But it's just a couple different thoughts from here in the book of Jeremiah. And as we come to this book, I don't know how many of you are familiar with the book of Jeremiah, but Jeremiah's ministry is not one that I am necessarily jealous of. I don't know if you've read it, but he pretty much had 40 years of ministry that he was able to preach and tell what God had told him to say. but pretty much everyone hated him for at least 22 of that. He served under technically five different kings, but two of those kings, they only served like They were only around for like three months of their reign, but he served under three main kings, and two of them did not like him. They threw him in jail. There was a group of people that swore that they were gonna try to kill him. Pretty much everyone did not like him, and it's not necessarily a ministry that you would wanna have that you be a part of. He was under one good king. That was King Josiah, and there's two bad kings. We'll see them in our, where we're gonna be turning to This morning one is King Jehoiakim and other is King Zedekiah. I don't know if any of you have gone to Bible college or had to do like a class on the kings of Israel, but in kings of Judah, but that is a fun test when everyone's name is like Jehoiah and it's like the last half of the name changes by like five different letters. And so it's always there's so many that are like Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Jehoiah. and just keeps changing, so there's a lot of kings that it's kind of confusing, but those are the two bad kings that he served under. And when we come to this book, Judah is in the midst of turmoil. This is the southern kingdom. The nation of Israel had divided into northern and southern kingdom, and we're here at the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom had already been taken off to Assyria. They had already been judged because of their sin. And now we're coming closer to Judah being judged for their sin. We're going to talk about that. We're going to see what different warnings that God has given out and just different things. The children of Judah are dealing with this pending overthrow from Babylon. Babylon is gonna come in multiple times, and there's just a lot of things that they're going through, and a lot of difficult time that we see in the book of Jeremiah. they're in a very difficult spot there's a lot of things that they're they're worried about and they're wondering what is God doing and you also go through the book of Jeremiah it does not follow any chronological order each chapter can and can jump jump around during his ministry so sometimes you have to make sure you keep a timeline to keep things straight but we're gonna again as we come here in Jeremiah chapter 36 we're gonna We're gonna look a little bit at some time that he had under King Jehoiakim, and then also look at a passage under King Zedekiah. We're gonna look at the thought of, is how do you respond to the Word of God? How do you respond when the Word of God tells you something that you do not like? If you look at the Bible, there's a lot of things that it says. It tells us about who God is. It gives some rules for our life. If you look at the Old Testament, it gave a lot of rules for the Israelites to follow. But you know what, there's still a lot of rules for us to follow today. And you know what, sometimes we do not like it. I don't know, who here likes being told that they did something wrong? Anybody? No one likes that. I don't like that. My wife tells me all the time when I do something wrong and it's not always an enjoyable thing. But you know, we how do we respond when we are told something we do not like? How do we respond when God's word is the one that's telling us that we are not doing something right? Sometimes we can have this negative response, and we're gonna see that in the kings, and we're gonna see that there's someone who responds correctly, or how they try to respond correctly to God's word, because it's very important that we respond correctly to God's word whenever it tells us that we're doing something wrong. I think I had this for later on, but I'll say it now. God's Word tells us positive things and negative things, but we have to be careful because God's Word is the way that God talks to us. God does not talk to us audibly. He does talk to us some through the Holy Spirit, again, but not audibly. God's Word is the way that He speaks to us. He had a message that He wanted His people to know, so you know what He did? He wrote it down. And we should be thankful that he wrote it down. We don't have to wander around this life and go, what did he really mean? He wrote it down for us to know. And so he gave us his word and he says, this is what I want you to know to do and not to do. And so that's how he communicates to us. How we communicate to God is through prayer. Those are the two ways that we communicate. He communicates to us and we communicate to him through prayer. And if we start responding negatively to God's word, we're starting to cut off how he communicates to us. And if we start responding negatively to God's Word, if we start ignoring it, trying to either justify what we're doing, if we try to start dismissing God's Word, we're cutting off that way that He talks to us. And if we cut off that way that He talks to us, we start hindering our relationship. We start getting further away from God. We start just completely cutting off our relationship, and we start being disobedient to Him, and we start severing that relationship. That's how you start going off into living a lifestyle that's not pleasing to him. And if we start, if we keep rejecting or responding the wrong way to God's word, it's going to eventually sever that relationship. Not sever that relationship as in that we won't be saved if we are children of God, but we want to live a life that is pleasing to him. We have to be careful on how we respond to him. But we're gonna start here in Jeremiah 36, we'll look at our first thought, and then we'll jump into that thought of how do we respond to God. Jeremiah 36, verse one, it says, and it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, that this word came unto Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah even unto this day. It may be the purpose, we see the purpose of why he's telling Jeremiah this in verse three, it says, it may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I purpose to do unto them, that they may return every man from his evil way, and that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin. we're coming to our first thought here in the first three verses we see here he says take a roll and God comes Jeremiah says take a roll I want you to write down everything that I've told you to we come here and it's the fourth year of Jehoiakim that is 22 years that Jeremiah has been serving he started in the I think the, I'm not going to go, 18 years he was under King Josiah. I can't remember where he was exactly. It says at the beginning of Jeremiah, but 18 years under Josiah and four years into the reign of Jehoiakim, his son, that's 22 years worth of things that Jeremiah has been prophesying, that he's been teaching. There's a lot of chapters that it covers, but pretty much 22 years worth of commands that God has given to Jeremiah. He says, I want you to write it down. Take that, I want you to take the time and I want you to write it down on a roll. Why? Verse three, it says it may be. It doesn't say it will, it says it may be because the listener of the word of God always has a choice to respond. They always have to respond again. They respond correctly or negatively. It says that they may hear the words. Why did we do what we do the past few days? Why did we spend all the time putting together God's word? We did it so that someone in Germany might hear what God has done. that they might repent of their evil way, their sin. What does the book of John and the book of Romans have? John tells about who God is, says that Jesus is God, but also Jesus is man. It talks about how he loves the world, that God sent his son. Romans goes through and shows them that they are a sinner, that they the penalty of that sin is that they go and spend an eternity in hell, that they don't actually have to pay that penalty, that God's already paid it for them, that there's a way that they can know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and receive that gift, that salvation, and know Him as their personal Savior and go to heaven. They don't have to go to hell, they can go to heaven, but it is a choice that they have to make. And it's written down. We have been blessed so much, we've talked about it, we're blessed that we have a copy of God's word. Pastor Jeff spoke about it on Wednesday evening, to whom much is given, much is required. How many years have we had God's Word in the English language? It's been hundreds. You know, there's several languages around the world, they've never had a copy of God's Word. We sometimes take it so much for granted, but you know what? God has given it to us. It's written down for us, and we made sure that it was now written down for someone in German that they might be able to hear what God is going to do. God is going to judge the lost for their sins. God is going to judge church people for their sins. We're not the same judgment, but we get punishment for our sins. There's a law of sowing and reaping. You can never, if you do something in sin, you will always be judged for it. You can't get out of the consequences of sin. There's always, you sow sin, you're going to reap the consequences of it. You sow obedience to God's word, you're going to reap the consequences of that. And what you did is you spent time And you made it a priority. You made it important that, hey, you said, you know what, I want someone in Germany to hear about Jesus Christ. It was written down. And the reason why we write things down, does anybody know why we write things down? We don't forget. Who in here has already forgot my name? If you want to be honest in here, we got people who've already forgot my name. I forgot your name. I asked many of you your name on the project. I have no idea what your names are. I'm just gonna be honest. I will smile and I say thank you for your help. I have no idea what your name is. The human nature is to forget. As much as the human mind and the brain is sometimes a very neat and very wonderful thing, it forgets so easy. Who in here, I don't remember, you know, two months ago what was going on. We forget so easily, that's why God wants it written down. If someone had to only, you don't come here this morning, you don't come to church just to hear Pastor Jeff speak. You come here because he's speaking the Word of God. It's not his words. If you had to only rely on what he was telling you, I would say that would be a very dangerous thing, because he could just make up whatever he wanted. If you did not have a copy of God's Word in front of you, I could say whatever I wanted to, if you cannot verify it by having God's Word in front of you. It needs to be written down, and that's what we have to do, is we have it for us. We need to make sure that other people are getting it in their language. And so that's one of the thoughts, is why did we do this? It's because we want God's word written down. He gave it to us. He was very specific in what he wanted written down, and he gave that to us, and we were able to know about Jesus Christ through it. We need to try to make sure that we give other people that opportunity as well. So it's because we forget. The people of Judah, they probably forgot for 20 years what Jeremiah was even saying. They probably had no idea what he was saying, but he wrote it down. Because it's written down, there's something concrete that they could read and say, you know what? This is what God said. And realize what he was saying and what they were doing wrong for the purpose that they may come back to him and repent of their evil way. We see here he was given that task, he gave this task to Jeremiah, and as we move on to the next thought of how do we respond to the Word of God, we're gonna see multiple people here as we have to move quickly just the last few minutes that we have. Like I said, how do you respond when the Word of God tells you something that you do not like? There's a lot of things in God's Word that tells us whenever we are wrong. Pride goes before, it talks about how pride is a sin. All of us in here are prideful. We're proud, we're humans. That's that is common nature. We all are very selfish creatures when it talks about how God says you need to die to self For us to live for him to live it. I can't I'm messing it up But you know what? I'm trying to say is for us to die I'm not gonna I'm gonna stop now, but we're trying to we need to die to self We need to live for him. He that we if we lose our life We actually gain it by giving it to him. But if we try to save this world and do everything for ourselves We're actually losing so much God's Word tells us a lot of things, but how do we respond to it? We'll go down to Jeremiah 36. You go down to verse 10. Jeremiah has written down everything on the roll. He's given it to his servant. But Beruk, and he's going into the temple to read it. Verse 10, it says, then read Beruk in the book, the words of Jeremiah in the house of the Lord, in the chamber of Gamaria, the son of Shaphan, the scribe, in the higher court at the entry of the new gate of the Lord's house, in the ears of all the people. There's a lot of names, don't judge me for how I say them. When Micaiah, the son of Gamaria, the son of Shaphan, had heard out of the book all the words of the Lord, Then he went down into the king's house, into the scribe's chamber, and lo, all the princes sat there. Go down to verse 13, the Micaiah declared unto them all the words that he had heard when Baruch read the book in the ears of all the people. Jeremiah wanted all the people to hear, so he's reading it in a public place, he's reading it in the temple so that everyone can hear God's word. It's not meant for specific people, it's meant for everyone. Verse 14. 14, therefore all the princes sent Jehudi, the son of Nethaniah, the son of Shalamiah, the son of Cushi, unto Baruch, saying, take in thine hand the roll wherein thou hast read in the ears of the people, and come. So Baruch, the son of Neriah, took the roll in his hand, and he came unto them. And they said unto him, sit down now, and read it in our ears. So Baruch read it in their ears. Now it came to pass, when they had heard all the words, they were afraid both one and other, and said unto Baruch, we will surely tell the king, all these words if you jump over to verse 21 that is the that is one response that people had they had fear whenever they heard the Word of God because it was talking about everything that they were doing wrong they were afraid because of what they had heard verse 21 it says so the king this is King Jehoiakim so the king sent you who died to fetch the roll and he took it out of a lash of the scribes chamber and and Jehudi read it in the ears of the king, and in the ears of all the princes which stood beside the king. Now the king sat in the winter house in the ninth month, and there was a fire on the hearth burning before him. And it came to pass that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with a penknife and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth. Yet were they not afraid, nor rent their garments, neither the king nor any of his servants that heard, all of these words. You know what their response was? They rejected God's word. He said, you know, I don't like what I'm hearing. He cut it up and he threw it on the fire. He burned it. He was completely rejecting God's word when God was telling them that he was doing something wrong. That is one of the negative responses we see here. We see here, what a good response to God's word when he comes to us and says, hey, you're doing something wrong, or hey, you need to fix something in your life, is to have that fear that the princes had in verses 10 through 16. They weren't afraid that they weren't gonna do anything. The fear that it put in their heart, that was the conviction that God's word brought in their life. And you know what they said? You know what, I need to respond correctly to this. And they were trying to be obedient to it and they tried to get the king to listen to it because they said, you know what? We've been wrong this whole time. We've been wrong in what we've been doing. We need to obey God's word. There's a lot of things if you go back through in the book of Jeremiah, it talks about what they did and how there's a passage where it talks about how the children of Israel were polluting the name of God. They were polluting the house of God. They were polluting so many things that were of God because of how they acted. They had God's Word, they had the law of what it said, and they were going opposite of that. They were rejecting God's Word, and whenever they now heard in this book that they were doing wrong, they were like, they were afraid because they realized what God's Word was doing, what God's Word was telling them. And they were trying to respond correctly. The correct response to God's Word is obedience. It's to try to obey, and it's try to change in our lives what is wrong. But we see here, the negative response here is to reject God's Word. He was trying to destroy God's Word because he did not like what it said or believe it. He thought by, hey, by throwing it on the fire, it has of no effect. If I ignore it, it doesn't really mean anything. That's how sometimes we are as people, is we try to take God's Word and say, you know what? If I just stop reading it, it doesn't actually mean the same thing. It's not true. If I reject it, I make my own truth. That's what a lot of people in this day and age are doing, is they are trying to follow their own truth. I saw that on social media. We are in pride month. If you've seen that, there's a lot of people they talk about, they're like, I'm trying to discover my own truth. It's not, there's not your truth. There is the truth. And that's what everybody's trying to do is whenever they try to reject God's word, they're like trying to say, hey, I'm trying to make my own truth. Truth is whatever I make it. But we have to realize that God's word is truth. And just because we reject it when it tells us something that we do not like, it does not take away the truth of God's word. It does not take away the power of his word. And those punishments still come. What is being said here that a lot of the children of Judah did not like, if you go throughout the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah is telling them so many times, hey, we're going to fall into the Babylonians' hands. Jerusalem is gonna be burned. Because of your sin, we're gonna go into captivity. And none of them liked that message because everyone told, they would go to false prophets and they said God's gonna bless us, God's going to save us and protect us, when in reality, All of their sin leading up to this point, he's saying you're going into captivity. And they were trying to reject that, and trying to make God's Word something else because they did not like what it said, because they were living in sin. They were in false idolatry. They were doing what was right in their own eyes, and because they were trying to reject God's Word, they were trying to change it. If you quickly go to Jeremiah chapter 38, if you quickly go over to 38, we come to King Zedekiah. This is now, could be like 10 years in the future, 10, 13 years away from this point in Jeremiah chapter 36. I know it's a different time, but we see another response. That one response is someone who completely rejects God for it. He doesn't even accept it, he just says whatever, he throws it away. But here in Jeremiah chapter 38, We start in verse 14. Jeremiah's just been pulled up out of prison because of this prison, this dungeon, because of the things he keeps saying that, hey, you're gonna go into captivity. And we come here, it says, then Zedekiah the king sent and took Jeremiah the prophet unto him into the third entry that is in the house of the Lord. And the king said unto Jeremiah, I will ask thee a thing, hide nothing from me. And so we keep going on. Jeremiah says, what's the point in telling you if you're not gonna believe me? And King Zedekiah, I'm paraphrasing because of the time that we have, King Zechariah says, no, I will believe you. Please tell me what is God going to say? What is God's word saying? And Jeremiah says, you know what? If you were to, you're going to go into captivity. Babylon has surrounded them. They are in siege right now. They are surrounded and they're just they're trying to outlast the Babylonian army You know what? He Jeremiah said to him. He says Zedekiah You know what you do if you would go out to the Chaldeans if you go out and surrender yourself to them You will live your family will live in the city will not be burned Because he said if you try to read if you try to resist if you try to run away if you try to do Anything other than what God's Word says there's a lot of bad things are gonna happen and you know what? I believe Zedekiah believed it. But you know what he was saying? He was really scared to follow that. And he says, you know what, I believe he thought of it, but he said, you know what, just don't tell anybody about this and we'll try to figure it out. But you know what, it says in chapter 39, in the ninth year of Zedekiah, king of Judah, in the 10th month came Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and all his army against Jerusalem. and they besieged, kind of telling some story about this. And it says in the 11th year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, the ninth day of the month, the city was broken up. They broke in and they started coming in and they started, this was the point that Zedekiah, according to God's word, he should have just gone out to the Chaldeans and he should have surrendered to them and everything would have been fine. The city would not have been burned, him and his family would have been fine. But you know what he did? He listened to his sons, even though he knew God's word was true because of everything that was going on, He said, you know what, let's try to run away. And when they tried to run away, we can see in verse number six that they caught up to him, they pursued him, and they brought him to the King Nebuchadnezzar. Verse six, it says, then King of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah in the Ribla before his eyes. Also the King of Babylon slew all the nobles of Judah. And then it goes on that he took out the king's eyes and he took him and changed the Babylon Verse 8 talks about how he burned the whole city. And you know what he did? He said, what I believe was happening here is one of the negative response. Someone that believes God's word, but does not act upon it. Someone who says, you know what, not today, maybe tomorrow I'll change that. Someone who says, maybe later I'll fix that. In reality, they're just still pushing off God's word. And yet, if he would have obeyed, his sons would not have died, the city of Jerusalem would not have been burned, and everything would have been fine. If you go back in chapter 38 and read the whole chapter, you'll read that. It talks about how Jeremiah said, if you do this, Your sons will be saved, the city will not be burned. And he talks about, hey, if you just do what God's word says, this will happen. But you know, he said not today. He kind of believed it, but not really. And when he pushed it off, the consequences came because he said no. We have to realize that when we respond incorrectly, when we don't respond to what God's word tells us to do, there are consequences to that. I want you to think about that good response. They were trying to be obedient to God's word. I want to give you some examples of when, sometimes when it does not make sense, that we still need to respond to God's word. Think about Elijah when God told him to go to the book Cherith and he will provide for him. It did not make sense for him, but he ran to the middle of the desert and he had ravens feed him. When Noah responded correctly to God and God told him, hey, I want you to build an ark, when he had never seen rain, what did he do? Protection we have to realize and we are obedient to God's word We will see him work in our lives Whether it's in to respond correctly to what he tells us to do or to get right in our own lives. We can restore that that relationship with Him, we have to realize that this is how God talks to us, it's His word. If we start rejecting it, if we start responding negatively, trying to reject it, or trying to say, you know what, maybe I won't fix that today, whatever God's talking to you about, pride, selfishness, maybe some sin in your life that He points out that's clear in His word, if we keep trying to push that off, not today, maybe tomorrow, there's gonna come a time where we don't have that tomorrow to fix it. If we're saved in here, that is not going to affect your eternal destination. You're still gonna go to heaven, but when you get to heaven, you're gonna have that broken relationship with God when you could have had a right relationship with Him and be pleasing to Him. Is this life really worth it when we're gonna spend eternity in heaven if we try to live for ourselves when really we could have lived for God and try to tell other people about Him and be obedient to Him? We have to be careful. When we respond correctly, blessings will happen. When we respond negatively, there is consequences. We have to be careful in how we respond to God's word. If everyone would bow your heads, close your eyes. Thank you for listening this morning. As Pastor Jeff comes for the invitation time, I did not go into specifics because we all have different areas in our life that God speaks to us. We're all hopefully in God's word. We're all in different places, maybe in our Bible reading or our Bible studying, and God speaks to us differently. But whatever this morning, if God spoke to you on maybe how you're not being obedient to him, and maybe something you are doing or something you are not doing, please respond to him because responding correctly is the best way to go. And we've seen responding incorrectly how that goes in affecting our relationship with God. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for the time this morning. Please just speak to our hearts. Allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives and help us to respond to you so that we respond to your word correctly and live pleasing lives to you. In Jesus' name we pray.