I invite you to open up your Bibles to Jeremiah, chapter 34, and today we're going to be looking at verses one through seven. Now, unfortunately, or sadly, the section that's called the Book of Promise, or the Book of Comfort, rather, within Jeremiah is at an end, that section of Jeremiah that detailed all those wonderful promises of the Restoration and the Revival of Judah along with the coming of the Messiah. But as we'll see, God had other promises to give to His people, and we will be hearing about one of them this evening. But before we go to the Word of the Lord, let's go to Him and let's ask that He would bless it. Please, John. Heavenly Father, Lord, we do thank You so much for Your Word, and we ask now, Lord, that You would open it up to us, that You would illuminate us inwardly so that we might understand it better. Be the light of our minds, Lord. Fill our hearts with the desire to hear Your Word and to contemplate these things. And I pray, Lord, that You would help me to open them up and apply them. And I pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen. Jeremiah, chapter 34, and verses one through seven. The Word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, when Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, and all his army, all the kingdoms of the earth under His dominion, and all the people thought against Jerusalem, and all its cities saying, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, go and speak to Zedekiah, King of Judah, and tell him, thus says the Lord, behold, I will give this city into the hand of the King of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire, and you shall not escape from his hand, but shall surely be taken and delivered into his hand. Your eyes shall see the eyes of the King of Babylon. He shall speak with you face to face, and you shall go to Babylon. Yet hear the Word of the Lord, O Zedekiah, King of Judah, thus says the Lord concerning you, you shall not die by the sword, you shall die in peace as in the ceremonies of your fathers, the former kings who were before you, so they shall burn incense for you, and lament for you, saying, alas, Lord, for I have pronounced the Word, says the Lord. Then Jeremiah, the Prophet, spoke all these words to Zedekiah, the King of Judah, in Jerusalem, when the King of Babylon's army fought against Jerusalem, and all the cities of Judah that were left against Lachish and Ezeka, for only these fortified cities remained of the cities of Judah, the grass withers, and the flowerfades, but the Word of our God will stand forever. Now, as in many books of prophecy in the Bible, including Revelation, the progression of events in Jeremiah is not strictly chronological. In other words, we don't go from one year to the next as we're going through the text. Sometimes the focus shift backwards and forwards in time in order to highlight different events or prophecies as God wants us to think about them. And the setting in this case is slightly earlier than the events of the previous chapters, as we were going through that book of comfort. Jeremiah was already in jail, and the siege of Jerusalem was in its final stages, but what we just read about was actually occurring before that time. In this chapter, Jeremiah has not yet been thrown in jail. This is therefore probably in about mid-588, or about a year after the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar's assault on the Kingdom of Judah, and a year before the fall of the city. But even at this time, there are only three cities remaining. Lechich, Ezeka, and Jerusalem, interestingly enough, the fortified city of Lechich was actually the largest city in Judah. It was about 18 square acres of fortified city, but while it was the largest in Judah, it was not the most important. The most important certainly was Jerusalem, the city of peace, the city of the Lord, and the place where Judah's worship was centered. But as we have moved away from that earlier series of promises that we read about, or rather the promises that weren't made chronologically earlier, but we read about them earlier, the series of promises about coming in the Messiah. As I said, the promises of God are not finished with. We're going to see many more in this book. In fact, here we have just read a promise of God made to Zedekiah that all the cities of Judah, including Jerusalem, would fall to Babylon, that Jerusalem and the temple would be burned, and that Zedekiah would be taken with his sons to Babylon, where he would see Nebuchadnezzar face to face. He would see the king whom he had rebelled against, and he would stand before him. Now this was not the first time that God had made this promise to Zedekiah. He had said essentially the same thing to Zedekiah in chapter 21. So God was reminding Zedekiah of what he said. I'm reminding you of this earlier promise I made. And at this position in terms of warfare, Zedekiah's position is hopeless. And if Zedekiah had simply heated this warning, he could have saved Jerusalem and his people, and perhaps even himself, terrible, terrible woes, but he didn't. And therefore the city was going to continue to go through terrible agony for another year. Why? Because he didn't believe the promises of God. Why was that? Why didn't Zedekiah believe the promises of God? It's possible that he was still treating these promises that Jeremiah was bringing to him as though they were simply the words of Jeremiah, as though they were the words of a man. And it's been my experience, probably your experience as well, that men often make that mistake. They assume that because God's promises and God's threatening come to them through the instrumentality of men, that is that they come through ministers and they come through apostles and they come through prophets, that because of that, they should be treated merely as the promises of men. And if we do that, then three things immediately occur to us. If we treat the promises and the threatening of God as they come to us through men as the words of men, then three things may occur to us. First, we know that men bluff. In fact, in games like poker or war or diplomacy, bluffing is, of course, part and parcel of what regularly happens. And perhaps Zedekiah thought that God was bluffing. I mean, he might have thought that God really going to destroy his own temple is God going to destroy the city of David, especially when so many other prophets have said that that was never going to happen. You remember that the city had its own kind of watchword, its own slogan, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these. We live in Jerusalem, like he's in Ezeka, might fall certainly, but Jerusalem, the place where the temple is, the place that God is appointed for his worship, God's not going to destroy his own house, is he? Now, that'll never happen. Maybe this is just a bluff designed to move me to repentance. Maybe God's just trying to, you know, shake me up a little, wake me up a little. Maybe it's just Jeremiah trying to get me to do what he wants. Maybe it's just a bluff. Or maybe he thought that it was a lie. We all know that men lie, and perhaps he thought Jeremiah was making all of this up and that God had never said it. Maybe all the prophets who were in the city who were still conveying good news and peddling stories of miraculous victories over Babylon. Maybe they were the ones who were telling the truth. Now, that would have been really silly because, of course, the evidence that Jeremiah was telling the truth was literally all around him at that time. All he had to do was peer over the walls of Jerusalem to see the manifest evidence that what Jeremiah had said before and was saying now is true. Jeremiah had said that the army is going to come out of the north. They're going to be like locusts. They're going to devour your land. They're going to surround the city and there they were. And now he's telling him what his own eyes should have told him, you're going to follow King. This city will fall. The evidence was right there, but it is amazing what men can believe if they want to. And so perhaps Zedekiah thought, no, simply this is all a lie. Men lie, this is a lie. Or perhaps he thought that God might have been physically incapable of doing this because I mean, men are sometimes physically incapable of keeping the promises they make. They say that they're going to do something then they find out later. I can't do it. I don't have the wherewithal. I never had the wherewithal to bring it about. Might be as simple as promising to take your children somewhere and then finding that work intervenes or the weather suddenly opens up on you. Or it might be you promise to pay somebody and then you find you don't have the money later on. Maybe God would be physically incapable of keeping this promise. Perhaps the Egyptians would return to prominence and they would come and they would drive off the Babylonians and God wouldn't be able to keep that promise to destroy Jerusalem and haul them away. I think that was probably Zedekiah's strongest hope at this point. But Zedekiah was probably encouraged to think that way, one of those ways because men are inclined to think that God is just like them, that he likes the things they like and that he acts the way they act. That's the way the natural man thinks about God. God is essentially just him on a much larger scale, so God has the same standards I have. God likes the things I like. God doesn't like the things I don't like. Perhaps that's the way Zedekiah thought about God and Zedekiah we know was a liar. He was a man who constantly broke his promises and his covenants. In fact, he was in this awful mess in the first place because he had broken his promises and his covenants to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, the very man who had installed him in the place of his brother on the throne. In fact, if you want to take a look at Ezekiel 17, I would encourage you to turn in your Bible to Ezekiel. You just have to turn forward little past lamentations to find Ezekiel. Now, you remember Ezekiel was the prophet to Babylon. His Jeremiah was opening up God's word and what was going to happen to the people who were left behind in Jerusalem. Ezekiel was preaching to the exiles who were already there about what would happen. So we read in Ezekiel 17 and then starting in verse 11. Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me saying, say now to the rebellious house, do you not know what these things mean? Tell them, indeed, the king of Babylon went to Jerusalem and took its king in princes and led them with him to Babylon, and he took the king's offspring, made a covenant with him, and put him under oath. That's at a chi, of course. He also took away the mighty of the land that the kingdom might be brought low and not lift itself up, but that by keeping his covenant, it might stand. But he rebelled against him by sending his ambassadors to Egypt that they might give him horses and many people. Will he prosper? Will he who does such things escape? Can he break a covenant and still be delivered? As I live, says the Lord God, surely in the place where the king dwells, who made him king, whose oath he despised and whose covenant he broke with him in the midst of Babylon, he shall die. Nor will Pharaoh with his mighty army and great company do anything in the war when they heap up a siege mound and build a wall to cut off many persons since he despised the oath by breaking the covenant and in fact gave his hand and still did not did all these things. He shall not escape. Therefore, says the Lord God, as I live, surely my oath which he despised and my covenant which he broke, I will recompense on his own head. I will spread my net over him and he shall be taken in my snare. I will bring him to Babylon and try him there for the treason which he committed against me. So Ezekiel has told the people as well. Why is this great evil going to fall upon Judah and upon Zedekiah? Well, because of their rebellion against the covenant they made with Nebuchadnezzar, he broke his promise and then he trusted in Egypt to deliver him in his time of difficulty and the Lord promises that it will not go well for him. He promises again and again. But Zedekiah at this point could be thinking, regardless of how many prophets said that the Lord would destroy Jerusalem, perhaps he's still thinking, maybe God will break his promises as easily as I break mine. But the fact is that God is not like the idols of Zedekiah, the idols of the Canaanites, the idols of the Greeks. Their false gods, as you read through all of the Greek mythologies and so on, you realize that all the Greeks did was they took men with all of their failings and all of their foibles. They simply amplified them. They made larger versions of themselves as I said before. Men writ large in the skies. That was their version of God. But the God who rules the heavens and the earth, Jehovah, he is holy, holy, holy and he is not like fallen men. He makes that point again and again in his word. For instance, in Psalm 50, 21, these things you have done and I kept silent, you thought I was altogether like you, but I will rebuke you and set them in order before your eyes. You thought when you sinned that I was okay with it because you thought I was okay. I am not like you. Says the Lord. Isaiah 55, 8 and 9 spelled that out in even clearer words. For my thoughts are not your thoughts nor am I, your ways, my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Perhaps Zedekiah either had never read or had simply forgotten what God said in Numbers 23, 19. God is not a man that he should lie nor a son of man that he should repent. Has he said and he will not do or has he spoken and will he not make it good? God never bluffs. God never lies and God is always capable of keeping his promises. If he says it will happen, it will happen. But men, the natural man in his heart is always thinking, no, no, no, there has to be some other way. A friend once walked in on W.C. Fields reading a Bible, the comedian from the 1920s and 30s from movies and he was well known as a womanizer and as a drunkard and his friend was shocked to see him reading a Bible. And he said, what are you reading that for? The fields looked up and he said, I'm looking for loopholes, looking for some way of escape from what seemed to be plotted out for him. And to that, to the end, Zedekiah still had that kind of W.C. Fields believe that there must be some other way. There had to be something that he could do. Something other than submitting, something other than surrendering to the will of the Lord and that I will not surrender desire would not die in him. So like Hitler in the bunker in Berlin, he was hopelessly surrounded by these huge Soviet armies. He's still dreaming of phantom armies that will come to save him. Egypt will show up and will lift the siege. For Zedekiah, his hope was still in the power of men or just that something would happen so that he would not have to submit to God. But it wasn't going to happen that way. The Lord had promised it and as we know what God promises comes about. It always does. So in due time, Nebuchadnezzar, the monarch who he had once made this league of mutual assistance with, he had made this covenant with him. He had sworn in the name of God that he would serve this monarch. Nebuchadnezzar came as a conqueror and he has come to hold Zedekiah accountable for breaking this treaty, breaking his vow, a vow that he swore before God. Josephus recorded the account of Josephus was a great historian of the Jews of the first century. He wrote this. When he was come, Nebuchadnezzar began to call him a wicked wretch and a covenant breaker and one that had forgotten his former words when he promised to keep the country for him. He also reproached him for his ungratitude. God is great," said Nebuchadnezzar, who hated that conduct of thine and hath brought thee under us. John guessed remarks of these words of Nebuchadnezzar. Even the pagan monarch could see the hand of God working against Zedekiah's broken promises. And that is one of the particularly awful things in all of this. Nebuchadnezzar could see the hand of God, but Zedekiah, who was supposed to be his monarch, who was supposed to be the leader of his people, couldn't see the hand of God or at least did not want to acknowledge it. There are none so blind as those who will not see. But in due time that encounter took place. He saw Nebuchadnezzar. You remember, he was promised, you shall see the eyes of the king of Babylon. But that would be the next to last thing that Zedekiah would see, because he was after that force to watch the slaughter of his sons and his friends. And then Nebuchadnezzar put his eyes out. And so Zedekiah was destined to stand in darkness, the last images that he had ever seen being the slaughter of his own songs. And all for what? Why? Because he would not believe the promises of God. That's what it all came down to. He would not believe God. And this leads me to my only application in this sermon because it is so critically important. Believing God has always been the dividing line between the line of Seth and the line of came. Believing God has always been the dividing line between the godly and the ungodly. It has always been the dividing line between the man whose heart is for God and the man whose heart is caught up in the world. The godly man, the Christian, is godly because he believes God's promises, even when it seems difficult or impossible. We see examples of that throughout the Bible. Perhaps one of the best examples to go to is the example of Noah. I mean, think about Noah's situation. God comes to Noah and he tells him he's going to destroy the world by a flood. But it's not going to happen immediately. First, Noah is going to have to spend decades building this giant boat on dry land to save the animals. Now, the word of God tells us this. It says, by faith, Noah, this is Hebrews 117, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household by which he condemned the world and became air of the righteousness, which is according to faith. And then Peter says this about him, for if God did not spare the angels who send but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment and did not spare the ancient world but saved Noah one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly. Noah received this message from God and he immediately said about obeying the Lord's commands. He actually preached. He was a preacher of righteousness. He didn't just build the ark. He told the men of his own day, a flood is coming. Something you can't even think of, the entire world is going to be drowned in water, every man, every woman, every child, and every animal who doesn't get into the ark that I am building will be destroyed. They will go down to death. Did the men at the time believe him? They scoffed. He said, that's ridiculous. You're building a boat on dry land. We've never had a flood like you're talking about. It's much easier at that point to simply conclude that Noah is a cook so that when Noah comes out and he condemns their ungodliness and he says, you must flee from the wrath to come. You've got to get into the ark. The response that men give is what a bunch of baloney. I'm just going to go on in the way that I've always been going and you go on with your boat building and I'll go on with making money and having fun and doing all the things that I've always been and I'm going to ignore you. That's what happened. At that time you had the believers, that was Noah in his family, and then you had the scoffers, the rest of the world. But that's always been the division between the believers and the scoffers. If you will, turn in your Bibles to 2 Peter 3. Now what the apostles do with these examples and what we should be looking at is the fact that they point to the situation then in Noah's time and then they bring it to their own time and all of the warnings that they were given because what were the apostles doing? They were warning men to flee from the wrath to come just as John the Baptist warned men to flee from the wrath to come. But they didn't say get into a big wooden boat. Did they? They didn't say, you know, you're going to be in a boat for many years with the animals when the flood comes. They said, no, the way to be saved from the wrath to come this time is to flee to what the ark was merely a representation of you need to flee to Jesus Christ. You need to get into that ark to be saved from the wrath to come. So 2 Peter 3, and then starting with verse 1, beloved, I now write to you this second epistle in both of which I stir up your pure minds by way of a reminder that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior knowing this verse that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation. For this they willfully forget that by the word of God the heavens were of old and of the earth standing out of water and in the water by which the world that then existed perished being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But beloved do not forget this one thing that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day the Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some count slackness but is long suffering towards us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise and the elements will melt with fervent heat both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness? Looking for and hastening the coming of the day of the of God because of which the heavens will be dissolved being on fire and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Nevertheless, we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Peter said, yes, in our own time, just as in Noah's time, there are these scoffers who are saying, okay, look, we look around and we don't see the evidence of the destruction of the world coming. Everything's continued on as it always has and we have no reason to believe, except for what you tell us. These promises of God, as you call them, that these things will change. And yet, what do we know about the promises of God? We know that he never bluffs, we know that he never lies, and we know that he never fails to accomplish what he sets out to do. He cannot fail of keeping his promises. And just like Zedekiah could look over the wall and see the evidence surrounding him of the truth of God's promises, you and I can do in essence the same thing, we can look out over the wall and see the truth of everything that God tells us in the Bible. You know, I teach world views to homeschool kids, it's fun to go over these world views, but perhaps the greatest flaw of all of these world views is they just don't explain the world as it really is. They, for instance, make assumptions about men that just aren't true. For instance, many world views assume that men are good at heart. You just have to look at the world to see that men are not good at heart. One of the examples that I give to the students all the time is I say, how many of you have keys in your pocket? Oh, most of them do. I say, so I say to them, well, why do you have keys in your pocket? Men are good at heart. Would you need keys? If you implicitly trusted that most men, in fact, nearly all men really want to do the right thing. Would you need keys? Why do you have keys? You have keys because you lock your house, you lock your car, you lock everything you can for fear that men will come and take what is yours, knowing that it's wrong but doing it anyway because they're not good at heart because they're fallen and that without the gospel they're not going to change. Brothers and sisters, we see the evidence of the truth of what God tells us and we know that all of his promises in the past have been true. Well, the apostles came to tell us that we live in the age of grace. We live in a wonderful time between the ascension of Jesus Christ and the return of Jesus Christ. This is the time of the in-gathering of the nations. This is the time when the gospel goes out to the four corners of the earth. This is the time that the Lord has given to men to repent and that if they simply say, ah, these promises that you make, they're all hui. The day will come when it's too late. We live in the age of grace but the age of grace is followed by the day of judgment and on the day of judgment it will be too late and so you know all of these things to be true. Just as Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Isaiah promised that Judah would be destroyed, it was. Just as there was the promise of the coming of Jesus Christ, he came just as his death was foreseen by prophets like Isaiah 53 on the cross as a toning work. They said it would happen. It happened. God made all of these promises going back all the way to Genesis 3 when he said that the seed of the woman that is Jesus Christ would crush the head of the serpent and he did on the cross. Every single one of those promises has been filled and yet men say, well yeah but I don't think this promise about the day of the Lord and about judgment for me personally will ever come. Why do you believe that? Why would anybody believe that? When so many of the other promises of God have been fulfilled against all odds in some cases, why would we believe for a second that it's not going to happen? For the same reasons that Zedakaya didn't believe because we don't want to. When we say no it's not going to happen we are actually going against what our conscience tells us is true. We are saying no no no these things can't be true there must be some other way some other way other than surrendering to God other than bowing the knee before Jesus Christ other than fleeing to him as a refuge. There's got to be some other way other than entering into the ark that God is graciously opening up. There's got to be some other system some other religion some other belief that I can have some way of men some army of Egypt that's going to deliver me at the last moment and get me out of the hellfire that God has promised for all those who will not come to him through Jesus Christ. There has to be why because I want it to be the case not because it's true and I speak as someone who labored under that delusion for 23 years of my life and I speak to you kids in particular because there are going to be people who are going to try to get you to trust in modern day Egypt's in modern day systems of refuge in all of these lies saying there has to be some other way they'll point out all the other religions on earth and they'll say look at all these other religions they can't all be wrong were the Canaanites wrong yes were the Egyptians wrong yes there can be countless errors but there's only one truth and that's always been the case brothers and sisters you who know the truth therefore need to go out as Jeremiah did and point out to men the danger of self deceit it's one of the most effective things we can do simply show them the promises of God and point to the world and say do you not see the way that these things have been fulfilled are being fulfilled and the way that only Christianity explains the world as it is we need to be like Jeremiah going to the Zedokias of our own age and saying don't you see the wrath that you're bringing upon yourself and that there is no deliverance from them that system when we look at America we tend to think of its troubles in terms of politics and economics and all of this stuff it's garbage do you know what our real problem is spiritual we've turned away from the word of God we've turned away from the promises of God we've embraced all of these materialistic promises brothers and sisters we've embraced a way that leads to destruction we've simply gone down the broad path and it's only if we return to the old paths the promises of God that we have any hope and I pray that's what you've done I pray that from the youngest to the oldest you've embraced the promises of God because you know that all of the promises of God are ye and our men in Jesus Christ in him is that promise of mercy and redemption that he made way back in Genesis 3 he is the seed of the woman who crushed the head of the serpent in him we find refuge he is the ark he is the only one we can flee to when the rain comes and I pray you've already done that and if you have tell others be the preacher of righteousness even if nobody comes in tell others because that is our duty while there's still breath in us to proclaim the glory of God and to be used by him as a worker in the harvest let's go before him now God a gracious Father we do thank you O Lord that all the promises are ye and our men in Jesus Christ he is the culmination of redemption he is the only way that men are to be saved there are so many lies so many falsehoods so many ways of salvation that will lead no one to heaven but only destruction every other way aside from Christ for only he could pay for our debts on the cross and only he could give us his righteousness no system of meditation or works righteousness can ever lead us safely home to heaven can ever deliver us from the day of judgment just as the thoughts of men the disbelief in your promises did not deliver anybody from the flood so too every other system every other ideology none of them will deliver us from the day of judgment other than Jesus Christ and if we have him we have all we need O Lord help us them to be gracious to others to tell them about the gospel and let us remember that we are not more worthy than any other person help us them more to believe and help our unbelief we pray this in Jesus holy name Amen