't repent, it's the bloody, bitter end of it all.

That's the way God works.

I don't need to apologize for it.

I don't need to explain it away.

And the application to a person...

The application to a person's life is the earlier you listen to God, the better.

Because somewhere out there, there is a point of no return.

Somewhere out there, there is a point where you won't even get a chance to come back

and probably wouldn't want to even if you had the chance.

Until next time, I'm Ronald Dart.

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