Wrath & Desperation - Jeremiah 8:13-17
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Introduction
Introduction
Turn with me to Jeremiah 8:13.
We began studying this section of Jeremiah’s prophecy last Wednesday night beginning with Jeremiah 8:4.
Judah was stubborn in its apostasy, in it’s knowing rejection of God and rebellion against Him (vv. 4-7).
The scribes, the wisemen, the prophets, the priests—everyone was in on it. They all told the people the lies they wanted to hear for greedy gain rather than the truth. They “healed” with lies and didn’t even know how to be ashamed of the abomination they had done (vv. 8-12).
Now, in Jeremiah 8:13-17 God says that He will snatch the people away and send poisonous snakes to strike them. In between what God says in v. 13 and v. 17, the people are desperate to escape the consequences of their sin.
If only they had been as desperate to repent, when there was still a chance.
[READING - Jeremiah 8:13-17]
13 “I will surely snatch them away,” declares the Lord; “There will be no grapes on the vine And no figs on the fig tree, And the leaf will wither; And what I have given them will pass away.” ’ ” 14 Why are we sitting still? Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the fortified cities And let us perish there, Because the Lord our God has doomed us And given us poisoned water to drink, For we have sinned against the Lord. 15 We waited for peace, but no good came; For a time of healing, but behold, terror! 16 From Dan is heard the snorting of his horses; At the sound of the neighing of his stallions The whole land quakes; For they come and devour the land and its fullness, The city and its inhabitants. 17 “For behold, I am sending serpents against you, Adders, for which there is no charm, And they will bite you,” declares the Lord.
[PRAYER]
[TS] In v. 13, the LORD speaks…
Major Ideas
Major Ideas
#1: The Lord Speaks
#1: The Lord Speaks
13 “I will surely snatch them away,” declares the Lord; “There will be no grapes on the vine And no figs on the fig tree, And the leaf will wither; And what I have given them will pass away.” ’ ”
[EXP] In Jeremiah 2:21 God said that He had planted Israel as a choice vine but that it had become degenerate. In Jeremiah 6:9 God told Jeremiah to pass his hand over the vine of Judah once more. He was to preach the message that God gave him giving the remnant the chance to repent.
The vine was supposed to produce more than a remnant, but here in Jeremiah 8:13, there’s not even a remnant. There will be no grapes left. The Lord’s judgment will snatch the unrepentant away so thoroughly that, if Judah were a vine or a fig tree, there would be no fruit left and the leaves would be withering. The choice vine is left withered and wasting away.
God’s wrath will thoroughly consume Judah.
Through Hosea God said…
10 I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness; I saw your forefathers as the earliest fruit on the fig tree in its first season. But they came to Baal-peor and devoted themselves to shame, And they became as detestable as that which they loved.
Then in Hosea 9:12 He said, “I will bereave them until not a man is left.”
Joel describes the consuming wrath of God in this way…
4 What the gnawing locust has left, the swarming locust has eaten; And what the swarming locust has left, the creeping locust has eaten; And what the creeping locust has left, the stripping locust has eaten.
7 It has made my vine a waste And my fig tree splinters. It has stripped them bare and cast them away; Their branches have become white.
Again, God’s wrath will thoroughly consume Judah.
[ILLUS] This past Sunday we were talking about the Seven C’s of History: Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consummation. It’s not a complete history. It’s leaves out the Covenants, the Commandments, the Calling of the prophets, the Captivity, the Church, etc. but it’s helpful in summarizing the main message of the Bible.
But on the bit about Catastrophe—the flood, I was struck by Genesis 7:19-20…
19 The water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. 20 The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered.
Why does this stand out? Because in a flood, you’d flee to the mountains. You climb higher as the flood waters rose. But there was no where to flee from the wrath of God. The waters of His wrath covered all the high mountains everywhere and then some.
In Revelation 6, when the wrath of God and the Lamb come upon the earth, it says…
15 Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; 16 and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”
Of course, no one is able to stand except those who stand in Christ Jesus. There’s no place to hide. On top of the mountain is no good. Underneath the mountain won’t work.
God’s wrath will reach everywhere and consume every unrepentant person.
Q: What is repentance?
Q: Based on what we’ve talked about so far tonight, how serious is repentance?
Q: How seriously do we take repentance?
We had better heed the words of Jesus while we can, “Repent and believe in the Gospel,” (Mk. 1:15).
Only by repenting of sin and believing in Jesus crucified and resurrected will we be saved from the eternal wrath of God.
Only by repenting and believing will we not be snatched away by the wrath of God.
Look at the last line of v. 13, “And what I have given them will pass away.”
In Mark 11 Jesus was hungry and seeing a fig tree in the distance, He went to see if it had any fruit on it. It did not. He cursed it saying, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again,” (Mk. 11:12-14).
The next morning, Jesus and His disciples are passing by the fig tree again. They all see that it had withered from the roots up (Mk. 11:20).
The fig tree, like the vine, represents Israel—in this case, fruitless Israel, which had the appearance of righteousness (the leafy branches that looked like fruit-bearing branches) but there was no fruit.
Rejecting Jesus was the last straw. Even what they had would be taken away. Not one stone would be left on top of another.
They would be snatched away.
Let us not be snatched away. Let’s us repent of sin and believe on Jesus crucified and resurrected.
Let us bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
[TS] …
#2: The People Speak
#2: The People Speak
14 Why are we sitting still? Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the fortified cities And let us perish there, Because the Lord our God has doomed us And given us poisoned water to drink, For we have sinned against the Lord. 15 We waited for peace, but no good came; For a time of healing, but behold, terror! 16 From Dan is heard the snorting of his horses; At the sound of the neighing of his stallions The whole land quakes; For they come and devour the land and its fullness, The city and its inhabitants.
[EXP] Judah is desperate. The people won’t wait around for Babylon to come and destroy them. They will run out to the fortified cities—the cities meant to keep the fighting away from Jerusalem. They say, “If we die, let us die there.” They say the Lord has doomed them and they know this is because they have sinned against Him. They claimed that God given them poisoned water to drink.
When Babylon came to Jerusalem, it would lay siege to the city. During a siege, no one goes into the city. No one comes out. No food gets in. No food gets out. The cities that fared best were those cities with plenty of water, but if the water supply became poisoned, then the seige would be over quickly. If the water supply was poisoned, the end quickly approached for the city under siege.
If the people thought God had given them poison water to drink, then they knew their time was quickly coming to an end. And, again, they knew this was because they sinned against the Lord.
They had waited for peace, perhaps the peace that the false prophets promised, but no good came. They waited for a time of healing, perhaps the time of healing that the false prophets promised when Babylon would no longer be a threat, but only terror came. And, again, this was because they sinned against the Lord.
Dan was on the northerly limit of Israel. It would have been among the first places to report an invasion by the Babylonians. It hears the snorting of Babylonian horses, the neighing of its stallions. So great is the number of the enemy cavalry that the whole land quakes. As one commentator put it, “They had all heard the din of rumbling chariots in the distance. The end was at hand.” Land and produce are devoured. City and people too.
[ILLUS] Imagine we are camping. The night air is cool so we build a fire to keep warm just to take the chill off. We start to get sleepy, but someone needs to put the fire out. Our sleeping bags will keep us warm enough through the night. But we don’t move. We’re too comfortable. We let the fire continue to dwindle and are reasonably sure that everything will be alright.
But the wind blows one of our embers onto some dry grass near by, and in the middle of the night we awaken surrounded by fire. We frantically look this way and that but there is no clear path of escape. Everything seems to be on fire.
Q: How desperate would we be for a way of escape?
Q: What led to our desperation?
We were not diligent in putting out our fire.
[APP] It’s often a lack of diligence that leads to desperation. We are often desperate to escape the consequences of sin but not diligent to repent of our sin, not diligent to obey God’s commands.
Because Judah was not diligent in obedience, not diligent in repentance, not diligent in pursuit of God—they were in the end desperate to escape His wrath.
The smallest sin not repented of will lead to the great fire of God’s wrath.
We must ask God to examine us for small embers of sin. We must ask God to help us extinguish those embers.
Let be diligent to repent and believe.
[TS] …
#3: The Lord Speaks Again
#3: The Lord Speaks Again
17 “For behold, I am sending serpents against you, Adders, for which there is no charm, And they will bite you,” declares the Lord.
[EXP] When the people of Israel grumbled against God in the wilderness, saying, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and water…” (Num. 21:5), it says…
6 The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and you; intercede with the Lord, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. 8 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.” 9 And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.
The fiery serpents of God’s wrath were, in a manner of speaking, charmed by looking on the bronze serpent made by Moses.
Here in Jeremiah 8:17 the story is different. God will send Adders to strike His people, Adders for which there is no charm.
Q: Do you think the Adders are literal or metaphorical? If metaphorical, what do the Adders represent?
Q: What is God communicating to His people by saying there is no charming these Adders?
[APP] There comes a point when the wrath of God cannot be turned back. The patience of God is exhausted. The fiery serpents of His wrath can’t be charmed.
Perhaps for most people God extends the opportunity to repent throughout their lives, but we can’t bank on that. We can’t presume on the kindness of God, saying, “I’ll repent later, but I’m gonna keep on sinning now.” God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance—and it’s meant to lead us to repentance right now.
In John 3:14-15, Jesus said…
14 “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; 15 so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.
There’s only one charm for the wrath of God, and that’s to look on Jesus crucified and resurrected and believe.
[TS] …
Conclusion
Conclusion
[PRAYER]