Jeremiah 7:1-8:3 “It’s Never Too Late”

1:35Mr. Simmons' story reminds us that change is always possible, that it's never too late to make a new start, that the past doesn't have to determine the future. Through the first six chapters of Jeremiah's book, He's been warning the people of Judah that God is going to discipline them for their sin and idolatry if they don't repent and return to Him. And when we started the series, I told you that this book is not written in chronological order, that it goes back and forth, and this is the first instance of that reality. Jeremiah chapters 7 through 10 is known as the Temple Sermon because, as we all just heard a few moments ago in the reading, Jeremiah preached this message in the gate of the Lord's house, where every person that was coming to worship would have had to walk past him and hear the words that he was proclaiming. As we'll see in chapter 26, this message was actually preached sometime in 609 or 608 BC after the godly king Josiah was killed in battle and the ungodly puppet king Jehoiakim, who was put in place by Egypt, began to reign in his place.

3:01But the reason this is positioned here in the text is because this is a summary of all of the messages that Jeremiah has been preaching through the first six chapters to this point. His message is simple and direct. It's not too late. It's not too late to leave superstition behind. It's not too late to listen to God. It's not too late to change direction. It's not too late to choose life. And so, friends, that's what we're going to learn today in the text. Is that because God is gracious, it's never too late to amend our ways.

3:52Let's turn our attention to these first 15 verses that Pastor Joshua read to us moments ago. We're going to learn in these verses that it's not too late to leave superstition behind. I want you to go back to verses 3 and 4, chapter 7 here. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words. This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.

4:25Jeremiah's message is that if the people would repent, amending their ways, And their deeds, God would let them keep the land and the temple. Because you see, the land and the temple were not rights owed to the people of Israel, they were gracious gifts from God. But keeping the land, which was the symbol of God's promise, and keeping the temple, which was the symbol of his presence, those things were tied to their obedience. That's the Bible's message from cover to cover. Grace is a free gift from God, but blessing is always tied to obedience.

5:13Here's the problem: the people of Judah had become superstitious. They broke God's commands every day, and then they treated the temple like a magic charm that would protect them from the consequences of their sin. Take a look at verse 8 again. Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered, only to go on doing all these abominations?

5:58Now, why would the people have been delivered? People of Judah think that they could live however they wanted, stealing, murdering, lying, committing adultery, and idolatry, as long as they also worshipped God in the temple? Well, if we go back a little over a hundred years, King Hezekiah is reigning over Judah. He is a good and godly king, but he's got a big problem on his hands. And that problem is that Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, has just taken out the northern kingdom of Israel, and he set his sights on Judah next.

6:37And so Hezekiah goes to the prophet Isaiah and he asks him, What are we supposed to do? And Isaiah declares the word of the Lord that the people are to trust God, to repent, and to pray. And I want you to look at the end of Isaiah's message here in Isaiah chapter 37. Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, he shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield, or cast up a siege mound against it. By the way that he came, by the same he shall return. And he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. For I will defend this city to save it for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.

7:24That very night, the angel of the Lord goes out into the camp of the Assyrians and strikes down one. 185,000 soldiers. Sennacherib turns around and goes back to Nineveh, and he is murdered by his two sons. That is essentially the end of the reign of the Assyrian Empire. So the people of Judah seemed to take God's word to them at that time through Isaiah as this inviolable promise: For I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David. They started to believe that God would defend Jerusalem and defend the temple no matter how disobediently they lived their lives.

8:11So what happened is that the temple turned into a den of robbers. If that sounds familiar, it's because that's the same exact phrase that Jesus uses over 600 years later to describe the temple. It was a place where thieves and murderers and liars and adulterers and idolaters would all go to hide out after committing their sins and their crimes, believing that they would be safe there. As one commentator noted, in the temple, God's people would be safe from their enemies, unless, of course, they made God Himself their enemy. In that case, the temple was a very dangerous place to be.

8:59You see, The people of Judah had become superstitious because that is what people do. We are all superstitious by nature. Superstition wasn't new in Israel, and that's what God is reminding them about in verses 12 through 14. Before the temple was built in Jerusalem, the people set up the ark and the tabernacle in a place called Shiloh, about 19 miles north. And as in Jeremiah's day, the people and the religious leaders were disobedient to God, and so God brought the Philistines against the people of Israel to attack them and defeat them.

9:39Well, I want you to see how superstitious they are. Just take a look at 1 Samuel chapter 4. When the people came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, that it may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies. Yikes. Go get the ark so that the box will save us.

10:14It is literally a little box of wood. And that is what they are trusting in. Even if you've never read the end of that story, how do you suppose it goes? Very poorly. Israel is routed. The Ark of the Covenant is captured, and the high priest Eli and his two wicked sons are killed. So Jeremiah tells the people walking past him in the temple complex: do not trust in these deceptive words, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. Remember Shiloh. If you don't repent and amend your ways, I will make this temple just like Shiloh.

11:03Friends, it probably requires no convincing that many professing Christians today are superstitious. I see Christians regularly knock on wood. What does that do? Does anyone know? Regularly, I have conversations with Christians and they say things like, I hope so. And I'm like, what do you think that's going to do? Crossing your fingers there. We have a statue on campus where students put coins so they'll do well on tests. We have a whole campus full of statues, as it were. It's like Acts 17, the Apostle Paul. I see that in every way you are very religious.

12:02Wearing Christian jewelry, attending church occasionally, all of these things we put our hope in as though these superstitions are going to protect us from the consequences of our sin. But, friends, they won't. God's blessing comes through obedience, through amending our ways and our deeds, as we saw in verses 5-7. Blessing comes from rooting out idolatry and replacing it with the worship of the one true God. So it's not too late. It's not too late to leave superstition behind, to stop trusting in trinkets and rituals and dead religious practices.

12:47But in order to do that, we've got to start listening to God. And that's what we find in verses 16 through 20. Take a look there. As for you, do not pray for this people or lift up a cry or prayer for them. And do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger. Is it I whom they provoke, declares the Lord? Is it not themselves to their own shame?

13:36Therefore, thus says the Lord God: Behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground. It will burn and not be quenched. Those are some shocking words from the Lord. He tells the prophet Jeremiah, Do not pray for this people, do not cry out for this people, don't intercede for them, because I will not listen. Wow. Why won't God listen? Look back at verse 13 again.

14:18And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently, you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer. You see, God stopped listening to the people because the people stopped listening to him. God is calling out to them, speaking persistently to them through the prophets. Meanwhile, entire families are engaged in idolatrous practices. Kids are gathering wood. Dads are building fires. Moms are kneading cakes for the queen of heaven.

15:00We'll see later on in chapter 8 that they loved and served, they sought and worshipped all of the hosts of heaven, the sun and the moon and the stars, just like their pagan neighbors. And remember what we saw in the first 15 verses. This is a critical thing to understand. The people did not ever stop going through the motions of worshiping God. They just started worshiping the queen of heaven and the sun, moon, and stars along with him.

15:37The nations all around Israel were polytheistic. And in polytheistic cultures, the only real sin is forgetting to worship any particular God. So they're acting like these pagans, as though God is fine with the situation as long as they worshiped him alongside of these other gods. But friends, that's not true. The one true God will not share his glory with anyone else. He will not be worshipped alongside anyone or anything else. The first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me, does not mean you shall not have any gods that are more important to you than me. It means you shall only. Only worship me. That's what the first commandment means.

16:35But God's people had stopped listening to him. Whole families are committing sin and idolatry on a daily basis. And so through Jeremiah, God is once again calling them to listen to him, to amend their ways and their deeds, telling them that it's not too late. But they won't listen. And so God will not listen to Jeremiah's prayers for them. Look at Psalm 66. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

17:11The people in Jeremiah's day loved and served, they sought and worshiped these false idols. They cherished iniquity in their hearts. And so God stopped listening to them and to anyone praying for them. Instead, his anger and wrath burned toward them and it wouldn't be quenched. So that brings up a really good question, doesn't it? If God won't even listen to Jeremiah's prayers for this people, what in the world is the point of preaching to them? Well, I think there's three takeaways.

17:52First, Jeremiah's preaching reminds his listeners of God's character. Before God disciplines his people, he warns them, which is what every good and loving father does. You know, some kids grow up in homes where they have no idea whether they will be disciplined or what they will be disciplined for. All of a sudden, dad snaps and they get a spanking or they get sent to their rooms or whatever. But loving fathers warn their children before they discipline them. They carefully explain the rules and the consequences, and then they enforce those things consistently, firmly, and lovingly.

18:44Jeremiah's preaching would remind God's people that he is a loving father. So if they went on provoking themselves, doing harm to themselves with their own sin and folly, he would discipline them for their own good. Second, Jeremiah's preaching would remind the exiles to learn from the past. To err is human, they say, but to not learn from your errors is foolishness. After Babylon conquered Judah, Jeremiah's words would go with them in the form of scrolls that were written down by Jeremiah's assistant. And so for Those 70 years that the people were exiled in Babylon, they would have access to hearing those words read on a regular basis, reminding them that they sinned and sinned and sinned and wouldn't repent until God exiled them into Babylon.

19:49You know, athletes watch game film to learn from their mistakes. If you've ever had to do that, that is not fun at all. It gets rewound again and again and again. But that is to drive the point home that you don't have to make that same mistake again. You can learn from that. Our mistakes can become our greatest teachers. And then, third, Jeremiah's preaching reminds us that it's never too late to listen to God. Because you see, these words were not just preserved for those people going into exile for 70 years in the 6th century BC. They're preserved for us today. So that when we hear and read God's patient warnings through Jeremiah, we're moved to consider how do we need to amend our ways? How do we need to repent? How do we need to listen to God?

20:47As Paul says in Romans 10, faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. It's never too late to listen to God's word. Let's pick up now in verse 21, where we're going to see that it's not too late to change direction. Verse 21: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them: Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you. But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants, the prophets, to them, day after day. Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers. So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. And you shall say to them, This is the nation that did not obey the voice of the Lord their God, and did not accept discipline. Truth has perished. It is cut off from their lips. Cut off your hair and Cast it away. Raise a lamentation on the bare heights, for the Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.

22:40I'm not sure if it came across, but verse 21 is one of the most sarcastic things God says anywhere in Scripture. Sacrificial offerings were killed by the worshipper, offered to God, and then eaten. Burnt offerings were offered to God, and the entire thing was consumed by fire on the altar. What God is saying in verse 21 is: you might as well turn this whole thing into a barbecue and go ahead and eat those sacrificial offerings along with your burnt offerings because your burnt offerings mean nothing to me.

23:23In this section, God reminds them that when He delivered them up out of Egypt, He did not set up a sacrificial system the second they crossed the Red Sea. In fact, it's not until Exodus 19 that there is a single word of law, much less an entire sacrificial system. Think about this for a second. The book of Exodus begins with 18 chapters of deliverance, of salvation, before there is a single word of law. 18 chapters of salvation, how God delivered them. By his grace, from a lifetime of bondage.

24:05So when he brought them out of Egypt, his command wasn't, now set up a sacrificial system. That's the most important thing to me. Not at all. What did he say? Look again at verse 23. But this command I gave them: obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people, and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you. God wanted their hearts, He wanted their obedience, He wanted to bless their lives.

24:44But what did the people do instead? Verse 24. But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts and went backward and not forward. Backward, not forward. Regress, not progress. Think about this. For 400 years, the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. And by his miraculous power, God delivered his people from grinding bondage that they had experienced generation after generation. God set them free and promised to bless them forever.

25:31Freedom would be found in obedience to his commands, in walking in the ways that God had prescribed. But instead of doing that, instead of walking according to his commands, they walked according to their own counsels. They listened to their hearts, the stubbornness of their evil hearts, just like the rest of us. The Israelites thought that walking according to their own counsel would lead to freedom and life, just like Adam and Eve thought. But the story that played out in the Garden of Eden played out over and over again for hundreds of years in the nation of Israel. Instead of moving forward, instead of making progress, they went backward, back into slavery.

26:22Except this time, they actually chose their own slavery. By worshiping these false gods, they enslaved themselves to unappeasable deities that required everything: all of their flocks and herds, their children, their land. And because they would not repent, because they would not amend their ways and deeds, they were choosing another kind of slavery too. And that was slavery to this nation that God was going to bring to judge them and punish them. So, God tells Jeremiah in verse 27: Speak to this people, but they will not listen to you. Call out to them, but they are not going to respond.

27:10As truth is cut off from their lips, I want you to cut off your hair. I want you to lament and mourn, because in their sin, they are going backward rather than forward. And, friends, here in America, we know all about going backward rather than forward in the name of progress. Think about what the last 50 years have brought to our country: no-fault divorce, abortion on demand, gender reassignment surgery for people of all ages have all been touted as progress in our country.

27:57Meanwhile, the Bible's teaching on marriage, children, and gender and sexuality is viewed as backward. Backward ideas held by backward people. Friends, these ideas are mutually exclusive. You must decide whether our society's ideas are truly progressive, are truly leading us toward human flourishing, or if they are in fact. Regressive, leading to greater and greater human misery. Jesus said that we can judge a tree by its fruit. And in this particular case, I think the fruit speaks for itself.

28:49We don't have to continue going backward. It is not too late. We can change directions. We can go forward instead of backward. But, friends, to do that, we have to stop listening to our own counsel, to our own hearts. We have to stop tuning out God's call to obey His voice, to become His child, and to walk in His ways. We have to start listening to God. The word repent means to turn or to change your mind.

29:24And that's what is necessary if you want to move forward rather than backward. It is not too late to change direction, but it starts with repentance and faith. Let's conclude in verse 30, where we see that it's not too late to choose life. For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the Lord. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth. Which is in the valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth or the valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter, for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth, and none will frighten them away. And I will silence in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, for the land shall become a waste. At that time, declares the Lord, the bones of the kings of Judah, the bones of its officials, the bones of the priests, the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be brought out of their tombs, and they shall be spread before the sun and the moon and all the hosts of heaven, which they have loved and served, which they have gone after, and which they have sought and worshipped. And they shall not be gathered or buried. They shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. Death shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family in all the places where I have driven them, declares the Lord of hosts.

31:22In this section, God reveals the depth of the people's depravity. They have rebuilt the high places of Topheth, that mercy. That word means fireplace to burn their own children as offerings to false gods. During his reign, King Josiah defiled Topheth. He turned it into a garbage dump. But after his reign, Jehoiakim came and the people rebuilt Topheth in the valley of Hinnom. In Hebrew, that word is Gehenom. In Greek, it's Gehenna. It means hell. And by Jesus' day, it was literally a dumpster fire.

32:13It was a place of trash, garbage, and waste that was smoldering and smoking 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And so it became this visual representation of Gehenna, hell. Here in verse 32, God says through Jeremiah that this place isn't going to be known as the valley of the son of Hinnnom, but the valley of slaughter. And that's because after the invasion of Babylon, the ground is going to be covered with dead bodies. Dead bodies that are going to be left out in the open, exposed to the elements and the animals. Nobody is going to bury them. Nobody's going to frighten these animals off because there's no one left. There's nothing but silence in the land. And then the Babylonians are going to come in, they're going to go into. Into the tombs, the tombs of the kings, the prophets, the priests, the officials, the common people, they're going to take their bones out and spread them out everywhere outside. In a culture that highly honored the dead, there was almost no worse insult.

33:16But I don't want you to miss the irony here of this grisly scene. Because there is a lesson, an important message for Jeremiah's hears and for you and me today from this scene, and that is this: God's judgment is inescapable. According to these verses, all of the officials went after these false gods, but some of them died of natural causes before Babylon invaded. And it seems as though some of the people who lived and experienced the invasion of Babylon and this awful thing might have been tempted to think that those people had it better off.

34:03Better to be dead years ago than to experience the destruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. That they kind of escaped God's judgment. But they didn't. Because see the irony here, their bones are taken out of the tombs and they are laid out before the sun, the moon, and the stars, all of the false gods that they worshiped. That they cried out to to deliver them, who did nothing for them. Even after death, God is holding these people accountable for their sin and idolatry, for loving and serving, seeking and worshiping false gods.

34:48Death does not exempt us from judgment. Look at what Jesus reveals in Revelation 20. John writes, Then I saw a great white throne and him who is seated on it. From his presence, earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

35:45You see, through John's vision, God shows us that every person who has ever lived is going to be resurrected to stand before the judgment seat of God. And we will be. Judge according to what we have done. Well, what have we done? Ephesians 2 tells us, take a look. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

36:36Friends, that is what we have done, every one of us since birth. We have carried out the passions of the flesh, the desires of the body and the mind, and we are under the wrath of God. What could possibly be done about that? Look again at Ephesians 2. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

37:30Brothers and sisters, this is what God has done, in his grace and mercy, sent Jesus to live and die and rise again in our place so that we could be raised with him and seated with him, enjoying the immeasurable riches of his grace. But how do we receive those riches? One more time, Ephesians 2. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

38:09We receive the gift of God's grace through faith. Unlike the people of Jeremiah's day, we hear God's warning about the consequences of our sin. We hear the good news of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. We repent of our sins, and we receive him through faith. In other words, we choose life. This morning, if you haven't done that, you have a choice before you. You can go on clinging to superstitious belief, ignoring God and His Word, going backward rather than forward.

38:51But, my friends, that choice does not lead to freedom and joy, it leads to slavery and misery. Or you can choose to leave superstition behind. You can listen to God. You can change direction and go forward rather than backward. You can choose life. You may be a young child. You may be a young adult. You may be a senior citizen in the last season of your life. But it does not matter. It is not too late.

39:28It doesn't matter what you've done because salvation is not dependent on you and what you do. Salvation is dependent on the person and work of Jesus Christ, His life, death, and resurrection. It is dependent on God's grace. And because God is gracious, it's never too late to amend our ways. Let's pray. Gracious God, we thank you that you have revealed the way of salvation in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We thank you that He has done everything necessary for us, obeying perfectly, dying sacrificially, and rising again.

40:27God, forgive us for. The superstitious beliefs that we have clung to, for not listening, for not changing direction, for not choosing life. We pray for every person here who has not yet come to faith in Christ that today would be the day that they turn to Jesus in faith. We pray that every Christian here would be reminded, both through your word and through the Lord's Supper, that Christ has done everything necessary to secure our salvation. Help us to rest in you and to walk in your ways. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

41:16Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.