In the 18th year of the reign of Josiah, while workmen were working in the temple, the high priest discovered the lost books of the law. Presumably, these were the books that had within them, contained within them, either the words of Exodus or the words of Deuteronomy and Leviticus or all of them together. And Hilkiah, the high priest, brought those words to Josiah and read them to Josiah in his palace. And the Bible tells us, in 2 Kings chapter 22, that as these words were being read to Josiah, that he was filled with sorrow and anguish, and that he tore his garments, or his clothes. In verse 13, after this word had been read to him, Josiah tearing his clothes says this, Go and inquire of the Lord for me, for the people and for all Judah concerning the words of this book that have been found. For great is the wrath of the Lord that is aroused against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book to do according to all that is written concerning us. And if you follow the life of Josiah, you will discover that even before the discovery of this word, that Josiah had been committed to seeking to serve God and to bringing the nation of Judah back into a worship of the one true God. And that among other things, he sought to destroy all of the prophets of Baal and all the places of false worship in the land and to lead his people by even by force, back into a time of reformation where they would worship the one true God. And you'll read that there seems to have been a reformation that took place. But Jeremiah was aware that much of this reformation, although the heart of Josiah was right, was external, that it wasn't real, that it was imposed upon the people from the outside, but it wasn't something that rose up within them. And so, he saw within their hearts the continual idolatry, spiritual idolatry, and idolatry that was rising up within them, and he spoke against it. And now we have in Jeremiah 36, the son of King Josiah, and the Word of God is being read to him from the prophet of Jeremiah. God has called upon Jeremiah to have all these words written down for him. He's had Baruch take these words and read them in the temple. On a day in which a fast has been called, a fast to God, by the way, that was likely called by Jehoiakim because the nation of the Babylonians had begun to mount themselves and to organize themselves around the borders of Judah and had actually been inciting the various tribes around the border of Judah to come in and to try to loot the land. And so the king has called for a national fast. to take place in the temple that his father had had been repaired, where the law had once been discovered. Jehoiakim has this fast called and it's in this place that Jeremiah sends Baruch to go and read the word of the Lord that the Lord has given to him. And Baruch reads that word and the people hear it and the princes hear it and are concerned. And so Baruch goes and reads the word again to the princes in the chambers of the temple. And then again, these princes take this word to be read a third time now in the presence of the king and before the king. But on this occasion, the king does not tear his clothes. He does not express anguish and sorrow. Instead, his response is arrogant. Instead of tearing the clothes, he tears up the word. And as it is read, he stops at every phrase and every line that is unappealing to him. And he takes out his pen knife or the pen knife of the scribe and he slices away at the scroll and tosses the offending words into the fire until all the words of Jeremiah have been read, but have also been destroyed. And this word that Jehoiakim destroyed. was the lion's share of the book that we have here that we're reading here. There are additions that have been made to this book following this event when God told Jeremiah to once again rewrite this word. This word that we have here is the inspired word of God. It is God's breath in writing for us to read. We are not simply meant to read it in truth. We are not meant to read this word. But as we read it, we are meant truly to listen to the word of God speaking to us. This is the very word of God that the Lord Jesus quoted oft times throughout his ministry and that the apostles would quote again and again. This is the very word of God that the Lord Jesus said would not pass away. What I want to do this morning is I want to make some observations regarding the actions of Jehoiakim. That's simply what we want to do. We want to look at this king in his chambers, having the word read to him with his penknife in hand, slicing away at the word and seeking to incinerate it from his consciousness. And we want to observe a number of things. The first observation is simply this, that Jehoiakim's actions were perfectly natural. You know, when God comes to us and seeks to bring us to himself, God doesn't seek to draw us with flattery. God does not seek to flatter us into his presence. God does not say and speak to us in such a way that he bolsters and lifts up our sagging spirits. Instead, when God comes to speak to us through his word, he takes his word and he lifts it up before us like a mirror to expose us ourselves or us to ourselves. James chapter 1 says as much, that the Bible is like a mirror. And the problem is that when individuals have this word lifted before them, it reveals to them the contents of their heart. And though there are vast portions of God's Word that are wonderfully encouraging, most of the Bible offends our sensibilities. It offends in particular our self-esteeming sensibilities. Much like a mirror might offend an individual who has been deformed by some gruesome disease or by some tragic accident. It's offensive to them. It's understandable that it's offensive. The reactions of Jehoiakim are a natural reaction. What the Bible reveals is that we are sinful, that we are wretched, that we are helpless, that we are powerless in and of ourselves. It reveals that we are dull-witted to the truth and the wisdom of God. And for the same reason that men wish to destroy Jesus, Men wished to destroy the Word of God. You see, men wished to destroy the Lord Jesus at least for two reasons. One was that they couldn't comprehend Him. They couldn't understand him. He was so wonderfully and sublimely above all that they were. His life, his mannerisms, the projection of his holiness, his righteousness and goodness made him in one sense incomprehensible to them. Wonderfully incomprehensible and they hated him for it. He exposed to them their own inadequacies, their own weaknesses, their own limited knowledge, their own spiritual dullness. His brightness turned their own concept or idea of their own brightness into a dull dimness altogether. And they hated Him because they could not comprehend Him. But they also hated Him because what they did understand of Him made them uncomfortable. It revealed to them their sinfulness. The Lord Jesus was like the kid who always gets a hundred on all the tests and ruins the curve for the rest of us. We would have got a A minus. Instead, we got a C plus. Well, in this sense, in a reference way of saying here, the Lord ruined the moral curve for those around him. They thought they were something, and He revealed to them that they were nothing. They thought that they had a moral prowess, and He revealed to them that they were full of hypocrisy, and that all that they constructed for themselves was completely empty. In fact, He describes what it is. It's not empty, but they were white in sepulchres. They had whitewashed the outside, but they were spiritually dead on the inside. And folks, they hated the Lord Jesus for what He exposed to them. Most people know the quote from Mark Twain. Mark Twain has said it's not what he doesn't understand in the Bible that bothers him, but it's what he understands that bothers him. And that's how it is with individuals. They don't like the word because they don't understand portions of it. And then the problem is what they can understand is disturbing to them. It reveals something in their life that they don't like. And for the same reason that men wanted to get the Lord Jesus out of their sights, there are men who in different ways, either in a crude way or a sophisticated way, seek to suppress the pronouncement of the word and get it from their lives as well. Jesus' presence was also a reminder to them of the requirements of God for absolute righteousness, a requirement that they could not ultimately find in themselves. And so Christ's presence was not only a witness of the righteousness they lacked, but his presence was a witness of the judgment that they faced as a result. He was a reminder that they were facing judgment, and they resented him and they hated him for that reason. And for the same reason, Men resent and hate the word of God because it reveals a righteousness that is unattainable for man and himself. And yet it reveals the standard upon which God will judge all men. And so it pronounces judgment on people. And so just understand here, Jehoiakim's response was a natural response. It is the regular and consistent response of all men. And that's our second point. It's this. His action was not only natural, but it was the common response. Now, it was carried out with some uncommon flair. I mean, Jehoiakim's destruction of God's word was conducted with the flourish of kingly swagger. The action in itself was nothing new and it's nothing old. We are constantly and regularly, even ourselves, pulling out our pen knives and sweeping it across declarations of God's Word in our life and seeking to incinerate it from our consciousness. We selectively choose to embrace parts of the Word that are pleasing to ourselves, while we politely seek to ignore those parts that are less encouraging. There's a very popular book that's been written and read by a number of individuals by a prominent evangelical pastor where he emphasizes all of the purposes that God has for a person's life and all the meaning that he wants to put and bring into our lives. And he makes much of God's love and he makes much of God's acceptance. And he spends a lot of time talking about all the things that God can produce and do in a person's life. But he barely makes mention only in passing of the harsh realities of sin. He doesn't talk at all of its deadening effects. He barely mentions and references the holiness of God, God's hatred for sin, God's judgment and wrath against sin and the sinner. And so you see that the penknife can even be wielded by the pastor. And reproduced over and over again. Some of you might guess at what book I'm talking about, or you might not, because there are a lot of books like that. And I'm not saying that there's not something be gleaned and not wisdom in the writings of individuals, but you'll find oftentimes, particularly in our day and age, that the writing is rather selective. The traits that we want to talk about and focus upon and the attributes of God and the word of God are selective as well. So about 10 years ago, I spoke to a missionary who had been on tour speaking in a number of larger evangelical churches, and he was speaking on the topic of hell and the lostness of man. And he was trying to explain why it was that we had to go into all the world to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. because they were bound under the sin and they lived under the judgment of God and were facing an eternal hell separate from God. And he noticed in all these large churches that he was preaching that there wasn't a resonant response of acceptance in what he was saying. And so on one occasion he had all the people in church stand up and he asked them in this one church he was in, a church of about 500 people, to separate themselves and those individuals who believed that there was a literal hell to move to one side of the room and those who believed there wasn't to move to the other side of the room. And when he was done, over 65 or 70 percent of the population was on the side that didn't believe in a literal hell. An evangelical church. How does that happen? I'm sure the pastor was shocked himself when he saw that, but it's because we selectively choose what it is that we declare in God's word and we cut it up so we don't read those things that we don't want to hear. Other individuals read the word of God in order that they can get out of it what they want. They'll go to the word to find some message for themselves, some word of devotion, some encouragement. They read it to get a word for themselves. And what's not surprising as they do that when they read the Bible just to get a word for themselves is that they discover in the word what it is they wanted to find. They read to get a word for themselves and wonder of all wonders, they found just what they were looking for, what they wanted. It doesn't mean that they've read all of it. The word of God was meant to be read as a whole and it's Not meant to be read for what you want to hear or what you feel you need to hear or what you want to selectively choose for yourself, but it's meant to be read for what God says. Most often we read God's word and God speaks to us through it and we take note of what he said and we feel his command upon our life or his direction upon our lives or his instruction upon our life or as a correction upon our life, but Slowly, we find a way to suppress it. Our action at cutting up the word is not rapid, but it's a stifling of it. We seek to suppress the message to our hearts. And so again, in a sense, what we do is we cut it up. Now, there are those who are not as polite as all that. They dismiss the Bible altogether. Or they boldly and clearly just dismiss anything they find unappealing to themselves. Or what they do is they force their own interpretation upon it in a forced way. But all these are slicing away at the Word of God. And all my point is this. Listen, what Jehoiakim did was not unusual. What Jehoiakim did was very common. Cutting up God's Word and seeking to incinerate it from the life. Here's another thing I want you to notice about this, though. Jehoiakim's action, although it was a natural reaction, it was a common reaction, his action was a premature one. It's as if Jehoiakim acted a little hastily. He stopped reading at every point in the word when he heard something that he didn't like and he cut it away and possibly, now here I'm just kind of speculating, but possibly if he had let it all be read, and understood the force of the whole before he formed his opinion of things, maybe things would have been different. Possibly he may have understood what God's intent was in giving him that word that what God was intending when that word was being read in his chamber was not to pronounce upon him a day of judgment, but to offer to him a day of finding mercy and forgiveness with God. Remember the reason that God gave to Jeremiah. God said it may be that the house of Judah will hear of all the adversities that I purpose to bring upon them, that everyone may turn from his evil way, that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin. He made a premature decision that everything there was against him, that all was seeking was his own destruction, that all was promising for him was ruined. And in this premature response, he failed to recognize that what God was planning in it, what God always plans, What God always designs when He speaks to us is the possibility of our repentance, the possibility of our turning, the possibility of forgiveness of iniquity, of the forgiveness of our sins. The Word of God is a whole message and it's meant to be received as a whole message By the whole man, it makes sense when we understand it in its entirety. I have mentioned to a few people that one of the most significant events in my life was a time in which I blew my knee out. And as a result, I was not able to work at the hotel where I was working as a young man going to seminary. They actually found a job for me. It was that I would sit in the PBX room, which was a little cubicle in the back behind the front desk of this hotel. And there I would be an operator from 11 o'clock at night until seven o'clock in the morning. Well, nobody called the hotel from 11 o'clock at night until 7 o'clock in the morning, but I had to be awake and alert at the switchboard. I retrieved a Gideon Bible from one of the hotel rooms and I sat in the room and over the period of actually less than two weeks, I did nothing but read God's word in its entirety in one shot. Well, I've been a seminary student and I knew much of it, but I never saw such a wonderful glimpse of the entirety of God's Word at one time. It was beautiful how wonderfully coordinated it was, how you could see in such a concentrated time of reading God's Word that the story fit perfectly together and it made wonderful sense and in a sense this is how God's Word is meant to be understood and read. I know for ourselves we break it up into little pieces and we read it a little bit at a time and some of us feel good that we found a booklet that shows us how we can have a five minute devotional every day. But let me recommend to you that somewhere in your life you find time to read concentratively the Word of God. Now, we have a brother here that just rejoiced a couple weeks ago. His rejoicing was, last night I finished reading God's Word. It took me two years. But the point is, read it and try to read it as a whole and understand the whole scope of what God is saying. And don't let yourself simply get hung up on all the parts. Oftentimes what happens are that just as men lose sight of God in the wonders of the world, we can lose sight of God and picking away at the wonders of God's word and not see the whole scope, the great panorama of God's revelation. That being said, and since that's a bit of an aside here, I don't know if that's germane to exactly what we're saying here. But what we have in this passage is an individual was hasty in drawing an opinion of the purpose of this word. And so you have a person who takes his Bible and begins reading it and he comes across the six days of creation and he's offended and so he cuts away at it and he stops reading. You have another individual that comes along to the genealogies and makes no sense of them or why they're written there. And he just can't get his way through the book of numbers. And so he cuts away and he stops reading. You have another individual who comes and reads all kinds of strange miracles that just somehow can't pass for him. And so he cuts away and he stops reading. You have another individual who comes and reads of all the bloody battles and wars and vengeance that take place in these men who wrote the Bible and are supposed to be the heroes of the Bible. And they don't like it. It offends their sensitivities. And so they cut away and they stop reading. And as they sink what they think the knife into the word of God, instead, they don't understand that they're sinking the knife into their own hearts. They don't understand that in all of this, these words that tell of their sins and recall of sins, awful consequences, indeed, also tell of the way out from sin, the only way out from sin and the only way of forgiveness and cleansing of life. I think I've shared this story with you before, and I know I've shared it with various individuals, and so bear with me if I share it again, but I think it's germane to this point. I had an uncle who came and visited my family when I was a teenager and spent Christmas in our home. And during that time, we had a wonderful time with him and you could see him observing our family and taking notes. And at the end of his day, he went to my father and he said, you know, I don't want to be a Christian, but I like the way you live and I want to learn how to live like a Christian. What do I need to do in order to learn how to live like a Christian? My father's answer to him was, well, Neil, he said, I think what you need to do is you take your Bible, take a Bible and begin in Genesis and read through to Revelation. And by the time you get to the book of revelations that I think you'll know how to live like a Christian. That's all the answer. Well, the time came when we visited my uncle six months later. We were down in Florida. Wonder of all wonders, he had read through the entire book in those six months. And as we're sitting together, my uncle was talking about the things of God as if he were a Christian. You know, it sounded kind of strange. I'd never heard him talking that way about blessings and thanksgiving and forgiveness and grace and all these words and terminology that have been foreign to him six months prior to that. So I said, I thought that you just wanted to learn how to live like a Christian. You're talking like you are a Christian. I am a Christian. Well, how did you become a Christian? When did you become a Christian? So I'm not sure it was somewhere between Genesis and Revelation. But what was the process? Well, I said, you know, I began reading it. And when I first began reading the word, I thought to myself, this is this is nonsense. This is unbelievable. These people are crazy. This is interesting. This is plausible. This is true. This is truth. This is God's truth. This is not truth. It's a dangerous thing when you prematurely set aside the words of God because they offend your sensibilities. In it is the truth of God. In it is life. When you slice up the Word to edit it and process it according to satisfy your own needs, you only cut away at your own ability to find God's truth, God's way of life. The Bible says of Jesus Christ that He is the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to bother but through Him. And this Word is all about Christ. He is on every page and at every point, revealing Himself until the ultimate expression of His fullness comes to us and you cannot find Him. when you cut him up, when you cut this word up. But here's another thing we can notice about Jehoiakim's action here. His action was pointless. It was pointless. You know, he could destroy the mirror and you can destroy the mirror of God's word because you don't like what it reveals to you. But folks, it doesn't change what you saw in the mirror. It's still there. You know, a person who doesn't like their looks. You find young girls who, every time they walk past the mirror, they paused and looked. And somewhere along the line, it happens to us where we don't pause as long in front of the mirror. And you'll see some folks who haven't paused at all, and you can tell, but it doesn't change the reality. You can deny looking in the mirror, but it's all there. It doesn't change what you saw there when you looked into it. And so you can burn this book, and God will rewrite it a thousand times. And God can even speak, listen to me folks, God even speaks without it. Let's think about this moment. This was a pointless action. I want to share with you some points that I got from a pastor by the name of Burrell. And I think he wrote this in about 1870 or in the late 1800s. And it's a point of this very idea of the pointlessness of Jehoiakim's destroying of the word. The first thing he points out is that if you take away the Bible, you can't take away the knowledge of God. You could take away the Bible and yet the knowledge of God will remain. A person will see the expression of the reality of God written in the stars. He'll see it in every nook and canny of creation. I shared the story before of the individual who was a lie detector specialist in the state of Texas. In fact, he rose to the point where he oversaw the giving of all the lie detector tests for the government of Texas. It was a well-known pastor, Southern Baptist pastor, shared the story of this individual because he was a close friend of his. And he shared how his friend told him after he retired that after 30 some years of administering lie detector tests day in and day out, when he would calibrate those lie detector tests, he would ask people questions in order to make sure that the lie detector was working properly. And one of the questions he would always ask as he was calibrating is, do you believe in God? And he said that there was never a time when a person said no to him in those 30 some years, that the test didn't show that they were lying. You know? God has given us a witness of himself that's in all of creation. It's in every nook and cranny of creation. It's in every fiber of our being. And so you can take away the Bible, but you cannot take away a knowledge of the Creator God. And you can take away the Bible, but you also cannot take away the knowledge of sin. You can destroy the Bible and you will still know that you're a sinner. Men know that they're sinful. One of the questions we ask when we go anywhere in the world is when we have our dialogues with individuals and try to share our testimony with them and witness to lead people to Christ, we always ask is do you believe you're a sinner? And all that time I've only had one person say no to me. One person out of thousands of people. You'd think it might be otherwise. This gentleman was in Venezuela, he was a Hungarian living in Venezuela. I said, well, Bronco, if you don't have any sins, what do you have? He says, I just have vices. Well, what are your vices? Women, drinking, you know, he went and listened to them all. And as he was done, there was a list of sins. And I pointed out to him scripture, how all those things are sins. Doesn't matter where you go. People's consciences are constantly declaring to them that they're sinful. The Bible is not. Listen to me, folks. The Bible is not responsible for your sense of sin and your sense of your own sinfulness. It's written in your conscience. And by the way, that's another thing that people try to whittle away at and suppress and burn away from the consciousness is the very whisper of their own conscience speaking against them. I read a passage where an old preacher told the story of a certain doctor, a doctor by the name of Webster, who had been contemned to death in a prison. And while he was waiting for his execution day, he began to hear one of his jailers cry out, Oh, you bloody man. And then before long, he began to hear all the other inmates in the prison beat upon the walls of their rooms and cry out against them. Oh, you bloody man. And in desperation, he cried out for the guard to come. And he asked the guard to ask all these people to stop their screaming and accusations against him. But it was all figment of his imagination. There was no one in the jail that was crying out against him. What he was hearing and what he was hearing speak was only his conscience screaming in his ear. You can get rid of the Bible. You will not get rid of your knowledge of sin. And you can take away the Bible and you will not take away from man a desire for righteousness. Every man and every woman has an instinct within them to want to do good and to do good duty They basically want to be good and they want to do good. They have a sense of right and wrong They know deep inside of them that God is a holy being that God is good and they wish in some way to measure up to and approximate Him. That's why there are acts of self-flagellation that they engage in. That's why there's some demand of prayer that they must meet at inconvenient times. That's why there are these consistent demands of denial that are placed upon them in their various religions. All that is their feverish attempt to be right. to do right, to somehow feel, although they know it's not the case, they can do something that will allow them to acquire some form of righteousness. They know they're sinners and they know there's a standard, an objective standard, that they seek to measure up to and that they know they don't. You can take away the Bible and you will also not take away from individuals death. And you will not also take away from it the judgment that they will face afterwards. Hebrews 9.27 says it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment. And there is an accounting that all people know they are facing. The same people who long for justice for themselves, who mourn over injustice and hope for justice in this life for other individuals in the cells also know they suspect that one day justice will come. But for them, this justice that they desire for others will mount up as judgment against themselves. God will not only one day judge the evil that is there and there and there and there, but they suspect He will judge the evil that is here within them. And so, Bible or no Bible, deep down inside people know this is true. And even this knowledge, in this knowledge, they seek to burn it from their consciousness. Listen, there's a reason why people react so strongly and viscerally against the suggestion of a God who will judge them for their sins, and it's because you've touched a tender point. Something that deep inside they know is true. You can take the Bible away, and you also will not take away from people the dreams of immortality. their longings for something more than this world has to offer. You can take away the Bible and you will not take away their dreams. but you will take away from them any hope that that dream might be fulfilled." The answer to that dream is found in this word. Listen, it was pointless to take away these things by Jehoiakim. The voice of judgment against him and his country wasn't going to change because he burned it. The realities of God's truth were not going to change. And here's another point, his action was not only pointless, but it was self-condemning. Because you take away the Bible, you cannot take away the knowledge of God, you can't take away the knowledge of sin, you can't take away the longing to be right, or the reality of death and judgment, or the dream of eternity. But when you cut up and burn the Bible from your life, all you do is take away from yourself the Word of eternal life. You take away. the person of Jesus Christ who is so wonderfully revealed in this Word, the One who has come to bring us forgiveness of sins, the Savior who has died in our place, the Word of His resurrection and triumph over the judgment that we deserve, His victory over the consequences of our sin that He took in our place. When you take away this Word, you take away the offering of His forgiveness and His mercy. You take away the Word of His invitation where He says, Come unto Me, all you who are laboring and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. This Word is the place where you find salvation. Salvation in no one else but Jesus Christ. And when you take away the Bible, you conduct an act of self-condemnation. Because what remains from this Word is the constant voice, the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death. You take away the Bible and you will still have this Word pronounced. You'll find it in Romans 6, verse 23. The wages of sin is death. You'll still have it. You'll hear it. You can try to slice it up any way you want. You can try to deny it altogether. This word will penetrate through the soil. It will rise through the smoke as you try to incinerate the word and you will smell it in your nostril. The wages of sin is death. But what you will miss, what you will not hear, what you will not receive is the last part of that passage. The wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Cutting up the Word and incinerating it is an act of your own self-condemnation. You will not obliterate the accusations that you do not like to find in this Word, but what you will do is obliterate the Word of hope, the Word of release, the Word of salvation that comes from this Word alone. And so when Jehoiachin did this, He wasn't banishing the Babylonians from his border when he burned the writings of God through Jeremiah. He was not burning the bridge through which sorrow and suffering would reach him. He was simply burning the bridge over which he might run into the safety, into the arms of God. Look what is said in chapter 36 verses 27 to 31. The word then came to Jeremiah saying, Take yet another scroll. I wonder if this came to him even as the flames were burning up the word that was there, even before the word came to him of what Jehoiakim had done. Take yet another scroll and write on it all the former words that were in the first scroll which Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, has burned. And you shall say to Jehoiakim, king of Judah, this is what you have accomplished, Jehoiakim. Thus says the Lord. You have burned this scroll, saying, Why have you written in it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land and cause man and beast to cease from here? Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, He shall have no one to sit on the throne of David. His dead body shall be cast out to the heat of the day and the frost of the night. I will punish him, his family, his servants for their iniquity. I will bring on them, on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, on the men of Judah, all the doom that I have pronounced against them." And again we read, "...they did not heed." You see, you can't burn away the judgment that God has pronounced upon the life of sin. But you can remove yourself from the blessing and the hope of salvation that he wants to bring to us through this word. Let's look at two more things very quickly. The next one is this. His action was not only a self-condemning act, but it was an act that brought condemnation upon others as well. What do we read in that passage? that as he did this, his advisors and his servants were gathered around, and in verse 24 we have these stunning statements. Yet they were not afraid, nor did they tear their garments, the king nor any of his servants who heard all these words. Listen to me. When a person determines to reject the word of God from his life, he doesn't simply reject the word of God from his life. He sets a standard up. He emboldens others to do the same. When a father decides that he will deny the influence and impression of the word of God in his life, and he will not adhere to it and obey it, He passes that judgment upon His children. He passes it upon those that He keeps company with. When a young man in the church decides to rebel and turn his back upon the things of God and walk away from God and to dive into the sins of the world, He emboldens all of His other friends who know that He came from a religious background to pursue Him even further into His sins. When a young child decides to reject the instruction of his mother and father, and the wonderful opportunities that God has given him, and that sanctifying influence of the home, and their privileges that they have within the body of Christ, and all the instruction they've been raised in, in order to pursue in the rebellion their sinful ways of life, they embolden their other brothers and sisters to do the same. ministered alongside of a man whose oldest son, he had four sons, and his oldest son rebelled in a terrible way from God. And you'd think it would stop there, but the next son carried the sin further, and the next son even further, and the fourth son even further. And so you think that you're involved in simply an intellectual game. This is simply a personal decision, that you will choose whether to reject it or receive it, but it's not. Your willingness to submit to this Word will result in others being drawn into the grace and blessing that God wants to pour through that Word. Your attitude to reject it and refuse to obey it and follow it and yield to it and submit to it will have the same impact in a negative way. Your acts of denying God and turning from His word not only bring condemnation upon yourselves, but they bring others to be emboldened by your example. And as a result, they bring a condemnation upon them as well. And so this passage says, they were not afraid that they did not tear their garments, the king or any of his servants who heard all of these words. The last thing is this, it was a fruitless act. You can't destroy the Word of God. Jesus said, not one jot or tittle of the Word passes away until all is fulfilled. Peter reminds us, quoting from Scripture, that the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord abides forever. Burn it and its smoke rises as an incense of truth to the world around. You cannot destroy it. It will continue to produce its solicitous effect on all those who are willing to submit to it, all those whose ears are opened up by the Spirit to hear it, and it will continue to pronounce its judgment against all those whose ears are stopped from its truth. You can't stop it. Back about 10 years ago when Russia first opened up back to us about 15 years ago I went and had an opportunity to visit there. Why was there? There were a number of different Christian organizations that were arriving at the same time and they organized themselves together under a banner called Commission. And some of the workers in Commission told the story of something that had just recently happened in the city of Moscow. One of the warehouses where the various Bibles that had been confiscated during the time of the communist rule, the atheistic communist rule in Russia, one of the warehouses where all these Bibles that had been confiscated had been opened up by one of the government leaders and the members of commission were permitted to go back and retrieve these Bibles, and it wasn't a few, it was many, many thousands upon thousands of Bibles, with the permission to redistribute these Bibles to anyone they wished. That in itself is a demonstration that you can't get rid of this Word. They knew it was more work than they could handle themselves, and so they gathered people that could help them. And one of the individuals who volunteered to help them because they wanted some money was a young Russian man who was an atheist himself and not a believer. And as they were working, they found that he was missing, and they went looking for him. And finally, when they found him, they found the man almost in a fetal position, lying in a part of the warehouse with a Bible in his hand, and he was weeping. They asked him why he was weeping, and he explained that when he was a young boy growing up, that no one in his family were believers, they were hostile towards Christianity, but he had a grandmother who was a Christian. And the grandmother had a Bible that would reference the truth that she learned, and the Bible was read to her as a young child, etc. And that as he was doing this work, and he didn't believe any of this stuff, out of curiosity, he just grabbed one of the Bibles in order to see what was written in it. And when he turned it, he found written in it the name of his grandmother. And he was overwhelmed. That's the point, you see. It's a fruitless act to burn the Word. The Word of the Lord abides forever. And in it, we find our salvation in Jesus Christ. Let's bow our heads and let's pray together. Oh God, we thank you and we praise you for the faithfulness of Jeremiah, for the meticulous care that you gave in speaking to him and through him to us. for the care that He gave in pronouncing all these words and having it very carefully written down, line by line. And we recognize and understand that that is how all of these words were brought to us. From your mouth to godly men's ears, led by the Spirit of God, to the page that we read ourselves. Oh God, may we be, as Jeremiah, May we come before this word with our ears cocked, ready to hear you speak. May we be willing to let its full measure be brought to us. God forgive us. for stifling and whittling away at your truth. Teach us to be surrendered in every way in good conscience. We pray for your sake and your glory. And we thank you in all this that you've left with us this Holy Spirit who has inspired this word to illumine our hearts. If there's a person here who doesn't know this truth and to them the word is still like brass and like stone and incomprehensible, oh God, how we pray that they might open their heart to Jesus Christ and receive the spirit of enlightenment that you might teach them and instruct them in it. In Jesus' precious name, amen.