God is Sovereign. We have been thinking about the story of the Jews who were ordered taken into exile in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar at the beginning of the sixth century BC. Jerusalem and the great Temple were destroyed and a small remnant were taken into captivity. God is Sovereign and He used a King and a nation who were not his followers to bring His judgment even on His own chosen people Israel. We saw how God kept hope alive amongst that remnant and then last week we saw how after 70 years of exile the Sovereign God moved another King who did not believe in Him or even acknowledge him – Cyrus – to bring his chosen people back to Jerusalem again.

God is Sovereign. He is in control of every aspect of His creation, all the seasons and earthquakes and floods. God is Sovereign over nations and Kings – they are all as grasshoppers to him. God is Sovereign over each and every one of our lives, when we will be born and when and how we will die, our jobs, our relationships, every tiny detail is in God’s hands. Time and again the Bible tells us, God is supreme Ruler of all things. God is in control. God is the boss. God is Sovereign!

It is a sad thing that over the centuries some Christians have misunderstood this wonderful truth of the Sovereignty of God. Among them were even some of our Baptist ancestors. Some Christians distorted the doctrine of God’s Sovereignty as expounded by among others the great 16th Century French Reformation theologian and took it too far. They became what have been described as hyper-Calvinists. They said that since God was in control of everything, Christians don’t have to do anything. If God has decided somebody is going to be saved, Christians don’t need to do anything about that – God will save the person with or without our help. God would save the person without anybody preaching the gospel to them. In fact some hypercalvinists went so far as to say that it would be wrong for Christians to preach the gospel to anybody because that would get in the way of God saving them by His own divine power. They argued that God would sort out all the problems of injustice in the world by Himself, so Christians did not need to do anything to help people who were poor or exploited or oppressed. And they argued that there was no point in praying in petition or intercession. Since the Sovereign God had already decided what He would do, there was no point in asking God to do something different. So because of their believe in the supremacy of God, hypercalvinists including some of our Baptist predecessors did nothing themselves. They left everything to God. They didn’t preach the gospel. They didn’t care for the poor or work for justice. They didn’t even pray about such things – they thought they didn’t need to.

God IS Sovereign. God is indeed ruler of all things. God is in control. Jesus Christ IS Lord! But that absolutely does not mean that Christians should just sit around doing nothing. Because time and again the Bible teaches us that it is the duty of all believers to preach the gospel and witness for Christ. It is the duty of all Christians to care for the poor and downtrodden and to work for justice for all. And it is the privilege and the duty of all believers to pray that God’s kingdom come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And we find these truths clearly demonstrated in the life of Nehemiah, one of the Jews who God sent back to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple and the city. They put their trust in the Sovereign God who moved King Cyrus to let them go back to Jerusalem. But Nehemiah knew very well that as well as God moving on their behalf, the exiles would have things to do themselves if the city was to be rebuilt. Without taking away one bit from the Sovereignty of God, men and women would have to pray and men and women would have to act! Prayer and actions – the human side of God’s will being done.

And here in the life of Nehemiah we find prayer and action working together. To begin with – prayer. Any action we ever take in obedience to God should spring from prayer. Any course of action we take in God’s name should be immersed in prayer! We can learn a great deal from Nehemiah’s prayer here in chapter 1.

Appeal to God’s character

5 Then I said:
“O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands, 6 let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel.

Prayer reminds us of who God is – acknowledges Him in every part of our lives and His world.

Honest prayer acknowledging sin

6 I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s house, have committed against you. 7 We have acted very wickedly towards you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.

Prayer reminds us that God doesn’t owe us anything. Before him, we are nothing but miserable sinners who deserve His Judgment.

Claiming God’s promises

8 “Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, 9 but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.’

Prayer is about claiming God’s promises. God is Sovereign. He has revealed what He is planning to do. But that does not mean he will get on and do it whatever we do or do not do on our part. God invites believers in every age to be his co-workers. And the starting point in our co-operating with God is praying for what he is intending to accomplish. If God has made specific promises, our prayers should be claiming his promises. If we don’t know what God’s plans are in a situation, we pray asking Him to reveal His perfect will so that we can pray for that.

Nehemiah knew the terms on which God had taken the Jews into exile. He knew the promises. When they had learned their lesson in captivity and his rebellious people returned to him, God had promised in Deuteronomy that they would then return to Jerusalem. So Nehemiah was simply claiming God’s promises, appealing to God’s Sovereign power and His character of steadfast love.

10 “They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand.

Nehemiah was reminding God of his plan of salvation and all the promises He had made concerning His chosen people the nation of Israel.

And in our prayers we have so many promises God has made still to claim.

Specific prayer

Nehemiah knew God had put him in a strategic position. He was cupbearer to the great King Artaxerxes! Nehemiah knew this position of influence could be used by God to bless the Israelites. So he prayed very specifically for an opportunity for God to use him.

11 O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favour in the presence of this man

OUR prayers need to be SPECIFIC. Not vague and woolly “God bless so-and-so” but specific! With this person, in this situation give me an opportunity to serve you and witness for you. Give me the grace to help this person. Because prayer should lead on to actions! Very often God wants to use US his chosen people to answer our own prayers!

I was cupbearer to the King
2 In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before; 2 so the king asked me, “Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart.”
I was very much afraid, 3 but I said to the king, “May the king live for ever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”
4 The king said to me, “What is it you want?”
Then I prayed to the God of heaven, 5 and I answered the king,
“If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favour in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.”

Here we see prayer and action hand in hand. We see a man whose prayer life is not just confined to times of prayer, to worship services and prayer meetings and set prayers. Here we see Nehemiah who is in close touch with God every moment and prays in the midst of life.

4 The king said to me, “What is it you want?”
Then I prayed to the God of heaven, 5 and I answered the king,

We need that kind of prayer life. As I’ve spoken about on many occasions, Practising the Presence of God, an awareness of God’s presence in every situation so that we can pray to God and answer those around us in a single breath. Some people call these kinds of prayers “arrow prayers”. A prayer we can send up to God of heaven in the midst of any situation asking for his strength or his wisdom or his guidance or his grace. A prayer for the right words to say and the courage to say them. An arrow prayer. That kind of prayer can lead to life-changing consequences!

BOLD ACTIONS

“If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favour in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.”

God’s Sovereignty doesn’t mean we just sit around and wait for God to save the world. Faith in God means we are prepared to go out on a limb and take risks for God and take the opportunities he gives us to serve Him.

6 Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, “How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?” It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time.

Nehemiah’s prayers were answered – God opened the door for him to God to Jerusalem. But Nehemiah wasn’t satisfied with just that. So he goes on to ask for more – to ask not for himself but for all the returning exiles and for the whole project of rebuilding Jerusalem.

7 I also said to him, “If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Trans-Euphrates, so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah? 8 And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy?” And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests. 9 So I went to the governors of Trans-Euphrates and gave them the king’s letters. The king had also sent army officers and cavalry with me.

Nehemiah had Faith in the Gracious hand of God.

He knew God was on his side. He knew God wanted to use him to do great things. So he prayed. And he prayed. And he prayed. And then he acted! He didn’t just ask for a little – he asked for a lot! Bold requests to God and bold requests to King Artaxerxes. And all those bold requests were answered.

God has put us in influential positions where he wants to use us. Unique positions with family and friends and neighbours and work colleagues where only we are able to show God’s love to them. Only we are able to tell them about Jesus. God is Sovereign – He can save anybody He chooses. But God chooses to do His work through us, his children. God wants to use OUR prayers and OUR actions to change lives and communities.

So we need to learn to pray and pray about things, like Nehemiah. We need to learn to pray through them – to soak situations in prayer. To discern God’s will and claim God’s promises. AND THEN we need to learn to walk closely with God, like Nehemiah did, so that we can send up “arrow prayers” any time we need to. Then we will naturally be able to be bold and step out in faith and accomplish great things for God. God needs us to pray – and to act!

Ezra 1 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfil the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing:
2 “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:
“ ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. 3 Anyone of his people among you—may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the LORD, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem. 4 And the people of any place where survivors may now be living are to provide him with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.’ ”

Cyrus the King of Persia was not a follower of Yahweh the God of Israel. He was not a believer. Yet God moved Cyrus to allow the Exiles to return and rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple in Jerusalem. And God can do that because God is in control, God is Lord, God is Sovereign. God is the Creator and Sustainer and Lord of all things. He can cause even people who do not believe in Him to do His bidding and fulfil His plans. Even Kings and Rulers as important as Cyrus King of Persia! Because behind the scenes God is continually “causing” some events to occur, and “allowing” other events to occur to properly set in motion the proper sequence of events that has to occur in “domino fashion” for everything to fall in place according to His perfect master-plan.

Isaiah 44:24 “This is what the LORD says—your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself,
…….
who says of Jerusalem, ‘It shall be inhabited,’ of the towns of Judah, ‘They shall be built,’ and of their ruins, ‘I will restore them,’
27 who says to the watery deep, ‘Be dry, and I will dry up your streams,’
28 who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd and will accomplish all that I please;
he will say of Jerusalem, “Let it be rebuilt,” and of the temple, “Let its foundations be laid.” ’
God is so great he can appoint even an unbelieving secular ruler to serve his purposes.

45 “This is what the LORD says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armour,
to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut:
2 I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron.
……
4 For the sake of Jacob my servant, of Israel my chosen, I summon you by name
and bestow on you a title of honour, though you do not acknowledge me.
5 I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.
I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me,
6 so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting
men may know there is none besides me. I am the LORD, and there is no other.
7 I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster;
I, the LORD, do all these things.

God is so great he can use even those who do not acknowledge Him to do his will. Because God is in charge. The God of Israel, the Lord, our God, God is Sovereign.
The Sovereignty of God: Sovereignty means supremacy, preeminence, taking the first place, absolute, and unique. The God of Israel is Sovereign – he is the ultimate power and authority in the universe!
1 Chronicles 29: 10 David praised the LORD in the presence of the whole assembly, saying, “Praise be to you, O LORD, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.
11 Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendour, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all.
12 Wealth and honour come from you; you are the ruler of all things. In your hands are strength and power to exalt and give strength to all.

Everything in heaven and earth belong to God. God is the ruler of all things. God is Sovereign. It is said there is a plaque on the desk of the President of the United States which reads, “The buck stops here.” But that plaque is wrong. The buck actually stops with a much higher authority, the ultimate authority. The buck stops with God – the Sovereign – the ruler of all things.

Christians, as the Jews before us, have always recognised the Sovereignty of God. In his classic book The Sovereignty of God, A.W.Pink puts it this way.
“What do we mean by [the sovereignty of God]? We mean the supremacy of God, the kingship of God, the god-hood of God. To say that God is Sovereign is to declare that God is God. To say that God is Sovereign is to declare that He is the Most High, doing according to His will in the army of Heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, so that none can stay His hand or say unto Him what doest Thou? (Dan. 4:35). To say that God is Sovereign is to declare that He is the Almighty, the Possessor of all power in Heaven and earth, so that none can defeat His counsels, thwart His purpose, or resist His will (Psa. 115:3). To say that God is Sovereign is to declare that He is “The Governor among the nations” (Psa. 22:28), setting up kingdoms, overthrowing empires, and determining the course of dynasties as pleaseth Him best. To say that God is Sovereign is to declare that He is the “Only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords” (1 Tim. 6:15). Such is the God of the Bible.”

God rules over all that He created. God was the Sovereign ruler over all His creation. He controls the seasons and the weather, all the storms and floods and earthquakes and volcanos.
The LORD has established His throne in the heavens;
And His kingdom rules over the Universe. (Psalm 103:19)

Psalm 135:5-6, NAS
5 For I know that the LORD is great, And that our Lord is above all gods.
6 Whatever the LORD pleases, He does, In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.
God is ruler over all nations and kings and human authorities.
Acts 17:24-26, NAS
24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things; 26 and He made from one, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation,
God in His Sovereignty raises one government leader up and puts another down.
But God is the Judge; He puts down one, and exalts another. (Psalm 75:7, NAS)
“And it is He who changes the times and the epochs; He removes kings and establishes kings;
He gives wisdom to wise men, And knowledge to men of understanding. (Daniel 2:21, NAS)
God is infinitely elevated above the highest creature. He is the Most High, Lord of heaven and earth. Subject to none, influenced by none, absolutely independent; God does as He pleases, only as He pleases always as He pleases. None can thwart Him, none can hinder Him. Divine sovereignty means that God is God in fact, as well as in name, that He is on the Throne of the universe, directing all things, working all things according to His own will and purposes. God exercises His supremacy – He is Sovereign.

God is sovereign over states and nations and He is Sovereign over each of our lives, and over each and every details of our lives. He is Sovereign over the Time and place of our birth and the time and place and circumstances of our death. God is Sovereign over every detail of our personality.
Psalm 139: 1 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. …..
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

God is Sovereign over our jobs, whether we succeed or fail, whether we get promoted. God is Sovereign over our relationships, who we will marry, whether we will have children, what spiritual gifts we may have. In his Sovereignty God has a perfect plan for each of our lives, what Spiritual gifts we will have, the good works he has prepared in advance for us to do.

God is ruler of all things – God is Sovereign. But I fear that too often Christians today have lost sight of the Sovereignty of God. We have lost confidence in the fact that God is on the throne, God is ruler of all things, God is in control, God is the boss!

1 The problem of innocent suffering.
Suffering like the natural disaster in Haiti. Suffering at the hands of evil men like that of children in Auschwitz and Belsen – the horrors of the Holocaust. How can we believe God is in control, people will ask, when such terrible things happen and there is such awful suffering in the world.
Classically the problem of suffering is expressed like this. If God is all-loving he would not allow suffering. If God is all-powerful he would not allow suffering. But suffering happens – so either God is not all loving or he is not all powerful.
As Christians we major on the God of love. We will defend at all costs the truth that God is love and that everything He does is an act of love. But the result is that many Christians have a much more vague concept of the Sovereignty of God. To preserve our understanding of the love of God when we see innocent suffering we water down our ideas about God as ruler of all things. Perhaps God isn’t in control quite as much as we thought.
Of course the problem is actually in the formulation of the logical proposal. Its first assumption is that if God was perfectly loving he would stop suffering – and that assumption is wrong. In fact God IS all loving BUT he allows some human suffering for purposes which for much of the time we just can’t understand. The presence of suffering in the world is NOT proof that God is not all powerful. Suffering does NOT negate the Sovereignty of God. In fact, If God was not sovereign in all of His ways this world would be in much worse shape than it is now. If God’s protection and restraining hand was not “sovereignly operating” on this earth – we would all be living in a hell on earth.
But God is Sovereign – ultimately nothing happens on earth unless He has allowed it!

Lamentations 3:37-38, NAS
37 Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass, Unless the LORD has commanded it?
38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High That both good and ill go forth?

And even as people suffer, the Sovereign God is at work bringing good out of evil.
Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose.

2. The question of predestination
The Sovereignty of God is unpopular with some Christians because of the answer it gives to a vital question. Who chooses who is saved and who is lost? Is it the Christian who chooses God? Or is it God who chooses us? Are we predestined to be saved – or do we get to decide for ourselves?
Romans 8:29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

We don’t have time tonight to expand this discussion. I promise I will do so on another occasion soon. But the point is that some people are so keen to defend the idea of human free will that they diminish the Sovereignty of God. Who chose who? Time and time again the Bible makes clear that God is Sovereign. His grace leads some to believe. In other cases the Bible is specific that God hardens some people’s hearts so that they will not believe and be saved. I don’t want to start any arguments about Pre-destination and free will. But I do want to say that so many times the Bible teaches us that God is God – creator and ruler of all things – God is Sovereign!

3. Jesus is only Lord because we let him be Lord.

We saw from Jeremiah 18 before Christmas that God is the potter and we are the clay. The potter who can do whatever he chooses with the clay to make whatever he wishes.

JESUS, YOU ARE CHANGING ME,
By Your Spirit You’re making me like You.
Jesus, You’re transforming me,
That Your loveliness may be seen in all I do.
You are the potter and I am the clay,
Help me to be willing to let You have Your way.
Jesus, You are changing me,
As I let You reign supreme within my heart.

God does invite our cooperation in the work he is doing in us and through us. He wants us to be willing. But don’t ever think that God needs our cooperation. That we need to let God mould us and transform us. God is God! He can do whatever He chooses! God is sovereign. Jesus is not Lord because we invite him or allow Him to be Lord. Jesus is not Lord just of the people who recognise and submit to His Lordship. Jesus is Lord! Exclamation Mark! God is Sovereign. Exclamation Mark.
God is Sovereign even though there is suffering in the world. God is Sovereign even though that gets our heads into a spin about who chooses who is saved – whether we chose God or he chose us. God is Sovereign whether people choose to submit to that sovereignty or not!

Ezra 1 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfil the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing:

Who’s in control? God is Sovereign. God is Ruler of all thing. God is in control. God is the boss!

It is easy to think of the prophet Jeremiah as all “doom and gloom.” We have seen the pictures of the broken cistern in chapter 2 and the potter and the clay in chapter 18 and the warnings against empty religion in chapter 7. But not all of Jeremiah is so gloomy and negative. Last week we saw the wonderful promise of hope in chapter 29.
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
And following shortly after that promise of hope, Jeremiah brings one of the most exciting and important promises in the whole of the Old Testament – the promise of a new covenant.
Jeremiah 31 begins with God assuring the nation of Israel of his love for them.
3 the LORD appeared to him from far away.
I have loved you with an everlasting love;
therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
4 Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel!
Again you shall adorn yourself with tambourines
and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.

God promises to bring his chosen people back from exile to their own land once again.

13 Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,
and the young men and the old shall be merry.
I will turn their mourning into joy;
I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
14 I will feast the soul of the priests with abundance,
and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness,
declares the LORD.”

More than that, God will restore to Israel all the blessings he ever promised them through Abraham and Moses and David.

27 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. 28 And it shall come to pass that as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring harm, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, declares the LORD.
But when God brings the exiles back and rebuilds the nation again, the most important thing He is promising to do is this
31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,
A new covenant. Throughout human history the relationship between God the Creator and human beings as the crown of His Creation had always been expressed in covenants. A covenant is a contract, or a treaty, or an agreement, which spells out on the one hand the promises made by Almighty God and on the other hand the obligations God places on human beings. In one way the first covenant was between God and Adam and Eve – all the blessings of Eden, as long as they did not eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then there was the covenant with Noah after the flood – that God would never again bring judgment in a worldwide flood. There was the covenant with Abraham – blessings of protection and descendants becoming a great nation with their own promised land. And of course the covenant on Sinai with Moses – the escaped slaves united into a very special nation, God’s chosen people, set apart to know and serve and worship God and given the commandments to show them how they can please God.
All those promises had been renewed with great King David and his descendants. But for centuries the people of Israel had broken God’s covenants. They had claimed the blessings but ignored their obligations to be a special people, set apart for God. To deal with the problems of human sinfulness and pride a new covenant was needed.
31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD.
But how would this new covenant be different? In what ways would it be new?
33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.
The New Covenant is a law within us, written on our hearts
The Old Covenant was expressed in the Jewish Law, The Torah, summed up in the 10 Commandments written on stones on Mount Sinai and expanded in the first five books of the Bible the Pentateuch. Here were lists of rules to obey, written down and memorized and passed on by the Scribes and the Rabbis. But these rules were mostly concerned with actions, things to do to please God and sins to avoid because they made God angry. This Jewish Law was concerned with externals.
But the New Covenant would be different. The Law would be written in the hearts and minds of God’s people. It would bring an inward knowledge of what pleases God, written in the conscience of each individual. Indeed it would be the presence of God the Holy Spirit inside each believer, guiding and leading and strengthening. It would bring a religion based on joy and love and not just duty.
The prophet Ezekiel delivered a similar message at around the same time.
Ezekiel 36 24 “ ‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. 28 You will live in the land I gave your forefathers; you will be my people, and I will be your God.
So God would give His people not only a knowledge of what they should do but also by the Holy Spirit the strength to be obedient. An internal and inward law affecting not only words and actions but motives and attitudes.
As Christians we live under this New Covenant. But sometimes we can live as if we were still trapped in the Old Covenant. As if we were under Law rather than under grace. For some Christians the Bible is just a book of rules showing us how to live. But John Stott describes the Bible as God’s love letter to the church, revealing to us Jesus who should be our first and greatest love and our heart’s desire.
From the Early Church to the present day there have been groups of Christians who have been trapped in legalism – trying to earn their salvation by keeping rules. But the heart of the New Covenant is a relationship with God as Father, mediated by the Holy Spirit inside us. The Christian life is not about legalism but a relationship of love.
The New Covenant is an individual and personal relationship with God.
Jeremiah 31:33 And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.
Under the Old Covenant, ordinary individual Jews did not have a personal relationship with God in the same way as every Christian can. They could only approach God through priests and sacrifices. Theirs was a “second hand” religion. God was at arm’s length from the ordinary people.
But under the New Covenant every believer can know God directly and personally through the only mediator we need, Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit living inside every Christian brings every one of us a deep first-hand personal knowledge of God. We don’t just know about God – we know God. We don’t need another human being to put us in touch with God – each of us knows God for ourselves.
34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.
Christians live under the New Covenant. But sometimes we can feel as if we are still under the Old Covenant. Sometimes we can feel as if we can’t come directly into God’s presence but we need mediators to put us in touch with God.
The Jews relied on their Temple – we can rely on special PLACES to bring us close to God: our church buildings. Church buildings can be helpful to worship and prayer – but if we just can’t worship God or pray anywhere else then we are trapped in the Old Covenant.
The Jews had their system of sacrifices – we can rely on particular RITUALS to bring us to God. Certain forms of service or styles of music or set liturgies can be helpful – but if we can’t draw near to God without these kinds of things then we are trapped in the Old Covenant.
The Jews had their priests – we can rely on particular people to bring us close to God, whether own minister or celebrity preachers at Spring Harvest or on God TV, or Christian friends. Other people may help us meet with God but if we can’t meet God without them then we are trapped in the Old Covenant.
Places or Rituals or People can help us get closer to God – but we shouldn’t need them, because the New Covenant has only One Mediator and that is Jesus Christ. Under the New Covenant, they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. Our knowledge of God should be first hand, not second hand or third hand!
Then The New Covenant brings forgiveness and new life.
The Old Covenant rested on an endless stream of sacrifice upon sacrifice, year after year. In particular every year the High Priest had to celebrate the day of Atonement and sacrifice the Passover Lamb, year after year.
Under the New Covenant there would be only one perfect sacrifice, Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Jeremiah 31:34 For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
One sacrifice, once, for all.
2 Corinthians 5:21 Christ was without sin, but for our sake God made him share our sin in order that in union with him we might share the righteousness of God. (Good News Bible)
So by His death on the cross Jesus has completely replaced the Old Covenant and the old Jewish Law. God has forgiven our iniquity, our wickedness, our inbuilt tendency to sin. And He has also forgiven our sins – all our disobedient words and actions. God has dealt with our attitudes as well as our actions.
As Christians we live under the New Covenant. All our sins have been forgiven! But sometimes we live as if we were still under the Old Covenant. We can live as if our sins have not yet been forgiven yet. As if we need another sacrifice or another act of repentance or another prayer of confession before we are properly forgiven. We don’t! Christ has done everything that needs to be done. We are already completely forgiven! We have been cleansed, totally, forever.
Romans 8:1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
Then sometimes we live as if we are powerless to fight sin and overcome temptation. But that is not the case. God has promised to help us live holy lives. He has given us His Holy Spirit. Remember the words of Ezekiel 36
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
God gives us His grace, His strength to live victorious Christian lives. The Israelites under the Old Covenant had to fight the battle by themselves but as Christians under the New Covenant we don’t have to struggle on alone. We have the Holy Spirit inside us helping us!
Through Jeremiah God promised the New Covenant. His Law inside us, written on our hearts, an individual and personal relationship with Go where all our sins and wickedness have been forgiven through Jesus’s death on the cross. And Jesus invites us all to experience this wonderful new life.
Matthew 26:26 While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”
27 Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 This is my blood of the (new) covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

What does the future have in store? That is a question that most people ask at one time or another. Where is life leading? What will I be doing next year? In five years? In 25 years? It’s a question young people ask. What job will I do? Where will I live? Will I marry and have a family? It’s the question may people find themselves asking in their forties, when some are facing a “mid-life crisis”. Where is my life going to? And many face the same question at retirement. Is this the end of life or a new beginning? What does the future have in store? The question also raises its head in times of crisis, of illness or family problems or accident or change of job or bereavement. At times of change facing an uncertain future can be exciting but it can also be challenging and even terrifying.
The Bible has answers to all of these questions and all of our problems because it is the Word of the God who knows the future, the God who holds the destinies of nations and of every individual in the palm of His hands, the God Who knows us better than we know ourselves.
So we turn to the prophet Jeremiah preaching just after 600 BC to the Jews who had been taken into exile by the Babylonians. If anybody has ever faced an uncertain future it was those exiles, in human terms anyway. And the message Jeremiah has for them from God brings both encouragement and challenge. It is a message which is just as relevant to God’s people in every age as they face the changes and uncertainties which are a part of human existence. And the heart of the message even for you and for me is this.
God has a perfect plan for our lives.
Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.
Many people will tell you that the whole of life is just one giant game of change. Other people will say, “You make your own destiny – there is no future except what we make for ourselves.” Others talk of karma, what goes around comes around, you get what you deserve. It’s all up to you. Lots of people believe in Fate, good luck and bad luck, and there is no shortage of ideas around to find out what the future holds – astrology and horoscopes, fortune tellers and Tarot cards and crystal balls, Ouija boards and séances and even witchcraft. All these ways of predicting the future are empty, or at worst positively evil. The Bible tells us that our lives are in God’s hands, and He has a perfect plan for each of our lives. God’s words through Jeremiah to the exiles are just as true for us in our lives today.
Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.
The Israelites had every reason to feel discouraged and depressed. They had been defeated and invaded and deported. They were in exile in Babylon. They needed reminding that God’s plans for his chosen people are always ultimately for our best welfare, to help us not to harm us, to prosper us and give us a future and a hope. God’s plan is not for us to be sad all to time, or struggling all the time, or suffering all the time, or even bored all the time! God’s cosmic master-plan is to bless His children, to take care of us and fill our lives with good things. God does this because He loves us! Let’s take a moment to remember just how much God does love us!
Ephesians 3:17-19
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Sometimes in our minds we underestimate how much God loves and set limits on the wonderful things He might do in our lives. So Paul reminds us:
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

God’s perfect plan for every Christian is that we should live fulfilled lives, for us to be holy and loving, knowing our Heavenly Father better and better and rejoicing in Christ our Saviour.
And God has a perfect plan for every church too. That we might have sincere unity, spirit-filled worship, powerful witness and continual growth in maturity and service. This is God’s perfect plan for His church the Body and Bride of Christ.
But if there is one very obvious lesson we can learn from the Israelites’ years of exile in Babylon it is this.
God’s perfect plan does not always happen immediately.
The Israelites were going to have to wait quite a while for the blessings God had promised them.
Jeremiah 29:10 This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place.
The Israelites would have to wait seventy years for God’s promise. That whole generation which had sinned so much that God sent judgment on the nation would have to die out. Those decades of exile were their punishment for neglecting and rejecting God. They were exiled to teach them a lesson and bring them back close to God again. Those seventy years were part of God’s discipline on His chosen people, just as the forty years wandering in the wilderness had been. And we have been reminded before from the letter to the Hebrews (12:5-7, 10-11) that sometimes God will discipline Christians too.
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? …. Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Sometimes it may seem that God is withholding his blessings from us. In those times it may be right to ask, “Is this an expression of God’s discipline? Is there something I must learn from this experience? Or is there something we as a church together need to learn, before God’s perfect plan can proceed?”

Of course, the hardships we face or painful situations we need to endure are not always an expression of God’s disciple. Sometimes instead God’s perfect plan is waiting for other events to unfold or other people to act. And sometimes God’s blessing or our rescue are held in wait because of factors we cannot even begin to imagine within the immense complexities of God’s cosmic master-plan.

Remember the story of the Exodus. God heard the cries of the Israelites in slavery in Egypt. So he arranged for Moses to be born as a Jew but be brought up in in Pharaoh’s house. But it was 40 years before Moses realised the sufferings of God’s people, and another 40 years of preparation in the wilderness before God called Moses from the burning bush. That was almost a century of suffering in slavery before God’s chosen deliverer was ready to lead the Exodus. And it would be another 1400 years before God’s perfect timing sent Jesus. “Just at the right time, while we were powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” (Romans 5:6)

So it was that in God’s perfect timing, Israel’s return from exile was inseparably intertwined with God’s purposes in the destiny of the vast empire of the Babylonians. If we can’t see how God’s perfect plan is working out in our own lives right now, maybe there are other factors in the lives of people and nations around us which would explain the timing of the things God is doing in our lives and in our church. Sometimes God’s perfect plan is waiting for other things going in the world. But alternatively, sometimes God’s perfect plan is waiting for us! Because we can be open to God’s blessing, but sometimes we can be closed to it! As we can see very clearly from the experience of the exiles,

God’s perfect plan waits for our wholehearted obedience and prayer.

Jeremiah 29:11-14
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

God had made wonderful promises to Israel. God is faithful and He always keeps His promises. But the Israelites had been sent into exile as punishment for their idolatry and immorality and lack of faith. God was not going to set them free and bring them back to Jerusalem until they had learned their lessons and put their trust in God again. God’s blessings were waiting for the Israelites to pray, and pray wholeheartedly and single-mindedly.

So often through history God’s perfect plans for His children have had to wait because they were not ready to receive the great blessings He had planned for them. Don’t get the wrong idea. I am not saying that we can ever earn or deserve God’s blessings by faith or by obedience or even by praying and seeking God with all our hearts. All God’s blessings to us are the free gifts of His grace. The point is that prayer and seeking God are the channels through which God’s ocean of love can flood into our lives and into our church. Prayer is the tap which allows the grace to flow. Often if God’s blessings don’t seem to be coming to us, the problem lies within ourselves. Instead of seeking God wholeheartedly, we are only half-hearted in our prayer or our faith or our worship or our witness. If so, then we are the losers – because God’s perfect plan will only unfold in the lives of those who are wholeheartedly seeking Him.

The New Testament brings us the same challenge. Hear these words from James 4:6-10
But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

James was writing to Christians who thought they were doing fine, but they weren’t. Instead they were proud and complacent and self-satisfied. They knew nothing about the passionate hungering and thirsting after God which the Psalmist talked about and which Jeremiah is demanding. Those early Christians had lost their first love. They were no longer seeking God wholeheartedly. So James gives them what is at the same time an encouragement and a challenge to repentance, “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.”

God has a perfect plan for each of his lives and for every church. But that perfect plan does not always happen immediately. Sometimes God wants to teach us something first. Sometimes His plan is waiting for other events or other people. But sometimes the blessings God is longing to pour out on His children or on His church are waiting for our wholehearted obedience and prayer. Sometimes waiting for us to turn to God in repentance and faith.

I remember watching a video of a factory assembly line. I can’t remember whether it was bottles of fizzy drink or jars of jam. But at the very end of the line the conveyor belt got clogged up and these jars or bottles got stuck and started to pile up on top of each other higher and higher, because nobody was there taking them away. I sometimes wonder if something like that is happening in heaven right now with all the blessings God is just waiting to pour into our lives but the very last stage is missing. We aren’t praying. We are not seeking God with all our hearts. Watchman Nee wrote, “The children of God are taken up with far too small things, whereas their prayer is intended for the release of heaven’s mighty acts. The church should be heaven’s outlet, the channel of release for heaven’s power. Many things have accumulated in heaven because God has not yet found His outlet on earth: the church has not yet prayed!”

God’s perfect plan may just be waiting for us to be ready to receive it. If we don’t pray, nothing is going to happen! “Many things have accumulated in heaven because … the church has not yet prayed!”

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

There are many things I am cosmically useless at! One of them is pottery. When we had pottery classes at school I could NOT get the clay to do what I wanted at all! As the culmination of a whole year’s pottery classes we were given the task of using a potters wheel to make a bowl and then add a handle to make it into a simple mug or tea cup. But mine didnt work like that! It was as if the clay had a life of its own. It wouldnt keep the shape I gave it. It kept jumping off the wheel.
In the end I gave in and let the clay have its own way. I looked at the lump of clay, saw something it actually resembled, fired it, painted it, glazed it in that shape the clay had chosen. So there in the exhibition of fine teacups, and slightly less fine mugs, and the bowls which didn’t quite make it as mugs, hidden away at the back was the result of my efforts. A clay mouse. And a very fine clay mouse it was too! The best clay mouse anybody made that year! I painted a little smile on its little rodent face and it was just as if the clay was grinning up at everybody saying, “I never wanted to be a teacup! I always wanted to be a mouse!”

Jeremiah 18:5 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my
hand, O house of Israel.

“Like clay in the hand of the potter”

We find the same imagery in the prophet Isaiah:-
Isa 29:16 You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, “He did not make me”? Can the pot say of the potter, “He knows nothing”?
Isa 45:9 “Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a pot among the pots on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, `What are you making?’ Does your work say, `He has no hands’?
Isa 64:8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

You are the potter – we are the clay!

Of course being transformed from a crude ugly lump of clay to a beautiful teacup is a long hard process for the clay. Imagine the story a teacup could tell if it could speak. Imagine the conversation it would have with the potter!

“You don’t understand,” it would say. “I haven’t always been a teacup. There was a time when I was red and I was clay. The potter took me and rolled me and patted me over and over and I yelled out, ‘leave me alone,’ but he only smiled, ‘Not yet’.

“Then I was placed on a spinning wheel, and suddenly I was spun around and around and around. ‘Stop it! I’m getting dizzy!’ I screamed. But the potter only nodded and said, ‘Not yet.’ Then he put me in the oven. I never felt such heat. I wondered why he wanted to burn me, and I yelled, and I knocked at the door. I could see him through the opening and I could read his lips as he shook his head, ‘Not yet.’

Finally the door opened, he put me on the shelf, and I began to cool. ‘There, that’s better,’ I said. And he brushed and painted me all over. The fumes were horrible. I thought I would choke. ‘Stop it, stop it!’ I cried. He only nodded, ‘Not yet.’

Then suddenly he put me back into the oven, not like the first one. This was twice as hot and I knew I would suffocate. I begged. I pleaded. I screamed. I cried. All the time I could see him through the opening nodding his head, saying, ‘Not yet.’ Then I knew there wasn’t any hope. I would never make it. I was ready to give up. But the door opened and he took me out and placed me on the shelf. An hour later he handed me a mirror and said, “Look at yourself.” And I did. I said, “That’s not me; that couldn’t be me. It’s beautiful. I’m beautiful. I’m a teacup!”

“I want you to remember, then,” said the potter, “I know it hurt to be rolled and patted, but if I just left you, you’d have dried up. I know it made you dizzy to spin around on the wheel, but if I had stopped, you would have crumbled. I know it hurt and it was hot and unpleasant in the oven, but if I hadn’t put you there, you would have cracked. I know the fumes were bad when I brushed and painted you all over, but if I hadn’t done that, you never would have hardened. You would not have had any colour in your life, and if I hadn’t put you back in that second oven, you wouldn’t survive for very long because the hardness would not have held. Now you are a finished product. Now you are what I had in mind when I first began with you.”

“Can I not do with you as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand.”

The people of Israel were God’s chosen people. Rescued out of slavery in Egypt. Given the Law of Moses to show them how to be the people of God. Brought safely through the wilderness into the Promised Land. Given victory over all their enemies. All parts of God’s master plan, shaping Israel into a holy nation, God’s special people. So Almighty God their Creator AND their Redeemer was perfectly entitled to continue the refining process of exile and restoration to purify the Israelites from their idol-worship. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand.”

At times Jeremiah himself, God’s chosen prophet must have felt like a lump of clay being rolled and spun and beaten. Being God’s messenger is a risky business.

20: 1 ¶ When the priest Pashhur son of Immer, the chief officer in the temple of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, 2 he had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put in the stocks at the Upper Gate of Benjamin at the LORD’s temple.

38:4 Then the officials said to the king, “This man should be put to death. He is discouraging the
soldiers who are left in this city, as well as all the people, by the things he is saying to them. This
man is not seeking the good of these people but their ruin.” 6 So they took Jeremiah and put him into the cistern of Malkijah, the king’s son, which was in the courtyard of the guard. They lowered Jeremiah by ropes into the cistern; it had no water in it, only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud.

Not pleasant at all! But God knew what He was doing. God knew what he was doing in purifying and refining the nation of Israel. God knew what He was doing in Jeremiah’s life. And God knows what He is doing in OUR lives too. He IS the Potter, and we are His clay. He will mould us and make us, so that we may be made into a flawless piece of work to fulfil His good, pleasing, and perfect will.

The trouble is that so often we fight against God’s plans and purposes for us. At the start of our Christian lives, when everything is new and we are excited and enthusiastic and grateful, we give our whole lives to Christ. But then over the years piece by piece we take our lives back again, like the clay fighting back because it doesnt want to be a tea-pot – it only wants to be a mouse.

People sometimes ask why isn’t OUR church very much like the Early Church when they moved out in the power of the Spirit in love and boldness and witnessing. Why isn’t OUR church like some other churches in the world today with the Spirit poured out in dramatic ways? Why don’t each of US as Christians experience as much as we would like to of the power and love of the Holy Spirit in our own lives? Why aren’t WE Holy as our Heavenly Father is Holy?

And the answer is all tied up with the potter and the clay. God can only make us into what He wants if we are prepared to be taken, transformed, used, WHATEVER IT COSTS. Too often we are like clay that is fighting back! You can only have as much of the Spirit’s love and power as you are prepared to have of His HOLINESS.

In our Home Group studies in 2 Timothy you will soon come to chapter 2.
2:20 In a large house there are dishes and bowls of all kinds: some are made of silver and gold, others of wood and clay; some are for special occasions, others for ordinary use.
21 If anyone makes himself clean from all those evil things, he will be used for special purposes, because he is dedicated and useful to his Master, ready to be used for every good deed.

God wants to use all of us for His work, for His glory. But we have to be prepared to be used, prepared to be MADE useful, to be purified and refined so that God CAN use us.

Whenever God asks us to do some act of service or witness for Him, if we are too busy with other things, that is the clay fighting the potter.

When God commands us to love somebody else, if instead we hate them or just ignore them, that is the clay fighting the potter.

When God invites us to spend time every day with him in Bible Study and prayer, if we can’t be bothered, that is the clay fighting the potter.

Everybody loses the battle against temptation sometimes. But if we have given up fighting against a particular temptation to a besetting sin and don’t even TRY to live a holy life, that is the clay fighting the potter.

When God brings us to a time of testing, a time of uncertainty, or change, or sickness, or opposition or persecution perhaps, His purpose is to refine us and purify us, to strengthen our faith as we turn to Him for help and strength. If we refuse his discipline and turn away from God instead blaming him, that is the clay fighting the potter. That is what the nation of Israel was doing. That is what Christians can so easily do as well.

People sometimes ask me what does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Does it mean that you receive more of the Holy Spirit. No it doesn’t. You receive ALL that you will ever receive of the Holy Spirit the moment you first trust in Christ and are born again. What being filled with the Spirit means is not that you get more of the Holy Spirit, but that the Holy Spirit gets more of you!!

Some people have compared our lives to a house. If you have a guest to stay in your home there might be certain places you wouldn’t expect the guest to go – your bedroom maybe, or your study. When we become a Christian we invite Christ into our lives, and God gives us His Holy Spirit to live inside us. And we welcome God into our lives as a guest into a house, but maybe there are some rooms we don’t expect him to go into. The dark rooms where we don’t want the light of Christ to shine. The rooms that have been locked up for so long we can’t quite remember why we don’t let anybody in there. The closets with a whole graveyard of skeletons inside. Different rooms of our lives we don’t allow God into.

But Jesus is not satisfied to be merely a guest in our lives. Jesus is Lord – and if Jesus isn’t Lord of all then He isn’t really Lord at all. We have to allow him into EVERY area of our lives – submit to Him in ALL things – surrender EVERYTHING to Him, if we really want to know the power and love of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Being filled with the Spirit is all about unlocking those dark dingy rooms of your House and allowing the breeze of the Spirit to blow them clean so the WHOLE house belongs to Christ.

The great Baptist preacher CH Spurgeon once said
“If you desire Christ for a perpetual guest, give him all the keys of your heart; let not one cabinet be locked up from him; give him the range of every room and the key of every chamber.”

The American equivalent of CH Spurgeon was DL Moody.
D. L. Moody said, “I believe firmly that the moment our hearts are emptied of pride and selfishness and ambition and everything that is contrary to God’s law, the Holy Spirit will fill every corner of our hearts. But if we are full of pride and conceit and ambition and the world, there is no room for the Spirit of God. We must be emptied before we can be filled.”

Moody was to have one of his campaigns in England. One elderly pastor protested, “Why do we need this ‘Mr. Moody’? He’s uneducated, inexperienced. Who does he think he is anyway? Does he think he has a monopoly on the Holy Spirit?”
A younger, wiser pastor responded, “No, but the Holy Spirit has a monopoly on Mr Moody.”

We have to allow God into EVERY area of our lives – submit to Him in ALL things – surrender EVERYTHING to Him, if we really want to know the power and love of the Holy Spirit in our lives, if we really want to become the people God calls us to be, if we really want to be useful to God.

Here is a prayer written years ago by an 18-year-old called Betty Scott:
“Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes, and accept Your will for my life. I give my self, my life, my all, utterly to You to be Yours forever. Fill me and seal me with Your Holy Spirit. Use me as You will. Send me where You will. And work out Your whole will in my life–at any cost, now and forever.”

Words like those are not only beautiful but risky: if you mean them, they can lead your life in directions you never expected. In Betty’s case, they led her and her husband John Stam to serve as missionaries in China, over seventy years ago. While they were there, Betty and John were captured by Chinese Communists, stripped, chained together, and marched through the streets of the little village they were working in. Then they were both beheaded.

Full surrender – total submission – that’s the only way to let the potter have His way with the clay of our lives, to take us and make us into what HE wants us to be. That’s the only way to release the power and love of the Holy Spirit into our lives. But too often we are just like the clay fighting against the potter.

“I don’t want to be a teacup, or a mug, or a bowl, or anything useful! I’d much rather just be a clay mouse!”

JESUS, YOU ARE CHANGING ME,
By Your Spirit You’re making me like You.
Jesus, You’re transforming me,
That Your loveliness may be seen in all I do.
You are the potter and I am the clay,
Help me to be willing to let You have Your way.
Jesus, You are changing me,
As I let You reign supreme within my heart.
(Marilyn Baker)

2 Timothy 3:5 in the Good News Bible contains this solemn warning. In the last days, it says, people 5will hold to the outward form of our religion, but reject its real power.
The New Living Translation puts it like this. 5 They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.
The apostle Paul was right. It will not just be in the very last days, just before Jesus returns, but throughout the history of God’s dealing with men. Starting with Cain and Abel, right up to the present day, human beings have been misled by “empty religion.” Beliefs and practices which appear on the outside to be spiritual but inwardly are worthless.
The prophet Jeremiah was confronting such worthless religion at the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim King of Judah round about 608 BC. This was around half way through Jeremiah’s ministry and roughly 20 years before Jerusalem would be destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon as God brought judgment on his chosen people who had rejected him. Here in Jeremiah 7 we find three characteristics of such “empty religion.”

Trusting in outward ceremonies instead of in God
We find this in Jeremiah’s day
4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!”
8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.
The Israelites were fooling themselves. They were claiming promises from God they were no longer eligible to claim because they had wandered away from God.
21 “ ‘This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves! 22 For when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, 23 but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you. 24 But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went backward and not forward.
The Israelites had fallen into the trap of thinking that animal sacrifices were of value in themselves. The truth is that their sacrifices were worthless and meaningless if they were not expressions of faith and obedience! The Israelites had gone so far away from the one true and Living God that they were offering sacrifices to false gods instead.
17 Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 18 The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger. 19 But am I the one they are provoking? declares the LORD. Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame?
The Israelites had drifted into performing rituals and ceremonies for their own sake, rather than as expressions of faith and obedience in God.
The Pharisees in Jesus’s time had fallen into the same trap. They gave minute attention to the details of the Jewish Law but overlooked the spirit of the Law. Straining gnats while they were swallowing camels!
And there are warnings for us about empty religion from the history of the church. It is sad to say that over the centuries there have been Christians who have made the same mistake of valuing outward ceremonies rather than putting their trust in God. We could look at the Roman Catholic church in the 15th century. They wrapped up all their worship in Latin, the language of the long-dead Roman Empire, rather than in the languages ordinary people spoke and understood. They kept the Bible in Latin and their liturgies in Latin. They had invented so-called sacraments of confession and penances and the priests sold indulgences and built a business around relics and shrines for the saints. All sorts of rituals and practices had replaced true faith in God.
It was Martin Luther and the Reformation which rediscovered the truth that forgiveness comes to us from the grace of God received by faith, not on the basis of good works. Salvation is God’s free gift to all who put their trust in Jesus. Salvation is not earned or deserved and it certainly can’t be bought by empty ceremonies!
So there is the challenge for us. Is our religion genuine? What are we putting our trust in? Do we think we are saved by going to church? Or by saying our prayers or by giving to missionary work? Faith in God is the only thing that matters! Anything else is just empty religion.

Pious words contradicted by sinful disobedient lives.
This was certainly true of Israel in Jeremiah’s time.
3 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. 4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!” 5 If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, 6 if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. 8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.
9 “ ‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? 11 Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?
The Israelites were trusting in empty words but practising oppression and theft and even murder. Their actions contradicted their words.
Much the same was true of the Pharisees in Jesus’s time. When Jesus cleansed the Temple and drove out the money-changers he quoted first Isaiah 56:7 and then Jeremiah 7:11, “My house should be a house of prayer but you have turned it into a den of thieves.” Indeed, Jesus reserved his strongest condemnation for the most outwardly religious people of his day. Pious words but unjust actions.
And church history has its warning for us about this as well, and even from the 20th century. There was a time when the supporters of the evangelical gospel of personal salvation received by faith alone were very critical of the “social gospel”, the call to express God’s love to all in actions as well as in words and to especially the poor and the marginalised. Evangelical churches were preaching the gospel but often it was only the theologically liberal churches that were caring for the poor and needy and fighting for social justice. Even up to the 1970s there was a big gulf between evangelicals like John Stott in his book Christian Mission in the Modern World and Ronald Sider in his book “Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.” Evangelicals used to view the social gospel as misguided, or worse.
We would like to think that Christians are not making that mistake any more. Now we are concerned with both truth and justice. Both with saving souls and with meeting physical needs. Rightly so. True religion is always expressed both in devoted worship and in loving actions. People should always be able to tell what we believe from the way that we live. People won’t care what Christians believe until they believe that we care! Otherwise it’s just empty religion.
And there is the challenge for us. Do we put into practice what we claim to believe? Pious words should be expressed in lives of holiness and obedience. Which leads us to the third characteristic of empty religion.

Deaf ears which ignore the voice of God
God sent his prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah to warn Israel to turn from their sins. But the kings and the people alike ignored the voice of God. Here was Jeremiah’s message.
28 Therefore say to them, ‘This is the nation that has not obeyed the LORD its God or responded to correction. Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips. 29 Cut off your hair and throw it away; take up a lament on the barren heights, for the LORD has rejected and abandoned this generation that is under his wrath.
What a tragic condemnation – deaf to the voice of God. His chosen people rejected and abandoned God. So God rejects and abandons his people.
22 For when I brought your forefathers out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, 23 but I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in all the ways I command you, that it may go well with you. 24 But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went backward and not forward. 25 From the time your forefathers left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again I sent you my servants the prophets. 26 But they did not listen to me or pay attention. They were stiff-necked and did more evil than their forefathers.’
27 “When you tell them all this, they will not listen to you; when you call to them, they will not answer.
So sad. Deaf to the voice of God. Ears closed to God’s guidance and rebuke.
13 While you were doing all these things, declares the LORD, I spoke to you again and again, but you did not listen; I called you, but you did not answer.
The same was true of the Jews in Jesus’s time. God sent his only Son to them and they refused to listen to Him. Jesus summed up the history of Israel and the rejection his own ministry provoked in the Parable of the Tenants in the Vineyard. 34 When the harvest time approached, the Vineyard owner sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
35 “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.
38 “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
God’s chosen people Israel rejected God’s prophets and in the end they rejected the Son of God Himself. So Jesus rebuked the nation in these sad words.
Matt 23 37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. 38 Look, your house is left to you desolate.
And there are lessons of the same refusal to hear the word of God from throughout church history. We could talk about the way the papacy and the established church in the 15th and 16th centuries failed to change so that the Reformers had no choice but to break away from Roman Catholicism and start new streams of church. But even our own Baptist forefathers are not blameless. Starting from the reformation, by the 18th century early Baptists had split into two strands, General Baptists and Particular Baptists. Many of the General Baptists ended up denying the deity of Christ and turning into Unitarians. On the other hand many of the Particular Baptists drifted into what was called hyper-Calvinism. They had such a strong belief in pre-destination that they thought is wasn’t just unnecessary to preach the gospel – they actually thought it was wrong to preach the gospel to unbelievers. They became the very closed “strict and particular” Baptists who scarcely survive today. Mercifully at the end of the 18th century a few groups of General Baptists and Particular Baptists did hear the voice of God, turned away from heresy and became the forefathers of Baptist churches today. But so many groups failed to hear the voice of God – and perished. Empty religion.
And there is the challenge through from Jeremiah right to us today. How good are we at hearing and obeying the voice of God? Do we make the time to listen to God through sermons and Home Groups and personal Bible Study? Are we open to hearing God speak into our own hearts in dreams and visions and prophecies? None of us have arrived yet. We have so much more to learn. We must listen and obey. Anything less warns us that our religion may be empty.
Trusting in outward ceremonies instead of in God
Pious words contradicted by sinful disobedient lives.
Deaf ears which ignore the voice of God
Three characteristics of empty religion which challenge God’s people in every age. How genuine is OUR faith?

Imagine living in a hot country like Uganda – or Israel! You’re bound to get very thirsty. We all need 6 pints a day just to stay healthy. If you need water you could dig a big hole in the ground to catch the rain, patch the sides up with mud to stop leaks and drink the rainwater that has collected and stood there over the months. The problem with that kind of water tank is that the water is always cloudy and tastes muddy. More than that, in dry weather they have a habit of springing leaks and letting you down when you need them most.
Or of course, where it is available, you could always take your water from the same fresh spring that your village has always drunk from, a cool refreshing, never-failing stream of life-giving water. You have your choice – build a water-tank, or drink from the spring? Only an idiot would refuse to drink from the spring if it was available. Only an idiot would reject a spring and build a water tank instead!!

Jer 2:11 Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.) But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols. 12 Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror,” declares the LORD. 13 “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Jeremiah chapter 2 is full of vivid pictures of the sins of Israel. The nation is under threat of attack by the Babylonians, because they have turned away from the one true God. God’s chosen people are worshipping idols and making alliances with their traditional enemies Assyria and Egypt. So Israel is pictured as a restless wife turning to prostitution, a choice vine running wild, a wild camel running loose, a thief caught red-handed. But perhaps the most memorable picture is here in Jeremiah 2:11-13. Israel is a nation obsessed with DIY, building water tanks instead of drinking from the springs of living waters.

They have forsaken me, the spring of living water,

The Bible often uses water as a picture of God’s blessing. God had always been the source of Israel’s life, right from the beginning from the wanderings in the wilderness when water sprung out of the living rock.
1 Corinthians 10:1 Our forefathers were all under the cloud and they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual
food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

Physically and also spiritually, Israel was always sustained by God the giver of life.

Psalm 36:5 Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. 6 Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD, you preserve both man and beast. 7 How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings. 8 They feast in the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. 9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

Psa 42:1 As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

God IS the spring of living water! And we know how this imagery is continued in our Christian lives.

John 4:14 Jesus said “whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Never, ever thirst again!!

John 7:37 Jesus said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.
38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.

GOD himself is the source of life for His people – for Israel – and for the church!

There was once a well known doctor called Howard Kelly who had a unique and effective way of “witnessing”. He was never seen in public without a beautiful pink rose in his lapel. He wore the rose to give him an opportunity to witness about his relationship with Christ. Someone meeting him on the street might remark, “That’s a lovely rose, Dr. Kelly.” “Yes, it is,” he would reply. “Actually, it’s a ‘Christian rose!'”
“Why do you call it that?” he would be asked. The doctor would then turn back his lapel and display a tiny water bottle which held the stem of the flower and kept it fresh and sweet.
“It’s a ‘Christian rose,'” he would explain, “because it has a hidden source of life and beauty. When our Savior pardons our sins, He also unites us with Himself and thereby nourishes and strengthens us. His Holy Spirit becomes the secret reservoir of our joy”

These springs of living water sustain us in this life, and will sustain us into eternity.

Rev 21:6 (The Risen Christ) said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.

Rev 22:1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of
the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Only an idiot would refuse to drink from these springs of living water – but that was what Israel was doing!!! And that is what so many people in the world have chosen to do! Our own nation, once so strongly influenced by the church and the gospel, has turned away from God. So many of our neighbours and friends think they don’t need God, they can get by on their own. When we offer them living waters they would rather have the latest brand of fizzy drink which rots your teeth and rots your guts but at least it comes in a nice pretty bottle!

Sometimes even Christians too can turn away from the springs of living waters. Perhaps the first water tanks the Israelites built were to collect and store up water from the spring, “just in case the spring ever runs dry.” So they began to live on yesterday’s water and last week’s water – instead of today’s fresh supply. And Christians can so easily do that – living on yesterday’s experience, last week’s blessing, last year’s encounter with God, instead of drinking fresh every day from the springs of living water. Personal prayer and Bible study and regular worship and fellowship aren’t optional extras for Christians – without FRESH water we become parched and sick and eventually die.

Equally, some Christians get lazy. Instead of going to the springs themselves, drinking straight from the life-giving streams, they are content to let somebody else go to the stream and draw the water and bottle it up for them and sell it to them. So some Christians rely on other people’s experiences of God instead of their own, kept barely alive by an occasional blessed thought from one of today’s celebrity preachers, but too lazy to open their Bibles or get face-to-face with God in prayer and drink for themselves.

This is not a new problem. In 17th Century, Sir Thomas Fuller wrote this:
“I discover an arrant laziness in my soul. For when I am to read a chapter in the Bible, before I begin I look where it ends. And if it ends not on the same side, I cannot keep my hands from turning over the leaf, to measure the length on the other side; if it swells to many verses, I begin to grudge. Surely my heart is not rightly affected. Were I truly hungry after heavenly food, I would not complain of meat. Scourge, Lord, this laziness of my soul; make the reading of your Word, not a penance, but a pleasure to me; so I may esteem that chapter in your Word the best which is the longest.”

They have forsaken me, the spring of living water. Living on old experiences. Too lazy to draw fresh water for themselves. That was Israel’s first sin – is it ever ours?

But then Israel’s second sin was just as fatal
They have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

The Israelites were trying to make their own sources of water, worshipping false Gods that will never satisfy.
18 Now why go to Egypt to drink water from the Shihor? And why go to Assyria to drink water from the River? 19 Your wickedness will punish you; your backsliding will rebuke you. Consider then and realise how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the LORD your God and have no awe of me,” declares the Lord, the LORD Almighty.

So many people today are building their own water tanks – satisfying themselves with polluted muddy stale water. All the false gods of the New Age movement, the age-old deceptions of the occult repackaged for today’s world. Then there are the false gods of Money and consumerism with their Temples at Lakeside and Blue Water (how curious that they should both incorporate the imagery of water in their names) and so many other Temples now open 24 hours a day to satisfy the desires of people who think they need to spend, spend, spend.
And there is the false god of Entertainment, with not only television but now the Internet to distract people for hours on end from the important things in life. And there are so many other false gods, fame, power, popularity, all things which people THINK they need, THINK will make them happier, – all designer drinks which leave people even thirstier than they were before, and distracting them from seeking out the LIVING waters!

And we Christians are not immune to these temptations. Do any of us spend as much time as we know we ought to in prayer and Bible study?? Are we really always thirsting after righteousness, or do we compromise when it comes to holiness because a part of us is also thirsty for popularity or success or wealth or entertainment. Do we throw away our time and money building water tanks to give us these other things, because we think we need them to make us happy? We should be entirely satisfied drinking from the spring of living waters – so satisfied that we don’t need ANYTHING else to quench our thirsts!

Jeremiah 2:13 “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Israel’s two sins – are these ever our sins too?

Psalm 36:8-9 They feast in the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. 9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

You remember that advert ? “It’s the real thing?” One of the top 3 best known brand names in the world!! Annual sales worth more than £50 BILLION. But Coca Cola ISNT the real thing. GOD is the real thing! The springs of living waters – that’s the real thing! Here is God’s invitation for you and for me.

John 7:37 Jesus said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”

Rev 22:17 The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!”
Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.

If the call of Moses and the Escape of the Slaves from Egypt into the Promised Land was the start of springtime for the nation of Israel, and the reigns of the great Kings David and Solomon were the height of the summer, then the Call of Jeremiah definitely came at the end of Israel’s autumn. The chosen nation had rebelled against their God, worshipped idols and fallen into immorality. Israel is about to face the terrible judgement of God, the fall of Jerusalem and exile into Babylon. And Jeremiah is the young man God chose to be his prophet to proclaim this judgement – the messenger of doom and gloom to Israel.

God’s Word to Jeremiah

2 The word of the LORD came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, 4. The word of the LORD came, saying,
7. `You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.

That’s the job of the man of God, the prophet – to deliver God’s messages, to pass on God’s Word. The starting point of course is HEARING God’s word, something that just wasnt happening in Jeremiah’s day!

AMOS 8:11 ¶ “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “when I will send a famine through the land- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. 12 Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.

This was fulfilled in Jeremiah’s day – God’s chosen people the nation of Israel had turned away from Almighty God – trusting in idols instead. They ignored and silenced the prophets.
Surely true today in Britain too! All the different religions with their contradictory messages. All the pop philosophies and their New Age gurus, A famine of hearing the Word of the Lord.

Maybe true even in the church today. No end of popular speakers, entertaining stories – but where are the John Stotts and Michael Greens and David Watsons and Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s expounding the Scriptures. Where are the Billy Graham’s bringing hundreds if not thousands to Christ every night? I have joined a Facebook Page for Christian authors and booksellers and the picture for Christian books is truly bleak. I was only commenting to somebody recently how few GOOD Christian books have been published in the last 20 years. Some Christian Classics were written in the 60s and 70s – but today’s popular writers are here today and forgotten tomorrow. Even the most serious sermons at Spring Harvest are lightweight compared to the kind of teaching everyone used to queue up to hear at the Keswick Convention. Premier Radio is great for the kind of teaching and discussion which is inspiring for new Christians and folk approaching Christianity from the unbelieving world. But you very rarely hear the kind of teaching and discussion that stretches and feeds Deacons and Home Group leaders. A famine of hearing the Word of God maybe?

But we DO have the Word of God in Scriptures / history of church / GOOD Christian books / teaching in church. We can hear God speaking to us through our friends and through our conscience. Increasingly Christians are rightly also expecting to hear God speaking in prophecy. But along with this hearing comes the requirement to OBEY what God tells us! God won’t speak directly to us in prophesy until we are properly obeying what he’s ALREADY said in His word the Bible.

Often God’s message comes to a prophet in the form of visions, or dreams or symbols. As we will see as well tonight and next week, this was particularly true of Jeremiah.

11. The word of the LORD came to me: “What do you see, Jeremiah?” “I see the branch of an almond tree,” I replied. 12 The LORD said to me, “You have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled.” Here is a play on Hebrew words “almond” sounds like “watching”

God has a message for Jeremiah to deliver to the nation. And it won’t be a popular message!

13 The word of the LORD came to me again: “What do you see?” “I see a boiling pot, tilting away from the north,” I answered. 14 The LORD said to me, “From the north disaster will be poured out on all who live in the land.
15 I am about to summon all the peoples of the northern kingdoms,” declares the LORD. “Their kings will come and set up their thrones in the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem; they will come against all her surrounding walls and against all the towns of Judah. 16 I will pronounce my judgments on my people because of their wickedness in forsaking me, in burning incense to other gods and in worshipping what their hands have made.

Here was a grim message of judgement – announcing God’s condemnation on all Israel’s idolatry and immorality.

God commanded Jeremiah – 7. The LORD said to me, `You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.

God says the same to US too!!! We also have been given a message to deliver to our generation. But unlike Jeremiah we don’t need a personal prophetic call to deliver this message – it’s been entrusted to the whole church by Christ Himself for 2000 years in the Bible. It’s not a popular message. It’s the solemn warning that the Holy God sends to a rebellious world. It’s the challenge to repentance and faith which came in the person and the good news of Jesus Christ.
But in many ways the whole Church seems to be deaf to the word of God – we have been commanded to proclaim the gospel. But so many Christians don’t seem to believe this command actually applies to them. They think it’s only for ministers or missionaries or evangelists or that Christian in the next pew!
So often when God commands his people to do something, they just come up with excuses.
Like Jeremiah!

Jeremiah’s excuses

6 “Ah, Sovereign LORD,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.”

`I do not know how to speak; – but that won’t do for ANY servant of God – God can equip us with all the gifts and skills we need to serve Him.

I am only a child. – I’m too young. Heard so often! Almost as often as “I’m too old!” I’ve done my share of witnessing and Christian service – it’s somebody else’s turn. OR “I’m too busy” – I’m at a crucial point in my career, with young children my family must take priority, 101 ways to avoid obeying God! So like the call of Moses – one excuse after another. Our excuses are as feeble as those used by Jeremiah or Moses. But the one consolation I suppose is to recognise how mightily both Jeremiah AND Moses were used by God once they stopped pussyfooting around and finally did obey God! How encouraging it is to think of what God could do through YOU, or ME, or his church right here, if only we stopped making excuses and DID throw our whole weight into passing on the vital message God has entrusted to us.

Did you notice the contradiction there in Jeremiah’s response to God’s call?? In one breath Jeremiah calls God “Sovereign Lord” and in the next breath he is arguing and worming his way out of obeying God with feeble excuses. Just like Peter when God called HIM to do something out of the ordinary, eating so called “unclean” foods – Peter said “Surely not, Lord! No way Lord!” Here’s Jeremiah – “Sovereign Lord – NO!”

But we can’t call God LORD, Sovereign, Master, and at the same time disobey Him! Either Jesus is Lord of all or he isn’t really LORD at all!!!
God has commissioned US to proclaim the gospel to all creation – starting with our neighbours and friends and even our family! We can’t honestly call God LORD, pray to Him as Lord, sing songs to Jesus as Lord, if we arent going to take that responsibility of evangelism and mission seriously!

But be encouraged! See how patient God is with Jeremiah – despite the excuses God doesnt cast Jeremiah aside and use a different prophet – and God won’t do that with us either.
Instead he brings Jeremiah encouragement and assurance!

God’s assurance

4. The word of the LORD came to me, saying, 5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

God knew Jeremiah from the beginning
God knows US from our very beginnings!

Psalm 139:1 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

God set Jeremiah apart and God appointed Jeremiah
God has set us apart and God has appointed US! NOT necessarily to be prophets. Not necessarily to be ministers or missionaries or evangelists. but certainly to be witnesses for Him.
1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

And God will protect Jeremiah

8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the LORD.

So many times this is God’s message to his timid servants. Do not be afraid! I am with you! With God on our side one is a majority! If God is for us who can be against us!!!! Jeremiah had nothing to fear! And neither have we!

9 Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “Now, I have put my words in your mouth. 10 See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”

God gave Jeremiah the message and God gave Jeremiah the authority to speak.
God has given US the message to proclaim – and God has given US authority as well!

Matt 28:18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

So here was God’s command to Jeremiah his prophet, his chosen messenger.
17 “Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them. 18 Today I have made you a fortified city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall to stand against the whole land- against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests and the people of the land. 19 They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the LORD.

God promised Jeremiah all the support and protection he could possibly want – “I am with you to rescue you” declares the Lord. And that promise is for US as well, as long as we are living in obedience to God’s commands, trusting in Him, and faithfully delivering the message He has entrusted to us. God will be with us whenever we proclaim the gospel which brings the only hope of life to a dead world, whenever we pass on his warning of the judgement that is coming and the Good News of the crucified risen Saviour!

God knew Jeremiah from the beginning: God knows US from our very beginnings!
God set Jeremiah apart: God has set US apart. God appointed Jeremiah. God has appointed US!
God will protect Jeremiah – and God will protect us.
God gave Jeremiah his message and the authority to speak – and God has given US his message and his authority as well!

We will see next week how Jeremiah obeyed His God and delivered the messages God spoke to Him. And we’ll wait to see in weeks to come whether you and I will follow that example of obedience – and throw ourselves as wholeheartedly as Jeremiah into the task of proclaiming the gospel. Or whether we’ll just go on making excuses!

“Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day.”

I thought I would begin by giving you a Quick burst of the official song of the American state of Kansas just to introduce the theme of Home.

“There’s No place like HOME” “Home is where the heart Is”

Home – “a place where a family lives” – place of safety and Security and COMFORT.

In the sixth Century BC two generations of the people of Israel found themselves a long long way from home! We saw last week how the Babylonians overran and completely destroyed the Holy City of Jerusalem. We saw how the vast majority of God’s chosen people were wiped out and just a few thousand remained to be taken away into captivity in Babylon. And we saw that this was God’s hand of judgment on Israel for their complacency, for taking their salvation for granted, for worshipping idols, for neglecting the Law and for neglecting the poor and needy.

But God’s judgment on Israel had a purpose. God’s intention was never to abandon his chosen people, but rather to refine and purify Israel. He never destroyed them completely – he kept a faithful remnant alive. In the middle of their exile, God gave his chosen people hope – the hope that one day they would return and reclaim the promised land – the hope that they would go home. And the story of Israel in captivity has given hope to God’s people throughout the ages strength and hope. When Life seems tough. When the whole world seems against us. When we feel like WE are exiles in captivity in a foreign land the hope is always there – one day we will be home!

So the hope which that remnant clung on to in exile has been an inspiration to believers through the ages. It is a picture for us of our salvation as we experience it now as aliens and strangers in a world which has rejected God. And it is a picture too of the home which awaits us in glory forever.

It was the so-called Major Prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel who encouraged God’s people in Exile and they have so much to say to us as well. So let’s hear how they hold out the promise of hope to the captives. Let me read the Scriptures which encouraged those exiles so much and let those promises encourage our hearts tonight.
The promise of going home

Jeremiah 31:1-8, 17
JEREMIAH 23:7-8
Isaiah 43:3-7

Isaiah 49:8-9, 13

Isaiah 52:7-10

A FEW MOMENTS FOR MEDITATION

Where is Home for you? What will it mean for you to return home to God?

Joy

Isaiah 52:12-14

Isaiah 35:10

Isaiah 55:12-13

Isaiah 61:7, 10

A FEW MOMENTS FOR MEDITATION

Where does your joy come from? Consider the joy which comes from being at home in God’s presence.

Peace

Isaiah 40:28-31

Isaiah 11:6-9

A FEW MOMENTS FOR MEDITATION: In what areas of your life do you need peace?
Light into darkness

Isaiah 60:1-3, 18-20

A FEW MOMENTS FOR MEDITATION: Invite the light of God to shine into your life and drive out all darkness

Water in a thirsty land

Isaiah 35:3-7

Isaiah 43:18-21

A FEW MOMENTS FOR MEDITATION

Are you thirsty? Let the Holy Spirit of God satisfy your thirst

We may not experience all these blessings of joy and peace and cleansing and new life fully yet. We aren’t home yet!
So how can we experience more of these blessings???

Jeremiah 29:10-13

The Exile of Israel into Babylon has always been a wonderful and inspiring picture of encouragement and hope for Christians. Until Christ returns and we are promoted to glory, Christians will always be God’s chosen people in a time of exile in a foreign land.

BUT this is a tricky subject because most preachers duck the reasons why Israel was in exile in the first place. Most preachers dodge the historical fact that God purposed that the Holy City of Jerusalem should be destroyed and that his chosen people should be taken into exile as a punishment for their sins.

Next week we will pick up on the glorious hope of the remnant – but for this week, what do we have to learn from the fact of the exile?

LAST WEEK we asked, “does God still send judgment on sin?”
The events of the exile were indeed terrible. But time and again the Old Testament speaks of a God who acts in judgment punishing sin and sinners. The flood was God’s act of judgment on the corruption and wickedness and pollution and violence of mankind at that time. God sent punishment on Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins. The Ten Plagues on Egypt were acts of judgment on the sins and the false gods of the Egyptians. The victories God gave to the Israelites wiping out the original inhabitants of Canaan were God’s acts of judgment on the evil practices of the Canaanites – including child sacrifices. And long before the Exile, even as they wandered in the wilderness, God brought punishment on his own chosen people Israel for their complaining and rebellion and lack of faith and worshipping false gods.

We also said very strongly last week that by no means all suffering is an expression of God’s judgment or a punishment for specific sin. Most suffering is not punishment. People do get sick. Traffic accidents happen. None of us has divine protection for the evil actions of others. Most suffering is just a consequence of living in a fallen world where bad things happen even to good people.

But we must also say that God made very clear that certain events in history, of which the Exile is a very clear example, were indeed his acts of judgment on specific sins. Time and again God had warned his people to turn away from sin and turn back to the Living God. But they refused to hear the warnings. So God sent judgment then. And the God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testament are one and the same God, the God of Israel whose name is Yahweh, So we have no grounds for thinking that God might not still bring his judgment on individuals and nations.

The Fall of Jerusalem and the events of the Exile were physically devastating for the nation of Israel. But they were also spiritually devastating for one obvious reason. This was not God’s wrath falling on foreign pagan nations. This was the Holy God of Israel punishing his own chosen people. The record shows that there were very many in the nation of Israel who thought that because they were God’s chosen people they could get away with anything. They were the people of God, and too often ordinary people as well as Kings and even priests, took their special status for granted.

God had warned the Israelites about such complacency and arrogance in His Word –
Deuteronomy 29
19 When such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself and therefore thinks, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way.” This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry. 20 The LORD will never be willing to forgive him; his wrath and zeal will burn against that man. All the curses written in this book will fall upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven. 21 The LORD will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law.

Time and again God also warned his chosen people through his prophets
Jeremiah 7
2“ ‘Hear the word of the LORD, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the LORD. 3 This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. 4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!” … 8 But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.

The Israelites trusted in the fact that they were God’s chosen people. But God still punished them! And this is why the story of the exile should be so disturbing to Christians as well – because it reminds us that God might yet punish us for lack of faith and lack of obedience.

Last week we mentioned God’s judgment on Ananias and Sapphira for lying to the Holy Spirit. We talked about the Christians in Corinth who were falling sick and even dying because when they celebrated Communion they were “eating the bread or drinking the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner,” (1 Corinthians 11:27) and failing to discern the body of Christ. We saw that there are many places where the new testament speaks about God’s discipline on his chosen people, the church.

In Hebrews 12 we read:
5 “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, 6 because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 10 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

The Fall of Jerusalem and the Exile were God’s punishment on his firstborn son the nation of Israel. And just as God disciplined his chosen people Israel, so God may also take Christians and churches into times of hardship so they can grow in their faith and obedience

1 Corinthians101 For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. 6 Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.

Paul goes on to list the sins which the Israelites in the wilderness fell into. Idolatry, immorality, putting the Lord to the test, grumbling and complaining. Then he warns Christians, not unbelievers, but Christians:
11 These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfilment of the ages has come. 12 So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!

Time and again Scripture warns us that we dare not presume to think that just because we are God’s chosen people, just because we are saved, that we can live however we like and it won’t make any difference. There will always be “Consequences!” I have called this evening’s message “consequences” because I didn’t like to call it “God’s judgment on the church.” But I want us to bear in mind that our actions as individual Christians and as a church have consequences. We can choose to obey God and he promises to bless us. But if we choose not to obey God, if we neglect Him, then there may well be consequences.

What were the sins Israelites were punished for – might we fall into those sins?

In the years leading up to the Exile, Israel fell into idolatry

Deut 29: 16 You yourselves know how we lived in Egypt and how we passed through the countries on the way here. 17 You saw among them their detestable images and idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold. 18 Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.

Worshipping false gods will bring judgment. Moses warned the Israelites, “The nations around will ask why is God punishing his chosen people Israel with fierce, burning anger?”

25 And the answer will be: “It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt. 26 They went off and worshipped other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them. 27 Therefore the LORD’s anger burned against this land, so that he brought on it all the curses written in this book. 28 In furious anger and in great wrath the LORD uprooted them from their land and thrust them into another land, as it is now.”

The people of the world around us have plenty of false gods they bow down to. Money. Success. Popularity. Celebrity. Political correctness. We must make sure that we as Christians never ever bow down to those false gods?

The second sin Israel had fallen into was Neglecting the Word of God
Deuteronomy 28 is a very depressing and gloomy chapter! Before they entered the promised land, Moses gave the Israelites this solemn warning.

Deut 2815 However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. … 20 The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. 21 The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess.
25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth.
36 The LORD will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your fathers. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. 37 You will become a thing of horror and an object of scorn and ridicule to all the nations where the LORD will drive you.
45 All these curses will come upon you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the LORD your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. … 47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, 48 therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the LORD sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.

62 You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the LORD your God. … You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess. 64 Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other.

All this judgment – for neglecting the word of God. It is sad but true that the Bible does not have the central place in the lives of Christians and churches which it should. I am saddened by the closure of so many Christian Book Shops because so few Christians are reading any more! The popularity of celebrity authors who write entertainingly but without any depth only compounds the drop in of sales of Bible study notes and commentaries and books on doctrine. Neglect of the Word of God.

Then thirdly the prophets warned Israel time and again that the nation were neglecting truth and justice

Jeremiah 7:4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!” 5 If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, 6 if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave to your forefathers for ever and ever. …
9 “ ‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? 11 Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the LORD.

At one time the churches were at the cutting edge of social action and the battles for truth and justice. With welfare state and rise of “secular” charities, are Christians too comfortable nowadays?

The holy city of Jerusalem and the Temple of the Living God was overthrown and knocked to the ground. God’s chosen people were taken captive and transported to a foreign land and lived there for 70 years because of their sins. Because Israel worshipped false gods. Because Israel neglected God’s Word the Bible. Because Israel neglected truth and justice. And because in their arrogance and complacency they thought they could do whatever they chose and they would still be safe because they were God’s chosen people.

In many ways the church in Britain today feels like a remnant, in exile in a foreign land. But we can’t dodge the question of how we got into the state we are in.

On a television program a small boy was asked if he had any pets. “Well,” he replied, “I did have some goldfish but some water softener got into the aquarium and they softened to death.” There is a real risk that Christian in this country are getting softened to death!

Is the present low state of the church in Britain in any respects a consequence of a lack of faith, a lack of prayer, a lack of holiness, a neglect of the Scriptures and a lack of concern for the poor and needy? And in our own lives and our life together as a church as we look to the future, are we seeking God’s blessing with all our hearts and seeking to serve God with all our might? Or is there a risk that we too might face the consequences?