You turn in the Bible with me first to the book of Daniel, Daniel chapter 7. Both Daniel and Jeremiah ministered in a portion of the time of the exile. Jeremiah, of course, coming earlier, but we read Daniel. Daniel himself was not a prophet per se, but as you know from the story, worked both in the Babylonian court and then later in the Persian court. In chapter seven, Daniel seven, he sees visions, especially of one who like the son of man approaches the ancient of days, but to this one who is like a son of man is given power and authority over all the kingdoms and nations of the earth. I want us to read from Daniel 7 beginning at verse 21 through verse 28, part of the vision of Daniel. Daniel 7 beginning at verse 21. I was watching, and the same horn was making war against the saints, and prevailing against them until the Ancient of Days came. And a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom. Thus he said, The fourth beast shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be different from all other kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, trample it, and break it in pieces. The ten horns are ten kings who shall arise from this kingdom, and another shall arise after them. He shall be different from the first ones, and shall subdue three kings. He shall speak pompous words against me, against the Most High, and shall persecute the saints of the Most High, and shall intend to change times and law. Then the saints shall be given into his hand for a time, and times, and half a time. But the court shall be seated, and they shall take away his dominion to consume and destroy it forever. than the kingdom and dominion. And the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people, the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him." This is the end of the account. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts greatly troubled me, and my countenance changed. But I kept the matter in my heart. Then we turn to the book of Jeremiah, your Bibles a few pages earlier, I'm sure, to Jeremiah 45. And this will be the text we consider tonight. Jeremiah chapter 45. The word that Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch, the son of Neriah, when he had written these words in a book at the instruction of Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to you, O Baruch, you said, Woe is me now, for the Lord has added grief to my sorrow. I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest. Thus you shall say to him, thus says the Lord. Behold, what I have built I will break down, and what I have planted I will pluck up, that is, this whole land. And do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them, for behold, I will bring adversity on all flesh, says the Lord, but I will give your life to you as a prize in all places wherever you go. This truly is the word of the Lord. Dear congregation of our Lord and Savior, whenever a people or a country experiences a war or invasion, of course, of course, this is a time of great anxiety, a time of great discouragement. And Baruch and Jeremiah together also experienced that kind of distress. For towards the end of Jeremiah's ministry, he witnessed the invasion by Nebuchadnezzar of the Chaldean army and the siege of Jerusalem that the city underwent. Jeremiah called for the people of God to accept this as God's discipline and to surrender to the Chaldeans, which only aroused the anger of the so-called war party in Jerusalem. Don't listen to Jeremiah. He's only weakening our hands against this enemy. If we just get Egyptian help, we'll be able to drive the Babylonians, drive Nebuchadnezzar out. But in the end, the Lord had his way and the city of Jerusalem fell. We know a lot about Jeremiah, don't we? His emotional ups and downs, he records for us. He is sometimes called the weeping prophet of the Old Testament. But who is this fellow we read about tonight in Jeremiah 45? The man Baruch. Well, we don't know a lot about him except that he is the trusted secretary, friend, sidekick, acquaintance of the Prophet Jeremiah. And in this chapter, something of a picture, a glimpse of some of the things that the man Baruch undergoes is given to us. And because of a certain sadness on the part of Baruch, the Lord comes to Jeremiah to tell Jeremiah, bring this word to your assistant, to your scribe, Baruch, to encourage him. in the task that he faces as well. And so I want us to focus tonight upon Jeremiah 45, very short chapter. Under the theme, the Lord assures sad Baruch of only his life. the Lord assures sad Baruch of only his life. And I want us to notice here, first of all, the occasion for this assurance. Secondly, the reason for sadness. Third, God's stern warning. And finally, God's gracious promise. The Lord assures sad Baruch of only his life. Now we read in the text that this good word came in the fourth year of the reign of King Jehoiakim. Year 605, maybe 604. Jehoiakim was wicked. He was the son of actually one of the greatest kings, one of the best kings of the land of Judah, namely Josiah. Josiah had been a God-fearing king who had led the land in reformation. The temple had been cleansed and rebuilt, repaired, and during the time of Josiah, a copy of the law was found, and that was read, and Josiah is just struck by the warnings, the covenantal warnings of the Lord, and he leads the nation in reformation. But he dies in battle. And the reformation that had been sort of a top-down reformation never had really taken root in the life of the people. And so with the death of a good king, Josiah, the advance of the Reformation among the people of God was over. The priests were corrupt. The prophets said whatever the people wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear. Yes, they still went to temple. Yes, they went through all the right forms, but their heart was not in it. In many ways, it resembles the modern church or modern churches where the word of God is frequently compromised in order to please the people who attend. But the people think they are Christians because they hear something about God and something about Christ. They feel they are okay, but they do not want to be confronted with the call of God's word and the demands of his law. giving to the causes of God's kingdom, worshipping God with other Christians, certainly not on a regular basis. Oh, no. Well, this was the religious situation in the days of Jeremiah and Baruch. And yet, brothers and sisters, the picture is not completely dark. No. The reason why it's not completely dark is because God always preserves for himself a remnant according to his purposes in Jesus Christ to glorify himself. For example, Jeremiah is one of the faithful men left ministering the Word of God and Baruch was as well. Now, we don't know much about Baruch. His name means the blessed one, one who is blessed. His brother is named Saraiah. He was a quartermaster for the king, something like a chief of staff. and so probably came from a family of prominence, maybe a princely family, and therefore a place of some importance within the community. Well, whatever. Baruch could have been a scribe, that is, a teacher of the law, a place of honor in that society, and yet he remains only as a scribe for Jeremiah. Verse one again, this word comes in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah. There's something else that happened in that year, something that is recorded for us in Jeremiah 36, a number of chapters earlier. In that chapter, Jeremiah is told to take a scroll. And the Lord says, write on it. Write on it every word that I have spoken to you concerning this land and this people from the time I began to speak to you until now. That perhaps these people will listen and perhaps turn from their wicked ways that I will spare them. Do you know what that means? Without benefit of word processor, computer, or typewriter, Jeremiah is to have written down, probably with the use of the scribe Baruch, 23 years of sermons, messages. Write them down and then go and stand by the entrance of the temple and read these to the people. Now these are what we might call today hell and damnation sermons, not exactly the most scintillating reading. Imagine that assignment. No wonder Baruch is sad. I've got to write down 23 years of sermons of this preacher whom almost no one likes. The Lord doesn't want Baruch to be downhearted because this task may be so distasteful. And so when Baruch has finished writing down the words of this dictation, God speaks this message recorded in Jeremiah 45. Now you know the end result of that. The scroll is prepared. The sermons are read. And King Jehoiakim says, bring that to me. And so it's brought to the king and he listens to it read. He takes out his pen knife and after every page is read, he rips it up and throws it in the fire until the scroll is destroyed. He burns the word of God. And the Lord comes back to Jeremiah and says, write him again. Write them down again and add more words. Add more words. But you know what's interesting, brothers and sisters, is to note that this message to Baruch is given to us in Jeremiah 45 and not in Jeremiah 36. And I want you to notice this. Already in Jeremiah 36 verse 9, events move beyond the time of chapter 45. So that Jeremiah 36 verse nine through chapter 44 record for us events and happenings to Jeremiah and the people of Israel that go beyond the time of chapter 45. Or to put it in other words, Jeremiah 44 records the predictions of judgments and death by the sword with only a remnant to escape. of things that will happen later and after chapter forty-five and then comes chapter forty-five. It stands historically not in sequence because sometimes the Bible arranges a description of events not according to historical sequence but according to a theme and a message that needs to come forward for our reading so that this chapter stands as kind of a Kind of a footnote about an individual in a big book. Something like an oasis in the desert where refreshment and hope can be found. That's chapter 45. And brothers and sisters, that hope is needed. God gives us hope, doesn't he? The blessed hope of the church today is that someday Jesus Christ will come back. The return of Christ is the blessed hope of the church. The fact that sin is under judgment gives us hope today. The fact that God forgives us our sins and no longer remembers our iniquities and our shortcomings and our failures gives us hope and he doesn't remember them anymore because he's placed those sins on Jesus Christ and Christ took the suffering for us on the cross. Baruch needed God's assurance because he was a sad man, worn out and troubled, verse 3, Woe is me now, for the Lord has added grief to my sorrow. I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest. And why? Let's go back to that question and look at it a little bit more. Why is he sad? Why does he feel this grief and this burden? Well, there may have been many reasons for Baruch's sadness. As I said before, he was a scribe. and therefore possibly could have come from a princely family. And if I may use a modern analogy, he could have gotten a good job, maybe a government job, nice wages, paid holidays, a home in the country on an acreage with all the modern conveniences, and a government pension to boot, maybe even government healthcare to take care of him whenever he needed it. But he didn't do that. He didn't do that. Just like the life of Jeremiah, Baruch's life could be judged by most human standards to be something of a failure. You are working for which preacher, which pastor, which prophet? Jeremiah? Oh, he's awful. He's always preaching doom and gloom. He's preaching that we should surrender to the Chaldeans. That's my calling, Baruch may have answered. What advancements of pay or position or prestige did he get? He has to write down the sharp and harsh sermons of a preacher, pastor that almost no one liked. Perhaps that failure In human eyes, to achieve a position of honor is what caused Baruch's sadness. And yet, brothers and sisters, I believe that it's something far deeper, much deeper. Human achievements, the failure to get that, I don't think that is the real reason. Rather, think of the message that Jeremiah dictated to him that he had to write down as a scribe. He has to write it down and then deliver it. The covenant people of God are to be destroyed and taken into exile. He's pained, Baruch is deeply pained by the stubbornness and the sinfulness of God's people. Downhearted by the note that the Lord has given. Jeremiah uses a number of illustrations throughout his book, and one of them is based upon the fact that God's people are a building. They are a house that God built, but now he's going to tear it down. He used the illustration of planting. God's people are a planting, a tree or a vine, but now he has to uproot them. What he's built, he will tear down. What he has planted, he will uproot. He has to do it, doesn't he? If God doesn't do it, then he is no longer the faithful God of the covenant. Look, if a landlord has tenants who wreck the house that the landlord built and ruin the grounds he planted for them, what will the landlord do? Tell them that they're okay? Keep them as his tenants? Lower the rent? Lower his standards? If people keep disregarding God's warnings about sin, if they keep ruining his earth, if they keep rejecting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior now, will God keep those people around forever? The house is God's house. The vine is his planting. He does with it whatever he chooses. And when Israel, his people, have fallen to sin, he chooses to be faithful to his own word, and he will bring punishment. And that congregation is hard to see, if we have a heart at all. The people remained in sin, causing Baruch great sorrow. Jeremiah, too, great sorrow. There appears to be no restoration to greatness in the future. Now, how can Baruch the scribe write down these things, condemning the people that he loved, the land that he loved? You know, it is sad to see people in the world, but also in the church, who harden their hearts against God's word. I don't mean just drift. Many people drift, but there are people who actually harden their hearts against the word of God. It is sad to know that God's patience eventually wears thin. It is sad to know that there's a time when people who must come under God's heavy judgment, even in this life, experience that. And if you have any heart at all, and I pray that you do, I believe that you do, then you too are saddened by the burden of knowing that although God is gracious to his own people in Christ alone, Though we be sinners, God will someday come back to this earth, planet earth that we know, and his fire will burn it. He will purge out all that is wicked in this world, and he will remove all the people who have rejected him, who are stead in their sins and trespasses. Are you sensitive to that at all? Am I? Baruch is saddened, very saddened by this. In the fourth year of wicked King Jehoiakim, Baruch must write down 23 years of harsh messages against God's people. In view of the fact that this earth and its people are headed for certain destruction, God in His mercy gives Baruch a very stern warning in verse 5. What does he say? And do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them. Do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them. Now, he may be tempted. tempted to seek a very fine position for himself as a scribe. He may have tried to advance himself to a place of honor, and yet God, in his mercy, puts the brakes on that and holds Baruch back from that kind of self-seeking. Do you seek things, great things for yourself? Don't seek them. And what are, what is meant here, great things for yourself? Well, brothers and sisters, let us remember this, that in God's calling to each and every one of us, we all have a place in God's service, in his kingdom, with the gifts and the talents that he's given to us. And it is in our calling, in our job, and in our assignment that we find our work, and that's good. Now that may vary for all of us. If God calls you to be the next senator from the great state of Michigan, the governor perhaps, pursue that. If he calls you to a place that is not quite as prominent, that's fine too. Wherever God assigns you with your gifts and talents, you pursue that for the glory of his name and for the coming of his kingdom. But if God has not called you to something, and you go there for yourself. Why? Why? Do you seek great things for yourself? Don't seek them. That's why isn't God's warning to Baruch a timely warning for us today? If the Bible had only said the land of Judah and the people of Israel or the people of Judah, we might say, well, all right, yeah, that makes sense. Back then, God puts the brakes on this man Baruch, that he doesn't overstep his bounds, doesn't go beyond his calling. And yet the language of verse 4 and verse 5 hints at something more. For when it speaks about the land there, you could translate it the whole earth. And in verse 5, all flesh means or implies the whole human race. So what is true indeed for the people of Judah is also true by extension of the idea to the whole earth. God will destroy someday the whole earth. God will judge someday all people, all flesh. And thus the warning is a warning for us today. And we need it lest we seek great things for ourself, for ourself. Should you seek great things for yourself, do not seek them. And yet again and again and again, we see people doing that, don't we? Think of Nebuchadnezzar in the time of Jeremiah and Daniel. Is this not the great Babylon that I have built? Where is that great Babylonian empire today? It is another one of those empires that is in the dustbins of history. Rome, worshipped one time as Rome the eternal. Where's the great Roman empire today? Adolf Hitler promised the German people that he would create a Reich, a nation that would last a thousand years. It hardly lasted twelve. People are so blind to God's law and their own calling. Men and women slave away for great possessions, and they wonder why they aren't happy when they get them. Have you noticed that the more possessions you have, the more time you spend in upkeep for those possessions? Wealth and honor and position, yes, those are gifts of God. Those are gifts of God. And yet when you seek them only for yourself, you become slaves to them, and they turn to ashes in your hands. Men and women who are driven by ambition for themselves soon get bogged down in the worry and anxieties of this life. Someone has once said, and it's really true, that whoever lives for the things which must needs perish always lives in the fear of their perishing. If you pursue things which will perish, you're always afraid that they will perish. That's right, when the stock market collapsed in 1929, there were financiers who leaped to their death for their gods had failed them. But we don't do that, do we? Are we sad because of the sins that we see in our own lives in the light of God's law? or perhaps in the life of God's people here in this church and certainly in the world. Or do we become sad when we see these things that are out there and my neighbor has them and why can't I get them? It's called coveting, which the Bible calls is also idolatry. And idolatry is the worship of some other God rather than the true God who is blessed forever and ever. God's warning is that we do not seek great things for ourselves. Well, then what should we seek? And Baruch is not told what to seek, but we are. In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord said to us, seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and then everything that you need will be given to you. everything that you need will be given to you. Brothers and sisters, that means that you are right now in Christ the richest people in the world. Because Paul will go on to say, if you are Christ's, then all things are yours. For you are Christ's and Christ is God's. All things are yours. Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness. Get out of the city, Baruch. Get away from the people that God has condemned. God speaks to Baruch his word of assurance because he is a good and gracious God to all his servants. Our God reveals his word through his servant Jeremiah, just as today he reveals his gracious plan and purposes through his servants of the word. Baruch will get his life, the last phrase of verse five, but I will give you your life as a prize in all places wherever you go. What happens to Baruch? Chapter 43 says he was taken to Egypt with Jeremiah, and then the Bible goes silent about him. It doesn't matter, for he, as one of God's children, is preserved by sovereign grace. Grace. He doesn't get great things, but he has his life. as a prize of war, for that's the implication of that word prize. It's a prize that is gained not because of a contest, but because of the contest of war. And what war is this? It's not a war that is fought really with swords or guns or nuclear weapons. It's a different kind of war. It is the ongoing clash of the kingdom of God against the kingdom of Satan. And Christ versus the Antichrist. And the promise of life during this conflict is meant to sustain us and our hope. The work of Jesus Christ is God's work that assures us. even as you, brothers and sisters, are also engaged as the church militant in the fight for the kingdom of God now. And Daniel warns us from the great Babylon that the coming Antichrist will, quote, speak great things. And many, many people will flock to this Antichrist. He will delude them. He will promise them heaven and earth. And if it were possible, he might even deceive the elect. If you eat of this tree, woman, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil, and we know the result of that lie. Christian, you must be content with God's promise during this spiritual war that Christ is one for us. Baruch was not told to seek, but you are told to seek the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and then everything is added to you. The war in which our lives are rescued and redeemed is the war that Jesus Christ has won. Look, on the cross, he removes guilt of his people. In the resurrection, he defeats death. He breaks the grave open as the first fruits of the resurrection. He ascends to heaven. Now, it's not simply the movement of his body from A to B. It's the ascent of the king, moving to his throne, moving to the Holy of Holies, where he presents his finished work. And now he is seated, as Hebrew says, seated at the right hand of God until all of his enemies are made the footstool of his feet. We face in this world many enemies. They are fierce and they are determined, but brothers and sisters, they have lost. They have lost. Now in some places our brothers and sisters experience horrific persecution. In Orissa, India, our brothers and sisters are killed. Yet the enemies of Christ have lost. When God tells us not to seek great things for ourself, he is not saying that a Christian may not attain high and influential positions in business or political life or anywhere else in society. What great things do we seek on this earth? It's the kingdom of God, of Christ that must be sought. But that kingdom is not of this earth. It takes its place in this earth, but it is not of this earth. Its origins are not here. No, the kingdom is plucked up from this current world because of sin, planted in the fertile soil of the new creation, nourished by Christ's blood. And thus we seek great things for God in business, in political life, and everywhere else in society. The danger of the devil is always, take a little bit of that gold for yourself. Take a few of those garments for yourself. They're yours. You deserve it. Great things for yourself, he whispers in our ears. He tells our soul. But no, let God exalt you and not yourself. We will always and must always remain serviceable to his kingdom. Baruch ends up with his life. But that is a gift of God's sovereign grace, undeserved mercy to a man who wrote down the words of an unpopular prophet. Baruch has his life. But you are promised more, much more than Baruch received in that old covenant era. You are promised greatness in life, life in his greatness. All things are yours, says the Apostle Paul, and that's to come. And thus we live by faith. We don't see it yet. Someday we will, but not yet. We live by faith. We are God's prizes, God's trophies in a war still being waged, but whose outcome and whose final results are already known to us who believe. We've read the last chapter. You know, when you read a book, sometimes you're rushed to read that last chapter before you read the rest. Well, we've read the last chapter. We win. Christ wins. Christ wins. That's good news. That's the bottom line. He's the victor in the fight. And to all who believe in him for dear life, you are more than conquerors in him. This is good news. Amen.