Dennis Tuuri

# Jeremiah 32 Sermon Transcript

is Jeremiah chapter 32. Jeremiah 32. I want to really focus on one verse, but we’ll read it in context by reading all of Jeremiah chapter 32. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Jeremiah 32: The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of Zedekiah, king of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar. For then the king of Babylon’s army besieged Jerusalem. And Jeremiah the prophet was shut up in the court of the prison which was in the king of Judah’s house.

For Zedekiah, king of Judah, had shut him up, saying, “Why do you prophesy and say, Thus says the Lord, behold, I will give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it. And Zedekiah, king of Judah, shall not escape from the hand of the Chaldeans, but shall surely be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, and shall speak with him face to face and see him eye to eye.

Then he shall lead Zedekiah to Babylon, and there he shall be until I visit him, says the Lord, though you fight with the Chaldeans, you shall not succeed. And Jeremiah said, the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Behold, Hanameel the son of Shallum your uncle will come to you saying buy my field which is in Anathoth for the right of redemption is yours to buy it. Then Hanameel my uncle’s son came to me in the court of the prison according to the word of the Lord and said to me please buy my field that is in Anathoth which is in the country of Benjamin for the right of inheritance is yours and the redemption yours.

So buy it for yourself. Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord. So I bought the field from Hanameel, the son of my uncle, who was in Anathoth, and weighed out to him the money, seventeen shekels of silver. And I signed the deed and sealed it, took witnesses, and weighed the money on the scales. So I took the purchase deed, both that which was sealed according to the law and custom, and that which was open.

And I gave the purchase deed to Baruch, the son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, in the presence of Hanameel, my uncle’s son, and in the presence of the witnesses who signed the purchase deed before all the Jews who sat in the court of the prison. Then I charged Baruch before them, saying, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, take these deeds, both this purchase deed which is sealed and this deed which is open and put them in an earthen vessel that they may last many days.

For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land. Now when I had delivered the purchase deed to Baruch the son of Neriah, I prayed to the Lord saying, “Ah Lord God, Behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for you. You show loving kindness to thousands and repay the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them.

The great, the mighty God, whose name is the Lord of hosts. You are great in counsel and mighty in work. For your eyes are open to all the ways of the sons of men to give everyone according to his way and according to the fruit of his doings. You have set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt to this day and in Israel and among other men. And you have made yourself a name as it is this day. You have brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with great terror.

You have given them this land of which you swore to the fathers to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, and they came in and took possession of it. But they have not obeyed your voice or walked in your law. They have done nothing of all that you commanded them to do. Therefore, you have caused all this calamity to come upon them. Look, the siege mounds, they have come to the city to take it, and the city has been given into the hand of the Chaldeans who fight against it because of the sword in famine and pestilence.

What you have spoken has happened there. You see it, and you have said to me, oh Lord God, buy the field for money and take witnesses. Yet the city has been given into the hand of the Chaldeans. Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying, Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for me? Therefore, thus says the Lord, behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and he shall take it.

And the Chaldeans who fight against this city shall come and set fire to this city and burn it with the houses on whose roofs they have offered incense to Baal, and poured out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger, because the children of Israel and the children of Judah have done only evil before me from their youth. For the children of Israel have provoked me only to anger with the work of their hands, says the Lord.

For this city has been to me a provocation of my anger and my fury from the day that they built it, even to this day. So I will remove it from before my face because of all the evil of the children of Israel and the children of Judah, which they have done to provoke me to anger. They, their kings, their princes, their priests, their prophets, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And they have turned to me the back and not the face.

Though I taught them, rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not listened to receive instruction. But they set their abominations in the house which is called by my name to defile it. And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into my mind that they should do this abomination to cause Judah to sin.

Now therefore, thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, it shall be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence. Behold, I will gather them out of all countries where I have driven them in my anger, in my fury, and in great wrath. I will bring them back to this place and I will cause them to dwell safely. They shall be my people and I will be their God.

Then I will give them one heart and one way that they might fear me forever for the good of them and their children after them. And I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from doing them good. But I will put my fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from me. Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and with all my soul.

For thus says the Lord, just as I have brought all this great calamity on this people, so I will bring on them all the good that I have promised them. And fields will be bought in this land of which you say it is desolate without man or beast. It has been given into the hand of the Chaldeans. Men will buy fields for money, sign deeds and seal them, and take witnesses in the land of Benjamin, in the places around Jerusalem, in the cities of Judah, in the cities of the mountains, in the cities of the lowland, and in the cities of the south.

For I will cause their captives to return, says the Lord.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this section of your scriptures. We thank you for the warning that it is to us, for the encouragement that it is to us and for the great encouragement it is of your love for us. Bless us now as we meditate upon it. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. Let’s begin first by an overview of what’s happening in this text. One particular person in the context here is Baruch. First I should put it in the greater context. Of course what’s going on is Jeremiah is writing in the context of the coming exile of God’s people in the south. The people in the north have gone into captivity long before. Now the people of the south are going to be taken into Babylonian captivity by Nebuchadnezzar. Jeremiah is prophesying in the context of that.

Much of this is what he does in his book. His book is not chronological, as we’ll see in just a moment, but it is laid out in a particular way and the text we have here is the first mention in the book of Jeremiah of the man Baruch. And his part in this incident is interesting and it’s interesting to note what happens to Baruch. He’s mentioned in four specific chapters of Jeremiah. So I wanted just to begin with to talk just a little bit about the life of Baruch and in the midst of the great things going on that are talked about here—tremendous, you know, macrocosm sort of international affairs and relations—it’s helpful I think even as we live in a world where we have all this information of what’s happening we have all our fears of what’s going on in our country we have all of our concerns about the culture that we live in the declension of the Christian church all the big issues in the midst of these big issues there’s this specific individual Baruch.

Now there’s Jeremiah of course he’s the great prophet. He’s a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, man of sorrows. But, you know, it’s usually helpful to look for us in the text, not in the great man, but in the man who is being tested, moved along in his life. And Baruch is that guy in the text before us, which is the first mention of Baruch’s name. He’s doing his job now. He’s a friend of Jeremiah. He’s attached himself to the right kind of guy. He’s sought out a great man and they’re apparently friends.

But what we’re told about Baruch primarily in this first text is he does a job. Jeremiah buys some land. He redeems it. He buys a portion of land. He has a deed and there’s one that’s open and one that’s sealed and legal customs of the time and all that stuff. And we could talk more about that, but we won’t. The point is we have these deeds open and closed. And these deeds, Baruch is a scribal officer sort of fellow. This is the sort of stuff he does is to keep records, deeds, etc. So, Baruch is asked by Jeremiah to put the deeds in a clay jar and seal it up for many, many days, for a long time. He wants it in a clay jar because it’s going to have to last a long time and the paper could disintegrate, whatever it is, safekeeping. So Baruch is just doing his job, right? He’s a scribal officer. He keeps the file cabinet with deeds, which happens to be clay jars, and he does it.

So he’s just doing his job. The next reference to Baruch is in Jeremiah 36. If you could turn there. Then briefly while you’re turning, Jeremiah 36 is the subject of the cover of the Order of Worship as well as the coloring page for the young kids today. So if you look at that coloring page, for instance, what you’ll see is a guy with a scroll, a king sitting on a throne. He’s got a knife out and he’s cutting the scroll into bits, cutting off pieces of it as it’s read.

So You know, you might want to ask yourself, do you know what that’s about? That’s about Jeremiah chapter 36. And the story is told in a little more detail in the art panel on the front here. And this is the second incident in the life of Baruch. And what happens in chapter 36 is that God now is going to speak against Israel. He says in verse 2 of chapter 36 to Jeremiah, take a scroll of a book and write on it all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel and against Judah.

So now these are the specific prophecies of Jeremiah written condemning the people of God for their sinfulness in the context of the land. And then in verse four, Jeremiah calls Baruch the son of Neriah. And Baruch wrote on a scroll of a book, the instruction of Jeremiah these things. So again, Baruch is just doing scribal work. This is what the guy does for a living. He’s being good at what he does. He does it for a living because he’s good at it.

He gets to attain to higher places and he gets to actually write this prophetic scroll out. Now, if the guy wasn’t any good at, you know, taking notation and writing down dictation from someone, he wouldn’t be able to do this. So, Baruch is the sort of guy that reminds us that when we do our job well, as the proverb says, we’ll stand before kings. The diligent man, that’s in the words of the wise, the first section about the whole idea of working and standing before kings because of the excellence of our work.

The only positive commandment in the first ten of the words of the wise at the middle of Proverbs is to be diligent to do your work well and you’ll stand before kings. So Baruch is an example to each of us to do our work well and to expect promotion by God. But that’s not the only thing that happens in verse 36. He then goes on to say in verse 5 of chapter 36, I’m confined and this time Jeremiah has been locked up in a prison.

This is actually earlier than the last one. We’re going thematically through the book of Jeremiah. Okay, these aren’t chronological, but they’re the way Baruch is presented to us. So, here Baruch does his job. And then Jeremiah says, “Well, as it turns out, I’m locked up. And so, I can’t go read this to the rulers of Israel or Judah, rather, you’re going to have to go do it.” Verse six: you go therefore and read from the scroll which you have written at my instruction, the words of the Lord and in the hearing of the people in the Lord’s house on the day of fasting.

So he then tells Baruch to go do this. Now this wasn’t part of Baruch’s job, right? He’s a clerk, a scribe, and now he’s being asked to take a set of prophecies which are really quite negative toward the house of Judah, toward God’s people in Jerusalem, and to those that would be in the temple, ultimately to the king and all the rulers.

He’s going to tell them all, you’re going to Babylon, you’re going to lose no matter if you fight or not, you’re going to come under judgment from God. Horrible sin is going on and God’s going to judge you. Now, Baruch is an example to us of someone who is stretched. His faithfulness to God is the first example, faithfulness in vocation. But the second example is that yeah, that faithfulness will make us stand before kings, but it may not be saying the sorts of things we want to say to a king to make him like us.

Baruch will have to say to the king as the story goes on. He’ll tell other people. They’ll bring him before the king. He has to tell the king, “You’re going to Babylon. You’re going to be captured by Nebuchadnezzar and you’re going to be destroyed.” So, you know, Baruch is an example that we should be faithful in our vocation. We should expect promotion, but we should also expect for the greater purposes of God in his kingdom trials, tribulations, difficulties, specifically because we’re good at what we do.

Baruch now has to be stretched. He has to do something that he’s not normally used to doing, going and reading this thing now to a bunch of people. And not only that, but what’s going to happen, of course, in the story that develops is this king is going to eventually have Baruch come and read it to him. And as Baruch unwinds the scroll to read it, the Bible says the king takes a knife and cuts off the pieces of it and throws it into the fire.

So all his work he wrote that thing. He Jeremiah dictated, but he wrote it. All that work is going to be burned up, and he’s going to suffer the wrath of the king. And what’s going to happen in 36 is he’s going to be seen as a bad guy. He’s prophesying against God’s people. He’s joining the opposition. He’s a hidden agent just like Jeremiah is. And he’s going to be confined as well. So, he’s going to end up suffering persecution simply because of his faithfulness.

And so Baruch in chapter 36 is an example. Yeah. Of vocational faithfulness, vocational stretching. We’re going to be asked to do certain things in our lives that aren’t things we’re used to or comfortable to do. And that’s going to bring us among other things a lot of times, at least sometimes, trials, tribulations, difficulties, persecution, active persecution is what happens to Baruch in chapter 36.

So the coloring page and the front of the order of worship as a reminder of that. Now, he goes back and it isn’t over because Jeremiah dictates the same stuff and Baruch writes it a second time and we have the wording of those scrolls in our Bible. So, Baruch continues faithfully in spite of knowing that the last time he was faithful it got him in trouble. Baruch loves God more than he loves men. He’s willing to suffer tribulation and rejection and persecution by men for the cause of God.

In chapter 43 of Jeremiah is the next reference and here another recurrence happens and the rulers come to him. All the proud men come to Jeremiah saying you speak falsely. The Lord our God has not sent you to say do not go to Egypt to dwell there. So now what’s happening is the king is making an alliance with Egypt, and it’s not going to work out, of course, because God is going to judge Judah and they’re not going to get off.

The Egyptian armies won’t show up. And, and, and Jeremiah is telling him what’s going to happen. So, they’re saying, “You’re a liar.” And then verse 33 says, “But Baruch, the son of Neriah has sent you against us to deliver us into the hand of the Chaldeans that they may put us to death or carry us away captive.”

So now Baruch doesn’t just get persecuted for doing what Jeremiah wants him to do. He’s actually called the instigator. He’s the one that turned Jeremiah against God’s people in Judah. So, not only will we have direct persecution for doing what’s right in obedience to another good guy, we actually may be called a conspirator, the grand conspirator against God’s people. And so, Baruch suffers that. And as a result of that, later in verse six, we read that Baruch and Jeremiah went with them to the land of Egypt because the people didn’t obey the voice of God.

So, you know, even when we suffer persecution, we’re not going to immediately get out of it. Baruch is an example of faithfulness in vocation, being stretched to do things for Christ and his kingdom that aren’t comfortable, getting persecuted for that, and then actually suffering difficulties himself, not just being disliked, but now he’s taken down to Egypt and essentially confined there as well. So he goes with God’s people into captivity.

So more persecution for Baruch. He ends up in Egypt and that’s really the last we know of him. Now there’s one last reference to him in the book of Jeremiah and that’s chapter 45. So turn to chapter 45. And it’s interesting that you know you may say well I don’t want to be like him. On the other hand chapter 45 is a chapter that is all about Baruch. So Baruch becomes the object the special object of a particular oracle that Jeremiah receives from the Lord.

Verse 1 of chapter 45: the word that Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah when he had written these words in a book at the instruction of Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah saying thus says the Lord the God of Israel to you oh Baruch you said woe is me now for the Lord has added grief to my sorrow I fainted in my sighing and I find no rest.

So Baruch is an example not of a great guy who never complained or never saw difficulties as anything other than a great gift from God. No, he was we see now an inner insight into his emotional distress over what was happening. He wasn’t just like you know the calm guy through all of this. Okay. No, it was greatly troubling to his soul. Verse four says: Thus you shall say to him thus says the Lord, “Behold, what I have built, I will break down. What I have planted, I will pluck up.” That is this whole land. So, he’s saying, “Look, it’s my land.

Don’t you grieve over it because I’m going to do it what I want to do.” And do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them, for behold, I will bring adversity to all flesh, says the Lord. The Lord corrects Baruch’s attitude. Make sure that what you’re doing, even your obedience to Jeremiah and me, isn’t for self-advancement but rather for my glory. So the Lord brings Baruch a correction to his attitude.

He doesn’t say that he’s doing it for himself, but Baruch is being tempted to think that way. We must admit, and God is preventing him from becoming that thing. And then look at the very way it ends. But I will give your life to you as a prize in all places wherever you go. God promises Baruch that no matter what the difficulties will be, His life will be seen as a prize, as a special treasure to God. He’s going to give Baruch life, not just sorrow, not just difficulties.

Somehow, he’s going to give him life with God, even wherever he goes. Whether it’s that place where he’s got to go speak before people and he doesn’t feel comfortable. If it’s that place where he’s got to go rebuke the king through the words of Jeremiah and suffer his wrath, that’s not comfortable. Wherever he goes, though, God gives him his life as a prize, as a delight, as a special treasure, even when he has to then suffer the slings and arrows of abuse, saying that he was the grand conspirator that was really motivating Jeremiah becomes the object of the conspiracy theories, still God says even there he will be with Baruch and he’ll be giving him his life as a prize.

And even when Baruch is taken down to Egypt in physical torment, now carried away down to Egypt, forced to go there, a picture of descent went into a difficult time, trials, tribulations, physical persecution. Still, even the Lord says that if you go to Egypt, I will give your life as a prize. Now, that’s kind of a setup for what God tells us in Jeremiah 32. But it’s a description that takes into account the need for, you know, really attending to our vocations, the desire that we should have to be stretched in what we do to do things for God.

The result causing persecution that will usually come or can come as a result of doing God’s work and even heightened persecution and yet the knowledge that through it all the Lord God is giving his servant his life as a prize as a special treasure. So it’s a picture to us no matter what happens in our lives no matter what trials or tribulations when we’re the servant of God when we’re the servant of God’s people and God’s prophet Jeremiah we’re the servant of the greater Jeremiah Jesus No matter where he takes us, our life is being given to us as a prize by way of illustration in the life of Baruch.

Now, that is really good news. That’s news that we should be able to take into the heart of our being, correcting our attitude. We’re not doing it for ourselves. We’re doing it for the glory of God. And when we do it that way, the Lord God is with us every step of the way, guiding and blessing us even in the most difficult of times. It’s a wonderful picture for us, the life of Baruch in these four chapters from Jeremiah.

With that as a background, I want us now to go back to chapter 32 and think about that a little bit, a little bit more. We’re going to talk about Jeremiah 32 as good news, bad news, and great news. You know, you hear the story. I got good news and bad news. What do you want to hear first? So, we’re going to hear first the good news. Now, when I say good news, I don’t mean for them, for the recipients of the letter of the prophecy.

I mean for us. I’m looking at this from our perspective. What is chapter 32 to us? And I think that the first thing it is good news. And the second thing it is bad news. Some bad news in there. But the third thing that it is as it develops is great news. Wonderful news. The best possible news we could ever have. Now let’s remind ourselves again what we just read. What’s going on in chapter 32? Well, a weird thing happens to Jeremiah.

Jeremiah knows at this point in his life that, you know, there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Judah’s going to die. Judah’s going into captivity. The prophets in the Old Testament, this is their message. You’re dying. Okay? There’s no ifs, ands, or buts. It’s really not a call to maybe you can get out of it if you do this. Not really. The overall message of the prophets is death. You’re going to be killed.

You’re going into captivity in the north, then you’re going to go into captivity in the south. Now, beyond that, it’s resurrection as well. The prophets, some prophets are all death. Some really focus more on resurrection. And in Jeremiah, we have a little of both, but it’s mostly death. But so Jeremiah has been told by God, you’re dying. The land is dying. You’re going to be going away. And in fact, the Babylonians were already starting to have influence at various times in the life of Jeremiah where They’re starting to control everything in the country.

And so Jeremiah gets a weird message from God. God tells him that this guy he knows is going to come and ask him to redeem this land and to buy it and take possession of land in his hometown. And he’s going to say, “Well, what’s the point of that? The Chaldeans are coming. What do you mean buy some land? I’m going to buy land. This land’s all going over to Nebuchadnezzar.” And so Jeremiah He knows it’s the word of the Lord that he’s supposed to buy this land, but he doesn’t really get it.

And so in chapter 32, this is told this is what you’re supposed to do. He does it faithfully and then he prays. When we’re perplexed, when we don’t understand what’s happening, prayer is a really good thing. So he cries out to God, alas, Lord God. Ah, Lord God, what’s happening? I need help understanding things. Now, his prayer in Jeremiah 32 is a lot like Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 9. It’s one of the great prayers of the Bible.

You know, it’s an extended prayer. It follows a lot of the same message as Daniel 9, which is a very important prayer as well. Daniel’s actually in captivity. Maybe he learned to pray that way from the writings of Jeremiah. But in any event, they’re similar. And what Jeremiah does is he talks about the greatness of God. His prayer begins with praising God for his power, for his might, for everything. He has he does not let the death announcement to Judah shatter his confidence in the sovereignty of God.

No, he’s there. He’s solid. He knows who God is. And more than that, he praises God for all of that. He praises God and he says, “Man, you are wonderful. You’re great.” And he moves from the praise of God to confessing the sins of the people. We know I know that the reason things have turned out badly for us is your curse against us. We know I know that we’ve sinned. you’re just in bringing your punishment to us.

Okay, so that’s how the prayer begins. And then only in the third section after that, after he praises God and he acknowledges God’s just judgment upon his people, only then does he say, “What’s going on with this land thing?” And God gives him an answer. God gives him an answer that really kind of connects up with the prayer of Jeremiah. We could take more time. We’re not going to, but Jeremiah’s prayers are sort of marked with the responses by God.

So, one long prayer, an answer by God and they match up. God is powerful. He has brought judgment for the sins of the people. And he’s going to explain now what the land thing is all about. And what he tells Jeremiah is that there will come a time after death. There will be resurrection. It’s not forever. You’re coming back to the land. And when you come back to the land, people will buy and sell with liberty and freedom once more.

Jeremiah knows that the time is quickly arriving when they will not be able to buy and sell land. It will be all owned by Nebuchadnezzar and his people. The free freedom and liberty to enter into commercial transactions with the sort of money Jeremiah is used to will go away. But God is telling Jeremiah that the image of doing that transaction and then recording the deeds and putting them in a clay jar for posterity is a reminder to him and to everybody that sees the symbol, the sign, the image.

It’s a picture, you know, like that picture of the king cutting up that scroll is from the coloring page today of what happened to Baruch when he was faithful. He got difficulties. This is a picture that once more people will buy actual plots of land in that hometown of yours and in Judah and in the mountain areas and in the lowlands and in all the area around here once more. Land will be able to be purchased.

Economic freedom, self-determination will return for God’s people. They won’t just die. They’ll be raised back up and they’ll come back to the land. Now, when does all that happen? Well, in one sense, it happens after seventy years, but Daniel’s told it’s really seventy weeks of years. It’s going to be four hundred ninety years, maybe a little plus or minus before it really happens. They do come back, but they’re under overlords for, you know, hundreds of years after their return to the land.

The restoration at the end of seventy years is really not what most of these prophecies are about. They’re about the coming of Christ. And when Christ returns, then freedom happens for the people again. So, it has a fulfillment in the restoration from Babylon under Nehemiah. It has a greater fulfillment in the coming of Christ. So that’s what Jeremiah 32 is about. Yeah, it’s really bad news. Jeremiah, you are going to die, but there’s some good news mixed into this.

You will be born again. You will come back as a people and freedom will happen. And now I want to talk about it in reference to us. What does it say to us? Well, first it’s good news. How is it good news? This first part where we recognize that all commercial transactions would cease and that there’d be total domination. The people would be taken into exile by Nebuchadnezzar. Well, it’s good news to us. It’s a reminder to us that things could be a lot worse.

It’s good news to us because we can complain and we can worry and we can say, “What’s Obama doing today, tomorrow, whatever? What are those Russians doing? What’s Chavez doing? Is he going to make us like him?” You know, we can worry about all that stuff. But really, when we read about what it’s really like to suffer the just judgment of God in its severity for our sins, we should recognize this is good news.

It’s nowhere near this bad for us. You can go on down and buy land, give somebody money for it, get a deed, file it with the court, and it’s okay. You can sell your land. You can buy your land. Yeah, there’s some restriction. But, you know, living in community is always living in community. There’s got to be community awareness in our what we do. But the good news is that we’re nowhere near the state at which God in his righteousness and in his justice and judgment brought God’s people.

So, it’s good news. But there’s some bad news, too, isn’t there? Because we read these things about weighing up money. And we think about buying and selling land and we look at what’s going on in our culture and we can see, you know, the hoofbeats coming from maybe a long way away, but we hear the hoofbeats, right? Judgments coming. We can’t enter into commercial transactions like we used to. Another year or two, you will not be allowed to buy and sell incandescent light bulbs.

Now, it’s a pretty small thing, right? Who cares? But understand the significance of that. It is a making illegal a free market transaction that has no health benefit. You know, there’s no problem with the incandescent light bulb. There’s some theory some guy’s got way off away someplace. This is bad and not energy efficient. And because this guy way off someplace that you can’t talk to thinks that, you can’t buy or sell light bulbs in a couple years.

And you’re used to. In fact, you got to use these compact fluorescents, which at least at this point in time are far more dangerous to your health than the incandescent. They’re going to make you have poison mercury in your house that could break and pollute your home and commercial transactions. He weighs out money. Now, you know me, I don’t think the only thing we can have for money is stuff that can be weighed out, but the solidity of the money supply is emphasized here.

He weighs out this silver, right? And what we have now is a currency system that at one time had at least a viable a viableness to it that provided economic transactions that were free and fair and open. That’s starting to the hoofbeats are on the road there too. When the Federal Reserve was created, it was created with regional Federal Reserve banks. You know why? Because each region of the country in the early twentieth century had particular industries associated with that region.

So the west you know was you know lumber and cattle and that sort of stuff and the in New York it was all financial systems and each element certain area had you know manufacturing industrial heavy industry. So the banks represented the sort of commerce that was going on in their region and because of that the Federal Reserve banks being decentralized really were there to bring perspectives not just from the New York bankers but from you know the cattle yards from the timber people from the heavy industry people that was the idea and so they knew that the centralization of money and currency in one person’s hands was a really bad idea any one of these regions would be tempted to use the system for their own purposes.

FDR attempted to put the Treasury Secretary, his handpicked guy, at the head of the Federal Reserve. And Congress said, “No way. First of all, that would be a transfer of massive amount of authority, what kind of money we weigh out for land purchases from the Congress to the administrative branch, and we don’t like it. Secondly, it’s putting all control into one man’s hands, on Nebuchadnezzar’s hands.” Well, two weeks ago, a bill was introduced in our legislature of the United States Congress. That’s a Federal Reserve Reform Act, eighty-eight pages.

Well, you know, the Fed didn’t do so good in this last crisis. We got to change it. And hidden away in that bill is a line that would say that whenever the Federal Reserve wants to loan money, they have to get the permission of the Treasury Secretary, Geithner. Now, Geithner’s New York bank guy. He was head of the New York Reserve before he became Treasury Secretary. He was why we allowed him to be confirmed, but he was a big part of the mess that created this problem at the end of last year is interesting.

But in any event, you know, he has one particular perspective and what Obama is attempting to do and I don’t know if the bill is going to pass or not. It probably will. I don’t know if this provision will be taken out or not. But it’s hoofbeats if hoofbeats that are saying if you don’t understand already that the monetary system is no longer a thing where we can really count on consistency in economic transactions.

Now, if we put the thing into one man’s hands, a New York banker basically, and a centralized authority guy and whatever else he might be Geithner and he is interesting things whoever he is that’s bad and when the text tells us that part of the coming judgment on Jerusalem was the no transactions and no having your money anymore to do these transactions it’s the sound of hoofbeats to us. The Energy bill is another, you know, little hoofbeats coming from the distance.

What will happen? We don’t know what’s going to happen. But what we do know, well, we don’t really know because it’s 1,300 pages. No, they haven’t read it. I tried downloading. I couldn’t even I mean, it’s huge and it’s done at the federal level where you really have a very difficult time finding out what’s happening. At the state level, you can go down to Salem pretty easily. You figure out what a bill’s going on.

You can talk to a couple congress your representatives, your senator, you can do that stuff. Federal government, forget about it, right? It’s not happening. Not happening. And in this bill, there’s provisions for a national building standard, right? You have building standards, how you supposed to construct houses. So already there’s a statist oversight or control of the sort of things that Jeremiah describes as symbolically a sign of oppression, the removal of the ability to purchase land.

You won’t be able to purchase land or purchase a house or buy a house or sell a house unless it’s by approved been approved by local zoning ordinances. Now, most of that stuff is good. It’s living in community. Some of that’s required, but now we’re talking about making homeowners or home builders rather meet a national building code based not upon safety. The house might fall down, but based totally on the amount of energy consumption where electrical outlets can be placed.

how many you’re supposed to have. It gets into that kind of minutia. Now, you know, that isn’t the elimination of private property. It isn’t. It’s a tremendous imposition upon it. It still isn’t. It’s still good news. They’re not prohibiting the sale of property. But when the federal government takes on that kind of status control over the minutia details of housing for every part of the country, it is centralized authority.

It is Nebuchadnezzar in possession of one empire rule and what he wants goes. So there are hoofbeats. it is good news. We’re nowhere near that way. But it’s bad news because it shows us that when economic liberties are impinged upon unduly without need for, you know, personal safety issues or living in community, then what we’re seeing is the judgment of God upon a people for not hearing him, fearing him, and keeping his commandments.

So, there’s some bad news here. There’s little things going on that we can connect up or should connect up with what’s happening to our ability to transact business to enter into free commercial transactions. You can’t build a car and sell it that uses all gasoline. Well, you can do it, but you can’t as a you can’t as a fuel station sell gasoline. That’s that’s all comes from oil. You can’t do it. It’s illegal.

Again, this is for some sort of national policy that might be right, might be wrong, but you have no way to input into that those overarching mechanisms that require this stuff. And it appears, at least at first glance, that it’s an imposition for the sake of what some politician thinks is a good idea, not because there’s evident safety or health concerns involved. And in fact, you know, mixing the ethanol in there is tough on some cars and it’s tough in other ways as well.

Ethanol, as it turns out, produces more global warming gases than not because of various factors. But anyway, the point is the free market in a biblical system is typically now there is some state involvement living in community safety and health, but the free market is the mechanism that God uses to enact transactions that will move a people forward. And people who are motivated by profit or by correct consciousness in terms of buying things are going to make better decisions at the micro level than some macro manager over everything who cannot predict and cannot see all the factors in life.

So, you know, without belaboring the point, there’s bad news in this text for us. We’re losing. We’ve already lost some elements of being able to buy and sell with freedom goods on the marketplace. And even the specific example of buying and selling homes is now being impinged upon if this bill passes and we have national building standards. So it should worry you. It should worry you. You should feel bad.

You should feel like, gee, things are not going well. Golly, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I want you to feel that, because that’s what Jeremiah felt in spades in his particular situation. And now we’ve got good news. It’s not as bad as it was for him. We got bad news. It’s getting that way. But now there is really, really, really great news. This great news is contained in God’s answer to Jeremiah at the end of chapter 32, the last ten or fifteen verses or so.

And really, these verses are summarized in verse 41: “Yes, I will rejoice over them to do good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and with all my soul.”

Now, we’re used to the “all my heart and all my soul” language. We’re used to hearing about it as the first and great commandment to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind here.

That’s not what’s being talked about, is it? Here, the really, really great news is the promise of God to his people, to you when you hear the hoofbeats coming or if the hoofbeats have ridden right over us in another few years. If in Jeremiah’s time they were happening at that very time in the midst of whatever difficulties are happening, The Lord God promises that it is temporary, that it will pass, and that his good for them is declared as being his whole heart and his whole soul is his motivation that will lead him to plant you again in the land that he’s driven you out of.

At least in the immediate context of Jeremiah, there’s a kind of paradox here, right? He’s going to rejoice. He’s going to rejoice over them. Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and with all my soul. So God’s rejoicing over us to do us good. God is rejoicing with all of his heart and with all of his soul, with everything that he has in terms of his emotions, his heart, the wholeness of his being, and with every living action of his.

He is the definition of life. His spirit. He is loving us. We are the apple of his eye as the text says in another place. Now you know who is it that is this people who have repented. They repent from passing their fire their kids through the fire to Molech. That’s a reference to dedicating their kids to the state. Whether they burned them alive or just passed them through a ritual fire doesn’t make any difference.

When we commit our kids to the state for upbringing, you see God brings his judgments. When we don’t fear God and as a result don’t obey his commandments, he brings us into judgment. And when he turns, he says he will teach them to fear. He says it twice in this section. He’ll teach them to fear him and as a result follow his ways. A people that are fearful of God, that are trying to please God, that desire to do his will.

These are the people that will replenish the land once more. That’s who we are. We’re the body of Christ. Ultimately, this is the body of Christ that he’s speaking of. You here are the recipients of this verse, the application of this verse in its long-term application, right? I mean, there was a short-term restoration at the end of seventy years, but the long-term restoration happens with the work of Jesus Christ.

And he now has planted us in the earth. And he’s done that with great joy over us. And he’s doing it, that joy is with all of his heart and with all of his soul or life as well. This is incomprehensible to think that the God of all the universe looks at us in such a way as to rejoice over us with all of his heart and with all of his soul. That is the greatest possible news that could be heard.

And so God tells this to a man. He tells this to a man who will shortly go to Egypt. He tells this to a people that will shortly go into captivity in Babylon. He tells this to people who will be destroyed in the wars that ensue and they’ll be the losers in all those battles. He tells it to people who don’t just hear the hoofbeats coming, but who are now the recipients being ridden over by other people. He tells them, “Look, this will pass.

It is temporary.” I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next ten or fifteen years in this country. Who knows? Nobody does. But what we do know is that whatever judgments we suffer from God will be for a season. And what we know is that the Lord God rejoices over us with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might. We can do by implication at least. Now, this is told us in other places in scripture in Malachi 3:16-17, Exodus 19:5 and Deuteronomy 7:6, God expresses his love for us as well.

And what he refers to us here are as jewels or special treasures. Malachi 3:16 talks about the people that are by to write a book of remembrance that love God. He talks about the church. And he says in verse 17, “They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, on the day that I make them my jewels, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.” God rejoices over you with all of his heart and with all of his soul.

You are to God precious jewels to him. This same word is translated as special treasure in Exodus 19:5 God says, “Therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure, a jewel to me above all people, for all the earth is mine.” The same thing is said in Deuteronomy 7:6, “You’re a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure, a jewel, a diamond, something that he absolutely loves, rejoices over with all of his heart and with all of his soul.

That is God’s attitude to you as you’re united to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Part of his church gathered together to hear the great news. And that great news is God’s incredible love. And mixed with that love is joy and treasuring us and loving us. And not just abstractly, all that heart, all that soul, all that rejoicing is implanting us in the world in establishing us in our places.

That is the perspective that goes here. It’s not just all you know eventually and away from created reality. It is here even in the midst of the times of difficulty. God refers to us as the apple of his eye in a couple of places in scripture in Deuteronomy 32 talking about him bringing them out of Egypt says he found him in a desert land in a wasteland a housing wilderness. He encircled him. He instructed him.

He kept him as the apple of his eye. And then the eagle as an eagle, he flutters over them, bringing them to new life. You are the apple of God’s eye. Now, the apple means the pupil. It means so, you know, literally you might have a translation that says the pupil, but that’s a phrase. The pupil of the eye is the beloved part because it’s the place of discernment and the place of value to the eye. So God keeps you.

He sees you as the apple of his eye. He has great love and affection for you. The text goes on to tell us in other places of scripture the same thing. He says in Zechariah 2:8, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, he sent me after glory to the nations which plunder you. For he who touches you touches the apple of his eye.” The apple of his eye is a reference to God’s great love and joy and rejoicing over us with all his heart and with all his soul.

But the immediate implication is that God will treat others who are come against you as enemies to the apple of his own eye, to his special treasure, to his jewels, to the cause of his joy and his the joy that he enters into with all his heart and with all his soul. He who touches you touches the apple of God’s eye. And as a result of that, we’re admonished to respond to this good news in Proverbs 7:2.

Keep my commands and live and my law as the apple of your eye. Delight in my law. It’s the expression of my purpose. May that be your delight. May I be your delight. I, as I’ve described myself to be by calling you to live in a particular way. And then in Psalm 17, David pleads back to God when he doesn’t quite sure of things. He reminds God. He says, “Keep me as the apple of your eye. Hide me under the shadow of your wings.”

The Great news is that in spite of whatever difficulties, whatever hoofbeats we can hear in the text, whatever problems we may actually go through as a people, we come back to Baruch. If we’re the faithful servants of God and his people, God and his church like Baruch was, what did the Lord God tell him? No matter what circumstance of life he went through, God was going to keep him, give him his life as a special treasure.

Baruch would experience the joy of God resting upon him even in the midst of persecution and difficulties. Baruch’s central experience God says is to be the acknowledgment, the joy of knowing that he is the rejoicing of God. He is the apple of God’s eye. He is the special treasure of God. And in all those things, God says he’s the joy of God. He’s the special treasure. He’ll keep him as the apple of his eye.

And God enters into this joy in this preservation with all of his heart and with all of his soul as well. This is what God tells us today. Praise God. Sing forth his praises today. There can be nothing that could be better news to us than to know that the Lord God loves us with all of his soul, with all of his heart.

He doesn’t call us first to do that. That’s what he does for us. And then as a result of that, he says, “The gospel response, the response to this wonderful news is now keep me. Keep my reflection of my character in the law. Keep me as the apple of your eye.” He’s sought us out as his bride and as his bride. Who could refuse him who have been so much the recipients of his love and his grace. And all he tells us then is to love me as I’ve loved you.

Beautiful. Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this wonderful gift, this great news in the midst of a very difficult time and a very difficult passage of scripture and at the beginnings of perhaps seeing difficult times ahead of us here as well. May we know at the bottom of our being today your great joy and love for us. Your whole heart and soul entering into that love and action for us. May we know Lord God that we are that special treasure, your jewel, the apple of your eye and that is in the midst of whatever difficulties, trials tribulations we experience.

Father, I know that there are people in this congregation and even people we’re very close to in other congregations this very morning who have suffered really things that are unimaginable to a parent, difficult times. We know that some of us struggle financially. We know that some of us struggle with our children. We know that some of our children struggle with who they are, with sanity, even with trying to keep their bearings in the midst of whatever this world is that we’re now in the context of.

We know, Father, that we go through difficult times and trials. And I pray that every person here would recognize, believe, and plant his flag on the fact of knowing that you rejoice over him and her as individuals that you love them with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then may we love you in response to that. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.