The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Jeremiah 26:8 “Yet when Jeremiah finished speaking everything that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, then the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him, saying, “You must die! 9 Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘This house will be like Shiloh and this city will be in ruins, without inhabitant’? And all the people gathered to Jeremiah at the house of the Lord. 10 When the officials of Judah heard these things, they came up from the king’s house to the house of the Lord and sat at the entrance of the New Gate of the Lord’s house. 11 Then the priests and the prophets spoke to the officials and to all the people, saying, ‘A death sentence for this man! For he has prophesied against this city, just as you have heard with your own ears!’ 12 Then Jeremiah spoke to all the officials and to all the people, saying, ‘The Lord sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city all the words that you have heard. 13 Now then, reform your ways and your deeds and obey the voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will relent of the disaster which He has pronounced against you. 14 But as for me, behold, I am in your hands; do with me as is good and right in your sight. 15 Only know for certain that if you put me to death, you will bring innocent blood on yourselves, and on this city and its inhabitants; for truly the Lord has sent me to you to speak all these words so that you hear them.’” (NASB)
I have in my hand a list of nearly 70 eco-pocalyptic doomsday predictions that started in the 1970s, crises that threatened mankind’s very existence that never happened. Here’s just a few of these predictions.
1967: World Wide Famine Forecast By 1975
1970 Life magazine reported, “In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
1970: Ice Age By 2000
1972: Pending Depletion and Shortages of Gold, Tin, Oil, Natural Gas, Copper, and Aluminum;
1970: Oceans Dead in a Decade, US Water Rationing by 1974, Food Rationing by 1980;
1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030;
1972: New Ice Age By 2070;
1978: No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend
Well it didn’t take 30 years to figure out that cooling thing wasn’t going to work out, so in the 80s there the political scientific community made a shift. Things weren’t going to freeze. They are going to melt and drown us all.
1987: Ozone layer depletion-increase skin cancer epidemics, destruction of ecosystem, ice caps vanishing.
1989: Rising Sea Levels will Obliterate Nations if Nothing is Done by 2000; (the start of the “we’re all doomed in 12 years” mantra)
1999: Y2K
2000: Children Won’t Know what Snow Is
2005 : Manhattan Underwater by 2015
2006: Super Hurricanes!
2008: Al Gore Predicts Ice-Free Arctic by 2013;
2009: Prince Charles Says we Have 96 Months to Save World;
The lists of all the various predicted crises that spell doom for mankind and the planet goes on, and on, and on. But people never learn. They still fall the latest and greatest doomsday prediction. From climate, to technology, to viruses, and more, people are constantly pushing or using the latest in vogue planetary death sentence. The rich get richer from them, the world’s politicians and governments grow bigger and more powerful and children grow up afraid of the bogeyman.
Yet when it comes to the real crisis facing humanity and every single human being on the planet, human beings and humanity doesn’t give it second thought, they don’t believe its coming, and they certainly don’t prepare for it. But it is coming to each person individually at the moment of death or on the last day when the old shall pass away and the new comes.
In the Old Testament text this morning, God’s chosen people were reaching a crisis point. If the people continue to allow God’s words to go unheeded, many of Judah’s citizens would die in a war siege tactics, their nation and race would wiped from the face of the map.
To avert this impending doom, once again the Lord God sent His crisis bound children yet another prophet. Instead of just “lowering the boom” on His children without a warning and explanation, the Lord God sends His people the prophet Jeremiah.
The Northern Kingdom named Israel had already fallen to the Assyrians in 722 BC. About twenty-two years after the events recorded in Jeremiah 26, the Southern Kingdom named Judah would fall to Babylon and would also be taken into captivity.
The Israelites had forsaken the covenant the Lord God had given the through the Moses. By the time Jeremiah came along, both the Israel and Judah had forgotten who their God was and what He had done for them.
False prophets rose up and told the people what they wanted to hear. Of the false prophets, Jeremiah preached against them saying, (6:14-15) “They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, Saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ But there is no peace.” same problem exited in the New Testament period and continues to this day. “For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths.” 2 Timothy 4:2-4
False prophets were praised and showered with gifts. Faithful prophets were mistreated, beaten, and killed. Thus, Jesus in Luke 13:34, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!”
Jeremiah warned that Judah’s enemies would come from the north. He called God’s people to repent or be on the receiving end of God’s judgment. Time was running out, but Jeremiah showed the people the way to avoid God’s judgment. He was there to show them the way to salvation. He was there because the Lord God didn’t want to judgment them and had actually provided a way to avoid the judgment against their sins. In other words, He stood ready and willing to forgive and spare them the coming doom.
V. 8 “Yet when Jeremiah finished speaking everything that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, then the priests and the prophets and all the people seized him, saying, “You must die!’” Jeremiah shows them the way out and they want to kill him.
They seized him and cried out mut. The Hebrew word used here for die. But this word for “die” means to die as penalty for a wrong done. They were accusing Jeremiah for wrong doing. They had it backwards. They were the wrong doers and he was the righteous one. “Mut” also implies a violent death to match the crime.
9 “Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘This house will be like Shiloh and this city will be in ruins, without inhabitant’?” To speak against the temple was a crime deserving of death. It was an act of treason and to blaspheme the temple was to blaspheme Yahweh (Exodus 20:7), unless of course the Lord God was the one who was speaking and He was washing His hands of a house the people had corrupted.
Here’s what Jeremiah said “This is what the Lord says: If you do not listen to Me, to walk in My Law which I have set before you, to listen to the words of My servants the prophets, whom I have been sending to you again and again, but you have not listened; then I will make this house like Shiloh, and I will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.’”
Around 1060 BC, the ark of the covenant was housed in Shiloh and the Israelites brought the ark into battle against the Philistines. They misused it. They turned the ark into a kind of good-luck charm. They tested the Lord God, so God allowed the ark to be captured by the Philistines and Shiloh was destroyed.
Through Jeremiah, God accused Judah of sins against His commandments— especially their worship of Baal. When Jeremiah said (7:14-15), “I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight” (7:14–15), that was the Lord God telling the Israelites that they were about to face a crisis. Jerusalem and Judah will become desolate unless they return.
The officials of Judah rushed to the temple and sat in the chairs of judgment to officially condemn Jeremiah. That didn’t stop Jeremiah. Yahweh “sent” (shalach) Jeremiah to prophesy. Shalach means Jeremiah was an official messenger dedicated to one purpose with single minded devotion. He was to go from point A to point B without delay or distraction. The Great I Am was pronouncing a judgment of desolation against Jerusalem and the temple. “This house,” the temple, “shall be like Shiloh.” Remember Shiloh was destroyed in the war against the Philistines?
From the time of Adam and Eve’s fall into sin, the whole world has stood on the edge of a crisis. The first doomsday crisis came with Noah and the flood. Now that’s what a real crisis of climate brings about and it is a work of God. But in Genesis 9:11, God promised us saying “I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be eliminated by the waters of a flood, nor shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth.”
Here God promises that He will not use water to destroy the earth and mankind, but the doesn’t mean there isn’t a judgment, a crisis of cosmic dimensions coming. The devil, humanity, and this sinful world all have a date with the judgment seat of Christ.
The wages of sin is death. Matthew 24:35-36 “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. But about that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.”
But for Christ Jesus, we’d all headed toward a cosmic and eternal catastrophe. But the Lord God has provided the way to avert the coming judgment. Jeremiah told the Israelites that judgment and destruction were not inevitable. 13 “Now then, reform your ways and your deeds and obey the voice of the Lord your God; and the Lord will relent of the disaster which He has pronounced against you.”
Jeremiah issued a call for repentance, a call to turn around, trust in the Lord God alone and in His promised Messiah. They did not change their beliefs and their lives. Twenty-two years after they threatened Jeremiah’s life, they were taken into captivity. Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. Only after decades in captivity did they repent and return to Jerusalem.
While the unbelieving world cries out year after year that the sky is falling and demand that we yield to the wisdom and virtue of the ruling classes, to modify our beliefs and behavior to conform with the changing godless religions of the day, the real earth destroying event is on its way.
But for the children of God, who have been baptized and live and die in true Christian faith, eternal catastrophe was averted on the cross of Good Friday. On the cross, Jesus did as He said in the Gospel lesson. He gathered His children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.
On the cross, Jesus dies the worst kind of death, the forsaking of God the Father so that we will not be forsaken. He dies and rises again so that we will live in the new heavens and new earth.
History and Jesus teach that the poor will be with us always, there will be wars and rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, storms, and plagues, but Christ bore our sins and took our judgment unto Himself. Doomsday came and went in Christ. Don’t living in fear. You’re sins are forgiven, crisis averted.
AMEN
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen