Well, I invite you this evening to take the Word of God and join me in the Old Testament in the book of the prophet Jeremiah. If you have your Bibles open to the prophet of Jeremiah. And we're going to begin reading together in just a moment with Jeremiah chapter number 9. I speak to you this evening on the subject enlisting tears. Laughter and crying are universal languages. known and understood by all. And tears are something that are very well known unto God. Now, anyone can cry when they are hurting, but the question comes to us, who can cry when God is hurting? And God is enlisting tears not to solicit His sympathy or pity, But God is enlisting tears that we might be engaged in prayer. And so, as we come to this ninth chapter of the writings of the prophet Jeremiah, beginning in verse number 1, O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people and go from them. For they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies, but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth. For they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not Me, saith the Lord. Take ye heed every one of his neighbor, and trust ye not in any brother. For every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbor will walk with slanderers. And they will deceive everyone his neighbor, and will not speak the truth. They have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity. Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit. Through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the Lord. Therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, behold, I will melt them and try them. For how shall I do for the daughter of my people? Their tongue is as an arrow shot out. It speaketh deceit. One speaketh peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his weight. Shall not I visit them for these things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation. Because they are burned up so that none can pass through them. Neither can men hear the voice of the cattle. Both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled. They are gone. And I will make Jerusalem heaps and a den of dragons. And I will make the cities of Judah desolate without an inhabitant. Who is the wise man that he may understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of the Lord hath spoken, that he may declare it? For what the land perisheth and is burned up like a wilderness, that none passeth through. And the Lord saith, Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walk therein. but have walked after the imagination of their own heart, after Balaam, which their fathers taught them. Therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink. I will scatter them also among the heathen, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send a sword after them till I have consumed them. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come, and send for cunning women, that they may come, and let them make haste. And take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters. For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion. How are we spoiled? We are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because our dwellings have cast us out. Yet hear the word of the Lord, O ye women, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth. And teach your daughters wailing, and every one her neighbor lamentation. For death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without and the young men from the streets. Speak, thus saith the Lord. Even the carcasses of men shall fall as dung upon the open field, and as the handful after the harvest men, and none shall gather them. Thus saith the Lord. Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, saith the Lord." If you're in the habit of marking your Bibles I would like for you to mark this expression given to us in the middle of verse number one, that I might weep. Can you imagine the desire of this prophet's heart that his head was waters and his eyes a fountain of tears? Just like a child would go up to a drinking fountain that's primed with plenty of water and just push the button and it would just begin to flow. We find a man who's brokenhearted, a man with tears. If you'll hold your place here and turn back to the book of Psalms in the 56th chapter, In Psalm chapter 56 and verse number 8, we find that tears are something that are very precious to God. In 56 and verse 8, Thou tellest my wanderings, put thou my tears into thy bottle. Are they not in thy book? Here's a man that's suffering and hurting. but it's reflecting upon life and a book that God has given and a bottle that God holds. This is speaking, no doubt, about the book of remembrance. And there's a book for journaling and there's a bottle for crying. I don't know when this is going to be reviewed, this book and this bottle, but perhaps at the judgment seat of Christ, at the very end of life, is God takes notes about our life. A book of remembrance is written before Him. And perhaps the judgment seat of Christ is not so much a public thing but a private thing where our entire life is reviewed with God. And God reviews the high points, the low points, what we did right, what we did wrong. But He sits with us in a very dear time of openness, of heart to heart. It's very special for a parent to take their child and the little notes and insignias they have written in the child's baby book and to explain to them that when you were six months old, you first said, Goo-goo-ga-ga. My mother took my shoes and embronzed them and hung them on a wall because she thought my precious little tootsies were worth keeping size memorances of. There's great heartaches in life, and tears. When Mrs. Molen and I were preparing for marriage, she began to have symptoms of a great disease. And she went to the doctor, and her suspicions were confirmed that she had multiple sclerosis. I was at my parents' home. My mother took her to the doctor. She didn't have a mother. Her mother went on to be with God. And we were down in the basement and she was explaining to me what had just happened. And she was weeping. And she said to me, you're probably not going to want to marry me now. And I took my yellow tie that I was wearing and I dried her eye with my yellow tie. And I told her, I'm going to marry you. I wasn't going to marry her because I thought it was what was best for me. I was going to marry her because she was God's choice for me. And I'm very grateful that I've chosen God and God chose her for me. But can you imagine a bottle of tears that God remembers? On your way back to the book of Jeremiah, let's stop in the book of Isaiah, the 59th chapter, and see what the prophet has to say about engaging our hearts with God. In Isaiah chapter 59, we're introduced to a horrible condition, and herein we find the secret of tears. It's comparison. You do not weep because you do not have God's comparison. And I do not weep because I do not compare the way the Lord does. In Isaiah 59, in verse number 3, he's looking at the society around him, and he says, For your hands are defiled with blood, And your fingers with iniquity, your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness. None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies. They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity. Verse number 7. Their feet run to evil, they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they know not. There is no judgment in their goings. They have made them crooked paths. Whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace. Verse number 14, And judgment is turned away backwards, and justice standeth far off For truth has fallen in the streets, and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth, and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey. And the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him that there was no judgment." You know what God is doing when the Bible says it displeased Him? God is looking at life. And God is seeing the heartbreak and the heartache and the absolute mess of what's going on in His people's lives. And God is comparing. He's comparing His great ideal with their present condition. And the Bible says that it displeased Him. It's made of two words. It quivered His eye. It hurt for Him to look. You might imagine a parent who has a grave illness in the life of their children, and they're in a surgery room, and they're watching a doctor come out with a scalpel and cutting their own precious child's skin open, and they say, I just can't bear to watch it. It hurts my eye. The Lord said, It displeases me to see what's happening. My eye is hurting. It pains me to notice. I'm displeased. But you know what great comparison is even found here for his people? In verse number 16 it says, And he saw that there was no man, and he wondered that there was no intercessor. For God to look at a society that is completely given over to debauchery, where murder touches murder, blood touches blood, lies touch lie, deceit touches deceit, it says, it hurts my eye to see it. But when God looks around and He sees that there is no one who is weeping and no one who is praying, He says, I wondered. I'm shocked. My jaw has dropped. I'm awestruck. Yes, it hurts me to see the mess that's going on, but I'm absolutely confounded that there is no one who's engaged in prayer. And He says, I am weeping over my people. And I want to enlist your tears in the fight. God has had His weeping warriors in David, in Jeremiah, in Nehemiah, and in David, but God is looking for weeping warriors for today. Someone that God can say, I want to enlist your tears in the fight. We have a weeping Savior. Weeping is a Christ-like thing. When the Lord Jesus came and Lazarus had died, there was a funeral procession gathering, He saw people who were crying over the results of death. The Jews were weeping and it says His spirit was stirred up in Him. And He wept too. The shortest verse in our English edition of the Bible. Jesus wept, John 11, 35. Do you know what made Him weep? This is the secret to weeping. He was comparing the ideal of the Garden of Eden and saying, perfect fellowship, everything together, everything just right, me, Adam, Eve, animals, righteousness, truth, harmony, unity. And then he's comparing what happened when death came in and he sees the results of death and how sad people become because of it. And that comparison is what enabled him to weep. The Savior wept as he was beholding the city of Jerusalem. And he gave them the truth again, and again, and again, and they rejected the truth again, and again, and again. And as he's looking over the city, he's crying. And he's saying, if you only knew the peace that belonged to you, if you only knew the time of visitation that was upon you. And he's weeping because he knows it's only a short matter of time before the Roman army comes in and levels the city without one stone left upon another. And as He compares His ideal with that nation and their present condition, He weeps. The third time we see the Savior weeping, there's no doubt in the Garden of Gethsemane where He was sweating great drops, as it were, of blood in agony. And the Bible tells us in Hebrew that it was strong crying and tears His soul is being poured out with strong crying and tears, weeping, because He knows the awful price of sin, that the wages of sin is death, the soul that sinneth, it shall die. He's about to go to the cross for all the sin of every single man, woman, boy and girl, that He, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man. And his soul is being poured out in tears because of the awful agony of eternal separation from God. And he says, I'm looking for weeping warriors. Will you be enlisted? Will you be enlisted? Will you be enlisted? Who will come and weep with me? As we come back to the ninth chapter of the book of Jeremiah, Let's remember that we must take personal responsibility for public problems. It's always someone else's problem, but God says, my heart is broken. Who will take it upon them to have personal responsibility for my hurting people and these hurting nations? Please don't let your eye go dry. Jeremiah pours out his heart, his desire to just weep and weep and weep like a fountain. And he says the condition is so bad in verse number 2, that I had a wilderness, a lodging place of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people and go from them. I just want to be gone from all of this. You have no idea how hard it is to stay in the middle of this mess. I wish I had my plane tickets booked. I wish I had my bags packed. I wish I was like a wayfaring man that could just leave it all and leave it to somebody else. I don't want to take personal responsibility for these public problems. I'm acquainted with a man in the military, and the report he gives is that it is such a difficult thing to be in the midst of that situation where conversations are just evil, speech is vile, And no doubt, if I was in the midst of it, I would want to be gone too. But you know why God would leave a man in the midst of all that mess? To teach him to have a broken heart of those people that he's around. It's way, way, way, way too easy just to leave the problem to someone else, instead of letting God enlist our tears into the fight. Jeremiah's not going anywhere because God is teaching. What's he weeping over? He's weeping over the fact that truth has fallen. Notice verse number 3, "...and they bend their tongues like their bows for lies." Can you imagine this? People, when they speak, they must posture their tongue in a particular position to make articulate sounds. And he's saying when people move their tongue, every word they speak is just like they're lying. He said that if they bend their tongue, it's like they're bending an arrow just to shoot out more lies. And this is what broke his heart. But they are not valiant for the truth. I hope you underline that expression. That is a powerful thing. Valiant for the truth. You do not become valiant for the truth by having the Word of God in your hand and by taking the Word of God to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Sunday school, Wednesday night. You become valiant for the truth when you stand up for the truth no matter where you are. As the Apostle Paul is engaging pastors in Ephesus, he's pouring out his heart to them. And he tells them two things, he repeats it. He said, I kept back nothing that was profitable for you. I didn't hold back any truth that would be helpful to your life. He said, I have not shunned to declare all the counsel of God. That kept back and shunned is the same word. And he's telling them that you should not be afraid to say anything in this book to anyone in this world. But that is not just a message for pastors to hear. That is a message for pastors to give to people so that people can live it out. And there must be people who are valiant for the truth. Someone says, well, I don't like this business of the homosexual agenda being pushed on our bathrooms and having controversy, but as long as they keep it private and they don't mess with it in public, I'm okay with that. No, we are not okay with that. We must be people who are valiant for the truth. And Jeremiah is weeping because valiant for the truth is nowhere to be seen. And he's weeping because of verse 4. Take ye heed every one of his neighbor, and trust not in any brother. For every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbor will walk with slanderers. It's very sad when a whole society and a news cycle has become such a partisan avenue that they no longer care about what's right, they only care about looking right. And the questions are designed to catch someone saying something wrong so they can have a news clipping, and so-and-so said this and said this, and context is all taken out. It's all filled with lies. And a whole social culture is given over to that. And the word politics has become a socially acceptable acronym, synonym, for lying. Oh, they're just playing politics. It means it's a socially acceptable lie-telling. I was watching an interview with a major news corporation interviewing President Kennedy. And maybe I'm just gullible and naive and ignorant of the times, but it seemed like they were actually having a reasonable conversation where they're trying to get to the bottom of things. The president was opening up about how he felt about things. They were asking questions to help him open up. It seemed like they were working together to get out what was going on. I don't find that as much today. And there's cause for people to weep. because truth has fallen in the streets. And when you go to tell your own brother something, they'll turn around and slander you and pull your name down so theirs can be lifted up. And the prophet says, I'm weeping over this. How long can God wait before He steps in to do something? Notice verse number 9, "...shall I not visit them for these things, saith the Lord? And shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?" Why hasn't God stepped in and judged already? And the answer is because God is looking to share His heart with His own children. And God is enlisting tears into the fight. And God is looking for weeping warriors who will truly know Him and engage their hearts in prayer. And God has kept off His hand that we might be enlisted in His heart. Notice verse number 13. The great reason why all of this is happening. And the Lord saith, Because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein. They didn't listen to the Bible. They said, Well, we just didn't like Jeremiah's personality. God is not going to ask if you like Jeremiah's personality. God is going to ask, did you hear my word and obey my word? Notice in Jeremiah chapter 7, with verse number 1, this is the message that God gave to Jeremiah to declare to the people. And God put that man plumb at the center of their social structure right at the temple gate. You could not avoid the man if you wanted to have any semblance of a religious pretense. In verse number 1, the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, Stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all ye of Judah, that enter into these gates to worship the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. trusting out in lying words, saying, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these. You know, as Jeremiah gave them the message about changing their ways, the number one thing that people say who are self-righteous when they're confronted with their wrong is they tell them what they have done right. You see, there had just been a religious reviving in the land. The king on the throne had been engaging people to put in money to repair the temple. The temple had just been repaired. They lost the Bible and they just found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. They're excited. They just reinstituted the Passover that had been dissipated from the land. And as Jeremiah came to them and he said, you've got to amend your ways and you've got to hear the Word of God and you've got to let the Scriptures go deeper. They said, point that sword somewhere else. Let us tell you, Jeremiah, where we are. We've got the temple. We just engaged in a building project. We've got the temple. We just found the Bible in the house of God. We just reinstituted the Passover. Look at how good we're doing. Don't you tell us about much more we need to do. And Jeremiah says, I'm weeping because you will not hear. The Lord Jesus never came into the temple of the Lord and took a whip and drove out the money changers and flicked it over and drove them away until He first was outside the city weeping over them. Weeping. You know what God said? Look at Jeremiah chapter 6 and verse 14. This is what you have done to my people. You have helped them out to hurt them. 6 and 14. They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace. Everybody's saying, Look, the temple's restored, the Passover's back. There's peace now. There's peace now. There's not going to be any destruction. Everything's going to be okay. The doctor takes a band-aid and puts it on your leprosy and says, You're fine. There's no problem. And out of that little bit of help, they bring about a greater hurt, because the great attention to the heart matter has not been engaged. And Jeremiah's weeping, and no one understands him, and he's broken. In chapter 9, we find that people need to face the truth. In verse number 17, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider ye. You just stop and think about this. Do you know truth and reality are such a difficult pill to swallow that many people just completely avoid it? They refuse to think about it. They don't want to face reality. They turn to a bottle of alcohol, a bottle of pills, and when the pills are gone, the pain is there and even greater. When the alcohol is worn off, the pain is there. It's even greater. And if you're going to help people, you're going to have to have a heart of compassion and realize how hard it is for them to face reality. Our convictions just turn people off and anger them if they're not clothed in compassions. If our convictions are ten feet high and they ought to be, our compassion should be ten feet deep. It was the Savior who was full of grace and truth. Consider, think of this. God says, this is such a sobering thing for me to say to you. If you people don't start weeping, look what he says in verse 17. Consider ye and call for the mourning women that they may come and send for cunning women that they may come. And let them make haste and take up a wailing for us that our eyes may red down with tears and our eyelids gush out with waters. Verse number 21. for death has come up into our windows and has entered into our palaces to cut off the children from without and the young men from the streets." The people had a practice at the time of when a sad time was going on, a funeral, they would actually pay and hire and bring in weeping women to weep and have these funeral lamentations. And these people had no idea what awful judgment was coming to their nation. And God said, if you are not going to weep yourself, then you better start emptying out your pocketbook, and you better start paying other people to weep for you, and hire those weeping women. Because if you don't choose to weep now while you can, you are going to weep later when you can't help it. Because death is going to come up in your windows, and the grave is going to rob you of your children. And either you weep now over the sinful condition of the nation, or you're going to weep over your own children's caskets. And God says, I want to enlist your tears. I want you to weep with me. I am hurting in all the afflictions He was afflicted. What's the answer to all of this? God tells us what is not the answer in verse 23. Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise men glory in his wisdom. Wise men have it all figured out. And they sit in their smug little chairs with their smug little smiles and make their smug little comments. And they are perfectly, pugnaciously pontificators. But God said, that will never, that will never please me, that you just know you're right. Let not the wise men glory in His wisdom. The second thing, that will not work. Neither let the mighty men glory in His might. Mighty men are men of ability, men of stature, men of prominence, men who know how to throw their weight around, men who are pushy and know how to accomplish what they want, self-willed people. There are people who have flooded the political scene in our nation, who throw themselves around and say, you follow me and I'll get the job done. And to me, it's not as sad when those men are up on a public platform pushing their weight around saying, I can get the job done, I know what's needed, you follow me. What's sad to me is people who ought to know the Word of God are just being whisked in by it. As a citizen of this nation, I believe in responsible voting, but my hope is not in a vote. And there's a third thing. God says this won't work either. Neither let the rich man glory in his riches." The church at Laodicea said, I'm rich. I'm increased with goods. I have need of nothing. And Jesus Christ himself said, you're poor, you're wretched, you're miserable, you're blind, and you're naked. Your riches will never please me. But you know what will make the difference? It's verse 24. but let him that glorieth." If you're going to take pride and boast in something, you boast in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me. You are to know God personally, to understand God. When we come to know God, everything else in life is a secondary thing. And all of the ripple effects will take care of everything else when we make that our business. God's great goal for my life must become my great goal for my life. And the Lord Jesus said in John 17, 3, and this is life eternal, that they might know me, the only true God. He saved me and gave me a life eternal that I might know Him and know His heart. And God says, you find someone that takes great pride and pleasure in knowing Me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgment, that is, people making the right decisions, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, saith the Lord. And if you and I are ever going to have our tears enlisted by God as weeping warriors, We are going to have to know the heart of God and what God desires and compare the present situation with what God's ideal is, and then we're not going to be able to help from weeping. If your eye has been dry, it is because you do not know God the way He desires for you to know Him. Because when you know Him, and you compare where we are, you'll weep. It's not about trying to cry, It's about letting God develop His heart in you. You never know who's going to be influential in your life. One of the most influential men in my life, I've only spent in his company for four hours. In three of those hours, it wasn't even personal. He came to our church at Grace Baptist in Birmingham, Michigan, and he spoke. And when he came and spoke, God used him to call me into the ministry. I remember leaving my seat and walking down the aisle. I thought I was going to be a missionary to Africa. Life is not over. He came to our church two other times. And then about a year, a year and a half ago, he was leaving that church and heading down south, and he called me. And he said, Can we have breakfast? And as we sat at that breakfast table, he was sitting from here to here, face to face, and he just began weeping and talking about how little he knew God and how much more he wanted to know God. And tears are flooding out of my face. I wasn't crying. I was singing of the Scripture, Weep with them that weep, and I'm saying, God, give me compassion for him. Help me to weep with him. He didn't care about feeling awkward. I was the one filtered in conviction. And that has stuck with me for hours, in all my life. But it made a profound impact, that here's a man who can weep. It's way too easy to go through life any other way. But God says, I want to enlist your tears. Would you pray with me, please? Maybe you're here tonight and you don't know the Lord Jesus as your personal Savior. God poured out His blood, His sweat, and His tears to purchase your salvation on a cross to forgive you of your sins. You don't know what it's like to have the way of peace, to have truth in your heart, to know God personally. And you say, God has touched my heart. I need to accept the Lord Jesus Christ. I need the forgiveness of my sins. Would you raise your hand and say, pray for me? And here we are as Christians. And we are either going to allow the Lord to enlist our tears or we are not going to allow the Lord to enlist our tears. And remember, as deep as the sword goes in your heart is as deep as your weeping life will go. You want to weep deeper, you let the sword go deeper. And don't talk about how much good things you've done and how good you are. You say, Oh God, I'm bad. and God weeps over you and weeps over me. Father, thank you for helping us to understand your heart. Please enlist our tears, and may we be willing participants. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.