Repentance?

Jeremiah 1 “The following is a record of what Jeremiah son of Hilkiah prophesied. He was one of the priests who lived at Anathoth in the territory of the tribe of Benjamin. The Lord’s message came to him in the thirteenth year that Josiah son of Amon ruled over Judah. The Lord also spoke to him when Jehoiakim son of Josiah ruled over Judah, and he continued to speak to him until the fifth month of the eleventh year that Zedekiah son of Josiah ruled over Judah. That was when the people of Jerusalem were taken into exile. The Lord said to me, “Before I formed you in your mother’s womb I chose you. Before you were born I set you apart. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.” I answered, “Oh, Lord God, Really I do not know how to speak well enough for that, for I am too young.” The Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ But go to whomever I send you and say whatever I tell you. Do not be afraid of those to whom I send you, for I will be with you to protect you,” says the Lord. Then…”

Exordium.

Introduction: Repeat offender...not in a criminal sense...maybe

-Sermon Series on Jeremiah

I have been wanting to do a Sermon Series on Jeremiah for over a year now. I wanted to

Narratio

Challenges with Reading Jeremiah

It’s a big book: Based on Word Count in the original language, Jeremiah is actually the longest book in the entire bible. Longer than psalms even.

It’s not written in Chronological order

Jeremiah 1:1–3 NET 2nd ed.

The following is a record of what Jeremiah son of Hilkiah prophesied. He was one of the priests who lived at Anathoth in the territory of the tribe of Benjamin. The Lord’s message came to him in the thirteenth year that Josiah son of Amon ruled over Judah. The Lord also spoke to him when Jehoiakim son of Josiah ruled over Judah, and he continued to speak to him until the fifth month of the eleventh year that Zedekiah son of Josiah ruled over Judah. That was when the people of Jerusalem were taken into exile.

Josiah, Jehoiakim, Zedekiah, they were all kings of Judah in Jerusalem

-You can read about them in 2 Kings 22-25, and 2 Chron 34-36.

-And I recommend, any time you read the books of the prophets, when it says something like “the prophet so and so spoke while so and so was king in jerusalem” Go back and find that section in Kings and Chronicles, to help orient yourself.

-The problem with Jeremiah, is that you go in expecting that it’s going to follow along with those kings and the order they served, but what you find is that He bounces back and forth between the kings. And so it doesn’t go in a straight linear line.

-That makes it a difficult book

The history of how the text was produced

We get this insight in Chapter 36 I want to mention briefly

God tells Jeremiah, go write down everything that you have preached from the very beginning of your ministry until now. Dictate it to your scribe, baruch, and he’ll write it down and then go deliver it to the king

At this point in Jeremiah’s ministry, he had been preaching for 20 years.

And it’s not really clear in the text whether he spoke it all from memory, or if he was reading off of a bunch of different scrolls, and baruch was compiling them into one big scroll

Or maybe a little bit of both

Either way, you have Jeremiah, re-producing 20 years worth of sermons to Baruch. They deliver it to the king, and the king doesn’t like what he hears, so he cuts up the scroll and burns it.

So God tells Jeremiah, do it again, and this time add even more to it.

So you have, in the text, at least three separate iterations of Jeremiah’s preaching

When he first delivered it, when it all got written down the first time, and when it all got written down the second time.

To top it all off, Jeremiah went on and preached for another 20 years after that.

Now you have four different compilations of Jeremiah’s sermons.

What’s fascinating is that in the manuscripts that we have, we actually have evidence of this.

We have manuscripts of Jeremiah where the material is all identical, but it’s compiled in different orders. like chapter 46 is where chapter 22 should be, and vice verse.

So that adds a wrinkle to it. Makes it a difficult book to work through.

As we go through this series, my goal, and I’m not sure how well this is going to work out, but we’re going to try.

We’re going to try and put ourselves in the shoes of Jeremiah, and try to look at what he wrote through the prophet’s eyes.

Partitio/Propositio

Big idea we want to discuss today, is

Repentance is at the core of our relationship with God

We’re going to talk about how when repentance is genuine, forgiveness is unconditional.

We’re going to talk about how repentance needs to to have staying power.

And how repentance depends on you.

Confirmatio

Let’s dive into the text, let’s look at the book of Jeremiah through the prophet’s eyes.

Jeremiah 1:1 NET 2nd ed.

The following is a record of what Jeremiah son of Hilkiah prophesied. He was one of the priests who lived at Anathoth in the territory of the tribe of Benjamin.

Don’t skip over these parts of the Bible. These parts set the stage.

Jeremiah is the son of a priest named Hilkiah. We’re going to read a little bit from 2 kings today, and there’s another character named Hilkiah, same name, different guy. So don’t get that confused.

Jeremiah grew up knowing the right things.

He’s the son of a priest, he saw by example, what it looks like to be God’s people, to do the right thing.

Jeremiah 1:2–3 NET 2nd ed.

The Lord’s message came to him in the thirteenth year that Josiah son of Amon ruled over Judah. The Lord also spoke to him when Jehoiakim son of Josiah ruled over Judah, and he continued to speak to him until the fifth month of the eleventh year that Zedekiah son of Josiah ruled over Judah. That was when the people of Jerusalem were taken into exile.

I’ll save you the trouble, and do the math, here, that’s about 40 year time span.

This book is his life’s work.

Let’s go check out the context, from the early days of his ministry, and see what was going on in Jerusalem when he preached.

Let’s turn back to 2 kings 21.

This is the lead-up to Jeremiah’s ministry, just a few kings back from Josiah.

2 Kings 21:1-6

2 Kings 21:1–6 NET 2nd ed.

Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned for fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother was Hephzibah. He did evil in the sight of the Lord and committed the same horrible sins practiced by the nations whom the Lord drove out from before the Israelites. He rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he set up altars for Baal and made an Asherah pole just like King Ahab of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the stars in the sky and worshiped them. He built altars in the Lord’s temple, about which the Lord had said, “Jerusalem will be my permanent home.” In the two courtyards of the Lord’s temple he built altars for all the stars in the sky. He passed his son through the fire and practiced divination and omen reading. He set up a ritual pit to conjure up underworld spirits, and appointed magicians to supervise it. He did a great amount of evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.

Manasseh was the worst king that Jerusalem had ever had.

He took evil to a new level.

He was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

He led the people so astray that God said, that’s it, I’m done, I’m sending an enemy from the north, they’re going to wipe out your kingdom.

Everything that happens after manasseh, is just waiting for the inevitable.

Babylon’s coming, Jerusalem is going to pay for their evil.

And yet, what’s fascinating about manassah, let’s look at how the book of Chronicles tells the story.

If you don’t know, Chronicles and kings tell pretty much the same story, but there are differences. Kind of like how Matthew luke and mark tell the same story, but they put a different emphasis on certain things.

2 Chronicles 33:1–2 “Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned for fifty-five years in Jerusalem. He did evil in the sight of the Lord and committed the same horrible sins practiced by the nations whom the Lord drove out ahead of the Israelites.”

Same thing...

2 Chronicles 33:10-17

You get down to verse 10

2 Chronicles 33:10–17 NET 2nd ed.

The Lord confronted Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. So the Lord brought against them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria. They seized Manasseh, put hooks in his nose, bound him with bronze chains, and carried him away to Babylon. In his pain Manasseh asked the Lord his God for mercy and truly humbled himself before the God of his ancestors. When he prayed to the Lord, the Lord responded to him and answered favorably his cry for mercy. The Lord brought him back to Jerusalem to his kingdom. Then Manasseh realized that the Lord is the true God. After this Manasseh built up the outer wall of the City of David on the west side of the Gihon in the valley to the entrance of the Fish Gate and all around the terrace; he made it much higher. He placed army officers in all the fortified cities in Judah. He removed the foreign gods and images from the Lord’s temple and all the altars he had built on the hill of the Lord’s temple and in Jerusalem; he threw them outside the city. He erected the altar of the Lord and offered on it peace offerings and thank offerings. He told the people of Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel. However, the people continued to offer sacrifices at the high places, but only to the Lord their God.

Couple of things I want you to notice here.

First off, mannassah only repents after God punishes him.

Verse 12 says “in his pain, in his distress, he cries out to the lord”

That’s enough for god. God doesn’t care how we get to repentance. There’s not a lower level of repentance like “oh, well he only repented to stop being punished.” It doesn’t matter.

What matters is whether or not the repentance is genuine.

When repentance is genuine, forgiveness is unconditional

Notice too, how it foreshadows what is going to happen to Jerusalem.

God’s going to send an enemy who is going to take them captive to a foreign land, and the people are going to repent.

God doesn’t do stuff just to be mean and punish people, he does it because he desires for us to turn to him and live.

Manassah, after God punished him, turned his life around. He repented fully, he had a complete change of heart.

But the nation of Judah, the every day people in the kingdom...

if you think about it in this metaphor. The king of Judah is like the capitan of a big ship.

It takes a while to turn a ship around.

Judah at this point was blowing full steam ahead toward evil.

so even though the capitan of the ship was starting to turn the ship, the every day people weren’t quite ready to be 100% commited to the Lord.

And unfortunately, the capitan dies, his son amon takes over in verse 21, and just flat out abandons the mission of turning the ship around.

This is the world that Jeremiah enters into.

Manassah repented, fully.

He had a change of heart he had a change of behavior.

and because of that, he was forgiven.

He was a heinous guy. he straight up practiced idolatry, and child sacrifice. But he repented, and his sins were forgiven.

If Manassah can be forgiven of his sins, don’t you think that you and I can too?

There is no sin so greivous that we could out-sin God’s grace.

His forgiveness is complete. But it’s based on our willingness to turn the ship around.

The people, only half heartedly repented. And as soon as manassah died, they went right back to it.

____

And then we get this king named josiah.

Chapter 34, I’m going to summarize a little bit.

2 Chronicles 34-35

Josiah takes the throne at 8 years old, and immediately starts to try to turn the ship.

At 16 years old, he starts getting rid of idolotry, he destroys the alters of the bales and the idols.

Verse 4 it says he “sprinkled the dust of the idols over the tombs of those who sacrificed to them”

He starts restoring and repairing the temple that had been neglected for so long.

And in the process they find the scroll that contains the law of moses.

And they read it to him.

Let me just impress upon you how big of a deal this is. And how fast this ship that Josiah is trying to turn around is going toward destruction.

Imagine, if you will, a church. pretend it’s this church.

And imagine if one day, one of us is downstairs getting some supplies or something. And we find a stack of Bibles.

And you bring it upstairs to me or ron or stew, and you’re like.

Hey I found these books downstairs. It says “Bi-ble” What isthis?

And we read it, and we’re like “Oh no, I totally forgot about that book”

It woudl be unfathomable.

That’s how bad off Jerusalem was. That’s how far down the path to destruction they were.

And so Josiah makes some major moves to turn the ship, but for the people it’s just too little too late.

You read this chapter, and you start to think, wow, we might be on to something. We might be starting to see true repentance in Judah.

Josiah did the right thing. He made some major reforms.

But they didn’t stick.

He dies, Jehoaz takes over, he only rules for like three months. Johoiakim takes over, and they’re right back to what they were doing before.

There wasn’t any staying power.

Repentance needs to have staying power

We all probably have someone in our lives who says “This time, I’m gonna change this time I mean it.”

I want to make sure we’re clear here, and distinguish between the situation in Judah, and our situation.

Because when I first read through this, I remember thinking, why did God punish Jerusalem right after Josiah repented

Why did god carry out his plans, even though manasseh repented.

Why?

And we have to understand that there is a difference between individual and corporate sin.

You and I are individuals. Manasseh was an individual, josiah was an individual. Who made an individual choice to repent and follow God.

That doesn’t mean that the whole nation did.

Your repentance depends on you

It doesn’t matter that you’re a part of a righteous nation

it doesn’t matter if your king or your president is doing godly things.

It doesn’t matter that you go to a good church, or have good friends

What matters is you, and the choices you make.

When repentance is genuine, forgiveness is absolute

Repentance has to have staying power

And it depends on you, and your heart.

Our big idea, repentance is at the core of our relationship with God.

Peroratio

Jeremiah was called to preach at a time that The people of Judah desperately needed to turn the ship around.

And I think when we read this passage, we often think about Repentance as “Those who are not Christians who need to repent and become Christians”

And there is some truth there. If you’re not in Christ, there is a need to repent, to turn around, to turn back to God.

But This section of Scripture was not written to the pagan nations, the outsiders.

It was written to God’s people.