And now, if you will, turn with me in your Bibles to Jeremiah chapter 42.
Jeremiah 42, we're going to read the entire chapter.
Before we get to that, let me explain to you a little bit about the background of what
is taking place in Jeremiah 42.
Jerusalem has fallen to Babylon.
Now, after the fall, there was what was called a remnant, a few people left in the land.
And the Babylonians had set up a temporary government.
There were soldiers there to run the land, but it wasn't a lot.
And there's going to be all sorts of misadventures that will happen between the fall and what
we are going to read.
Now, explain that a little later.
But now the people are making a request of Jeremiah.
Let's see what that request is about, and let's see what the answer is.
Beginning in verse 1, then all the army officers, including Johanan, son of Caria, and Jezaniah,
son of Hoshiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest approached Jeremiah,
the prophet, and said to him, please hear our petition and pray to the Lord your God
for this entire remnant.
For as you now see, though we were once many, now only a few are left.
Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.
I have heard you reply, Jeremiah the prophet.
I will certainly pray to the Lord your God as you have requested.
I will tell you everything the Lord says and will keep nothing back from you.
Then they said to Jeremiah, may the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if
we do not act in accordance with everything the Lord your God sends you to tell us.
Whether it is favorable or unfavorable, we will obey the Lord our God to whom we are
sending you so that it will go well with us, for we will obey the Lord our God.
Ten days later, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, so he called together Johanan,
son of Caria, and all the army officers who were with him, and all the people from the
least to the greatest.
He said to them, this is what the Lord the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present
your petition says.
If you stay in this land, I will build you up and not tear you down.
I will plant you and not uproot you, for I have relented concerning the disaster I have
afflicted on you.
Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon whom you now fear.
Do not be afraid of him, declares the Lord, for I am with you and will save you and deliver
you from his hands.
I will show you compassion so that he will have compassion on you and restore you to
your land.
However, if you say we will not stay in the land, and so disobey the Lord your God, and
if you say no, we will go and live in Egypt, where we will not see war or hear the trumpet
or be hungry for bread, then hear the word of the Lord you remnant of Judah.
This is what the Lord Almighty the God of Israel says.
If you are determined to go to Egypt and you do go to settle there, then the sword you
fear will overtake you there, and the famine you dread will follow you into Egypt, and
there you will die.
Indeed, all who are determined to go to Egypt to settle there will die by the sword, famine,
and plague.
Not one of them will survive or escape the disasters I will bring on them.
This is what the Lord Almighty the God of Israel says.
As my anger and wrath have been poured out on those who lived in Jerusalem, so will my
wrath be poured out on you when you go to Egypt.
You will be a curse and an object of horror, a curse and an object of reproach.
You will never see this place again.
Remnant of Judah, the Lord has told you, do not go to Egypt, be sure of this.
I warn you today that you made a fatal mistake when you sent me to the Lord your God and
said, pray to the Lord our God for us.
Tell us everything He says and we will do it.
I have told you today, but you still have not obeyed the Lord your God in all He sent
me to tell you, so now be sure of this.
You will die by the sword, famine, and plague in the place where you want to go to settle.
Let's pray and ask God to bless the reading of His word.
Our Heavenly Father, please be with us now as we listen to what you are going to say
to us.
Help us, our God, to understand how we are to live in this fallen, uncertain world.
Give us assurance that you are with us.
Hear our prayer, our God.
Amen.
Now, most of the time, I know exactly what is going to happen in the future.
For example, I knew that when I got up this morning, I would let the dogs out, eat breakfast,
feed the dogs, work on the sermon, go to church, deliver the sermon, eat lunch, take my nap,
start working on next week's sermon, watch a little TV, go to bed, next morning get up,
go to work, repeat.
Most of you, same way, you are pretty certain about what is going to happen in your near
future.
Next day, next week, next month, we're pretty confident.
And thank goodness for gravity, because that assures that when I walk out that door, I'm
not just going to float away one day.
There's a lot of regularity in the world.
But not always.
Sometimes life does not go the way we expect it to.
Now, I know that is true for me.
In fact, one day after Jan and I had gone to General Assembly in Tampa, we were coming
back through Tallahassee, a drive that I had made before, had lunch, and got on the road,
and we got into a crash.
A crash, which has scarred both of us.
A crash which we will never forget.
Did we expect it?
Did we plan for it?
No, we did not expect it at all.
And I'm sure if you looked at your own life, there are events that have happened, and you
saved yourself, I wish I had planned for that.
Problem is we're humans.
We are limited.
We don't know everything that's going on.
And sometimes we say to ourselves, I wish I could look in the future and know exactly
what to do and what is going to happen.
Oh, think of the possibilities of that.
I would know which job really was the best for me.
I would know the right people to hang around with.
I would also know which lottery ticket to buy and become very wealthy.
I would know if I did such things, and I'm not suggesting you should, which sports teams
to bet on.
Oh, life could be so much different, but it's not, and it never will be.
We are limited, finite, human beings.
We are not God.
And we don't know what's going to happen ultimately to us tomorrow.
We don't know what's going to happen in the United States.
We don't know what's going to happen in Pensacola.
It could be good.
It could be bad.
We don't know.
We don't know when the judgment of God may fall or when he will bless us more than we
have expected.
So the real question then for all of us is how then should we live?
And that is exactly the question that the people of God have come to Jeremiah for.
They want to know in their situation as a remnant, the leftovers of Israel, left in
the land, how then do we live?
And this morning, Jeremiah tells us we're going to see that there is a seemingly spiritual
request, a truly deceitful desire, and a biblical way to live in this passage.
As you read this together, you can see that there is a seemingly spiritual request here,
can't you?
On the surface, it seems to be right and godly something maybe you and I would request.
But let me give you a little bit of a background about what is going on in this passage.
First of all, Jerusalem has been destroyed.
Now when the Babylonians came in, they tore the place up, but they did leave a remnant
from Judea to stay in the land, take care of the fields and the vineyards.
Nebuchadnezzar also left a governor in charge, Gadalia, who was formally secretary to King
Josiah and a friend of Jeremiah.
And it talks about soldiers here.
These were probably soldiers that Nebuchadnezzar left to take care of order in Judea.
But here's what happened.
Gadalia was assassinated by Jewish rebels.
In other words, the Babylonian appointed governor was killed.
And the question then comes up by those who were left in the land.
What in the world is King Nebuchadnezzar going to do?
It can't be good.
Will King Nebuchadnezzar come in and try to punish us?
Will he turn our city into a city which is nothing more than a parking lot for his chariots
and a stable for his horses?
This is what they are worried about.
They are scared to death of what could happen to them because of an assassination of one
of their leaders.
Would Nebuchadnezzar wipe them out once and for all?
So the question in their minds is, what do we do?
Do we stay or do we go?
Do we get out of Jerusalem and possibly stay of our lives or do we listen to God and stay
and listen to what it says in verse 3 and you get to the heart of what's going on here?
Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do.
Stay or go to Egypt.
And Jeremiah says, alright.
I will go and I will hold nothing back.
I'm going to tell you as they say on the Perry Mason episodes, the truth, the whole truth,
nothing but the truth.
Ten days pass.
And before this, remember the people have said in verses 5 and 6, oh, we'll obey.
We'll obey whatever you say.
We'll obey.
But ten days pass before the word of God comes to Jeremiah.
And he tells them, you're to stay.
Don't leave.
Don't go to Egypt.
You are to trust and obey because there is no other way.
Doesn't that seem like a pious, godly request?
The surface it certainly does.
I mean that's something that you and I should be asking God, God, what do we do?
And in times of uncertainty when you don't know what the future beholds, certainly you
must continue to trust God and obey in times of blessing or in times of trouble.
But there's more going on here, isn't it?
It's not just merely a pious request and at the end of the chapter, listen to what Jeremiah
says to them.
He says, you are not listening.
You have asked me to go and make this request of God, but yet you have no intentions at
all of doing what I have just told you.
He says in verse 21, I told you today, but you still have not obeyed the Lord your God
and all he sent me to tell you.
And what happens later on is those people do go to Egypt and they die there because they
thought, oh, we'll be saved by the Egyptian because they're a superpower too.
But Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian smashed Egypt too.
It is a seemingly pious request, but what is really going on in this prayer request is
a sinful desire of the heart.
Were they truly desires of God's will?
No.
Do they want to trust God?
Now God has given them some good news.
It says in verse 9 and 10, I'm going to have compassion on you if you stay in the land.
I'm sorry for what has happened and all your struggles.
And in verse 11, look what he says.
Listen to what the Word of God says to those fearful people.
Don't be afraid of the king of Babylon whom you now fear.
Do not be afraid of him, declares the Lord, for I am with you and will save you and deliver
you from his hands.
Jeremiah has told them what you fear is not going to happen, but they don't seem to listen.
God has shown them His grace and mercy, but they don't listen.
God was going to be with them though they were nothing more than a remnant.
Ever seen the basketball movie Hoosiers?
It's about a little rinky dink basketball team in the state of Indiana who no one thought
would win, but with Gene Hackman as your coach.
You can win.
It's like this, you're right, they have nothing.
There has been a sin problem, but God was going to be with them.
But they're not interested.
Their request is hypocritical.
They think by going to Egypt, they will escape the trouble.
They are trusting in a world power rather than the God who has made them and judged them
and condemned them.
And they ask Jeremiah, go and ask God, oh, we are so pious, but they didn't want what
God was saying to them.
It's called hypocrisy.
And if you go on in the New Testament, what do we read about?
Hypocrisy.
You hypocrites?
Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you.
These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain.
Their teachings are merely human rules.
And in Matthew 23, what does the Word of God say in verse 28?
In the same way on the outside, you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside,
you're full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
That's what's taking place here.
The evil, sinful desires of the heart.
And why are they doing this?
This is the question.
Why?
Because they don't trust God.
What they want is God to bless what they have already decided to do.
They've already made up their minds without listening to God.
And they're basically saying, I hope God is going to tell us to go to Egypt even though
Egypt is not the place to go.
It's not the promised land.
It's like what happens often in churches where we want the ceremonies.
We want a baptism.
We want a Christian marriage ceremony when we have no intentions of fulfilling the vows
that we have decided to take.
And people do that.
And they think they're being pious when really what they're asking God to do is bless their
sin.
And you and I often have to check our motives when we pray.
And we have to ask about our desires.
What we need to be thinking is when we ask God to work in our lives or we ask for his
wisdom, am I really being honest here?
Am I really going to listen when what God says may go against our common sense?
Am I really willing to trust him instead of whatever power brokers we want to trust in
for our safety and our security?
Because often they will not deliver.
Are we willing to trust God when his will may be risky?
Or do we simply ask God, bless my sin?
Bless what I've done.
Never mind about your kingdom.
Never mind about what you think is right.
There is sin in this Bible chapter, hypocrisy, under the guise of righteousness.
Yes, that request was seemingly pious, but yes, it was extremely sinful.
But also in this, we do see a biblical way we should live.
And what did I ask at the beginning of the sermon?
How then should we live?
What does God want from us?
And I will tell you, it has been the same answer from Genesis to Revelation.
Trust me.
He wants his people to trust him enough that even though the land has been devastated,
even though there are few in numbers, God is with them.
If you are going to live in this world, you're going to have to trust someone.
We think we can get out of life without having faith or trust in anyone, but that is not
the case.
You will either trust yourself or you will trust God.
You will either trust institutions or you will trust God.
You will either trust another person or God.
Who are you going to trust?
And don't say Ghostbusters.
You trust God.
That is really the heart of the Bible.
And that is the problem that Adam and Eve had all the way down through history, and it's
the same with us.
And what does the book of Proverbs say?
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.
And we come to the New Testament.
There is a wonderful Bible passage, which we should all memorize.
It's in John chapter 14 verse one, where Jesus is headed to the cross.
He is told his disciples that he is going to be betrayed.
He's going to be sold out and he's going to die.
And all of those disciples may have been thinking to themselves, well, what's going to happen
to us?
Will we be persecuted if this is true?
Will we die?
Will we be disbanded?
What about the church?
What about all those promises you said?
And you're telling us you're going to the cross.
You're telling us if they persecuted me, they're going to persecute you.
And what does Jesus tell them?
Don't let your heart be troubled.
Trust in God.
Trust also in me.
And what was the lesson that that small bunch of disciples had to learn?
And what was the lesson that the early church, though persecuted and small in number, had
to learn?
You've got to trust me and you've got to keep moving forward with the cards you have been
given in this life.
Follow me, even though it may seem risky.
Now, when I was in Covenant College, which is up in the mountains, one of the extracurriculum
activities that many of the boys used to participate in was repelling.
And I remember the first time I ever went repelling and I went with a friend who claimed
to have some experience and knowledge of this sport.
And then repelling, there is a rope which has supposedly been tested and everything.
And the idea is that there is the side of the cliff.
You turn around, you have the rope, you've got the carabiners and the guy at the bottom
who was my friend says, belay, you say belay on and then you attempt to walk off the side
of the cliff.
And I've got to tell you, I was scared.
But at one point, instead of not doing it, I took the step.
Why did I take that step?
Because I trusted my friend of questionable experience and I trusted that rope.
Now, belay me, that was not the only time I went.
I remember one time they either had the wrong rope or it was too spongy and I stepped off
the side and I went right into the side of that mat.
But do you see what we're talking about here?
It's that trust, that faith which we have in other things.
But the real question is, do we have it in God?
To keep moving forward in life, trusting that He loves us enough to take care of us, to protect
us and one day bring us to our heavenly home.
The way forward.
In one sense, life is uncertain.
I can't tell you what's going to ultimately happen tomorrow.
I can't tell you what is ultimately going to happen to this church.
I can't tell you what is ultimately going to happen to the United States of America.
I can't tell you if there's going to be success or failure, but I do know this, that I am to
trust God and keep walking, walking forward obeying His commandments, no matter what is
ahead.
Let's pray and ask God to bless this reading of His Word.