Introduction:
Why Obedience Matters (Jeremiah 40:1-6):
- God's word does not Change .
- There is consequence to both Disobedience and Obedience.
- Protection
- Provision
- Hope
- Obedience matters because it shapes our Character .
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:00-00:46
So good to be with you this morning, church. Today we're gonna be in the book of Jeremiah and we're gonna be honing in on the topic of obedience and specifically why obedience matters. But first I do have a little little story I'd like to share. So first by show of hands who has had the pleasure of putting together IKEA furniture? Anybody? Okay a lot of us in here. You might know exactly what I'm talking about. And I find it ironic that they don't sell back at IKEA. It's probably the number one thing needed to assemble their furniture, right? At any rate, so one Christmas my wife Janelle decides to purchase the IKEA equivalent dentist and doctor playset for our children Eli and Cody.
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And like a good responsible father I gave myself plenty of time and started at 11 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Right, exactly. And so there was a bit of a problem however, when I went to unpackage everything the instructions were absolutely nowhere to be found. Yeah, so after about 15 minutes of frantic searching and mounting frustration, I discovered that someone at the packaging center had actually taped them between two overlapping folds in the cardboard box. So my initial thought was how much I'd like to flick the guy in the back of the head who would do something like that, but then an overwhelming sense of piece kind of came over me that our Christmas crisis was was averted but I want to ask a question would it have been enough for me to find the directions but not read them or maybe in that point I find them and I read them but I don't act on them or do what they say that would be silly wouldn't it however could it be that sometimes we view the Lord and his word in that very same way. For those of us who call ourselves Christians, maybe we say things like, "Lord, I know you and I know that I'm saved, but do I really have to read my Bible?" Or maybe we read the Bible and we don't quite agree with something that it says and it doesn't align with our lifestyle, so we say, "Lord, do I really have to obey what your Word says?" I've struggled in those areas in my life and so I'm sure that some of you may have as well. Things like, "Lord, do you really I want no profane thing to come out of my mouth.
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Or how about, Lord, do you really want me to tie the portion of every single part of my income?
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Maybe, Lord, do you really consider it murder if I hate someone in my heart without reason?
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Or Lord, is it really lust if I look at anyone other than my spouse in that way?
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So these things can be difficult to acknowledge, but if we truly obey what the word of God says, I believe that we will see why our obedience matters.
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And we'll get a glimpse of that here in Jeremiah chapter 40.
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So as we turn there, I'm gonna go ahead and bring you up to speed with what's been happening in the book of Jeremiah up to this point in chapter 40.
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So Jeremiah was a prophet called by God since before his birth to oversee the destruction and captivity of Israel, and specifically the tribe of Judah.
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So when he became of age, he was sent with a message to call the people to repentance, to their disobedience.
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And every single day, year after year, Jeremiah went preaching the same message of repentance for their disobedience.
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And instead of being met with repentance, Jeremiah was mocked, he was beaten, he was imprisoned, he was starved and almost murdered, and multiple times for some of these things.
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and even at the hands of his own countrymen." So now we fast forward to Jeremiah 40, which is where we're going to pick up and read our text.
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In Jeremiah 40, verse 1, "The word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah, Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, had let him go from Ramah, when he took him bound in chains, along with all the other captives of Jerusalem and Judah, who were being exiled to Babylon.
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The captain of the guard took Jeremiah and said to him, "The Lord your God has pronounced this disaster against this place.
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The Lord has brought it about, and he has done just as he said, because you sinned against the Lord and did not obey his voice.
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These things have come upon you.
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Now behold, I release you today from the chains on your hands.
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If it seems good to you to come with me to Babylon, then come, and I will look after you well.
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But if it seems wrong to you to come with me to Babylon, then do not come.
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See, the whole land is before you.
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Go wherever you think it good and right to go.
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If you remain, then return to Gedaliah the son of Ahicham, son of Shaphan, whom the king of Babylon appointed governor of the cities of Judah, and dwell with him among the people.
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So the captain of the guard gave him an allowance of food, a present, and let him go.
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Then Jeremiah went to Gedaliah the son of Ahicham at Mizpah and lived with him among the people who were left in the land." So if you take notes, our first point on the outline is, we see that the word of the Lord has not changed.
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God's word does not change.
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It's kind of like when you tell your kids to do something and they delay for a couple minutes and then ask you the same question if they need to do that or they go ask your spouse to confirm what you just said.
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It's not like we're gonna starve God out and he's gonna change his word towards us.
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His word does not change.
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And I think a great example of that is that we see Jeremiah recognize the word of the Lord, even being spoken through a Gentile non-believer, someone who did not know the Lord, and that was Nebuchadnezzar.
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In fact, in verse one, it says, "The word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah," even though it was spoken through someone who did not know it.
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It's kind of like when maybe you're out in public when someone tells you, "Hey, control your kids." And if you're like me, maybe your first thought is, "You don't know me or my kids.
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Who do you think you are?" Well, maybe the first question we should be asking is, are they justified or are they right in what they're saying?
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Let's bring it a little closer to home.
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Maybe the Lord has been speaking to me in my heart about being more consistent in disciplining my children, leading up to that point.
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Then it might not be a coincidence that the grumpy old lady at Target control my kids. Not that that's ever happened or anything. You get my point.
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So here we have the Lord using the captain of the Babylonian army, Nebuchadnezzar, who is an unrighteous man, in order to confirm what the Lord was speaking to Jeremiah all along. And by all along, that's 23 years. We see that in Jeremiah chapter 25, verse 3. Day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year for 23 years.
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And I had to read that a few times before it actually sank in.
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I mean, some of you in this room are listening, aren't even 23 years old yet.
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That's a very long time.
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And so after reading that, I began to think, and my first thought was how ridiculously stubborn were the children of Israel, that they didn't listen after 23 years.
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But then I also started to think about how this truly speaks of God's mercy and His long-suffering.
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And I couldn't help but consider the verse in the New Testament that God is long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, but that He wants all to come to repentance.
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And I think we see that clearly, delivering the same message for 23 years, every day through Jeremiah.
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But I did begin to see when those two thoughts mingled in my mind, how the Lord was justified in the judgment that He brought on His people.
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So doing some basic math, which is pretty much all I'm capable of, so we're confident with these numbers, 365 days in a year times 23 years. That's just about 8,400 times. So we have to ask ourselves the question, would there have been enough times that the Lord could have spoken to his people? Are we to suppose that 8,401 times would have done it? 8,402 times? I don't think so. I believe that there were no amount of times at that point that the Lord could have asked His people because their hearts were so hard and jaded towards the word of the Lord. So that begs the question in this room for me and for anybody listening, are there areas in our life that we are putting off our own obedience, or maybe we are jaded to the Lord's message that he would want to speak to us.
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Is it going to take the Lord 8,401 times in our life?
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Maybe the Lord would speak to us and say, "Hey, drop that frivolous activity that you're doing.
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Come spend time with me.
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You know what you're doing is, it's meaningless right now.
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Come spend time with your Creator." Or maybe the Lord would tell us, "You need to stop visiting those websites.
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You know what's on there.
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gonna pop up, or stop being dishonest in the work that you're doing. Maybe it's husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church, or wives submit to your husbands as unto the Lord. Maybe it's not specifically said, but you and your heart know where the Lord is calling you to obedience. I'm gonna tell you don't wait.
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If you feel the Lord tugging on your heart in that area of obedience, it's not too late to obey. And just as obedience mattered to Jeremiah and the Israelites, thousands of years ago, it matters in the here and now. Why though, you might ask.
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Someone might say, "Well, why does obedience matter right now or how does it matter in my life today?" And that brings us to point number two, because there is consequence to both disobedience and obedience. I think that's a pretty common thread that we can all agree on. I mean the speed limit on McKnight Road is 45 miles an hour. Let's say I had a beautiful Porsche 1911 and I decide to go a hundred miles an hour on 19. Antonio Brown, excuse me, something in my throat. I think we can agree that regardless of my prestige or status that I think I have, I'm punishable by law at that point. So picture of consequence to disobedience. And by default, we see that a result or consequence of obedience would be that I get to continue to enjoy my sports car responsibly. So I do want to take a closer look at the contrast between disobedience and obedience because I think there's a really great picture of that in this portion of the text. And the one key point that I want to consider under the consequence of disobedience and obedience is that disobedience separates us from God whereas obedience draws us closer to God. And how close or far that we are from the Lord it impacts some very important areas of our lives.
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And those areas are threefold. The first one is protection, the second one is provision, and the third one is hope. And I do want to dig into that a little bit more but first whenever you're talking about obedience and disobedience as New Testament believers there's something that we have to address so we're gonna take a little segue off to address that but then we're gonna come right back and talk about those three areas and that's the topic of grace I know there might be someone listening or maybe someone in this room that says as a born-again believer in Jesus Christ aren't we under the law of grace aren't we adopted into God's family as his children, obey, disobey, I'm still covered by the by the grace of God and he'll forgive me, right? The short answer is yes, absolutely. But I would challenge anyone with that mindset and say that your heart is not in the right place based on Scripture. See we see in Hebrews chapter 10, it says that when we willfully or deliberately sin, we are trampling the blood of Jesus Christ and insulting the Spirit of Grace. Other translations say we outrage the Holy Spirit and I don't know about you but in the Holy Spirit's work in my life I don't want the word outrage to be any part of that. So speaking of the condition of the heart I want to use this illustration because I think it's a very good a good way to sum it up. About two months ago my wife and I we we decided to really teach our boys how to pray and how to repent.
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Not just a surface prayer of thank you for this meal, Lord, which is good, but really ask the Lord for forgiveness for when they make mistakes.
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And my nine-year-old son, Eli, began to truly repent.
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And I could hear it in his voice.
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And I can't remember his prayer verbatim, but it was something like this.
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Lord, please forgive me for not listening to Mommy and Daddy.
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It's just so hard when I wanna get my own way, but I know it doesn't honor you when I don't listen to them.
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So please help me to do the right thing and listen when they tell me what to do.
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And I'm standing here and telling you that there are fewer things that I have heard in my life that were more precious and beautiful to me than the honest, heartfelt repentance of my child.
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But let's look at the other side of that.
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What if his prayer would have been different?
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What if his prayer sounded something like, Lord, I know you're gonna forgive me, whether I listen or not.
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I'm covered by grace, so I guess I need to listen or don't listen, it really doesn't matter.
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Basically, I can do what I want because I'm still my parents' child, they're not gonna put me up for adoption.
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Can you see the difference in the heart there?
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Both prayers were given, but which prayer do you think blesses a father's heart more?
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And likewise, the Israelites, they're still God's chosen people, but they were missing out on the blessings that came along with being God's chosen people.
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Blessings of protection, of provision, and hope.
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So now bringing back around to those three points that I wanna get into.
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Blessing, blessings of protection, provision, and hope lack thereof through disobedience. So the first one is protection. We clearly see a lack of protection for the Israelites in this portion of Scripture and in the whole book of Jeremiah to be candid. In fact, I would go as far as to call it a punishment. You see in verse 1, "They were bound in chains and they were taken away captive from their homeland and everything familiar to them." Whereas Jeremiah in verse 4, "He was set free." And I do think that this is a beautiful picture also of Jesus's words, "Whom the Son sets free is free indeed." And Jeremiah was truly set free. The captain of the entire Babylonian army, a man who answered only to the king of Babylon, stopped his entire convoy of over 750 people, and he took the time to seek out Jeremiah and find him. It's not like he could send a group text and say, "Hey, find me Jeremiah." And he sought him out and let him go. On top of that, he tells Jeremiah not once but twice, "Go wherever you want to go." So on one hand we see Jeremiah set free and free indeed, but we see the children of Israel suffering a lack of protection and punishment because of their disobedience.
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See, in verse two and three, it clearly says, "The Lord pronounced this disaster on the land.
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He brought it about, and he has done it just as he said." So the question in my mind was, how could God do such a thing?
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And right away, I automatically thought of Pastor Jeff's words where he said, "Because he is God and I am not." There are gonna be some things we don't understand about the Lord, but don't allow that to erase all the things that you do understand about the Lord.
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To help us understand a little bit more, because I really thought about this for some time, let me ask you this.
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We all wanna see God as a loving and merciful God act in our lives, right?
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Of course we do.
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But does that mean we forget about his character of justice?
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God's love and mercy is the characteristic we wanna see, but that doesn't negate God's character of justice.
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He has every right to implement his character of justice when he sees fit, just as he does with his love and mercy.
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Now I'll give you this example.
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So if one of my children makes a mistake or does something deliberate, I can choose to have grace as their father, can't I?
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Yeah, of course.
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I can even choose to show grace a second or a third time, even for the same offense, but there will come a time where punishment will be metered out for their disobedience.
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Even to the extent that I don't enjoy punishing my kids, but it's a necessary means to show them that I love them.
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I love them enough to not let them continue in their disobedience and hurt themselves or others or develop a behavior of disobedience.
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And that's a strong message for us today as believers.
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And I stand here before you, even from personal experience, saying that if you're a professing Christian, and you are living in sin, there will come a time where the Lord, as a loving Father, will discipline and even punish you for your sin if you don't repent.
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And maybe someone in here is thinking, or someone listening is thinking, well, I've done this sin before and nothing's happened, or this act of disobedience, and I didn't see any punishment or anything like that, so what do you make of that?
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I would say the fact that you're still sitting here, the Lord is showing you mercy and grace and giving you time to repent.
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And that's the very reason that you're hearing this message right now.
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Think about what that looks like in your life for a moment.
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So keeping in step with the parenting analogies, which I think are pretty appropriate since we do have many references in scripture to God as our Father, I do wanna go to our next sub-point of provision.
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So by show of hands, who has ever had the punishment or metered out the punishment of being sent to bed without dinner?
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Yeah, me, I have.
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I know it doesn't look like it, but it happened.
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So let me ask you this.
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In that moment of the parents withholding a normal provision that the children would have had, if they obeyed, does that mean that the parents are never again gonna provide for their kids or withhold meals from them indefinitely moving forward?
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Of course it doesn't.
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It just means in that moment of separation and discipline that there is a punishment or lack of provision that is being metered out by the parents.
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And in a similar way, in Jeremiah's time, the cities in Israel, including Jerusalem, would have been surrounded by the Babylonian army and their external food supply was cut off.
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And many starved, and that's why we see it's so important, 'cause it struck me as odd, why didn't Nebuchadnezzar and the captain of the guard give Jeremiah food?
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But if you read through Jeremiah up to this point, it's because there was famine in the land that was caused by the Babylonian siege.
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And that's why we see it's very important that he was given food.
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And along with that, he was given a gift and he was set free.
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So thinking about Jeremiah's moment of freedom, I started to think of maybe the joy that he was feeling.
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You know, his chains were removed, he was given food, he was given a gift, which is kind of random, and he was given the freedom to go wherever he wanted to go.
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I think that Jeremiah understood why his obedience had been important up to that point.
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Seeing no fruit for his 23 years of going to the people with not so much as any positive sign, except his word from the Lord.
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But think about it, in that moment of his freedom, the joy that he was feeling, maybe even a sense of hope.
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And I say hope because Jeremiah, although he was given this very severe message for the people of Israel, he was told that it would be a severe punishment, but that it would not be permanent, which is very important.
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And so that's why I believe Jeremiah did have a future glimpse of the hope that this would not be permanent because the Lord said so.
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Where does that leave the rest of the Israelites?
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Can we also put ourselves in their shoes and imagine the hopelessness that they felt?
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So earlier we read that the Lord was the one who pronounced the doom that would happen.
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He brought it to happen and it was already done, just as the Lord said.
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Consider that for an Israelite.
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The same God that created the heavens and the earth, created an entire nation through one man, Abraham, through many, many miracles and signs, generation after generation after generation, is now allowing his people to be conquered and taken captive because of their disobedience.
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So in thinking about the Israelites in that sense of hopelessness, but not a permanent hopelessness, I have to share with you a story from fifth grade.
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So let's just say I wasn't the model student in fifth grade.
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And those of you who are Seinfeld fans, you might appreciate this analogy.
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We'll get there.
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So we had a corresponding chart with pouches on the wall, with our name on the pouch.
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And if you had a, let's call it an infraction, a fifth grade infraction, not bringing your homework, talking back to your teacher, pushing someone at recess, whatever it was, going outside principal's office, there was a corresponding colored index card that you had to shove in your pouch.
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Let's just say that my pouch was like George Costanza's wallet on Seinfeld, where one more piece of paper in that pouch was going to cause it to explode and shower the room with confetti.
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So, as a result, I was not able to go on my end of the year field trip to the LA County Zoo.
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And instead, I had to sit in the second grade classroom and make up every assignment that I could and write standard upon standard upon standard.
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For those of you young kids, that's when they make you write the same thing over and over and over.
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Yeah, so you can imagine to my surprise, when everybody got back, they returned from the field trip, I noticed that getting off the bus was, 'cause the second grade classroom was, the window was right where the buses would pull in.
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I noticed that there was another kid, his name was Junior.
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And let's just say Junior and I were battling it out for the thickest pouch.
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And he got to go on the field trip.
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So I mustered up enough strength to ask my teacher, Mrs. Durkee, yes, that was her name, and I'm sure there was a card in there for making fun of that name.
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But nevertheless, I mustered up the courage to ask her, Mrs. Durkee, why did Junior get to go on this end of the year field trip, but I didn't?
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And I will never forget what she said to me.
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She said, "James, if you would have just asked "for forgiveness and asked politely to go, "I would have let you go." Talk about a letdown.
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Seriously, but nonetheless, an important lesson, one that stayed with me for, I'm not gonna say how many years, But looking back, I feel like there was such a disconnect because I didn't understand her character.
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And even though she just wanted to be reconciled to me and wanted me to have the courage to reconcile with her, that's all she wanted.
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But yet I felt a hopelessness that no matter what I did, that my fate was sealed, that there was no amount of pleading or forgiveness that I could have asked to go on that trip.
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and that was a hopelessness I felt and I didn't get to go on the trip.
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But that wasn't the case.
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If I would have asked for forgiveness, I could have gone.
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And I wonder how many times the Lord would plead with us, even as he played with the Israelites for 23 years, "Just come to me, repent, and I will forgive you." So lastly, discussing a little bit more about character.
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This is our point three and the last one that we're gonna cover.
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Why does obedience matter?
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because it shapes our character.
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So we've seen some clear differences between Jeremiah and the children of Israel, differences of how they dealt with and received the word of the Lord, how close or far they were from the Lord, or separated or near to the Lord, differences of protection, provision, and hope.
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But now I wanna talk about the character difference between Jeremiah and the children of Israel.
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So clearly we see that Jeremiah was faithful.
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The fact that he went and spoke the same message for 23 years without wavering in the midst of all those trials and persecution speaks of his faithfulness.
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But I think the most clear picture of Jeremiah's character is found in verse 6, and I want to read it again.
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It's kind of subtle, so I don't want us to miss it.
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"So then Jeremiah went to Gedaliah the son of Bahikam at Mizpah and lived with him among the people who were left in the land." So Jeremiah chose to go back to the land and dwell with the people of God, even when he was given the option to be provided for by one of the most prominent and powerful leaders in the entire land, Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the entire Babylonian army.
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What would cause him to do something?
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I began to think of our youngest son, Cody, and you know, like good parents, we have nightlights in their room, and in the hallway, and in the bathroom, just in case they get scared in the middle of the night with a bad dream or have to use the restroom.
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There's probably 57 nightlights between their room and the bathroom.
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But my wife and I, we don't like sleeping with any lights on.
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We love it as dark as we can.
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We sleep very well like that, but we do leave our door ajar just a little bit.
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So I was thinking, what would cause my son Cody, feeling the fear of a bad dream or whatever it is of the darkness, to leave the most well-lit area of the house at the night, his room, the hallway and the bathroom, to go into a room where all you can see is darkness.
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What would possess him to do that?
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And what would possess Jeremiah to go back to the land where there was famine, destruction, and hopelessness?
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And I believe that Jeremiah knew who was waiting for him and knew that the Lord would be with him.
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Just as my son Cody, even in that sliver of darkness where he can't see what's on the other side, he knows that his father is waiting for him there with open arms, ready to meet his needs and comfort him in that moment.
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And I think that shows how Jeremiah understood and knew the Lord's character and how Jeremiah's character had been shaped by the Lord for as long as it was.
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So I'm gonna close with this, in talking about why obedience matters.
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Based on everything that we read, and looking at the lives of Jeremiah and the children of Israel, some pretty interesting childhood analogies from my kids, maybe from me, I'm here to tell you that obedience matters in your life as well.
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And I truly believe that it matters more now than it did to Jeremiah and the Israelites.
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Why?
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Because that's the past, that can't be undone.
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It's not changing.
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But you have a choice today, to obey or not to obey the Lord.
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There is still hope for you to make that choice and to make the right choice before the Lord.
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And God being a loving and good father, he makes it as simple as he possibly can for us.
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And I believe it boils down to one word, and that word is repent.
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If you are a non-believer and you've never trusted God as your father and what he did for you in sending his son, Jesus, to die for your sins, you need to repent of your unbelief.
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Ask God for forgiveness.
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He will forgive you.
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His word makes that clear.
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Likewise, if you're a believer and maybe you find yourself in sin, you don't know how you got there, maybe it was intentional or not, maybe it is deliberate.
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Either way, the same word, repent.
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Ask your father for forgiveness.
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He will forgive you.
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I wanna close with the book of Acts, chapter 17, verse 30.
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The verse says that God has overlooked times of ignorance, but now commands that all people everywhere repent.
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The two things I really like about that verse is that there's not a caveat for believers that says, If you're a believer, you don't have to do this.
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It specifically says, "All people everywhere." And that's exactly what it means.
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And secondly, it says, "The word repent is a command." And what do you do with a command?
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You obey or you disobey.
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But it does matter.
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Let's pray.
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Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this time.
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Lord, we thank you for the mighty power of your word.
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Lord, we're humbled to be your servants and to acknowledge, Lord, that your grace abounds and it abounds magnificently in our lives, Lord, but that we do have a choice to obey or disobey you.
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And I pray that we would always choose you, Lord.
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I pray that you would please minister, Lord, to our hearts this week.
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Help us to be unified as a congregation.
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And we thank you for this time.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Jeremiah 40:1-6
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
What does Jesus say about obedience?
Are there any areas in your life where you may be putting off obedience?
Considering the first two questions, why do you think it is important for us to obey God?
Breakout
Pray for one another.
