Jeremiah 19 | The Sign of the Broken Flask | 11.13.1996

[music] beginning in verse one of Jeremiah chapter 19, we read these words. Thus says the Lord, "Go and get a potter's earthn flask, and take some of the elders of the people, and some of the elders of the priests, and go out to the valley of the son of Hinnam, which is by the entry of the pots herds gate, and proclaim there the words that I will tell you, and say, hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I will bring such a catastrophe on this place that whoever hears of it, his ears will tingle, because they have forsaken me and made this an alien place, because they have burned incense in it to other gods, whom neither they, their fathers, nor the kings of Judah have known, and have filled this place with the blood of the innocents. They have also built the high places of of Baal to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or speak, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, or the valley of the son of Hinnim, but the valley of slaughter. And I will make void the council of Judah and Jerusalem in this place. And I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of those who seek their lives, their corpses. I will give his meat for the birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth. I will make this city desolate and a hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished in hiss because of all the plagues. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters. And everyone shall eaten eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the desperation with which their enemies and those who seek their lives shall drive them to despair. Once again, a very encouraging passage of scripture. Now, remember with me in chapter 18 how that the Lord had sent Jeremiah to the house of the potter and while he was there at the potter's house, the Lord had given to him a message. The message was a basic message. It was a message that God was giving concerning judgment. It was one of impending judgment. And as we looked at that passage, we saw how the Lord used an illustration by using this potter working on a clay pot. And the potter was a type of God. The potter had power over the clay. Remember with me, the clay was willful clay and was resisting the hand of the potter. And it was a picture of an unrepentant nation. And God stated as he was showing this picture to Jeremiah that he was beginning to devise a plan. He was going to fashion, he said, a disaster against the nation. Now in verse 11 of chapter 18, Jeremiah said, "Return now everyone from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good." So in other words, after stating concerning this vision that there was a judgment coming, he called out for a repentance. But instead of humbling themselves, verse 12 tells us that they chose to rebel against the Lord. And their response was simply they said, "This is hopeless. So we will walk according to our own plans and we will everyone do the imagination of his evil heart." So they slandered him and they began to refuse to do the things that he said. And in doing so, Jeremiah begins to pray. And as we concluded chapter 18 last time, Jeremiah began to pray that the Lord would simply vindicate his name. Jeremiah was simply saying to the Lord, you have said it. Now bring it to pass. As we move into chapter 19, God is now commanding him to go and to get an earthn flask. And as he goes and he gets this earthn flask, earthn flask was a clay pot with a it would be anywhere from 4 in to about 10 or 12 in with a very thin neck. And it was used to to um carry water in. He is told by the Lord, go out and I want you to get an earthn flask and I want you to gather some of the elders. It says here in verse one, he says, "Get some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests." And he was to take them out to the valley of the sun, which is described as being by the entry of the potard gate. And he said, "And proclaim there the words that I will tell you and say, hear the word of the Lord, oh kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel. Behold, I will bring such a catastrophe on this place that whoever hears of it, his ears will tingle. And so he says, I've got a message for you. I want you to first go out and buy this clay pot, this pot that is used to carry water in. And I want you to go and I want you to gather some elders. I want you to take them to the place called the valley of the son of Hinnam. It's also called Tophet. And as I was preparing the study, I thought I'd give you a little bit of background on this so you can understand the symbolism here in this passage. And so in order to do so, I need to share a few little basic things and perhaps it'll be of some interest to you as I get into this study because these images that you have are actually very powerful. First thing we'll we'll touch on is when he goes and he gets this earthn flask because it had a very delicate and very thin neck. If it was broken, if that neck is broken, it's an irreparable damage that's been done. You can't fix the thing once it's broken. And you'll see later on in verse 10, he'll say, "You shall break the flask in the sight of the men who go with you." So once this flask is broken, it cannot be repaired. The flask was utilized to carry water. And in chapter 2, God had already spoken of himself as being the uh the living water that they were rejecting. So this is speaking concerning vessels that are rejecting the living water that God has to offer them. But we have a picture here a picture that is given to us by using the names the valley of the son of hinnam and also place that is called tophett. Now the word hinnam in the Hebrew basically means lamentation and the word tophet is is a place literally a place of fire. It was located in the southeast end of the valley of the son of hinnim. Now, I don't know how many of you have had the opportunity to go to Israel. If you went to Israel and you went into the city of Jerusalem and uh and it's this is kind of hard to describe, but on the southwest of the city walls of the city of Jerusalem on the west actually running north to south, there's a valley there. And that valley running north to south and then bending off towards the east, south and then towards the east. That valley is the valley of Pinnam. And when it goes down and you can follow the city, you can actually walk down this valley and it's still there as you go through this and follow it from the north down to the south following the wall there. We walked out there a number of times. As you're doing that, as you're going out in that direction, then you begin to curve off to the east. uh that would be the area that is being spoken of the valley of Kinnam. Now I'm going to give to you a little bit about this because this valley has a very ancient past and is a very important type in scripture. This valley initially as you read about it in the scripture was a border but beyond that it's associated in the old testament the valley of hinnham is associated with child sacrifice in 2 chronicles in the old testament book of 2 chronicles I'll give you a couple instances of this in chapter 28:es 1-3 the bible speaking about one of the kings says this was 20 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem 16 years. Unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord. He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel and also made cast idols for worshiping the Baal. He burned sacrifices in the valley of Benhinam. The word Ben to the Hebrew is son. And so that's the valley of the son of Hinnam. Ben Hinnam is the son of Hinnam. and sacrificed his sons in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. And so Ahaz was a man who was sacrificing children there in the valley of Hinnham. In 2 Chronicles in chapter 33:1, another king is mentioned, a man by the name of Manasseh. I shared with you how that Israel, Judah had actually Judah being separate from Israel. Uh Judah had a king, a very righteous king by the name of Hezekiah. Hezekiah had been notified by Isaiah the prophet that he was going to die. You know the story how he turned his face to the wall and began to cry out to the Lord that he would didn't want to die and the Lord gave him 15 more years of life. And so during this 15 years of life, his wife conceived and had a son and his name was Manasseh. And Manasseh was one of the most evil kings Judah ever had. And in 2 Chronicles 33:1, the scripture says Manasseh was 12 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem for 55 years. And in verse 6 of the same chapter, the Bible says he sacrificed his sons in the fire in the valley of Benhinam, practiced sorcery, divination, and witchcraft, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking him to anger. And so the valley of the son of Hinnam is associated in the Old Testament with child sacrifice in paganism. Now shortly after Manasseh, a king arose by the name of King Josiah. And under King Josiah, a reformation began to take place in the nation. And as part of the reformation, Josiah transformed this valley into the local trash site. In 2 Kings 23:10, the Bible says that Josiah desecrated Tophed, which was in the valley of Benhinam, so no one could use it to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech. And so it became a place where they would throw their trash. Now in spite of all of this changing that Josiah tried to bring about in the nation and remember with me that Josiah was a king during part of the the uh ministry of Jeremiah. They were contemporaries and so that will give you some insight or remind you of some things that are taking place here as we go through Jeremiah because the things that he's dealing with are things that were contemporary to King Josiah. Josiah had tried to bring reformation. and he had actually desecrated the Velotopet. But in spite of all of this that he was trying to do, the Lord had determined to bring judgment on Judah. So in 2 Kings 23 at 25 following it says, "Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength in accordance with the law of Moses. Nevertheless, the Lord did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger which burned against Judah because of all that Manasseh had done to provoke him to anger." So the Lord said,"I will remove Judah also from my presence as I removed Israel and I will reject Jerusalem, the city I chose in this temple about which I said, there shall my name be." So as Jeremiah was prophesying during the days of King Josiah and during that reformation, he sees that a lot of the reformation that's occurring is really only outward. Though they are at this time professing to have a godly heart of repentance and all and and all of that, the bottom line was is it was all outward. It was not inward. And so even though Josiah had initiated reform and all the kings who were following him were not godly at all. And the Lord began to deal with them. And God made a decision that he was going to change the name of that valley. And the valley was going to be changed from the valley of the son of Hinnam. It's the evil practices. It's the evil practices that are taking place. Now, remember in chapter 7 of Jeremiah in verses 31 and 32, how the Lord had already said he was going to change that name. Because in Jeremiah 7:es 31 and 32, we read, "They have built the high places of Tophet in the valley of Benhinum to burn their sons and daughters in the fire. Something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind. So beware, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer call it Topet or the valley of Benhinnham, but the valley of slaughter, for they will bury the dead in Tophet until there be no more room. This valley of Hinnam, the place where refuge was burned. When Nebuchadnezzar came down and destroyed and was on three different occasions, the king of Babylon was laying siege to and destroying Jerusalem. Even as the Lord had said, "Your bodies will be laying out in the streets and dogs will begin to devour them and birds of the air will begin to devour them." What they were doing apparently is they were taking some of those bodies and because they couldn't give them a burial, they would put them in the valley of the sun or to ignite them and actually just burn them, cremate them. Now, that's an important image because the valley of the son of Hinnom in the Hebrew language is ginum. That's where we get the word genna from which is one of the words that are translated by the single English word hell. And when Jesus Christ speaks about hell, he used two basically two different words. One is the word Hades and the other is the word hi. Let me give you an instance of this and I want to develop this a little bit further by turning you to Luke chapter 12. Fires were kept burning constantly in this valley and the people would bring their rubbish and they would dispose of it in the valley of the son of Hinnam or in gehinum. Jesus chose to use this image when he spoke concerning final judgment. It was an image the entire city and all the people of Israel would understand because anybody coming from the north down to the south going into Jerusalem coming into the city would know that there's a valley that runs there on the west of the uh of the of the walls of the city of the valley of the son of Hinnam. And they would know that it's the place where the refuge was burned. So in Luke 12 in verse 4, Jesus used this word. You could use it so many times. I I could have cross referenced so many other passages. Perhaps I should have, but I'll give you one instant where it says in Luke 12:4, I say unto you, my friends, be not afraid of them that kill the body and after that have no no more that they can do. He said, but I will forewarn you whom you shall fear. Fear him which after he has killed has power to cast into hell. Yeah, I say unto you, fear him. When he says he has power to cast into hell, it's the word genna that he's using there. And it's the image of the fire that is never quenched. And he called it a place where the worm dieth not. Now, the reason he would say it's a place where the worm dieth not, it's because the maggots would be there on the decaying carcasses. It's just a picture, very graphic, that Jesus is using as a picture of final judgment. And so when we see this in Jeremiah, it's an image that continues on for several centuries until the time of Jesus Christ. And so during the time of Jesus Christ, he's still using the same image that Jeremiah was speaking about six centuries before. And he's saying this is the place where the worm dieth not. This is a place where the flame is never quenched. This is a place that is called hell. It's an image or a type. And so when Jesus would point to it, it was so that the people would see it was a place of corruption. It was absolutely unclean because it was decayed. It was filled with with with death. And that's picture Jesus wanted. And it was a place where it was uh utilized as an image by Jesus Christ to symbolize the final judgment. So this was originally the valley of Hinnham where the filth and dead animals of the city were cast out and burned and it became a symbol of the wicked and their future destruction. In Isaiah in chapter 30:33, Isaiah writing said this, "Though has long been prepared. It has been made ready for the king. Its fire pit has been made deep and wide with an abundance of fire and wood. The breath of the Lord, like a stream of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze. It's a place of judgment. It's a place of torment. It's a place where the fire is never quenched. Hades in the New Testament is a temporary receptacle. But the final picture of total judgment is the lake of fire. The lake of fire is where Hades, death and Hades according to the book of Revelation are cast in. In other words, the temporary receptacles of the human soul that only have a short purpose and then it's over with they are finally consumed by the reality of the lake of fire which is the final place of judgment valley of the son of Hinnima the picture in the old testament as well as the new of God's judgment and Jesus utilized that I'll talk a little bit more in just a moment about some other things but let's move on back to Jeremiah And look at verse three. He says, "Hear the word of the Lord, oh kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem." So he's describing his audience at this point. The audience is the entire nation from the rulers to the citizens. And he's saying, "Disaster of unheard of proportions is going to come upon all of you." When he speaks about this disaster causing their ears to tingle, it simply speaks concerning the severity of this disaster. It's going to be an incredible disaster. In verse four, because they have forsaken me and made this an alien place, because they have burned incense in it to other gods, whom neither they, their fathers, nor the kings of Judah have known, and have filled this place with the blood of the innocents. They have also built the high places of Baal to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal which I did not command or speak nor did it come into my mind. So God gives the reason why he's bringing judgment. He's and once again he's telling Jeremiah to remind them of their sins. They don't want to hear the things that he has to say. And this is one of the reasons why Jeremiah keeps repeating himself. When you're growing up, perhaps you're still growing up right now. and somebody was speaking to you and they'd say something like, "Clean your room." Maybe they still do, right? Wife says that. "Can't you pick up your dirty socks? Clean your room." Or whatever. Did you ever say, "I heard you the first time." And did you ever hear your parents say, "Well, if you heard me the first time, then why didn't you do it the first time?" Do you ever hear that? Do you ever hear yourself saying that? I bet you do. A lot of parents say, "Well, listen, if you heard me the first time, then why didn't you do what I told you the first time? You're always nagging me. Why do you always nag me?" Well, I'm nagging you because you don't listen. And I figure if I say it more than once, you might hear me. Anybody here understand what I'm talking about? Or am I speaking to me? Maybe this tape's for me. I'll play it later on. I go, "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean." Now, why do we nag or why were we nagged? And why are we training our children to nag? The reason is because we don't normally hear the first time, do we? We really don't normally hear the first time. And the Lord has a way of repeating himself several times over because it increases the accountability on the hearer because the Lord can say, "I have a variety of times." He says, "I have risen up early in the morning and addressed you. I have on a variety of times with persistence repeated the same message over and over and over again in a consistent fashion. So you have no excuse. You've heard me over and you've heard me over and you've heard me over again. And yet the bottom line is is you refuse to hear every time I speak to you. No matter what it is that I'm saying to you, you seem to hear something else. So I say it again and so I say it again. And so I say it again. And so as we read through Jeremiah, you're going to see very often that he's repeating himself. And you might begin to say to yourself, I've heard this before. Well, the bottom line is is these people were not hearing it. They weren't listening. And so over and over and over again, the Lord repeats the same message of judgment because the nation will not listen. And yet at the same time, he's just saying, "This is what I say. This is what I say. This is what I say. I am saying it consistently. I am saying it frequently. I'm saying it with persistence because you need to know that you are being held accountable for rejecting what my word is saying to you. So the Lord ministers to me. How many times does he have to say the same thing to me before I get it? Thank God that he is patient with them. It took me a year to figure out when my mom said David, she was talking to me. You know, that's about how long it took for you to learn your name, right? About a year. And she made that sound, David. And she looked at me, she was talking to me. And I've discovered most of my lessons take a long time to learn. And they're repeated lessons. Repeated lessons over again, over again, over again. The same kind of thing. Because the Lord will not let you move to uh step two until you have pretty much understood step one. Do you understand step one, you can move to step two. you understand step two, you'll move to step three and he builds into your life and builds into your life and that's the habit of the spirit working into you. So God keeps saying to them the same basic things over and over again in this passage here in verses four and five basically the Lord is saying to them there are three things that that you've done. The first thing he reminds them of again is he says you've abandoned me. The word abandon speaks of forgetting. It it speaks of of of uh of apostasy is what it is. He's saying, "You have put me behind your back. I'm not somebody that you care about anymore. You basically, you've left me behind. You've abandoned me." Secondly, he's saying, "You have made Israel a place where foreign gods are at home." Now, when he says that, and notice what he says, or how he says it, when he says, "They have forsaken me or you've abandoned me." And he said, "And made this an alien place because they have burned incense in it to other gods whom neither they, their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known." He's saying, "You have made idolatry acceptable in the nation." When God gave originally the commands to the nation of Israel, he said, "I am the Lord thy God, and you shall have no false gods before me. You're to make no grave in image." When the Lord gave his command, he was serious. He said, "I am the Lord. That is my name. My glory I will give to no one else, neither my praise to graven images. So when God called the nation of Israel, he called them to an exclusive relationship with him. When Solomon dedicated the temple to God, it was to be a place where Israel met with with their God. And when they had the tabernacle from the time of Moses up to the building of the temple through Solomon, those that tabernacle was representative of God being amongst the people in the nation. And God had ordained that they have an exclusive relationship with him. See, that's what makes Judaism such an important religion because God was was saying to the Jew, as he says to us now, but God was saying to the Jew, I am not a tribal god. See during that time if you were a Canaanite or Hittite a Jebusite and an out of sight cellulite or whatever you were if you were running around as one of the itites the uptightes you had a god that you would worship it was your tribal god and so the tribal god that you worship basically was the god who protected you be it baal or deeon or whatever But God was saying that he is greater than all gods. He claimed an exclusive right not just over the nation of Israel which makes him unique. He claimed exclusive rights over the entire creation that he had created with his hand. Now during the time of the early portion of the history of Israel whenever they would travel with the ark of the covenant there that was a symbol of God's presence with them. And when they would battle against these people that they were displacing the ark of the covenant was a symbol of God being with them protecting and giving them victory. And they displaced all of these mighty nations because of the power in the presence of the Lord. And God had stated to them, "I will be with you and I will give you victory. I will give you victory over insurmountable odds because you're not fighting with the arm of flesh. You're not trusting in man. You're trusting in me." And when you trust in me, God was saying, "I'll give you victory over impossible odds." And God did. But what happened in the nation of Israel as we read our Bible is over and over again in a repeated fashion they moved into idolatry. God says you're forsaken you do that. And then God says the result of your forsaking me is I idolatry has found a home in the nation of Israel. Idols your burning incense your idols in the nation and you have brought into this nation alien gods. In other words, foreign gods are at home here. I have that against you. And then thirdly, he says, "You have filled Israel with innocent blood." How did they do that? By offering their children in sacrifice. Notice with me when he says this, by the way, in verse 5, he says, "They have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or speak, nor did it come into my mind, nor did it come into my mind is a way for the Lord to say, to attribute to me any pleasure in your sacrifice of your own children is absolutely blasphemous. To say that I am pleased when you burn your children is absolutely blasphemous. The way to say that never came into my mind. Children are a heritage of the Lord. The fruit of the womb is his reward. Psalm said. And so God's love for the nation and the nation's children is so incredible. And yet he's saying as you burn these children in the valley of the sunhinn and you think I have pleasure in that he says that is absolute blasphemy. So one you forsake me two you introduce false worship and three you will do the most evil things because of that and God says I am opposed to that. So in verse six it says therefore behold the days are coming sayeth the Lord that this place shall no more be called Tofhat or the valley of the son of Hinnim but he says the valley of slaughter and I will make void the council of Judah and Jerusalem in this place and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies and by the hands of those who seek their lives their corpses I will give as meat for the birds of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth. I will make this city desolate and a hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished and hiss because of all its plagues. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons, the flesh of their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the desperation with which their enemies and those who seek their lives shall drive them to despair. Now notice something when he says it will be called the valley of slaughter. That's what the valley will be called after Babylon invades because that's where the bodies will be just deposited. They will have no burial and that's why the dogs will have access to dead bodies because they'll be out there in an unburied fashion. But he speaks concerning making void in verse 7. I will make void the council of Judah and Jerusalem in this place. The word void simply means empty. I will make empty their counsel. When it says it will become void, it's a picture of pouring water from a vessel. It's a picture of their plans falling to the earth. And that's one of the reasons why he has this vessel as he's sharing because the vessel holds water. And he's basically saying, I will make void. I will make your plans unfruitful. They will not come to pass. The Bible in Job 5 12 and 13 speaking concerning how the Lord uh is the one who makes plans either be successful or thwarted. It says in Job 5:12, he thwarts the plans of the crafty so that their hands achieve no success. He catches the wise in their craftiness and the schemes of the wily are swept away. In Psalm 33:es 10 and 11, the Lord foils the plans of the nations. He thwarts the purposes of the people, but the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations. And again in Proverbs 21:30, there is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord. No matter how I plan, if God is opposed to it, there's nothing I can do about it. The preparation of the heart belongs to the man, but it's the Lord who brings the plans to fruition. So what I'm supposed to do is rather than saying I will get up today and go to such and so city and I will make a profit. James makes it very clear that we're supposed to say if the Lord wills I will do such and so because you see either I am submitted to the will of the Lord and doing the things that are pleasing to him or I'm going to submit myself to my own plans. And if I'm attempting to in any way, shape, or form plan out my own life with the exclusion of God, then ultimately I will be responsible for whatever it is that I'm sowing. Because if I sow in my plans, if I sow to the flesh, from the flesh, I will reap corruption. The most wonderful and wise thing then that I can do and that you can do is to take any plans that you might have and pray through those plans and hand those plans to the Lord. And that's about everything we do. By the way, sometimes we like to say, well, the spiritual things like for me as a pastor, Lord, should we buy some property? Well, I will I will make that a spiritual prayer. But Lord, in raising my kids, you know, I can do that pretty much on my own. It's stupid. Everything that I do has to be saturated with prayer and seeking the will of the Lord. And that's just basic Christian life, man. That's just the way it is to be a Christian. It's yielding yourself daily to the Lord, asking God to give you direction. And I've discovered a lot of times the things that I've done that I've really regretted are things that I didn't pray pray over or wait on the Lord for answers about. I just moved. I just did them. And as I did those things, he did not bring my plans to fruition. Now, there are times that I might have tried to twist and I have. I've tried to twist the arm of the Lord to basically do the things that I want. But I thank I thank him that he's stronger than me and that he has a way of doing what he wants no matter what I am doing. But you know what happens is he says, "Listen, I'm going to take their plans and I'm going to avoid them. Their counsel's no good." These false prophets are saying all kinds of things about my blessings and he's saying, "I will avoid those plans." You are not going to be blessed. These false prophets are saying that you're going to have prosperity and peace. He said, "I will avoid those plans." They're saying, "Don't listen to Jeremiah." And they're slandering him. They're saying, "We will not obey him." The Lord says, "I will avoid those plans." And even when the false prophets get up and say, "You know what? Jeremiah is no good." Listen, he's always a downer. He never says anything that we like plan. And his plan is going to come to pass no matter what anybody else says. And so he's fulfilling his word. Now in verse 10 it says then you shall break the flask in the sight of the men who go with you and say to them thus says the Lord of hosts even so I will break this people and this city as one breaks a potter's vessel which cannot be made whole again and they shall bury them in Tophet till there is no place to bury. Thus I will do to this place, says the Lord, and to its inhabitants, and make this city like Tophen, and the houses of Jerusalem, and the houses of the kings of Judah shall be defiled like the place of Tophen, because of all the houses on whose roofs they have burned incense to all the host of heaven, and poured out drink offerings to other gods. So Jeremiah is standing there now, and he's holding a flask in his hand. It says in verse 10, he's to break that flask. Now, as he breaks the flask, he is dramatically illustrating the heart of the message because that flask cannot be repaired and neither can the nation. It is broken now and it will be discarded. And so, the Lord is saying, "Judgment is coming upon you, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it." judgment is coming upon you and it's an it's an irrevocable irreparable judgment even as this flask having a delicate neck on it cannot be repaired because of the nature of the clay and how it's already been baked and all and it can't be repaired even so this nation will not be repaired the Lord says I will break you when he says in verse 14 Jeremiah came from Tophet where the Lord had sent him to prophesy And he stood in the court of the Lord's house and said to all the people, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I will bring on this city and on all her towns all the doomed that I have pronounced against it because they have stiffened their necks that they might not hear my word." The Lord is basically saying, I am going to bring judgment on Jerusalem and it is doom because, and this I'm going to develop I'm going to develop two things with you at this point because the scripture says it here in verse 15. They have stiffened their necks that they might not hear my word for all the warning. The people would hear what he had to say and remain unchanged. When the nation of Israel went through their wilderness experience, they had the greatest leader that Israel had ever seen. Still a hero to this day. He is the national hero, Moses. Moses is looked at even to this day as being the great symbol of Messiah and the most tremendous deliverer that the nation of Israel has ever seen in its history. And Moses is held in tremendous honor. Sometimes it seems to me that he's held in more honor than Abraham and even King David. Moses was the man that delivered the nation from the Egyptian bondage. Moses was with the children of Israel all those years in the wilderness. And Moses is a hero to the nation. And as he was bringing the nation from Egyptian bondage out to the freedom that God had for him, they began to rebel against him out there in the wilderness. And you know the story, they didn't enter into the promised land. The Bible tells us the reason that they didn't enter into the promised land was because of unbelief. Because the word that they had that they were to receive or the word that they received was did them no good because it was not mixed with faith. And so when the Lord spoke the word and shared the deliverance with them, the message through their deliverer Moses, the people refused the word of warning and thus were held uh accountable for rejection and disobedience and their carcasses littered the wilderness out there in peninsula. So the warning that we have as we look in scripture is if you hear what God has to say, then you need to obey. Now, now, now I'll get a little practical at this point. We went to uh I did the conference. I did a conference this weekend as you know and at the conference there are about 9,000 men. I was talking to one of my Calvary Chapel friends, Calvary Chapel pastor a couple days ago who had gone to the conference and he said, 'You know, David, he said, uh, just before lunchtime, he said, when it was about lunchtime, he said, I went out, I stepped out, he said, and when I walked out into the court area there, he said, I thought I walked into a forest fire. There were so many guys who were there just smoking their cigarettes and blowing the smoke around. He said, "Do you think that they're listening?" Now, this is a pastor. I'm not talking to somebody in the church who just is wondering. I'm talking to a pastor, a fellow pastor who's been in ministry ministry for years. But he asked the question, "You think they're listening? Do you think that the men are listening?" So when you consider all the teaching, when you consider all the messages pounding one after another that we need to live godly lives and we have guys getting up running out so they can smoke their cigarettes and all or hurrying so they can get first in line for lunch. Do you think they're listening? My answer is I don't know. I don't know who's listening and who's not. How would I know? I would hope so. I would hope that men are beginning to listen. I I would hope that the church wakes up and listens. But I don't know. I don't know because how many times was I sitting in church and the message was to me and I was ignoring it or deflecting it saying, "You know what? That's for somebody else who almost got me." I mean, I did that for a long time. And not only that, I knew things in my head that I had yet to allow to sink into my heart. And so I could talk a good talk. I was at a cousin's wedding. I was 22 years old, just gotten out of the service. And at the wedding, they served champagne. And so at the age of 22, I thought, well, I'm old enough to drink. No big deal. And I drank. And I drank too much. And I was sitting down on a couch. I wasn't, you know, slobbering drunk or anything like that, but I wasn't sober either. And as I was sitting on that couch, a young man came and sat down next to me. And I was sitting there with a beer in my hand. And he was a born again Christian, as my cousin is a born again Christian. And he began to witness to me. And I'm sitting there with a beer with a buzz and I'm looking at him smiling with that dopey drunk smile, you know, and I'm and I'm honestly thinking that I'm a great Christian. And so he shared the Lord with me and I'm there going, "Yeah, I know that. Oh yeah, I gave my heart to Jesus [laughter] two years ago." And he's looking at me like, "Are you serious? I mean, you're sitting here with a beer." And that wasn't the last one I had that day to be honest with you. I'm sitting there with a beer and he's looking witnessing the Lord. You know, Jesus can give you abundant life. Oh, I already have it, you know. And when he got up after he walked away, you know, he got up and he witnessed me for some time, you know, and he got up and walked away and he said, he said to me, "I'll see you later, brother." And I said, "Here, there, or in the air." You know, you know, I had it down. So, I don't want you to have in any way, shape, or form any impression that I'm judging my brothers because they're still stuck with a carnal habit because it is a carnal habit. It's a destructive habit. It'll kill them. I don't want to bury another person dying of lung cancer. I've already done it. I don't want to do it again. The habit that you take God's money and you pour down every day. Every day. Can [clears throat] you imagine how much money you could be pouring into the work of the Lord or in house payments? But every day, I don't even know how much they cost anymore. It used to be a quarter years ago. Now they're three and a half dollars or something. I don't remember. I don't know. I know it's a lot of money. I know people are spending a lot of money every day on something that's killing them every day. Are they listening? Only only you can answer that question. Am I listening? When the Holy Spirit speaks to my heart, am I quick to hear and slow to speak? Or am I immediately making excuses for my behavior, saying, "Well, you just don't understand my circumstance." You see, in society that exalts the victim, it's very difficult for the victim to be convicted because the victim has already got an entire group of people that he can blame or she can blame for their their problems. If I had a loving father, if I had a loving mother, if my father hadn't divorced my mom, I mean, we have a victimized society. But the problem is is the Bible says that God can make all things new. And the problem is the Bible says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And the Bible says if any person be in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. And if the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead dwells in me, well, Paul says, "Shall he not bring life or give life to your mortal bodies? And if I've been sealed unto the day of redemption, and if the creator God dwells in me, then why can't I have victory?" You see, that's where people get into, I think, victimizing themselves, making excuses. I think the bottom line and I don't want to make this so simple that it becomes stupid but the bottom line is embracing either embracing God's promises or rejecting it. I part of the problem that we're seeing in the church today is simply a rejection of the word of God. A failure to put into practice the things that God is saying. An unwillingness to change. an unwillingness to to admit, God, I am a sinner. We think that if we did it once when we got saved, that's all we really need to do for the rest of our life. It's not true. Every day I confess to the Lord, God, be merciful to me. I'm a sinner. Not for salvation, but for sanctification, Lord. I want to live for you and I can't. Without your power. Jesus said, "Without me, you can do nothing." So, Lord, I want to be dependent on you. You see, when the word of God is taught, we need to hear it with an ear of faith and we need to act on it. I think part of the problem is is we have these heightened expectations. We think that if we well, we made our decision and so things are going to automatically change. I've discovered when I make my decision to die to self, it can it gets even more difficult. Father, teach me to love the unloly. And then before you know it, I discover all kinds of unloly people. The first one I see is in the mirror. Help me, Lord, not to be an unloly person to others. And help me to love other people. I've been praying that prayer for over 25 years now. Father, help me to love. Father, help me to hear what you have to say. Father, help me to do what you have to say. Father, help me to to do what your word says to do. Jesus asked the question, why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? How can you say I'm your Lord when you refuse to do the things that I tell you to do? And how long will you call me Lord? Now, you know, some people will say after these kinds of words, we'll say, "Well, then you know what? I'll just give up." No, that's that's not what I'm saying. Don't give up. Don't give up on the Lord, but yield to him and let him have your life and let him work in you and begin to see yourself for what you are, a sinner in need of God's grace. You see, when we see this place where the broken pots, these potter's vessels are going to be trashed. Let me finish what I started earlier when I was speaking about the valley of the sun hinnam to because in that same general area there in Jerusalem, sunhinnham, valley of the sunhinnham, Vienna, Tophett, Tofphet being located in the southeast, right in that same general area is a place called the Potter's Field. The potter's field was located just outside of what was called the refuge gate or the dung gate. And the potters would go and they would work and when they would have a a a clay pot or whatever that they were forming that just didn't work or perhaps that just broke, they would gather all of the shards and all and they would take it out to the potter's field and they would take the pots and they would basically just dump the broken pots out there. It's called a potter's field. During the time of the Lord Jesus Christ, there was a man by the name of Judas. And Judas is the one who betrayed the Lord Jesus Christ. He sold Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. And we know in the Old Testament that the price of a slave is 30 pieces of silver. So Jesus was sold for the price of a common slave. Now Judas was the man who held the money bag. You know the story. And when a woman began to minister to Jesus. Judas was the first one to speak up. And it was Judas who said we could have sold this this this perfume. We could have made uh some money 300 dinari 300 days wages if we' have sold it. We could have made some money off of it and and we could have given to the poor. And he was such an influential man that the others began to listen to what he had to say and they said, "Yeah, that's true. Why was this waste on Jesus allowed? He's saying this is being done beforehand in preparation for my burial. Judas, he didn't make his 300, but he did get his 30 because he got so upset at Jesus's rebuke that he sold Jesus out. And he went to the chief priests and he said, "What will you give me to betray this man to you?" And they weighed out his price and they gave him 30 pieces of silver. Well, you know that Judas regretted what he did. And so he went back to the priest and he said, "I have betrayed an innocent man." The Bible tells us that he regretted what he did, but he never repented. To regret and to repent are two different concepts. To regret is to feel bad. To repent is to change. He felt bad. A lot of people regret what they've done, but they don't repent from it. You can wake up on a Saturday morning, you you tied one on, you slept with somebody, and you feel terrible for doing that because you're a Christian. I shouldn't have done that. But you may go out a month later and do it again because you may have regretted it, but you didn't repent from it. And there's a worldly difference. Repentance talks about turning away. Regret is just a sorrow of the heart. And the regret of the world produces death. And that's what took place in the life of Judas because he regretted what he did. He felt bad because he betrayed an innocent man. He didn't say, "I betrayed the son of God. I betrayed an innocent man." And so what did he do with the 30 pieces of silver? We know the story. He threw it. He said, "You take it." And he gave it to them. And what is it that the hypocritical priest did with that? They said, "We can't have this money because it's his blood money." So they took the 30 pieces of silver and they bought a potter's field. Potter's field is a place where discarded pots play. Now thou, oh God, art, we are the clay and thou art the potter. We are all the work of thy hand, Isaiah says in Isaiah 64. So what is it that Jesus's betrayal even did? It purchased a field where broken pots are thrown. In other words, Jesus died to redeem crackpot and gun broken vessels filled a field of blood potter. And so when the Lord says in Jeremiah, thus sayeth the Lord of hosts, even so I will break this people and the city as one breaks a potter's vessel which cannot be made whole again. They shall bury them in toet till there is no place to bury. The Lord is saying that will be a potter's field. We see another potter's field in the New Testament. But we also have a concept in the New Testament of Jesus purchasing that potter's field. Jesus purchasing broken vessels. Jesus purchasing us. So, how can I be sober? How can I stay away from drugs? Or how can I stop jumping in one bed to another? How can I stop lying? How can I start loving? How can I live a pure life? Understand that I was a broken vessel that had been purchased by Jesus's blood and I'm transformed. Now God in the Old Testament says this potter's field is going to be filled with broken vessels. But in the New Testament, Jesus purchases the potter's Jesus purchased us. We can leave this place today with a brand new life.