Well, I've been told just get up here and start.
So here we go.
You ready?
Thank you for the opportunity to be here.
I appreciate Aaron asking me to come.
I think I am fifth or sixth on his list.
Everybody else had something else going, and so you end up with me.
I'm sorry about that.
But your first pick is gone, and your second, and third, and fourth, maybe your fifth as well.
But here I am.
Let's take a look at the book of Jeremiah for our Bible class.
And we're going to be looking at this question, what will you do in the end?
And that comes from Jeremiah chapter five.
Let's take a look at the context there.
Jeremiah chapter five.
God has told Jeremiah, you go into the city of Jerusalem and you see if you can find anybody that really wants to know the truth.
See if you can find anybody that is really wanting
to see true justice done.
And then God tells him, now some people are going to say that they want to glorify God, but he says, they're liars.
They're not telling the truth.
Let tell you how those people are in the city of Jerusalem.
Jeremiah chapter 5 and verse 30, an astonishing and horrible thing has been committed in the land.
The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule by their own power and my people love to have it so.
But what will you do in the end?
And really that's a great question.
What will you do in the end?
So here's the situation with Jeremiah the prophet.
Jeremiah has been told by God at a very young age to begin preaching to the people of the city of Jerusalem in the area of Judah.
The ten northern tribes have already been destroyed by the Assyrian Empire and they're long gone because of their wickedness.
Now Judah has become worse than those people and so their destruction is imminent.
their judgment is coming.
God sends Jeremiah though to give those people some more opportunities to repent and to come back to him so that they might avoid the condemnation that is coming upon them
through the Chaldeans or the Babylonians.
Now when Jeremiah is sent, Jeremiah chapter 1, to go and preach to these people, God tells him they won't listen to you.
But I'll be with you.
Now God does not promise Jeremiah there will be no suffering for you, but he does promise Jeremiah, will deliver you, and he does.
And Jeremiah gets into so many difficult situations and God delivers him over and over and over again.
But Jeremiah suffered immensely.
There's probably no prophet of God that suffered as much as Jeremiah did.
And Jeremiah suffered probably as much as the Apostle Paul, perhaps more.
These people that Jeremiah was sent to preach to hated God, hated him, and tormented him for about 40 years.
Jeremiah had to preach to those people.
So here's an overview of what happens to Jeremiah.
He begins to preach to these people.
He doesn't actually like the message at first that he's preaching, and he pushes back against God a little bit.
the prophets that were popular were the ones that were saying you just go on and live like you want to and there will be no punishment and so that's these prophets spoken of here
Jeremiah five verse thirty an astonishing and horrible thing has been committed in the land the prophets prophesy falsely and the priests rule by their own power and my people
love to have it so they loved to hear the lies
because the lying prophets were saying, can live the way you want to live, give yourself over to wickedness, violence, lewdness, all kinds of nastiness, and you know what?
You're going to be okay.
God's fine with that.
God will not destroy you.
So that's the message from the false prophets, and that obviously was the popular message.
Everybody loved those guys.
Jeremiah comes along and says,
What you're doing is sinful.
What you're doing is wrong.
You need to repent, come back to God, and if you don't, God is going to destroy you.
Now that's not the popular message, is it?
And so they hated Jeremiah for what he preached.
As you go through the book of Jeremiah, you'll see that at some points it's not necessarily in chronological order, but more in topical arrangement based on the kind of
illustrations that he uses to show that God's judgment is coming upon the people.
But you'll find that as time does go on, Jeremiah is persecuted more and more.
You get to Jeremiah chapter 20 and you find Jeremiah is in a situation where he is complaining to God.
He's very upset about the way he has been treated.
And God in essence tells him, look, if you can't contend with the footmen, how are you gonna contend with the horses?
If you can't fight with the infantry, how are you gonna fight against the cavalry?
If you can't put up with this speed, how are you gonna put up with it when it gets worse?
And God shows him it's getting worse.
What had happened was the people of Jeremiah's own hometown, the city of Anathoth, the town of Priests had turned against Jeremiah and they wanted to kill him.
And so God tells Jeremiah, it's gonna get worse.
Here's how it's going to get worse.
The people behind the city of Anathoth turning against you are your own flesh and blood.
It's your own brothers, the ones you grew up with, the sons of your father.
They're the ones that are stirring all this up against you.
And so even his own family turned against him.
There were so many things that he suffered.
He ended up at one point in a prison.
It had been put into a house that had been converted.
It was the house of Jonathan the scribe.
It converted to a prison.
That prison was so bad.
When the king, King Zedekiah, asked Jeremiah to come out and talk to him, Jeremiah begged the king, don't put me back in that one.
Don't put me back in that prison.
Jeremiah had suffered so much there.
What is most well known about Jeremiah's suffering is the time that he was put into the pit.
It's a cistern or well, it's possibly, if you look at some of the words used and the way it's used in other contexts, possibly the place where they put all the waste from the
prisoners in the prison that was in the king's palace because that's where Jeremiah was living at that time in the court of the prison in the king's palace and they lower him
down in there in order to die.
not just to torment him.
but to make him suffer as he dies.
You get sunk into a pit like that, you fall asleep, well, you're just going to suffocate in the monk.
And he was going to be starved and dehydrated and all of those things down in that pit.
But there was an Ethiopian there by the name of Ebed Melek that came along, lifted him up out of the pit and rescued him.
There are so many examples like that, time when Jeremiah was put into the stocks overnight after he had been hit by the governor of the temple of all
people.
Governor of the temple hits him, puts him in the stocks, leaves him there overnight.
Well, if you're in stocks, you can't move.
And they put him out by the gate of the city, the Benjamin gate, and he was left there for people and animals to do whatever they wanted to to him, and there was nothing he could do
about it.
So the next day, Jeremiah was pretty mad at that governor, Basher, he was pretty upset.
and he said, I'll tell you what, your name's no longer pasture, which means liberty, your name now is going to be fear on every side.
Meghra Masabib, fear on every side.
Well, after he said that, then the people mocked him for saying that.
And everywhere Jeremiah went, they'd make fun of him saying, fear on every side, fear on every side.
And they would just tease him and mock him and torment him.
And he suffered immensely.
It became evident after a while that basically everybody hated him.
There were very few people.
that had any interest in doing anything good for Jeremiah.
The people that Jeremiah was preaching to, most of them anyway, were people who had gone far beyond what any civilized society would do.
They had been engaged in all kinds of vulgar nastiness that was associated with uh idol worship, and they had decided to mix the idol worship in with worship to God.
And so they had this hybrid religion that even involved bringing in some of the pagan idolatry into the temple of God that was there in the city of Jerusalem in that day and
time.
Then they had also become very violent.
The people of Jeremiah's day in the city of Jerusalem were always robbing each other and attacking each other, lying in wait for one another.
God says at one point, you can't trust anybody in the city of Jerusalem.
Every single...
one of them is a liar, every one.
That's the kind of city it was back in Jeremiah's day, Jerusalem around the 6th century BC.
Terrible, terrible place to be.
The worst thing though was this.
They had decided to engage in the worship to Moloch.
And down south of the city of Jerusalem on the southern side was a valley, the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, uh also known as Gehenna.
Jesus Christ would use that in the New Testament as a picture of eternal punishment.
But down there in the Valley of Hinnom in Jeremiah's day, they had built this metal idol to the god Molok.
and they would heat it up, set it on fire.
There were different chambers in the god there, and you could fry your kids for a certain amount of material wealth, or you could bake them in that idol.
And if you put them further back in the chamber to be baked alive and killed, then you were going to be blessed by that idol materially.
So for the sake of material comforts in their minds, they were killing their children.
That's how nasty those people were.
So when you read about the people of Jeremiah's day in the city of Jerusalem, you can't think for a moment there's anything nice about them.
There are a few good people around, but not very many.
As a whole, the people are as violent as you can imagine, probably more than you and I could imagine, and more nasty and vulgar even than you and I could imagine, and Jeremiah
had to live with that.
At first he didn't like his own message and after a while he was right on board with God and he wanted God to hurry up and punish them when they continued to persecute him and
torment him.
There was one time when Jeremiah quit and God was very patient with him.
Jeremiah accused God of being an unreliable stream.
You said that you would take care of me and look at all the suffering.
No, no, God said I would deliver you.
He didn't say he wouldn't let him suffer.
Jeremiah comes back, preaches again.
Jeremiah wants to quit again later, and he says, I couldn't.
The word of God's like a fire burning in my bones.
And he kept on going for 40 years.
He put up with that mess.
I tell the preacher students at school, as we study Jeremiah in the fourth quarter, don't complain about being a preacher.
If an elder is upset with you and is playing dirty games and is mean to you.
Don't complain.
Look at what they did to Jeremiah.
You'll never have to face as much torment and suffering as Jeremiah had to face for preaching the truth.
Look what he put up with.
40 years goes by, Jeremiah's prophecies all come true.
The Babylonians come down, they destroy the city of Jerusalem, and the ones that survive are either taken away into captivity or just a few are left behind with Jeremiah there.
And even then, those that are left behind with Jeremiah are saying, Jeremiah, go ask God, and we should go down into Egypt.
And so Jeremiah does, and God says, don't go to Egypt.
Babylon's going there next, you'll die down there.
And the people had said to Jeremiah, whatever God says, that's what we're gonna do.
And when Jeremiah says, God says stay here, they said, Jeremiah, you're a liar.
We're not staying here, we're going down to Egypt.
And then they kidnapped Jeremiah and Baruch, Jeremiah's coworker, and took them down into Egypt with them.
So Jeremiah just kept on suffering.
read the book of Lamentations, you see Jeremiah suffering in the ruins of the city of Jerusalem, hurt so much by what he sees.
It was a horrible, horrible time.
But this question, you're trusting in these lying prophets.
What are you gonna do in the end?
For 40 years, they had this period of long suffering when God was sending his prophet Jeremiah to preach to them.
But it really went far beyond that.
If you go back about a hundred years before Jeremiah's day, have Isaiah preaching to Jerusalem and the people of Judah, giving them an opportunity to repent.
Isaiah chapter one, come now and let us reason together, though your sins be ascarred, they shall be as white as snow.
If you come back to me, God says, and over and over again, God sent his prophets for decade after decade after decade.
Come back to me, I love you.
Come back to me, I don't want to punish you.
Come back to me, I take no delight in punishing you.
Come back, repent, and I will forgive you.
Come back to me over and over and over and over again.
So many times, so many prophets, so many years.
God showed his long suffering on these nasty people.
Wicked, vulgar, extremely violent people.
God was so patient with them.
You know what some people do, especially skeptics and such, they'll do this.
They'll take a look at some of the history in the book or in the Old Testament, such as what's said concerning the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587
BC, and they'll say, look how cruel and vindictive God is.
Oh, you missed it.
you will find an abundance of grace and kindness and mercy and long-suffering in the Old Testament.
In fact, the Old Testament is a story of God's long-suffering over and over again.
And these people, He didn't punish them immediately.
He would be justly well within His rights because He is the perfect sovereign divine being to have killed them immediately, and that would have been just.
They didn't do that.
He gives them
so, so much time, so many opportunities to come back to him, but eventually the punishment comes.
So God is indeed long-suffering, and the book of Jeremiah shows that God is long-suffering, but long-suffering always ends, and I want us to think in terms of this,
and we'll show you the passages here in just a moment.
You and I are now in a world that is evil.
and you and I are in a period of long suffering.
But this period of long suffering will end and there is a judgment day coming, not just on one city or one nation, but on the entire world.
And so the question that was posed to the people of Jeremiah's day, but what will you do in the end?
It's a really good question for people today, isn't it?
What are you gonna do when the long suffering of God ends?
What are you gonna do in the day of judgment?
What good will it have done for you?
Listen to those lies that made you feel good about your sin and your wickedness.
So sixth century BC was a nasty, nasty place.
The wickedness of Judah, let's look at a few passages that indicate that.
The long suffering of God, we'll check out a few of those as well.
And then the judgment that came upon them.
Look at Jeremiah chapter three and verse 10.
Now the first king,
that Jeremiah served under was good King Josiah.
And Josiah was a righteous king.
When you put it all together, looks like Jeremiah and Josiah were probably about the same age.
Josiah had been writing a little while before Jeremiah came along.
When Josiah died, Jeremiah mourned his death.
They were two good men in a wicked city trying to do the right thing.
And so Jeremiah lost a good ally at that time.
While Josiah was king, Josiah wanted the people to repent and turn back to God.
And so they did, but just in a superficial way.
Look at Jeremiah chapter three and verse 10.
And yet for all this, her treacherous sister Judah has not turned to me, God says, with her whole heart, but in pretense, says the Lord.
So they had started to put away the places of idol worship and things such as that, because that's what the king wanted them to do, King Josiah.
But God says, you didn't do that from the heart.
You didn't do that with the whole heart.
It was just a show.
It was just pretense.
It was fake.
That's not acceptable, it?
And so when they appeared to be righteous, it was just a lie.
But later on, when Josiah was gone, there was no reason for them even to play around with being righteous, and they became even more wicked.
Jeremiah chapter 5 and verse 23, but this people has a defiant and rebellious heart.
They have revolted and departed.
They do not say in their heart,
Let us now fear the Lord our God who gives rain, both the former and the latter, and its season.
He reserves for us the appointed weeks of the harvest.
Your iniquities have turned these things away, and your sins have withheld good from you." They have a defiant and a rebellious heart.
You know, there might be situations where that might be okay.
For example, if there is peer pressure trying to steer you in the wrong direction.
Well, you kind want to have a defiant heart, don't you?
say, well, I'm not doing that.
But if you have a defiant and rebellious heart toward God and His will, you're in really, really big danger.
That's a serious problem.
And that's where these people were.
So they had hearts that were rebellious.
So keep that in mind.
Jeremiah will emphasize how wicked and horrible the hearts of these people were.
And so, you know, the way you are comes from the heart, doesn't it?
The heart representing
who you are deep down inside, what you truly believe, what you really, really want to do.
And these people are very rebellious.
They want to bring a revolution against God.
They want to be rebellious toward God.
They have a defiant heart toward the law of God.
And God says, Jeremiah, now you go preach to those people.
So it was not an easy task, was it?
Jeremiah chapter 7 is an interesting chapter.
because here you are introduced to some of the lies that the prophets were preaching in that day and time and here's what it was they were saying this the temple of the Lord the
temple of the Lord the temple of the Lord of these and they would make this point here we are in city of Jerusalem and there's God's temple over there God's not going to destroy us
he's not going to destroy his temple as long as we've got God's temple here there's no way he's going to destroy the city of Jerusalem
And so Jeremiah says, do not trust in lying words.
Those are in fact lying words.
eight, behold you trust in lying words that cannot profit.
Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you do not know, and then come and stand before me in this house
which is called by my name and say, we are delivered to do all these abominations?
God's with us, here's the temple.
God says, come in here and worship me.
and say because of that you can do whatever you want to do you know what people will do what they want to do won't they and you and I have to make up our mind that what we want
to do is the will of God because if we don't make up our minds that what we want to do is the will of God we will end up doing whatever it is we want to do in rebellion against God
and we will be lost these people were looking for ways to justify their own wickedness
and still say, oh, but we still believe in God.
Here's his temple.
We still go into the house of the Lord.
They did on a regular basis go into the house of the Lord, but they were nasty, vulgar, violent, filthy, rebellious, evil, evil people.
Look at verse 23.
But this is what I commanded them saying, obey my voice and I will be your God and you shall be my people and walk in all, all the ways.
that I have commended you, that it may be well with you." You see, what we have today in our culture and really in so many of those that would call themselves to be, you know,
call themselves religious and call themselves Christians is this very same attitude where they want to do whatever it is their heart tells them to do, whatever they feel like
doing.
and try to find some way to excuse disobedience to God.
God hasn't changed and just as he said to those people you must do all I command you so he says to us today in passages such as 2nd Thessalonians 1 7 through 9, Hebrews 5, 8 and 9,
Matthew 7, 21, 22, etc.
But notice this verse 24, yet they did not obey or incline their ear but funneled the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts and went backward
and not forward, some translations say the wicked imaginations of their hearts.
It's the evil dictates of their hearts.
Follow your heart.
You know, if you and I go out here to the ice cream shop and you're looking at the ice cream there and, know, here's the mint chocolate chip and here's the strawberry and here's
the butterscotch and you don't know which one you're thinking, hmm.
I'm just gonna follow my heart and go with strawberry today.
Well, that's okay.
Doesn't matter, does it?
But if you want to take a look at the Word of God and then think in terms of what you'd rather do in opposition to the Word of God and say, I'm not gonna follow God.
Instead, I'm just gonna go with my heart, whatever I feel, whatever feels good to me, then you would be a part of the postmodern culture, philosophical term, historical term.
describing those who don't want there to be anything like absolute truth that comes from God telling us how we need to live.
We have got to do it God's way, not our way.
We have no right to say, God, I'll just do what I want and you'll accept it.
We have no right.
He gives us the free will to do it, but there's a terrible price to pay if you do it.
It's not about following your heart, it?
When it comes to following God, it's about following His Word.
and doing what he says and these people misunderstood that or actually didn't care.
Verse 24, yet they did not obey or incline their ear but followed the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts and went backward and not forward.
Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day I have even sent to you all my servants the prophets daily rising up early and sending them over and
over again.
That's God's long suffering.
Yet they did not obey me.
or incline their ear, but stiffen their neck, they did worse than their fathers.
Therefore you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not obey you.
You shall also call to them, but they will not answer you.
Go ahead and preach the truth.
Let's give them the opportunity.
But they're stubborn people that rather follow the evil and wicked imaginations of their hearts than to obey God.
And that is a statement that will be made over and over and over again throughout the book of Jeremiah.
Look at Jeremiah chapter 17.
for just a moment and consider their wickedness.
The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, with the point of a diamond it's engraved on the table of their heart.
It's dug down deep into their hearts.
On the horns of their altars, while their children remember their altars and their wooden images by the green trees on the high hills, on my mountain in the field I will give as
plunder your wealth, et cetera.
And he goes on to describe their wickedness, their idolatry, their vulgarity, and their violence, and this, verse nine.
The heart, this is Jeremiah 17, is deceitful.
Above all things, oh, what was it that they wanted to funnel?
their hearts.
He says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it?
uh Lord searched the heart.
God's the one that knows it.
I test the mind.
Even to give every man according to his ways according to the fruit of his doings.
You're following your hearts.
That's your guiding standard.
Your hearts are wicked, he says.
And I can see that.
I see your hearts.
I know your hearts.
And you will be judged according to who you are.
and what you are doing.
And so the people there are very wicked and so it's very appropriate in Jeremiah 5, 29 to 31 for God to say through Jeremiah, what are you going to do in the end?
When the judgment does come, when the long suffering is over, what are you going to do in the end?
Look at God's long suffering to these people who have rebelled against him for so many years.
They have engaged in so much violence, shed so much innocent blood.
killed their own children over and over again.
These are nasty people.
But God still says this, chapter three and verse one.
say if a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's, may he return to her again.
Would not that land be greatly polluted?
But you have played the harlot with many lovers, yet return to me, says the Lord.
And so he tried all kinds of illustrations to help these people to understand how wicked they were.
but how much he wanted them to come back to him so that he could forgive them.
And here's one, here's a man that has a wife and he divorces her, and she goes out, she plays the harlot and she's been with a whole lot of different men.
He's saying, what man on earth would take her back?
And God is saying, that's what you've done to me, but I'll take you back.
So he wants them to see how much he loves them, even though they have become so very, very wicked.
He wants to bring them back.
He wants to help them.
He wants to take them back.
Verse 12, go and proclaim these words toward the North and say, return backsliding Israel says the Lord, I will not cause my anger to fall on you for I am merciful, says the Lord.
I will not remain angry for ever.
Verse 22, he says this.
return you backsliding children and I will heal your backsliding indeed we do come to you for you are the Lord our God chapter 4 and verse 1 if you return Israel says the Lord
return to me and if you'll put away your abominations out of my sight then you shall not be moved I'll keep you in the land you won't be moved from the land if you'll come back to
me if you'll do the right thing and this rebellion seen here in Jeremiah chapter 6 and verse 16
is astounding as God is giving them the opportunity to do the right thing.
Thus says the Lord, Jeremiah 6, 16, stand in the ways and see and ask for the, excuse me, for the sniffing, ask for the old past where the good way is and walk in it.
Then you will find rest for your souls.
What does God want to give them?
Rest for their soul.
just go back to the old way, just go back to when you were doing the right thing.
Then you'll find rest for your souls.
But they said, we will not walk in it.
And so you see a little bitty child standing before the child's father and the father tells the child that that child is going to go do something and the child says, I will
not.
We know what that looks like, don't we?
We understand that kind of rebellion, and we know that that little child needs to understand that's not the way to do things.
Well, this is what God's children were doing to him.
He was telling them how to have peace, how to have a better way to live, how to have forgiveness from him, how things could go so much better for He wanted to bless them and
do so many great things for them.
And he's telling them how they can have that.
And they're saying, we will not.
We're not going to do it.
Jeremiah chapter seven, verse three there.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways.
and your doings, I will cause you to dwell in this place.
Do not trust in these lying words, saying, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord of these.
For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the stranger, the fatherless, and
the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, or walk after other gods to your herd, then I will cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your
fathers forever and ever.
I want you to stay here.
I want you to have the land.
but you've got to serve me.
Come back to me, and this land is yours.
As long as you're serving me, it's yours.
and they wouldn't come back.
But don't you see God's long suffering?
Decade after decade after decade, prophet after prophet after prophet, God begging, pleading with people.
And he doesn't have to do that, does he?
Begging and pleading with people to come back to him.
If you look over to Ezekiel's book, Ezekiel is preaching to some of the Jews who've already been taken captive.
So some of the Jews were taken captive around 606, 607 BC.
and that would have included Daniel.
So Daniel's over in the palace of the Babylonian kings.
And then about 10 years later, somewhere around 596, 97 BC, Babylonians come back, take some more captives.
And so they're in Babylon as captives, and Ezekiel was taken with them, and so Ezekiel was preaching among the captives in Babylon.
There's still some people left in Jerusalem at that point in time.
The final destruction wouldn't come until 587 BC.
So Jeremiah is back there in Jerusalem.
So you got Daniel in the Babylonian palaces and you got Ezekiel with the captives already over there and you got Jeremiah with the people in the city of Jerusalem.
So if you look at Ezekiel's message, it's very similar to Jeremiah's.
Ezekiel chapter 18, God is telling these people, don't blame me and don't call me unfair.
And let me tell you this, I take no delight in the death of the wicked.
it does not make God happy to punish people.
He does not find himself filled with some sort of sense of great joy over punishing people.
He would rather the people come to him, come back to him, repent, be saved.
God is telling them, I want good things for you.
I don't take any delight in punishing you.
I would rather see you get yourself a new heart.
Change yourselves.
That's what I want you to do so that I can...
bless you.
And despite God's long suffering, the people continued to rebel against him.
And so, what will you do in the end?
It does end.
The long suffering always comes to an end and judgment comes.
Throughout the book of Jeremiah, judgment is promised against these people.
I'm assuming 1015, is that right?
Is that the last spell?
Throughout the book of Jeremiah, this judgment is promised.
If you don't come back to me the punishment will come.
So think about it, Jeremiah is preaching that message for 40 years.
It's not as though God said, tomorrow judgment's coming, you better repent now.
He gives him so many opportunities and so much time, doesn't he?
He's very kind and very patient.
But he reminds them that there is a lion that has already come out of the thicket, and that's Babylon.
And this lion that's already come out of the thicket has gone on to attack the Gentiles and is conquering the Gentile nations.
And that lion, Babylon, that's come out of the thicket, it's conquering the Gentile nations, is coming here.
You look to the north, and so if you look at where Babylon was and Jerusalem was on the map,
Babylon is almost due east of the city of Jerusalem, 550 miles, but it's desert between them.
And so you don't want to take an army 550 miles across the desert.
And so the Babylonian army will travel up northwest through what's called the Fertile Crescent.
A couple of historians in 1914, 1915 started calling it the Fertile Crescent, where the water is.
So you go up through the Tigris Euphrates area.
plenty of water for your troops so you're going northeast and then uh you would come down from the mountains and from the areas where the Jordan River would start you come down
through the Jordan River Valley and that way you've got plenty of food and water for your troops as you move and so even though the Babylonians were east of them they would always
come out of the north and so God was promising them this punishment coming to them from the north it will come he said
He tries to describe, or he does describe the Babylonians in such a way that should have caused fear into the hearts of the people.
All of their men are mighty warriors.
And in fact, he says, if you killed them all but just a few, and the few that were left that were wounded were still attacking the city, they would win the city.
When you go against God, you cannot win.
And so he describes all of those things.
He talks about a time when King Zedekiah says, well, what's going to happen?
The Babylonians are surrounding us now.
What what Jeremiah asked God what's going to happen God says to Zedekiah.
I'm gonna turn your own swords against you I'm against you.
I'm gonna fight against you.
I'm gonna fight for the Babylonians Well when God says that you don't have any chance do you?
But he promised them that he would forgive them if they would come back to him But they didn't and he warned of judgment to come if they did not take his gracious merciful loving
tender kind compassionate
long-suffering offer of forgiveness.
And so it's described in so many ways.
One of the ways that he describes it is to tell them that some will die by the sword, some will die by disease, some will die by famine.
So the Babylonians would come and surround the city of Jerusalem.
They would lay siege.
At one point, then the Egyptians would start moving, and Babylon would pull back.
The Egyptians would defeat Babylon for a time.
Babylon would retreat, recover.
Nebuchadnezzar would rebuild his troops.
He would meet the Egyptians in the Battle of Carchemish, a very famous battle.
You'll find it lot of historical writings.
And once he defeated the Egyptians at the Battle of Carchemish, then he would just gain more more strength.
And that's when he would come back down to the city of Jerusalem, lay siege to it.
About four months into the siege, the people of Jerusalem ran out of food.
And so, as you can imagine, he got really desperate for them.
This is Jeremiah chapter 39 now.
He got really desperate for them.
and then two years total, the wall would be broken down.
The Babylonian army would come in.
Zedekiah, who was the king of Judah at that time, who was very, very wicked, Zedekiah and some of his best soldiers would run and leave the people, of course.
But the Babylonian troops would catch up with Zedekiah and capture him and bring him before Nebuchadnezzar there.
And so the judgment came.
Now, even in the judgment, God was showing long suffering in this way.
God says concerning so many of other pagan nations, I will bring a final end to them because of their wickedness.
For you, Judah, I'm not going to bring a final end.
you will be punished.
You will be punished for your own good.
You cannot be made righteous.
You cannot come back with the idea in mind that you're going to serve me without the punishment.
You will be punished.
but I won't make a full end of you." He says, I know what I want for you.
I want good things for you.
I want peace for you.
I'm gonna bring you back.
You're gonna go into captivity, but I'm gonna bring you back home.
And I'm gonna resettle you in the land and I'm gonna bless you in the land.
But you're going to have to be punished first for their own good and also because God is just and perfect in his justice and justice had to be served.
He had shown so much long suffering.
But the time came when everything
Jeremiah had said concerning the destruction of the city of Jerusalem came about and among those that survived most were taken captive into Babylon.
Now Nabopalassar, not Nabopalassar, Nebuchadnezzar's general found Jeremiah and said God's told us to take care of you.
So you have a choice.
This is Jeremiah 40 now.
You can come with us back to Babylon and we'll take really good care of you.
Or you can stay here in the land and he says, look all around you, wherever you wanna go, Jeremiah, you can go.
So while all these Jews are being taken captive, they're telling Jeremiah, do what you want.
God delivered him just like he promised.
And Jeremiah decides to say, and so the Babylonians say, go with Gedaliah, we're gonna set Gedaliah up as governor over the area for a while and you'll be blessed, we'll take care
of him there and you'll be taken care of.
It got really bad from there for Jeremiah again, but Jeremiah was always delivered by God.
But everything he said about the punishment came true.
Now it is the case that we are in a period of long suffering now, isn't it?
2nd Peter 3,9 why is it that the Lord has not yet returned?
know some were saying in the first century even, well Jesus, you he hasn't come back yet so obviously he's not going to and they made the mistake of arguing well you know the
world's never changed so it's never going to change and uh Peter makes sure they understand that's wrong.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise.
As some count slackness.
but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
The Lord said, Matthew chapter 25 judgment will come.
The Lord said, Acts chapter one, that he would return.
The promise is there, John 14 even.
So he will.
Why hasn't he come back yet?
Longsuffering.
You and I right now are in a period of long suffering.
As long as you live, it is God's long suffering giving you the opportunity to make sure that you are devoted to God.
And as long as this world stands, it's God's long suffering giving the world the opportunity to come to God so that they can be ready when that day comes that God puts an
end to it all and he will.
Matthew 25, the judgment here in 2nd Peter chapter 3, a description of the smallest particle of anything being completely dissolved.
the whole thing being broken up with a great noise.
It's all going to go away.
Matthew 25, the judgment comes, there will be a separation on the day of judgment.
And God is going to say to some people, depart from me, you're cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
So we gotta ask ourselves, is that gonna be me?
Do I want that to be me?
and others who's going to say, you blast of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
You want God to say on the day when the long suffering ends, well done, good and faithful servant, what will you do in the end?
God bless you all.
Let's think very carefully about Jeremiah and his powerful, powerful message.
I think you got a minute, anybody want to say anything?
says in 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 3, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts, they shall heap to themselves teachers having
itchy ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned into fables.
This is no different now.
put people in.
Well, that's a very, very good point and very well made.
You know, the reality is this.
God's message is a beautiful message of peace and hope.
And there are many, many times when preachers can preach sermons that are encouraging people with the great hope that we have in Christ and the great and wonderful things God
has done for us and will do for us.
And you see how important you are to God, how much you are loved by God.
And there are times when we should just go out of here just feeling so joyous over what God wants to do for us.
But you know what?
There's another side to it too, isn't there?
There is a reality that we must obey God.
We must do it God's way.
Sin must be identified as sin.
False doctrine must be identified as such.
God's word must be presented and we must make sure we're following God's word.
And there may be times when we walk out of here feeling instead convicted.
Like, oh, you know what?
I don't feel so good about myself.
I gotta make some changes.
And so it's not always a feel-good situation, is it, when you're preaching the truth?
But in the end, of course, if you will repent and come to God, eternal life in heaven, well, that'd be another lesson, it?
And it's beautiful.
Anybody else?
That's great point.
All right, thank you.