This morning we're going to spend a little bit of time considering the words of the prophet Jeremiah or rather the words of the Lord as they come to us through the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 6. Jeremiah 6 verses 16 through 30. Thus says the Lord, stand by the roads and look and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is and walk in it and find rest for your souls. But they said we will not walk in it I set watchmen over you, saying, pay attention to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, we will not pay attention. Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what will happen to them. Hear, O earth, behold, I am bringing disaster upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not paid attention to my words. And as for my law, they have rejected it. What used to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land. Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifice is pleasing to me. Therefore thus says the Lord, behold, I will lay before this people stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble. Fathers and sons together, neighbor and friend shall perish. Thus says the Lord, behold, a people is coming from the north country. A great nation is stirring from the farthest parts of the earth. They lay hold on bow and javelin. They are cruel and have no mercy. The sound of them is like the roaring sea. They ride on horses, set in array as a man for battle against you, O daughter of Zion. We have heard the report of it. Our hands fall helpless. Anguish has taken hold of us. Pain as of a woman in labor. Go not out into the field, nor walk on the road, for the enemy has a sword. Terror is on every side. Oh, daughter of my people, put on sackcloth and roll in ashes. Make mournings as for an only son. Most bitter lamentation, for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us. I have made you a tester of metals among my people that you may know and test their ways. They are all stubbornly rebellious, going about with slanders. They are bronze and iron. All of them act corruptly. The bellows blow fiercely. The lead is consumed by the fire. In vain the refining goes on, for the wicked are not removed. Rejected silver they are called, for the Lord has rejected them. And those last two verses are also the verses we will focus on together this morning. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, this morning it is our privilege to celebrate the Lord's Supper again. And as we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we celebrate our reconciliation with God, and we celebrate that he strengthens us in our faith. For that reason, it might come as a surprise to you that we read an Old Testament judgment prophecy this morning. The prophet Jeremiah spent 40 years preaching to God's people that the Babylonians were coming and they needed to repent from their sins. For most of that time the people ignored his words. Finally in 586 before Christ, the Babylonians did come and they did destroy the nation, they burnt the temple. And in our passage that has not yet happened, but the Lord is laying out the reasons why it will. It's not just that these people have totally strayed from his law, it's that they ignore any attempt at correction. And God takes that very seriously. Look at all the lengths he went to in order to warn his people. Bear in mind again that Jeremiah ministered among these people for 40 years. That's a long time to be in one place. And in verse 17, the Lord says, I set watchmen over you, saying, pay attention to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, we will not pay attention. The trumpet was a warning that disaster was coming. The people knew that, they heard the trumpet, they knew what it meant, but they didn't care, they didn't take it seriously, they ignored it completely. And it wasn't that they weren't religious, and this is probably the most puzzling thing of all, if you think about it, that Jeremiah actually spent time preaching during the ministry of King Josiah, and things were actually, on the outside at least, going relatively well. Josiah was a good king. He attempted many reforms, but apparently they never really caught on. They never really stuck because the people simply didn't take it to heart. So Josiah has a son, Jehoiakim, and under Jehoiakim, things go really bad really quickly. In fact, in Jeremiah 36, many chapters later, we read how Jehoiakim reacted to Jeremiah's words. It says there that it was the ninth month. So what had happened was Jeremiah had written out more prophecies and passed them on to Jehoiakim in a scroll. And it says it was a ninth month. And the king was sitting in the winter house and there was a fire burning in the fire pot before him. As Yehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a knife and throw them into the fire in the fire pot until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the fire pot. that happened a little bit later than our text, but it gives you an idea of what kind of people Jeremiah was dealing with. They deliberately refused to pay attention to God's word. Is it that different for us sometimes though? If the Lord gives his word to us and we don't read it, We leave it on the shelf, we don't apply it to our lives, we don't work with it. Whether you don't read it and leave it on a shelf or whether you don't read it and burn it, is there any difference at all? The problem is that the attitude that comes with this is very deeply rooted. And it comes through in our passage. In our text, God calls Jeremiah to be a tester of metals, he says in verse 27, I've made you a tester of metals among my people. Technical term for a tester of metals is an assayer. An assayer is somebody who tests metals to see what kind of quality they are. And in this particular illustration, he doesn't just test the metals, but he wants to find out how much silver is in it and then refine it and keep the silver. And verse 29 describes that process for us in the way that it did happen back then. It says, the bellows blow fiercely, the lead is consumed by fire. So silver often is mixed in with lead in its natural state. And if you want to get the silver out, it depends in part on the purity of your lead. Sometimes you need to add more lead as a kind of a flux. So the proportions had to be just right. And if it was impure or if the furnace was too hot, then it wouldn't work. And in that day and age, of course, they didn't have thermometers in the way that we do. And so, this was a really difficult process. It took a lot of skill to do this work. They didn't have our equipment. So, if you were an assayer in those days, you would put the lead ore in a special container that had pores in it. So, it would be earthenware, for instance. Earthenware is a porous container. You would heat it to about a thousand degrees Celsius, and then at just the right moment, you would blast air across the top of it. And if you did it right, the lead would be absorbed into the pores, the porous walls of the earthenware container and it would leave behind a little bit of silver because silver has a higher melting point. But if there was not enough lead or if the lead was, if the ore was impure, it would fail and you would get a scum of copper oxide or tin that would form on the top of your silver and it would make a big mess and after that there was no way of fixing it. So Jeremiah has tested the ways of the people against the word of God and they are coming up short. He's preaching against them, but it makes no difference. In vain the refining goes on. They are rebellious, they cannot be refined, they are too impure, their sin is too deeply rooted into them. It cannot be separated from them. And after all of that preaching, all that is left is an even bigger mess. How profoundly sin destroys people's lives. How tragic it is. How wicked people are. Their wickedness is not removed. Wickedness is ingrained in people as a whole because none of them are completely good. So how do we apply all of this to ourselves this morning before we celebrate the Lord's Supper? Well, we're not that different, are we? Every time that we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we declare our own unrighteousness. We say, these things are true. The Lord's Supper is a verdict. It is a verdict over our sins. It's the verdict of death. And we confirm that verdict when we eat and drink the bread, which represents the judgment of God over sin. It's one of the things that it represents. The breaking of the bread, the pouring out of the wine, represents God's judgment over sin. When we participate in that, we ascent to that verdict over our sins. We say, this is true about me as well. This is what I deserve. But we do more than that. We also confess that Christ suffered that death for us. Christ removed our sin. As the forum puts it so well, by his death he has removed for us the cause of our eternal hunger and misery, which is sin, and obtained for us the life-giving spirit. His Holy Spirit purifies us. The Word of God says so. The Word of God can be trusted. Psalm 12 says that the words of God are like silver, seven times refined. You contrast the impurity of God's people on one side, and then the clarity and purity of God's Word on the other. Silver, not just refined once, but seven times, as pure as it gets. Seven is the number of perfection. So yes, that word says we are condemned sinners, it pronounces judgment over our sins, but it also points us to Christ, and that's what the sacrament does. In verse 30 of our text, Jeremiah said, God's people are called rejected silver for the Lord has rejected them. He has cast them off. Jeremiah couldn't help his people. He was helpless in the face of their sin. His words could only condemn. But Christ, Christ was cast out for us. Christ was condemned for our sins. Christ went into the furnace of God's wrath. He was tested and he was shown to be completely pure. Through faith we are united with Him, and then all of His purity becomes ours. All of His holiness becomes ours. All of His righteousness becomes ours. When we come to the table this morning in true repentance for our sins, we can be sure that we are completely clean. The bread and the wine promise it. And they also strengthen us in our fight against the ongoing pollution of sin in our lives. Hebrews 9 verse 14 says that the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the living and the true God. But then let us take that service seriously. We have been cleansed from sin. Do not go back and pollute yourself again. Let us not go back to that which ought to be left behind. Instead, let us come to the table in a spirit of genuine repentance over our sins. And then we can sing the words of Psalm 139 at the table with a clear conscience. Search me, O God, I know my heart. Try me, I know my thoughts. See if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. Amen.