All right, brethren, Jeremiah 44. Jeremiah chapter 44. Now this is Jeremiah's last message to the children of Judah. That's about all I could find to make this a last sermon for 2019. But I hope this sermon is received better than Jeremiah's was. And I trust it will be. But these words are important. This is an important thing for us to learn no matter what time of the year it is. And the reason is because every sinner has a responsibility to obey God's word. Every sinner has a responsibility to obey God's Word. Now, the natural man cannot obey God's Word. He won't receive it, nor can he even obey it. He won't submit to it. But that doesn't change the fact that he's responsible. Inability does not negate responsibility. People say, well God wouldn't have given a law that his people couldn't keep. If I came to you and I decided I'm going to show these people that they can't stack marbles. And I came to you and I said, now if you stack these marbles, I'll give you all the money in my bank account. Well, everything I said was true. If they could stack them, I wouldn't give them all the money in my bank account. But that doesn't mean they can. They didn't mean they can. But when God gave His law, even though we couldn't keep it, He didn't change the fact that we're responsible to keep it. But then the believer who's been regenerated by God, he's given a new heart, he's given faith, and he's made willing to obey God's Word. He's made willing to cast all his care on Christ as his only righteousness, as his only holiness, trusting Christ alone. And he's made willing to love his brethren. Now, God's saints don't obey perfectly. That's why we can't ever look to any obedience of ours for righteousness or holiness or acceptance with God. We don't obey perfectly. Sin is mixed with all we do, with everything we do. We look to Christ alone. And when we do not obey our Master, God chastens us. We're going to see Him pouring out judgment. right here, punishing these children of Judah. God doesn't do that for those Christ redeemed. He chastens us and turns us from our error to keep us partaking of Christ's holiness. We saw that Thursday night. The Holy Spirit gives us a heart in the new man and makes us willing to be like Mary. Remember Mary said concerning Christ, she said, whatsoever He says to you, do it. Whatever He says to you, do it. And that's the heart He gives His child. Whatever Christ says, I want to do it. I want to obey Him. I don't want to disobey Him. Now in that first message, we saw a gospel precept. We saw something that Christ commands His people for the good of His people, for the good of His church, to receive our brethren. To not judge our brethren, to not try to discern what their heart is, and we can't do that, but to trust them to Christ. He tells us that when your brother's fallen, he's overtaken in a fault, restore him in the spirit of meekness. Consider it in yourself, lest you also be puffed up. These are gospel precepts that Christ teaches His people to obey. And the Spirit of God gives you a heart to obey. Not perfectly, not without sin, but He gives you a heart when it's needful and He's going to keep you from He will keep you bearing the burden of your brethren. He will give you the strength and the wisdom to do these things He has called you to do. And so, with that being the case, I thought it good to look at this message because here we behold God's Word going forth to a people who did not obey. These people did not obey the Word of God. And we see here what God did to those who do not obey. His word. And I will try through the course of this to show you some mercy and grace in the middle of all this judgment. Now it begins here and it says, the word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews which dwell in the land of Egypt, he names some cities there in Egypt. Now, this was the word of the Lord. This was the word that came to Jeremiah to go preach to these people from Judah who were now in Egypt. Now, we've been going through Exodus and we've seen over there that God delivered the children of Israel and the children of Judah. He delivered them out of Egypt. But now, here they are and they fled back to Egypt. They fled back to Egypt. Egypt typifies that from which Christ has redeemed us. Egypt typifies that which Christ delivers us from. Idolatry, sin, the bondage of the law, the bondage of our flesh, this ungodly world. These are all the enemies that Christ has redeemed us from. That's what Egypt pictures. And these Jews who had been delivered from Egypt and now go back They are a picture of somebody who professes to believe on Christ, professes that he has been redeemed from all his enemies, and yet in time goes back to that which he was professing to be redeemed from. What caused him to go back to Egypt? God sent a trial. God is going to try faith. And if a person's faith is not the genuine gift of God, then that person is going to do what they did. When God sent this trial, He sent it to judge Judah, Jerusalem, because of their idolatry. For His people, He made them obedient. They bowed to the King Nebuchadnezzar. He took them into the land of Babylon, a picture of Christ there. God purged them of their idolatry, He corrected them by His chastening hand, and He brings them back to Jerusalem, and they worship God. But these people here, they didn't have faith. They didn't have true faith. They claimed to, but when the trial came, it exposed them. Rather than looking to God for salvation, rather than hearing God's word and bowing to King Nebuchadnezzar as God commanded, they tried to save themselves by fleeing back to Egypt. Fleeing back to Egypt. So they typify those who profess faith in Christ, but go back into the world, back into idolatry, back to the law, back to the sin, proving that they never were truly Christ-redeemed. That's what they prove by that. So God asks a question of them. Wherefore commit ye this great evil? Wherefore commit ye this great evil? Now, if there's anybody here who would disobey our Lord Jesus Christ, anytime that you're faced with a situation and you know that if you do this thing, it's going to be directly contrary to what God's Word teaches us to do. You know you're going to disobey God if you do this. I want us to ask this question, wherefore commit I this great evil? What is the reason why I am committing this great evil? And I'll show you in context to this passage some things that why he says wherefore. Wherefore looks back to some things he said. Why did he say wherefore have you committed this evil? First of all, wherefore commit I this great evil when I have seen God's judgment upon the disobedient? I've seen God's judgment upon the disobedient, so why would I disobey God? Look here in verse 2. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, and he keeps calling himself that because he's in control of everything going on here. He's the Lord of hosts. He's the God of Israel. You know what I found remarkable? At this time that He's calling Himself the God of Israel, He has destroyed Israel. They've been besieged, Jerusalem's been destroyed, Israel's been destroyed, and they don't even really exist. They're in bondage in Babylon. But He is the God of His spiritual elect Israel, and that never changes. That never changes. But look what he says here. Ye have seen, you've seen all the evil, the judgment that I have brought upon Jerusalem and upon all the cities of Judah. Behold, this day they're a desolation. No man dwells there. Because of their wickedness, which they have committed to provoke me to anger. How'd they do it? They went to burn incense and to serve other gods whom they knew not, neither they, ye, nor your fathers. Now listen to this Word right here. I should think, when I know I'm fixing to disobey God's Word, and I'll tell you something about our sin, it's all willful sin. When you disobey the Word of God, you and I do it willfully. We do it willfully. We don't sin against our will. We sin willfully. And usually we know exactly what God's Word says, and we do it anyway. And when that's the case, brethren, I should ask myself this question. What does God call disobedience? He calls it here wickedness. He calls it wickedness. He says it's that which provokes him to anger. Now their disobedience was idolatry. But brethren, anything contrary to God's word is sin. Anything contrary to God's Word is wickedness, and it provokes God to anger. You and I have seen God's judgment upon the disobedient. We've seen it. In history, from Adam all the way up to our present time, we have seen the judgment of God upon the disobedient. We've seen it. God poured out judgment. We're looking at it here in our text. He poured out judgment on Jerusalem until they were a desolation. He poured out judgment on them until there was no man left inhabiting Jerusalem or any of the cities of Judah. Well, just beholding that judgment is not going to make us obedient to God. It's not the judgment of God that brings a sinner to repentance. What is it? It's the goodness of God. And you know what it's going to take to make you and I turn from evil? It's going to take God coming to us and making us see God's judgment upon the disobedient by looking to Christ. When we look to Christ on the cross, Remember this. Christ saw the judgment of God. He knew the judgment of God from eternity. He knew holy and just God and He knew the judgment of God. He is God. He knew the destruction that would be poured out on all who disobey God. He knew this. And He knew that judgment would come from the hand of His Father who He loved. And yet our Lord Jesus Christ entered into everlasting covenant with the Father to come to where His people are, just like He sent Jeremiah into Egypt, God sent His Son into this Egypt that we live in. And our Lord Jesus Christ entered covenant to come into this world, and the sinless one agreed to bear all the disobedience of His people. to bear all the wickedness of His people, to bear our idolatry, and our adultery, and our murder, and all our sin, all the sins of thought that we have. You imagine how much sin Christ bore. You and I can't even count the sins we've thought, much less the ones we've committed. That's just one sinner. Christ bore the disobedience of every single elect child of God throughout history. Talk about a weight. Talk about a weight. That's what He bore. And in love to His people, He went to that cross and we see on that cross the judgment of God justly poured out on the disobedient. We see Christ taking our punishment, the punishment of God's elect in our place, in our room, in our stand. Now if He blesses that to our heart, that will make you and I not want to disobey our Lord Jesus Christ. That will make you and I receive our brethren and be long-suffering to our brethren and restore our brethren in meekness. That will make us say, wherefore commit I this great evil seeing that I've seen God's judgment poured out on Christ in my room instead. That's what it will make you say. Now secondly, We brought to the point of not to sin against God. We should say, wherefore commit I this great evil when I've seen God's judgment upon all who ignore and reject God's Word? Why would I sin against God when I've seen what He does to those that reject His Word? Look here in verse 4. God says, Howbeit I sent to you all my servants the prophets, rising early, sending them, saying, O do not this abominable thing that I hate. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear to turn from their wickedness. They kept burning incense to other gods. Wherefore, my fury and mine anger was poured forth and was kindled in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, and they are wasted and desolate as at this day. Though Israel and Judah disobeyed, God continued to send His prophets to them. He continued. He sent His prophets immediately when God saw that they needed to be corrected. He says, rising early and sending them. God sent them immediately when they needed to be sent forth. God spoke His Word clearly and plainly to them through these prophets. He said, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate. Now brethren, in all of that we see four really good things that should constrain us from sin against God. Four things. One, God sent to me His preacher speaking God's Word. He sent His Word to me. And God has told me in His Word, whatever sin it is that I'm about to commit, God has said to me in His Word, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate. But not only that, think about the fact that disobedience to God, think of what it is, what God says it is. It's an abominable thing. That means it's a stinking thing. I don't want to be found with stinking spots all over me when my Savior returns. Remember Peter said, he said, seeing that you're looking for these things, be diligent that you may be found of Him without spot. I want to be found of Him not having my own righteousness, but the righteousness which is of Christ Jesus my Lord, so that I don't have any abomination. That's how I want to be found when He returns. And then another thing to consider is how God regards sin. God says here, I hate it. I hate it. Will we love that which God says He hates? Will we love that wickedness, that sin that God says He hates? And here's a fourth reason. God didn't just do for me what He did for these people. He sent them His prophets. And they spoke God's Word. But God didn't give them a new heart. He didn't bless that Word to their heart. He left them to do what they would with God's Word and to show you and me exactly what we did with God's Word before God made it affectionate in our heart. We turned our back and rejected God's Word. But God sent the Spirit to us and gave us spiritual life and faith and made us believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and trust Him. And when He did so, He made us see this. For these folks, God poured out His fury on them. He poured out His wrath upon them until they were desolate, totally desolate, totally destroyed. And yet, here we are exactly like them. Exactly like them. No difference. Disobeyed God's Word all our days of rebellion. And yet God poured out grace and mercy on us. He poured out grace on us. Justifying us. Justifying us freely from all our sin. That is the constraint of a believer. That's the constraint that makes a believer say, wherefore am I committing this evil? I see what God's done for me by His grace. Thirdly, we should ask ourselves, wherefore commit I this great evil when disobedience not only hurts me, but it also hurts my children. I'm not the only one that's hurt, though I am, it also hurts my children. Look here in verse 7. Therefore now thus saith the Lord, the God of hosts, the God of Israel, wherefore commit ye this great evil against your souls? against your own soul, to cut off from you man and woman, child and suckling out of Judah, to leave you none to remain. You provoke me unto wrath with the works of your hand. You burn incense to other gods in the land of Egypt, whether you're going to dwell, that you might cut yourselves off. That you might be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth. You bring in reproach. On God he's saying. Have you forgotten the wickedness of your fathers? The wickedness of the kings of Judah? The wickedness of their wives? And your own wickedness? And the wickedness of your wives? Which they've committed in the land of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem? They're not humbled. They're not contrite even unto this day, God said. Neither have they feared nor walked in my law nor in my statutes that I set before you and before your fathers. When I disobey God's gospel precepts, anything God teaches a believer in the New Testament, when I disobey His gospel precepts, my sin is not only against God, it's not only against Christ Jesus my Lord, I'm sinning against myself. I'm sinning against myself. I'm cutting off myself by this. Sin is the cause of everything sorrowful. Sin is the cause of everything sorrowful. It's the cause of us, by nature, not having any spiritual discernment. It's the cause of division. It's the cause of destruction. It's the cause of every disease. There's nothing but sorrow that comes out of sin. God said, through James, He said the end thereof is death. When sin is conceived and brought forth, it brings forth death. But not only does my sin hurt me, my sin hurts my children and their children. You know, Scripture says whenever Moses saw God's glory, he said, God said, I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. Now, that doesn't mean that God makes the children bear the punishment for the sins that the fathers committed. That's not what He means by that. What did God say in Ezekiel? That's what the children were complaining about. They were saying, we've had the fathers ate sour grapes and our teeth are set on edge. That was a proverbial saying they had. And it meant our fathers sinned and we're having to pay the price. We're having to be punished for it. God said no. God's just. He said the soul that sinneth, the individual soul that sinneth, it shall die. You're not going to die for the sin of your father, you're going to die for your own sin, God said. Well, here's what he means by that though. Due to their idolatry, due to the idolatry of the fathers, brethren, God cut off the fathers. His punishment was to cut off the fathers by destroying Jerusalem and destroying all the cities of Judah. That's how He punished the fathers. And because He did that, Their children didn't get to grow up in Jerusalem. Their children had to grow up in Egypt. They had to grow up in Egypt. Their children and their wives became idolaters like their fathers. They followed in their steps. The fathers passed to their children the results of their own judgment. What God gave them, it passed it on to them as well as teaching them idolatry and thus bringing judgment on themselves for their own sin. Let's see if I can illustrate this. You take a father, robs a store, gets caught, goes to prison. Well, his children are going to grow up without a father. That his iniquity is being visited on them in that regard. They don't have a father. They're going to have to quit school so they can go to work and support the family. And since they're not getting an education, and they're working and not making much money, they'll probably end up following their father's step and robbing a place too, just like him. You see what he means? That's how your sin never just affects you. You're the only one that will get punished for that sin. But now, for God's child, we don't get punished, we get corrected. He doesn't pour out justice on us. He already did that. He corrects us. But, whatever that correction involved, that's going to affect my children. You know, David sinned with Bathsheba, had her husband killed. God took the baby. And God told David, the sword will never leave your house, and it never did. And so everybody in his house had to suffer that sword not leaving the house, which was David's punishment. But they felt the effects of it. That's what God means by the visiting the iniquity. And He said, yet after all this judgment upon them, He said the fathers nor their wives were humbled in heart. And so neither the children nor their wives were humbled in heart. There was no gospel. There was no gospel there. And God said this is a heart issue. Your hearts are not humbled. Believer, here's how we're made obedient. Here's how we're made obedient. Our Father, our everlasting Father, The last Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, lived before God as our representative head. They saw their fathers live in sin and disobey God, and they bore the effects of it. Here's our constraint. We see our Father live in holiness of heart, humble before God, in perfect righteous obedience to God. They sinned against themselves, and the judgment God poured out on them, they were cut off. Our Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross, and He bore that judgment for us. I don't have time to read verses 11 down through here, but what you'll see is God set His face against them. God said, you've turned your face from me, I'll set my face against you. Well, God set His face against Christ in the room instead of His people. God poured out judgment on Him in the room instead of His people. The sword was awakened and was pierced into God's own Son in place of us, instead of into us. The sword of justice. And God says what Christ did, we did. When He was cut off, He says there, look there in In verse 11, 44 verse 11, he says there, I'm sorry, verse 45. He says, from the least to the greatest, by the sword, by the famine, there shall be an execration, an astonishment, a curse, a reproach. He said, I'm going to cut off every one of them. I'm going to cut off every one of them. And brethren, that's what God did in Christ for His people. In Christ, every elect man, woman, child, and suckling was cut off in Christ. When Christ was cut off. I am crucified with Christ. I am. I am. I was crucified with Christ. So when I'm tempted to disobey my Savior, Let me ask myself, why, wherefore am I committing this great evil seeing I'm crucified with Christ? My old man has been destroyed. You see, just like God destroyed all those in Judah, all the children, from the least to the greatest, He's going to destroy every sinner in this world. He has to. But the difference for you and me who He chose, He destroyed us in Christ. He cut us off in Christ. So that now the life I live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who liveth in me. That same One who loved me and gave Himself for me. I need to constantly remind myself of this. I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And everything I'm doing now that's true and right, I do it by one. I do it by the faithfulness of Christ living in me, controlling me, constraining me, turning me, directing me. It's all of Him. I can't turn my back on Him and commit this sin. Now lastly, When we're brought to this place, we should say, wherefore commit I this great evil when Christ has saved me from the bondage of my sin nature and continues to do so? How can I commit this evil when not only has He saved me from justice, He keeps saving me from my own sin nature, from myself. The wives heard Jeremiah indict them. As Jeremiah was preaching, he indicted these wives. And they stood it long as they could stand it. And they finally, they were proud, they were arrogant, they were stiff necked. And they finally stood it long as they could stand it. And so they looked God's prophet straight in the face. And they said this to him, verse 16. As for the word that thou has spoken unto us in the name of the Lord. And I'm sure they said that sarcastically. Because to them, all they saw was a man standing there. And they said, we will not hearken unto thee. We won't. We're going to certainly keep our vows to our idol God, but we won't hear a word you say in the name of God. And then, not only that, verse 19, they said, furthermore, They said, when we burned incense and poured out drink offerings, did we make these cakes to worship her and pour out these drink offerings unto her without our men? You're sitting here accusing us women of sin. Did we go and worship this idol and did not have our men right beside us? You know what they're doing? They're doing what sin does. Two things. One, they're justifying themselves for their idolatry. And two, they're throwing their husbands under the bus. That's the arrogant, proud heart we had while we were dead in trespasses and in sin. That's the exact same heart we had. And sadly, brethren, as believers, as believers, we still have this sinful flesh to deal with. We praise our idols for providing for us. Don't we? They said when we were offering these things, our idols provided for us. But when we stopped offering, we were wanting then our idols to stop providing for us. They attributed this to their idols. Don't we do that? Let me see. We praise our cleverness. We praise our business acumen. We praise our professions. I'm talking about our jobs. We praise our children. We praise our riches. These are all our idols, things that we praise and think have provided for us, provided something for us. But you know what? While we're praising our idol, And we're saying about how we, boy I was wise in how I handled that situation. Look how far ahead I come out. Look how I provided for myself and all the money I'm making now. Well we praised our idols. Just like Hosea did for Gomer. Laying the oil and the wool and the flax at her door. And Gomer praised her idols for doing it. All my lovers have been good to me. That's what we did. And all the while it was our Lord Jesus Christ providing for us. And He continues to be the one to provide for us. Christ is a faithful husband to His bride. He's a faithful husband to His bride. And He's a faithful loving father to His children. How was he faithful to his bride and to his children? He raised us up under the preaching of the gospel and saw to it that we heard the truth. That's what a faithful father does. That's what a faithful husband does. Our Lord Jesus, our husband, our father raised us up under the gospel and made sure we heard it. He interceded for us. He prayed the Father on our behalf for the Father to send forth the Spirit and give us life. And the Father did just that. He sent forth the Spirit. He put fear in our hearts. He gave us faith in Christ. And Christ clothed us in His righteousness. Christ feeds us the bread from heaven. And He provides temporal things for us too. He said, don't you worry about what you're going to eat and drink like the Gentiles do, like the unbelievers do. He said, your heavenly Father knows you have need of these things. He provided Christ, He'll provide these things for you. And He keeps providing for us, and as we need it, He continues to correct us through the preaching of the Word. I hope right now somebody is being corrected by the preaching of God's Word. This is what He does through the preaching of His Word. He's a faithful husband. He's a loving father. And He chastens the children whom He loves through His Word. Now if He had done for these women in our text, if He had done for them through Jeremiah's preaching, what He's done for you and me. They would have loved Christ and they would have loved Jeremiah. They wouldn't have talked to Jeremiah that way if God did for them what He's done for us in our heart. The man God used to preach the gospel to me, he could do no wrong. He could do no wrong. He was a sinner. Oh, he said and did sinful things, but not in my eyes. In my eyes, he could do no wrong. That's the man God used to preach the gospel to me. He was my grandfather and he was a grandfather to me. And he was also my pastor. And anything he needed, I was there. If he needed anything, he needed help, I was there to help him. Why? Because He preached the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to me. God puts His love in our hearts, love for Christ, and love for our brethren, and love for those who minister the gospel to us. It's all of God. He did it all, but He used a worm like me to preach it. And God gave me a heart for that worm and the other worms that were in that congregation. Because that's what God's love does. It unites us with Christ and with one another. Now, when He chastens us, you know what we do? We praise our husband for any ability we have. Even ability to believe. They said, was it not our husbands that were with us? And we say, is it not Christ our husband with us that makes us to to come and believe on Him and to love one another. Doesn't He give us the ability to do anything good? He gets the praise and the glory for it. God told them, verse 21, He said, Did not the Lord remember your idolatry and came it not into His mind? But He says to you and me, I remember your sins no more for Christ's sake. I've forgiven them and I don't remember them anymore for Christ's sake. Now you go forgive your brethren. That's what He says to us. Since they had sworn to keep their vows, God said, Behold, I have sworn by My great name, and I am setting My face against you, and your name won't ever come out of My mouth again. My name won't come out of your mouth again. You know what He has done for us? Because He could swear by no greater, He swore by Himself, saying, Blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. Due to their sins, verse 27, God said, I'll watch over them for evil and not for good till they be consumed. Due to Christ, God says, I'll watch over you for good and justify you and keep you until I bring you home to glory. What He did for them in judgment is just the opposite of what He does for us in grace. He gave him a sign. He said, you just know this, that my words are going to stand. You're going to find out who's true, God or you. And he said, here's how you're going to know it. You ran to Egypt trying to escape the king of Babylon, because I let the king of Babylon take Zedekiah, the king of Judah captive. So you ran to Egypt trying to save yourself from that. He said, I'm going to turn the king of Babylon and make him go in there and attack Egypt and conquer Egypt and bring you out of there and bring you into bondage too. And then you're going to know this was God's Word. God's Word is true, not mine. But you know what He does for you and me in Christ? He's given you and me assurance in that He's raised Christ from the dead. And He's given us the earnest of the Spirit or the Holy Spirit, which is the earnest, the guarantee of our inheritance until Christ returns to redeem His purchased possession. So believer, what I'm trying to show you is this. Christ has delivered His people from Egypt. Let us not disobey His Word and run back and get into bondage in all of that which He's delivered us from. Instead, let us call out to God to save us. Let's call out to Christ to save us. And when He gives you His Word, as Mary said, whatsoever He says to you, do it. If it's in this book, it's for your good, and it's for His glory. Do it. Do it. And when you do, give Him all the glory, because that's the only way you did it.