in the way that we see things.
But you know sometimes we as humans don't have the best description of things.
Sometimes we as humans base our descriptions on the things that we perceive to be true but actually aren't.
An example of this is in 1 Samuel chapter 16.
Samuel goes to the house of Jesse to find the next king of Israel.
God has sent him on this quest if you will to anoint the next king.
And so he goes and he sees all these different sons of Jesse and he says, well, well, surely this is the king.
God says, no.
God, look at this man.
He is the specimen of a king.
Surely this is the king.
And God tells him in verse seven, you're looking on the wrong things.
You're looking on the external, but God, he looks on the heart.
And what we understand about God is that he
knows us better than we know ourselves.
And so when God offers a description of somebody, of how a people are, we know that that is the utmost truth.
And so today we're going to be noticing how does God describe.
How does God describe?
We're going to be taking as our text for this evening, I guess it's technically evening, or this afternoon.
Jeremiah chapter five.
Jeremiah chapter 5, you would go ahead and open up there, that will be the text of our study today.
In Jeremiah chapter 5, Jeremiah is tasked with finding a good man.
In verse 1, the Lord tells him to run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and see now and know and seek in the broad places thereof if ye can find a man if there be any
that executeth judgment.
that seeketh the truth and I will pardon it.
Jeremiah is prophesying to a people who are facing coming destruction.
God has told Jeremiah that there is destruction coming upon Judah because of their sin, because of their rejection of him.
And as he goes through chapter five, we notice the descriptions that God gives for Judah.
And so today we are going to be noticing two negative descriptions that represented Judah and one description that should have represented Judah but sadly didn't.
So we begin by noticing how God describes the fool.
How does God describe one who is a fool?
Well first and foremost, one who is a fool is one who does not know God.
Let's look at verse two.
though they say the Lord liveth, surely they swear falsely."
earlier in Jeremiah, Jeremiah 3 verse 10, Jeremiah records that they had turned to the Lord but only with half of their heart.
They were only half-heartedly serving God.
They were saying, I know God.
look, if they were in our time, they'd say, well, I go to church, you know.
Hey, I even, I'll do you one better.
I have a cross in my house, you know.
So that makes me religious, right?
That makes me acceptable on God's side, right?
No.
and it wasn't acceptable for them to say well we have the temple the temple to God is right here in Jerusalem see over here he's a priest we're priests we're offering
sacrifices now granted they're the least of our flocks and herds you know they're the stuff we want to get rid of but we're still offering sacrifices right so we're cool with
God right
But God does not want half of the heart.
In fact, to give God half of our heart is to say, God, you get nothing.
and had these people known God, they would have known that.
But because they chose not to know God, because they chose to falsely claim to know God, they were fools who would be facing destruction.
But God also describes the fool as one who ignores correction.
Notice verse three.
O Lord, are not thine eyes upon the truth, thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved, and thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction.
They have made their faces harder than a rock, they have refused to return.
God sent warning after warning after warning to Judah.
Turn away from your sin.
Turn away from this wickedness.
Turn back to me and you will be blessed.
and yet time after time Judah said no.
Judah chose their own sin, their lusts, their desires, they chose that over God.
They chose what they wanted over what God told them to do.
And when God corrected them as any good father does, they didn't listen.
It's like
the child who is told, don't touch the hot stove.
Stay away from that when it's on.
Don't touch it.
And he gets closer and he keeps trying to touch it.
And finally, you spank him, you correct him, and he does it again.
That's what they were doing.
And so it's no wonder that their hand gets burned.
It's no wonder that Judah faces this fiery judgment
that Babylon would bring upon them because they chose to ignore God.
And truly that was the foolish decision.
But the fool is also one who does not fear God.
And this is something that is too often forgotten.
Let's look at verse 9.
Shall I not visit thee or visit for these things, saith the Lord, and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?
Skip down to verse 21-22.
Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding, which have eyes and see not, which have ears and hear not, notice this question, fear ye not me, saith the Lord?
will ye not tremble at my presence which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual degree that it cannot pass it and though the waves thereof toss themselves yet
can they not prevail though they roar yet can they not pass over it verse 24 neither say they in their heart let us now fear the lord our god that giveth reign both the former and
the latter
in his season, for he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.
We think about one who is foolish.
We think about someone who knows better, but yet does what's, well, well, it's foolish.
Does what is not beneficial.
But sometimes we forget, in teaching about the love of God and teaching about the care that God has, sometimes we forget that God is someone to be feared.
Those of y'all who know me, you know I love my dad.
He's great man, a great gospel preacher, and a great father.
But I can tell you right now, when I done wrong, he was someone to be afraid of.
Because he was coming with that rod of correction.
He was coming in judgment on my wrongdoing.
And it would have been rather foolish of me to say, I don't care if dad's coming with his bells or not.
That would have gotten me more of whooping voice.
But Israel was looking at the God who made them.
The God who took them from being nothing to being a nation, a people that conquered.
A people that should not have gained the promised land.
Looking militarily, they should not have won.
But they did because God provided for them.
They should not have escaped Egypt.
Generally, red seas and other bodies of water don't part on their own, generally speaking.
God had provided for them time and again.
Yet they looked at the being who is all-powerful.
They looked at the being who blessed them.
They looked at the being who loved them.
They looked at the being who cared for them more than anyone and they said, why should I be afraid of you?
And they said why does your opinion matter?
Lord, why do you get to say get to say on how I should live my life?
It's my life.
want to live it how
But they were foolish in their lack of fear.
We serve God out of love, Out of a sense of debt that we owe God, because we do.
But let us not forget, there is a time to fear God.
The Hebrews writer would say, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of living God.
When God comes in judgment, we should be afraid.
But we should let that fear, as should have been done in Judah, motivate us to serve God.
Motivate us to correct our error.
When Jeremiah came and preached this message of coming destruction, they should have been afraid.
They should have turned from their wickedness because they were afraid of the coming judgment.
But because they were too foolish to fear God, they continued in their path of wickedness and ultimately were destroyed.
Ultimately faced this punishment that as we'll notice later, they thought wouldn't even come.
The fool is not how we want to be described.
But sadly, that's how Judah was described.
That's how God described Judah.
But number two, we notice how God describes the treacherous.
And Judah at this time had become treacherous.
They had not only denied the facts that they should have known, they not only were foolish, but they were also
intentionally acting against God.
They were backsliders.
Verse six tells us that their transgressions were many and their backslidings are increased.
They not only stumbled on their path on the right way to serve in serving God, but they fell and they said, you know what, this ground's kind of comfy.
I think I'll just stay here.
They did not get back up and try to correct their error.
No, they said, hey, sin's fun.
Hey, this idolatry, man, isn't great.
Worshiping Baal, worshiping Ashdoth, man, that's awesome.
And so they added sin upon sin upon sin upon sin.
Until all that was left was a nation that couldn't even be recognized as serving God.
As having any respect for God.
But we also notice that one who is treacherous, one who God describes as treacherous is one who forsakes God.
Who not only he falls down, yes, but no, one who forsakes, he doesn't even have to fall down.
He doesn't have to stumble.
He's walking this one direction in the direction that God has laid out for him.
And he does a complete 180.
He walks the other direction, walks away from God.
He abandons the God who would never abandon them.
That's what Judah had done and we see this as we look at verse seven.
How shall I pardon thee for this?
Thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods, when I had fed them to the full They then committed adultery and assembled themselves by troops in the harlot's
house."
And then verse 23, but this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart.
They are revolted and gone.
Judah at this time.
decided that it was better to serve idols.
Decided that it was better to serve a thing that they had to create themselves.
Don't miss that.
Jeremiah would later talk about how they had to cut the tree down.
They had to make an idol out of it.
And then, yeah, the excess wood, we burned it, know, because it's wood, you know.
We use it for fire.
But somehow this tree that we chopped down and carved, suddenly it's deity.
We understand the foolishness of this and yet...
They preferred that.
They preferred a God who had to be worshiped by sacrificing their children.
Don't miss that.
But they preferred that.
That wickedness.
over a God who had blessed them, a God who had made them full.
When they served God, there was not an army in the world that could conquer them.
When they served God, there was not a famine that could touch them.
But when they turned away from God, there was not an army in heaven or on earth that could stop that judgment.
They forsook God.
And yet how many times do we see this happen today?
How many times do we see people who choose money, the things of this world?
They choose entertainment, free time, over serving God, over taking just a few moments to consider what God wants in your life.
To study God's word and to pray to Him.
It gets busy.
Our lives are pissy.
but we should never be too busy for God.
We should never get to the point where we forsake God to entertain ourselves or to serve Satan.
The treacherous is also one who calls God a liar.
Now this might be the most audacious thing that Judah rather did.
Look at verse 12.
They have belied the Lord and said it is not he, neither shall evil come upon us and neither shall we see sword nor famine.
Remember at this time Jeremiah and other prophets are teaching
There's a coming judgment.
Babylon is coming because of your wickedness.
God is sending judgment upon you.
But yet these people in Judah, they were saying, you're lying.
There's no judgment coming.
There's no sword coming.
There's no reason why we should be afraid or why we should stop doing what we're doing.
There's no reason.
And they were even so bold as to say, God's a liar.
God claims that he's going to send judgment, he's not going to do that.
He's just trying to make us little scared.
They'd soon find out how scared they should have been.
But then they also, not only did they call God a liar, not only did they call the true prophets of God liars, but they called themselves who were liars to be teaching the truth.
How messed up do you have to be as a society where a lie is preferred over the truth?
oh
And yet, how many times does that happen?
Let's look at verses 30 and 31.
A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land.
The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means, and my people..." What's this next word?
Love.
"...my people love to have it so, and what will ye do in the end thereof?"
God looks at these people that should have been righteous.
God looks at these people who did no better.
These people who had, as they would point out, the temple, the priests, the law of Moses.
He looks at these people and he says, you have loved lies.
You have loved what is wicked over what is true and what is righteous.
The sad truth is that...
when the day of judgment comes.
There are those that God can rightly say that to.
There are those in our lives even that we know who God can say, have loved a lie over the truth.
You have loved the lies of Calvinism, of premillennialism.
You have loved the lies of these denominational doctrines, of these faith healers.
You have loved these lies over the truth of my word.
Brothers and sisters, let that not be said of us.
Let it not be said of us that we love a lie over the truth of God's Word.
we've noticed two descriptions that accurately described Judah.
How they were foolish and how they were treacherous.
But let's look at the one that Jeremiah was trying to find, the one that they should have been.
That's how God describes the great.
Let's look at verse five.
I will get me unto the great men, and will speak unto them, for they have known the way of the Lord, and the judgment of their God.
But these have altogether broken the yoke and burst the bonds."
remember that as this chapter opens Jeremiah is looking for righteous people he's looking for people who seek the truth of God's Word who follow after proper judgments and
righteousness he's looking for great men and when he's seeing all this wickedness when he's seeing how lost Judah has become he says I'm done I want to go
these great men.
I want to go over the people who are righteous, but these people aren't that way.
The great is one who knows God.
just as the fool doesn't know God and refuses to learn of God and to apply what he knows of God, the great man seeks after knowledge of God.
He seeks God with his whole heart and when he learns what God wants, he does it.
He applies that knowledge to his life.
Biblical hearing is not just words coming in one ear and out the other.
when what we are supposed to do as Christians is to take what we learn.
to take what the Bible says and apply it to our lives because let's face it if we're not applying it then we're not listening if we are not applying what God says then we are
wasting our time
And we might as well call ourselves by a different name.
But if we are willing to serve God, if we are willing to look at His Word to see what He wants, what He desires, what He commands, and we apply that to our lives, and brothers and
sisters, we are Christians.
We are the family of God.
We are great, as God describes great.
But notice also that the great man is one who submits to God.
Judah had become so prideful, so arrogant, that when God told them what to do, they said, no, I like my way better.
But to be great in God's eyes is not to build a statue to yourself.
It's not to have your name up in lights.
It's not to be well known.
To be great in God's eyes is to humble yourself.
and to say Lord your opinion comes before all others.
Lord your word is the authority by which I live.
Lord, if you settle it, or if you said it, regardless of whether or not I believe it, that settles it.
The great man, the one that Jeremiah wanted to be around, the one that Jeremiah was trying to find is one that understands God's authority, that understands that God has the final
say.
but he's also one who takes correction from God.
Remember we talked earlier about how Judah had refused correction.
How they were foolish and they were like the child who does not listen to his parents as they say, don't touch the hot stove.
The great man, the really truly the wise man, he sees that happening to his brother and he says, I don't need to go near that stove.
He learns from other people's mistakes.
But most importantly, he learns when he makes a mistake.
My mom and dad both always taught me, if you make a mistake, learn from it.
Otherwise you just wasted your time.
When we fail, when we sin, when we stumble, get back up and learn from the mistake.
Learn what you did wrong.
Learn how to correct it.
Learn what you need to do and take that correction to heart.
Every day that we read this book, every day that we study the Word of God, we are getting corrected on something.
We are seeing things that, hey, I need to be doing better at this.
But if we choose to look at that and to make ourselves better, to follow more closely to God, then we can see all this hope, all the joy that's recorded for us in the word of God
and say, that's waiting for me.
That's mine because I am his.
How does God describe?
We've looked at how God describes Judah during this time.
But what about how He describes you?
What about how he describes me?
Does he describe us as foolish?
Does he describe us as treacherous?
Does he describe us as those who fight against him?
Does he describe us as those who are great?
Does he describe us as those who are righteous?
Does he describe us as those who are faithful to him?
Brothers and sisters, if it is the case today that you cannot say that God would describe you as righteous, then correct that.