Over the past few weeks, we have looked at how a lot of the modern religious world has watered down and softened the word of God. God has been reduced to this kind of heavenly mystical lover that many Christian artists sing about. Now, there is a lot of good gospel music there, and some of the older stuff has its problems as well.

The Gospel is a love story that is framed in harsh violence. The Holy God allowed His Son to be beaten to the point of being disfigured, then hung on a tree, nailed with long iron spikes to it, and then having to suffer the pain of suffocation, the shame of nakedness, the rejection of His own people, and the slow, agonizing death that was so harsh it was illegal for Roman citizens to be crucified.

God poured out His wrath – that should have fallen on us – on His Perfect, Sinless Son so we could be saved.

In the passage we will explore today, God teaches us a lesson about obedience. The Bible is very cut and dry in many areas. God is gracious, and often His patience leads us and the world around us to think that He is letting things go; nothing could be further from the truth. As we explore Jeremiah 36, we will hopefully learn some blunt realities about God and His word.

Verses 1-5: Tell the truth no matter what. Jeremiah could not go in himself. But he made sure that the word of the Lord got to where it was supposed to be. So, he called Baruch to write and then to read the word from the Lord to the people. Baruch was responsible for making sure the people heard the Word. You and I are responsible for making sure that the people around us hear the unfiltered truth of salvation. Jesus is the only way. They need to know that Hell is real and eternal, and the simplicity and totality of salvation. Let us get away from any kind of pretense and performance; just tell them the truth as plainly as possible.

Verses 11-19: Some will hear; some will have the right response. Notice verse 16: they looked towards another in fear. They were hit by God’s word; they were convicted. There is an old-fashioned word: convicted. There are two kinds of fear: one of reverence and another of simply understanding that they deserved all that was coming their way because of how they behaved.

You will see in verses 18-19 that these men understood that the message being told was not a popular one and that the speakers had to be protected, hidden away until they could gauge the reaction of the leaders that needed to hear the message.

We live in a time when no one wants to hear of right and wrong, no one wants to hear of judgment, and no one wants to hear that there is a Holy Judge that will call us to give an account of our lives. Sadly, the world around us and many Christians have neither a reverential fear of God nor fear of God’s judgment. We have cheapened God’s grace to make it into a license to water down even the power of salvation and the broad need for all people to be saved. We hate those that point out right and wrong, good and bad, holy and evil, the godly and the ungodly.

We have molded God in our image and refuse to be changed to be more like Jesus. Thus doctrinally conservative preachers are hated, and the wishy-washy spiritual motivators are lauded. These men who heard the words of Jeremiah through Baruch hoped that the king would hear the warnings of God and repent. So they prepared for the worst and hoped for the best.

Verses 20-26: The Rebellion in Political Leaders. The king calls for the scroll to be read, and they read sections of it; he cuts it off and throws it into the fire. There are some that think if they ban the Bible, make it illegal to read like they did here in Canada, burn it, imprison the preachers, close the churches, and cancel social media accounts that they will shut up God, reshape the truth, and beat God. What fools!!

Over the past few years, Bible sales have soared in North America; the death of Charlie Kirk sparked a call to worship in young men, and somehow, against all odds, the people elected a President that openly tells the nation and, indeed, the whole world that Jesus is Lord.

This king in Jeremiah has no reverence towards God, no regard for His Word; the men who brought word to him asked him not to burn the scroll (verse 25).

Well, we see in verses 29-31 that God pronounces a judgment on Jehoiakim, and eventually his bloodline dies out, and no one from his line is left to sit on the throne. There is another line that follows, and in that line, we have the person of Jesus. On top of that, there was a great disaster that came upon Jerusalem: thousands died, thousands more went into captivity, and the city was burned with fire and the temple torn to the ground.

Back in verse 3, we see that God graciously sent the word by His prophet to see if the people would hear and repent. He reached out His hand, extended grace one more time, offered life, but they rebelled and chose death.

Every day that we live here on Earth is one more day of grace  — grace extended to a godless generation that defies their creator and curses His very existence. Every day that they live is an offering of grace; just maybe the next sunrise will show them there is a God to be feared, and maybe they will repent. Maybe they too will hear someone read or speak the Word of God and be convicted; maybe they will repent and live.

Sadly, too many are like this king; they have cold hearts, hardened hearts, their ears no longer want to hear from God, and so they ban the Bible, shush preachers, and choose Hell. But that does not diminish our responsibilities; we have to make sure they hear the word of God; what they do with it is between them and God.

seangooding@yahoo.ca

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

In Numbers 23:19, we are told this foundational truth: “God is not a man that He should lie.” We should find solace in this promise, this character of God. In our last look at Psalm 110, we found the most quoted Old Testament passage. In it we see Jesus the King, the High Priest, and that He is powerful and strong. Jeremiah is writing to the southern kingdom of Judah; this is about 627 BC. He is warning the people that there is no hope for rescue. Sadly, many false prophets had told the people that God would rescue the people and destroy the power of Babylon, and the people were holding on to this false hope. The people hated Jeremiah; look at Jeremiah 20:1-6, 18:18 – and the people turned to false prophets (Jeremiah 7:5-11).

When Jeremiah tells them God’s judgments, they say they will repent, but they don’t really repent; they are just doing lip service. So, God sends Jeremiah to tell them that there will be judgement; they will not be able to resist the power of Babylon. They will either die or be taken away as captives. In the midst of this judgment, God gives them a bit of hope. There is a need for a bit of hope because the situation is so bad that, back in Jeremiah 15:1-4, God tells us that even if Moses and Samuel were to plead for Israel, He would not relent. Even these two men could not help. The judgment that was coming is secure and sure. Nothing will stop it.

In the midst of this, God offers a two-stage prophecy for hope. Verses 3-4 offer prophecy that will be fulfilled in the short term, 70 years to be exact, and then in 5-8, there is a yet-to-be-fulfilled future prophecy. The people were captured; we have the story of Daniel and his three friends who end up in Babylon with him. These are a part of that group that is taken as captives into Babylon. Others are left to care for the broken land of Judah and the destroyed city of Jerusalem. Hundreds of thousands die, and their bodies are left to the birds of the air and beasts of the fields.

But around 538 BC, as is recorded in Daniel 5 and prophesied in Isaiah 44-45, a man named Cyrus the Mede invades Babylon and takes the nation. He soon begins to send the Jews back to their homeland, and the prophecy of Jeremiah 23:3-4 is fulfilled. The scattered people do come back; they once again are a people, and they stay that way until 70 AD, when General Titus of the Roman Empire invades Israel, kills about 1,000,000 Jews, and burns the temple; yes, that same temple that Jesus walked in.

But there is a future promise that is yet to be fulfilled; in this, we see a man called The Branch of Righteousness. Jesus is referred to as the Branch in Jeremiah 33:14-18, Isaiah 11:1-5, Zechariah 3:6-10, and then again in Zechariah 6:12-13. They are told about a temple that this Branch will build, and we see that prophesied and described in Ezekiel 40-46. Here we are promised, just like in Psalm 110, that He will both be King and Priest, an office only for Melchizedek, whom we established in the last post of Jesus.

We are told in Jeremiah 23:6 that in the day of the Branch, Israel will dwell in safety. They do not dwell that way now, so this is a future, yet-to-be-fulfilled promise. But make no mistake, this will happen. God says so!! One day soon, God will deliberately seek out the Jews from the four corners of the earth, bring them back to the Promised Land, and begin a head-to-head battle between those that hate Israel and the Lord Jesus Himself that culminates in Revelation 19.

It is high time to repent. Call on Jesus and fall on His mercy. The next time you see Him, He will come as the Almighty, All-Powerful Living God whose words will kill millions. Now is the day to be saved.

seangooding@yahoo.ca

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario