The Day of Sorrows
Notes
Transcript
Jeremiah 6:9-15 ESV
9 Thus says the Lord of hosts: “They shall glean thoroughly as a vine the remnant of Israel; like a grape gatherer pass your hand again over its branches.” 10 To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen; behold, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn; they take no pleasure in it. 11 Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of holding it in. “Pour it out upon the children in the street, and upon the gatherings of young men, also; both husband and wife shall be taken, the elderly and the very aged. 12 Their houses shall be turned over to others, their fields and wives together, for I will stretch out my hand against the inhabitants of the land,” declares the Lord. 13 “For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. 14 They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace. 15 Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,” says the Lord.
When God first led me to write this series of sermons from Jeremiah, chapter 6, I was kind of scared to be honest. You all know that I am not a fluff preacher that will tell you whatever you want to hear, I always strive to stick with what God says alone.
But this chapter… wow! If you had any pride when you came into it, if you had any pride when we started this series, I’m pretty sure that God has taken it from you and humbled you by now. And that is what I hope has been accomplished thus far.
What God had been saying through His prophet Jeremiah to the people in Jerusalem and what he says to us today here in America is that there is no civilization, no people so great, so unique that it will not experience God’s judgment if it persists in sin and does not genuinely repent.
I think that sometimes, some of us feel that because we live here in America, we will never ever suffer true hardship and that our nation as a whole most certainly will never suffer God’s judgment.
That’s what those who lived in Jerusalem believed, and if there is anybody who might possibly believe that, it would be those who lived in Jerusalem. After all, over in Isaiah, God calls Jerusalem “My city” and “the city of righteousness” and in the psalms, Jerusalem is called “the city of God”.
This most certainly put the people at ease in Zion, thinking that they could live as a wickedly as they desired, because according to them, God would never destroy His city!... How wrong they were!
Last week, as we finished our message, we spoke about how God had told the people of Jerusalem that He would judge their city, therefore, he told them to turn to Him and repent of their evil before it was too late.
Now, in the first verse of our reading, Jeremiah chapter 6, verse 9, we read more concerning the nature of the judgment that God will bring upon Jerusalem where it says:
Jeremiah 6:9 ESV
9 Thus says the Lord of hosts: “They shall glean thoroughly as a vine the remnant of Israel; like a grape gatherer pass your hand again over its branches.”
So, first of all, we see Who speaks these words. These are not the words of Jeremiah or some priest in Israel, rather, they are the words of God. “Thus says the Lord of hosts” is what our reading says. This is the Word of God.
Now, that title “Lord of hosts” what that signifies is that God is the Sovereign, that He reigns over all heavenly armies and over all earthly armies. In other words, He is the One Who has the final say in military affairs.
And this fits perfectly with the context of our reading, especially when God speaks in this verse of “they”. This verse says, “They shall thoroughly as a vine…” The “they” in this verse is in reference to the foreign army, the Babylonian army who God will send against Jerusalem.
And once again, our reading says that “they” the Babylonian army “shall glean thoroughly as a vine.”
Now, gleaning is in reference to one who gathers the crops from their field that they missed when they initially harvested. In fact, in ancient Israel, God commanded farmers to not glean their fields so that the poor and needy could come and collect what the farmer didn’t initially collect.
And once again, our reading says that Babylon shall glean thoroughly as a vine, like a grape gatherer pass your hand again over the branches. Thus, this would refer to one who owned a vineyard going back and collecting the grapes that he missed when he initially gathered them.
And what God tells the Babylonians to glean is the remnant of Israel. Now, several years before this, the ten northern tribes of the Kingdom of Israel had already been captured and carried away captive, those who are left are of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, comprising the Kingdom of Judah.
God compares Benjamin and Judah to grapes that were missed when the vinedresser initially gathered his grapes. He says that Assyria came and we might say “harvested” the Kingdom of Israel, but now Babylon is going to come and “glean” what is left; the Kingdom of Judah.
This is serious stuff! This is not good news at all! And it is news that God commands Jeremiah to pass along to those dwelling in Jerusalem. But knowing the kind of people who Jeremiah is supposed to pass this news along to makes him pretty apprehensive, we see this in verse 10 of our reading, where Jeremiah says:
Jeremiah 6:10 ESV
10 To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen; behold, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn; they take no pleasure in it.
Jeremiah recognizes and understands what God tells him to pass along to the people in Jerusalem, and he knows that God commands this of him, but Jeremiah also knows what the people are like.
They are godless people, people who have become so hardened to their sin that they don’t even recognize it as sin anymore. And while the Word of God is of course, most serious, these people are so hardened to their sin and have indulged in their fleshly desires to such an extent to where when they hear the Word of God, they ridicule it, they doubt it, they absolutely hate it!
Therefore, Jeremiah says, “Who shall I speak and give warning to who will actually listen?!” he balks at the command of God, he says, “What good will it do?!”
But in the first part of verse 11 of our reading, we see that Jeremiah finally relents to what God has commanded him to say where we read Jeremiah saying:
Jeremiah 6:11a ESV
11a Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of holding it in.
Jeremiah says, “therefore; because I know that none will heed the warning of the Lord, I have kept it to myself, but alas! I have grown weary of holding in the Word of God! I must declare it as He has commanded!”
And then we see in the last part of verse 11 and in all of verse 12, God returning to speak His word of judgment, when He says:
Jeremiah 6:11b-12 ESV
11b “Pour it out upon the children in the street, and upon the gatherings of young men, also; both husband and wife shall be taken, the elderly and the very aged. 12 Their houses shall be turned over to others, their fields and wives together, for I will stretch out my hand against the inhabitants of the land,”
declares the Lord.
God says, “Pour it out! I pour My wrath upon children, young men, upon husband and wife, upon the elderly, upon the very aged! They all shall be affected! People of all ages and classes shall suffer My wrath! I will stretch My hand out on all of them!”
This is one of those parts of the Bible that tends to make us a little uncomfortable. Children? Old people? How could God ever pour out His wrath on them? We ask. But that is because we don’t understand the holiness of God and the depths of our sin nature, a sin nature that everyone inherits, a sin nature that sets everyone at odds with God, no matter what our age may be.
This is made plain in verse 13, which reads:
Jeremiah 6:13 ESV
13 “For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.
God says that He pours His wrath out on all classes of people, from the least class to the greatest class. He says that all of them are inherently evil, all of them are inherently selfish and wicked, and He says that while He called all people from all classes to repent, people from all classes refused to do so.
But while all classes of people had sinned against Him, there was one particular class of people that were especially guilty, and that class, God describes here as “from prophet to priest”.
Now, we know that God had prophets and priests who had been called and commissioned by Him. But there were also prophets and priests that were false prophets and priests, those who had not been called and commissioned by God. And these false prophets and priests were prone to do what the very end of this verse says, they were prone to deal falsely.
Now here in verse 14 of our reading, we see how these false prophets and priests dealt falsely, where it says:
Jeremiah 6:14 ESV
14 They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.
God says “they” that is, the false prophets and priests “have healed the wound of my people lightly”. Now, the “wound” that is being spoken of here is in reference to God being at odds with them due to their sin nature and their persistence to remain at odds with God. And God says that these false prophets and priests have healed that wound lightly. In other words, the counsel that they give to the people does not help them in any way.
While the people are at odds with God, God is at odds with them, yet the false prophets and priests cry out, “Peace! Peace!” They say, “God is absolutely fine with the way that you have been living. He is in no way angry with you! There is nothing but peace when it comes to God.”
And thus, they led countless people to believe that they were at peace with God when that was the farthest thing from the truth.
Thus, concerning these false prophets and priests, God says in the first part of verse 15:
Jeremiah 6:15a ESV
15a Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush.
God says, “You false prophets, you false priests, you have led My people into heresy! Now are you ashamed of that? Do you repent of the fact that you have led countless people into damnation?” God answers the question for them, “No! You are not ashamed. You don’t even know how to blush!”
They could care less that they have offended God, they could care less that they have led so many people to their damnation, and the reason why is because these false prophets and priests don’t know how to blush. And what that means is that their hearts have been so hardened to their own sin, that it doesn’t even affect them anymore. Profound is their hatred of God!
Because of this, God utters the rest of the words in our reading, when He says:
Jeremiah 6:15b ESV
15b Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,” says the Lord.
God says that they too, the false prophets and priests, they must also taste His wrath, experience His judgment, and they will be overthrown when the temple of the Lord is destroyed.
Beloved, I am here to tell you that in the nation, the society in which we live today, there is no peace. Sure, the world may offer phony, fickle peace, but there is no true peace, there is no peace with God!
I believe that judgment is nigh for our nation, behold! it waits at the door! May we today know that we as individuals are at peace with God, may we be assured of this. But may our hearts desire stretch out from ourselves and pray that others in this society, in this nation may repent of their sins and be at peace with our God!
As Habakkuk confidently declares, may we as the people of God look at the grim state of our society and say:
Habakkuk 3:17-18 ESV
17 Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
Amen?