Book of Jeremiah for a few minutes this morning. I just want to visit with you in this book. When you open it, you know about the man, of course, and what a man of God he was. God called him to the office of prophet before he was ever born. Chapter one tells us. And with that call, God gave him certain promises. The promises should have been a giveaway to him as to what his ministry was going to be. First thing that God promised him is you're looking down through it verse 8 He told him don't fear the people because I'll protect you and deliver you Now that's one of the first promises he gives him. I stop and think about that one for a minute Don't fear the people. I'll protect you and I'll deliver you that should have given him a little bit of a hint about what he was going to be going into and what he's going to be facing he goes on and he says I'll put my words in your mouth in verse 9 of chapter 1 what a promise that is and that he would put, God would put his words in this man's mouth. Now, that's a tremendous promise, but at the same time, he was going to be saying some things, again, that the people might not like. Maybe that was the reason he was going to have to be protected from some of the people, because God was going to preach his message through this man. And when you get God's words, he goes on a little bit later and tells him, is not my word like a fire and like a hammer? Well, both of those hurt. And so that was going to create some problems. They went on in chapter one, you get out about the last verse of it. He says, told him that people are going to be against you, but I'm going to be with you and they'll not get anywhere against you. So all the way through here as he begins, he's promised that your ministry that I've called you to is not going to be an easy ministry. You know, we live in a day and a time when I don't know of any ministry that's an easy ministry. If it's easy, you're probably not doing anything. Old Dr. Bob Senior used to tell us, you can't move without creating friction. And in this day and age that we live in, people do not want to hear the word of God. And I think so many times of as I look out here this morning, you see these guys that are all primed and ready to go into ministry. And yet, you know that some of you are going to face some hard things. It's not going to be an easy thing. And you need to realize that right now and be preparing yourself right now for that which you're going to face. You know, people are not going to love you all the time. You'd hope they would part of the time, but they're not going to love you all the time. Now, God was going to be sending him to prophesy to Judah. I go into that background, you know, all of that. But what a people they were going to be. He even told him what they were going to be like as he went to them, because God tells him that, first of all, these people have done two things. They had forsaken Him, you get into chapter 2, and had hewn them out their own cisterns, so they had forsaken the God of heaven, but they had created their own gods. You know, again, we live in the midst of a people today who do not want the God of heaven to be their God. They don't want the book to be their book. Because again, as they come to it, it's not that they don't have a sense of need for, as he talks about cisterns and living water there, it's not that they don't have a sense of need for water. They know they need water. They just don't want his water. They know they have a need for God. Every human being on the face of the earth was created to worship something or someone. We were made that way. So they knew they had a need for God, but they just didn't want that God of heaven. They wanted their own God. And how many people are we ministering to today or going to minister to who have created their own little God? They don't like a God that's going to tell them what to do and how to live and all of that. They want a God that they can dictate to. Now, there's some sitting here this morning like that. We have so many times people just exactly like that. Now, be careful that you're not doing that. So many times we say, well, you know, I believe that this is what needs to be right in my life. That's not where you begin. You begin with what the book says. What does the word of God tell you to do? And then you come along and you conform your life to that word of God. So many times, though, we have students here and all of us have been guilty of this at some time or other. You write out your own agenda and you submit that agenda to God. And the only thing you want is not his approval, but for him just simply to sign that for you. And you run your own life. You do your own thing. You know, that's one of the most dangerous places and the most dangerous areas you can ever be in. I think back over my life, and it's been a rather lengthy one right now. And I think of the times that I made the biggest mess of things was when I decided I was going to take charge and control my life. And every time I picked it up and tried to do it in my own agenda, I always fell flat on my face. And some of those falls were hard. But Some of those falls just made me, again, tear up my agenda. Say, okay, Lord, what do you want? And so as you come down through here, that's what's happening. Now, Jeremiah, as he went to the people, he'd already been told what their problem was going to be, and it was going to be a heart problem, really. And as he goes down through, oh, you get into chapter four and so forth in here, and he begins to talk to them, and he wants them to wash your heart from bitterness that you might be saved, he tells them in chapter four. So he knew he was going to be dealing with a people who had a hard, difficult heart. They had a wicked heart. And so he knew what he was facing. And God told him, though, that he was going to make Jeremiah's words as fire and the people would. I want to think about that for a moment. It was God's message. And every time I read that, I think the only thing God's telling there is make sure you get your message from me. Don't preach your own messages. Make sure your message is from me, because my message, my word is going to be fire. And it's going to be suited to the wooden hearts and lives of people. So be sure you get it from me. And then you get in chapter 5, and when they heard his message then, he's about verse 23 there, it says they had a revolting and a rebellious heart when they heard what God had to say. Is it always easy to receive and to accept what God says to you, whether it's in the Word of God or whether it's from the pulpit somewhere? Not always is it easy to accept. But isn't it marvelous today to know that we have a God that's willing to speak to us? That's one of the greatest proofs to me that God still loves me, is the fact that He will speak to me and correct me when I'm wrong. Somebody's asked, well, how can you know you're saved? One of my greatest salvation thoughts, even security thoughts is whom the Lord loves. He chastens because he must love me an awful lot. He just whales the fire out of me about half the time. So I know he must love me. Listen, if God's not getting on your case, you better stop and examine something real quick. You better stop and just take notice of where you are. But he gets on down to chapter 6 of here and it says, were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush. That's chapter 6, verse 15. Now, we pass over that verse a lot of times. He gets on over and he repeats almost the same thing when you get to chapter 8 and verse 12. There he says, they were not ashamed, neither could they blush. We live in that kind of a day and a time. I think one of the most beautiful things in all the world to see is, well, especially a young lady that blushes. I know that's embarrassing to some of them, but that's one of the most precious things you have, is the ability to blush. Fellas, you need that too. What's happened? We've been inundated with so much today. We've been just bombarded with so much today of worldly philosophies that we can, some of you can turn on the television, you can watch off-colored programs and everything, and it not bother you. We've lost our sensitivity to what is sin and what's not. And we've lost our sensitivity to it to the point to where we no longer blush. And because we don't, we're dealing with people who no longer blush. In other words, they do not see sin as a big problem. And so we must go out and help them to open their eyes and see that what they are doing is sin. It's an abomination to God. And so it was to that kind of people that Jeremiah was going to go minister. They didn't want the God of heaven for their God. They created their own. They didn't see sin as an abomination. They didn't even blush at it. They had a rebellious heart. And God says, I'm going to send you that kind of people. You think, boy, am I glad I wasn't a Jeremiah. Well, I am too. He's one of my heroes in Scripture, but I'm glad I wasn't in his case. I'm glad God never called me to go through what he went through. But listen, you and I are going to go to the same kind of people. They're the same, whether it was in that day and time or this day and time that we live in. People don't change a whole lot. They're still the same. That's why I get tired sometimes when I see churches and ministries and so forth trying to do away with, well, I appreciate what was said this week about preaching. Trying to do away with preaching and getting on with some other things. You know, the drama and so forth. We've got to get back to preaching. Simply preaching the word of God. That's where God has promised His power, fellas and gals. That's where the power is. It's not in your thoughts. You can be the most creative person on the face of the earth. You can make and deliver masterful sermons. But understand something, if you don't get them from God, and if they're not from this book, they're going to fall over on the floor and that's going to be where they are, right in front of the pulpit, piled up right there. And so it has to come from the word of God itself. But we get out there in the ministry. And are you going to be appreciated all the time? Probably not too much. Michael here, he's going to Deutschland. I'll clue him in right quick. They ain't gonna like what he's saying. He may be over there and he may minister for the next 10 years before he gets the first converse. I know a brother, Tom Hastings, is up in the Koblenz area. He's been there for 25 years and he's finally built a church of somewhere in excess of 40 people. 25 years. He's got 40 good people now. People don't appreciate it and So many times I think the spiritual scene out there today in pastorates and in churches is littered with quitters Because they got out there and it's not what they expected Listen spend some time in the book of Jeremiah because your ministry is not going to be a whole lot different than this You're not going to be appreciated Every sermon you preach, people are not going to come up and throw their arms around you and say, what a wonderful preacher and message that was. Most of the times they do that, they're lying. I told the people one time in one of our churches, I said, look, don't keep telling me that that was a good message. I know whether it was good or not. I said, I'd rather for you to come out and tell me that message stunk and kicked me in the shins. Well, I dismissed the service. I standing at the door greeting people. One lady walked by and give me the awfulest look and kicked me right in the shins. But, you know, I appreciated that more because she got my point, because she didn't she didn't like what the word of God did for her. And you limp for a day or two, but at least it was more truthful than what most of them say. Like the pastor that was leaving message, finished the message on Sunday morning. He's standing at the door shaking hands with people as they leave. One lady, a wheelmaker, a Mrs. Smith, this morning went up to him and said, Oh, pastor, we just love you. You're a model preacher. So after everybody was gone and everything, he's in the car going home with his wife and family, and he turns to his wife and he said, Did you hear what Mrs. Smith said about me? She called me a model preacher. That night, before bedtime, he's sitting there reading again and he looks at his wife again and he says, Honey, wasn't that sweet of Mrs. Smith? She called me a model preacher. Next morning at breakfast, He reminds her again what Mrs. Smith said. She dismisses herself from the breakfast table, goes to the study, comes back in a few minutes with a dictionary. And she read to him, model, small imitation of the real thing. She may have been doing him a great favor. But here's Jeremiah, and he's going to a people And listen, even though he's a, I think, a giant in the faith. And he is to go through everything, did think of what all he was going to suffer. He was not going to be able to marry. Well, that discouraged a bunch of you in here right now. God's come down to you and said, you're not going to marry. What are you going to do? What else can do in college? There goes your college career down the tubes because you're here on a hunting expedition. And the problem is most of you spend more time hunting than you do in your studies. But you do. But as he comes through here, here is this man that's told all of these. These are the kind of people you're going to. That's kind of people you're going to go to. Here's how they're going to receive your message. That's how they're going to receive your message. Here's what's going to happen to you. And it's all spelled out for him. And here he is called before he was ever born. He was trained and prepared for that which he's going to do. And God had done the right job on preparing this man. But although he had all of that going for him, did he ever falter a little bit in his ministry? Think of the promises of God that he had. The other people are going to be against me. I'm going to stand with you. Do you have that promise? Sure you do. He told him that people aren't going to like you. Did God ever tell you that? Sure. And so here he is preparing this man for what he's going to go out and do. And again, you're going to go to a people who have no shame about sin. I've not been in Forest City all that long, but I've been there long enough to know that our biggest problem in Forest City is finding lost people. There are none. Everybody is saved. What they're doing, their lifestyle, what they're practicing and how they're living is not an abomination to them. They don't blush about those things. They're not even ashamed of them. Because they're on their way to heaven. I could camp there for a while because I think the way we witness today to people is an abomination also. We end up inoculating a lot of people against the gospel of Jesus Christ. I was telling some of the folks last night, I've taught those courses. Too soon old, too late smart. Old Pennsylvania Dutch saying. I've taught those courses. I've taught people. When you go up to a house and you knock on the door and you start talking to people, you get in that positive mode. You start nodding your head and you start talking to them. And the more you nod your head, the more you get them to nodding. And before long, as I told the folks at church last night, remember, well, you're too young to remember the little hula girls in the back window of the cars. It used to be that every time you hit a bump or anything, they removed. That's kind of people we get. And we teach people the positive act. You nod and everything that you want to get saved, don't you? And by the time you get to that point, everybody's nodding their head. Yeah, they want to get saved. Would you accept Christ right now as your personal savior? Oh, yes, I'd receive him right now. It's my personal savior. And they pray some little prayer, have no idea what they did. No idea what they did. Then you let somebody else come in there a few weeks later. And try to witness to, oh, I made a decision. Way back there. And so he's going, Jeremiah is going to go to a people that have no shame. They set their own course. And as he goes along now, he will come with me. Chapter 20 is the one I want to get to this morning. Come to chapter 20. And I was in here this morning early. There it is. You come to chapter 20. And in the margin of my Bible, I have written there, holy heartburn. As you sat here this morning, whether you be fellows getting ready to the ministry or young ladies getting ready for whatever God has you for, we all need to get a case of holy heartburn. Now, as you read into these verses, you come into chapter 20 and you come down to verse nine. Jeremiah is saying, then I said, I will not make mention of him nor speak anymore in his name. Who's he not going to mention and who's he not going to speak anymore in his name? The Lord. He said, every time I speak in his name, every time I preach his word, I get nothing but trouble. I'm not gonna do that anymore. I'm quitting. These people don't like me. He's off in a corner with a spiritual thumb in his mouth, pouting. Understand something, people ain't gonna like you. If you're gonna stay true to the word of God, they're not gonna like you. They're not gonna appreciate the message. And they're gonna try their best to turn you off. So here's Jeremiah, this great man. We're chapter 20 now. Go back some time and read what's happened to him up to this point. All of the promises of God that he's had. Everything that God has given to him and told him about and how God has powerfully used him. And yet he gets to that point in his life where he says, I'm going to quit. I'm going to give it up, it's not worth it. I deserve a lot better than this. What do you deserve today? You know, it's a good day if I get up and can't find my name in the obituary column. I'm not in the hospital and I'm not in jail. That's a good day. And I'm not in hell. Well, people ask me sometimes, they say, Brother Cummings, how are you? My usual reply is, if it was any better, I couldn't stand it. And they think that's just a little cliche. But listen, it's not. It's not. Who are you today and what are you today? if you know Jesus Christ as personal Savior. But sometimes you're just suffering through school. My bills, I'm hard to pay my school bills and all these studies and these mean old teachers that are, you know, I just don't deserve all this. No, you deserve hell. You're getting grace now. Just simply getting grace. So old Jeremiah says, I'll not make mention of him anymore. I'll not speak his name anymore. But Oh, and I like this. The moment he'd made that decision, notice now what was happening. His word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones. And I was weary with forbearing and I could not stay. I could not quit. Fellas, if you've got then, gals, if you've got the least idea of quitting down the road somewhere, quit today. Quit today before you start influencing people in a ministry somewhere. I mean, just bail out today and go get you another job somewhere. But here he said, I wanted to. Now you're going to want to. But the test of your character is going to be, what does it take to stop you? And one of the best things that you can do against the problems and the difficulties and everything that you're going to face is to get a holy heart. Now, a little bit later in chapter 23, he says, Is not my word fire? What's going to stoke that fire in your heart? The word of God. You better start packing that word of God in your heart and life today, not in your mind. I I live in in fear because I was there. I've sat in the classrooms. I have studied the word of God. And one of the easiest places to get backslidden and cold of heart is in a Bible college. Listen, and you will get that way too because you read the Word of God, you studied the Word of God this week so that you could pass a test somewhere along the line. And until you start learning to study the Word of God to build a fire in your heart, it's not going to do anything for you. Now, the fire comes from the Word of God. And you're going to have to be in that Word of God. And you're going to have to be in that Word of God more than just a few minutes a day to check off your devotional time. One of the things that bothers me, I'm just unloaded here this morning. The one minute Bible. That's an abomination. That has to be an insult to the God of heaven. God, I'm going to give you a minute today. Well, whoop-dee-doo. That's an insult to the God of heaven. Did you ever notice how, now we get up right at the last minute, and I've noticed, I go over there to the cafeteria in the morning, and not too many of you have missed breakfast. I was sitting in there this morning, I was wondering how many of these students are in here because they have to have breakfast, but they've not been in the word of God yet. You had to have the donuts and muffins this morning, but you hadn't been with God yet. What does that tell you about yourself? Doesn't that say I love my stomach more than I love God? You'd be much better off in a lot of ways. Some of us would be, if we foregone the donuts and spent the time in the Word of God. You're setting and you're hearing and you're getting, I tell you, some of the best training you'll ever get. And you're going to be grounded here in the things of God, in the word of God. It's going to be preached to you, taught to you, and you're going to be grounded in it. And it's not going to catch fire. Do you love the Lord this morning? You know, that's an act of your will. The scripture comes along and he says, husbands, love your wives. I love a guy that comes in my office and said, look, we're having troubles. I just can't love my wife. What do you mean you can't? What you're saying is you won't. Lord, if God commanded you to and whatever God commands you to, he'll give you the ability to do it. You have to. Besides that, you're supposed to love your neighbor and if she's not your neighbor, well, she's not. What is she supposed to do with your enemies? I mean, you can't escape it. But it's an act of your will. And it tells us to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our mind. That's another act of our will. And this morning, the thing that's taking your attention and everything away from the God of heaven is your love for other things. You're fixed on the love of other things. Paul wrote, and he said, Demas, hath forsaken me, having loved this present world. He had will. How can you? Well, I know how you can because we're in the flesh. But you look around you at this world that we live in today. The mess that it's in. Yeah, you have to love the people. God loved him. And we have to love him with such a burning passion that we share the gospel of Jesus Christ. But as far as the system of the world is, how can you love this thing? Where people are so wicked, that they would slaughter innocent people. How could you love this? And so it's an act of our will to love the Lord, our God. We have to love him. We have to love his word. And our problem is today, we do not love him and we do not love his word. We give lip service to it. We nod to it, but we don't love it. My my illustration, my own heart and life. You said a coconut cream pie before me. Nice flaky crust. good homemade meringue that comes up just the right, and it's just been browned in the oven just right. Now, I love that. I love it to the extent that if my wife doesn't hide most of it on me, I will eat it all in one sitting. And she can tell you, I will not share with her if I can get away with it. I wish I loved the Lord that much. I wish I loved His word that much. Oh, how I do. I want to, but it's an act of my will. Will I? Will I do it? John the Baptist, Matthew chapter three, he said, there's going to be one coming after me. It's going to baptize you with water. and with fire. We need to take that word of God, which is fire, and that baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is fire, and let that at least warm our innards a little bit, if it doesn't stoke a fire in us. I think we have that fire burning within us, it's gonna be seen. People are gonna notice it. Now, I grew up in the days in which our heat in the wintertime was an old coal stove in the house. You know, you had the old warm morning. Don't know what the old warm morning stove was. We didn't have that much wood up in Illinois on the prairie, so we burned coal. But the front door of that stove had what was called Eisenglass little windows in it. Not high-tech plastics and not glass, but Eisenglass, a mineral that they sliced very thin, and it was semi-translucent. But it was always great to come in on a cold morning and know that my dad had gotten up and already had the fire going, you look and you could see the glow of that fire through those little eyes and glass windows. I can remember on cold evenings, sitting in front of that stove and just watching the fire through that eyes and glass. You know, people should be able to walk up to us and see that glow. There's a fire in us, a fire that we're not complacent about the things of God. but that it's got a hold of us. Not that we've got a hold of God or his word, but that they've got a hold of us. Because once God gets a hold of you, he ain't never gonna let you go. He's not going to. And you look out and you dream sometimes and you think, boy, wouldn't it be marvelous if everyone here caught fire. We could impact the world. We could do it. If the Lord Jesus Christ could take 12 men, and one of them was a rascal, and turn his world upside down, oh, imagine what you could do with a crowd like this if they caught fire. First of all, we not have any quitters out there. They might think about it like a Jeremiah, but the fire's still burning there, and when we wanted to, we couldn't. We couldn't, no matter what the future held. The military, you speak of, Baptism by fire. Brother Sheets and I were talking about this just a couple of days ago. The first time you ever get into a firefight with somebody, you're scared spitless. You're just scared. But something happens to you in the midst of that. And the next firefight and the next firefight, you're a changed person. And they speak of that as being baptized under fire or by fire. And that's what it takes to harden you and make you a good soldier. Is it not true also for the cause of Christ? Many will fear that baptism by fire. When the devil starts throwing the hot rocks and everything at you, you're going to become afraid. And you'll never go on. I remember in basic training, we always had to, you had to crawl about 75 yards we had under barbed wire that was strung 24 inches above the ground. And you had to get on your belly and you had to crawl. Couldn't fasten the strap of your helmet. Some of the old heads out here do that because as you're crawling through, there's going to be explosions going off all around you. And you can't stand up because 24 inches above the ground, there's a machine gun that's going back and forth and just firing over your head. It's trying to get you used to the fire. But I've seen kids that almost stand up. So scared. But once you went through that, and you got that baptism of fire, something happened. But I think in our Christian life, oftentimes, we give up right there. And we wanna quit. But listen, get that fire in your bones, get that fire in your heart that won't let you quit. We've got a world that desperately, it needs to meet people like that. that they cannot, no matter how rough things go, they cannot and will not quit. But they'll just simply share the gospel until the day they die. Who was it, Billy Sunday, that said he was going to chew on the devil as long as he had teeth, and when he lost all of his teeth, he'd gum him to death. In other words, he's not going to quit. And some of us are awful close to the point of gumming something to death, but at least stay there. When it's all over and God turns the switch off and says, that's it. I still, if I'm still here and I think I will be, uh, I want to still be working. I want to still be doing it. I don't want to have it set over me. He was a quitter. Now we have some inscription. Remember John Mark? Paul said, I'll never have that young man with me again. He's a quitter. That's a Cummings transmission. But then when John, or when Paul is in prison, he's getting down toward the end of his life. Who did he want to send come to him? John Mark. He said he'd be profitable to me. Now he was a quitter. You might have quitter genes in your bones and you may quit. But oh, listen, let that fire burn again and get back and just simply do it. Do it. Would you let the word of God and the spirit of God just build a fire in you? is simply build a fire in you.