Hope for Those Who Surrender
June 2, 2024
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Jeremiah 1:1-10
1 The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2 to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. 3 It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.
4 Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” 7 But the Lord said to me,
“Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,
and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
8 Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
declares the Lord.”
9 Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,
“Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
10 See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”
Let’s pray as we begin.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
Most of us have never heard a sermon series through the book of Jeremiah. It’s possible most of us have never read through the whole book. And so this morning, together, we begin a journey—an adventure really—through a foreign land, a land with dangers and villains and harsh realities. But also a land with a wonderful oasis, a land of good news, a land of gospel, a land we can put down roots and find streams in the summer heat.
In the opening verses we read, “The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin.”
He’s from Anathoth, which was a priestly community just two or three miles north of Jerusalem, the nation’s capital of political and religious life. And he’s the son of a priest.
Those details pop as the book goes on because God calls him to preach against the priests. It would not so much be like a pastor’s kid but the son of a church denominational official who’s called to denounce the practices of that denomination. Or maybe picture a son growing up just outside of Silicon Valley, the son of a VP at a big tech company, who’s called to preach against the industry that raised him.
In v. 2 we read, “to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.” That’s 627 BC, for those interested. The introduction goes on to mention the fateful eleventh year of King Zedekiah, which is 586 BC, which we’ll come back to at the end.
These years span some of the hardest—if not the hardest—seasons of history for the people of God.
Jeremiah is known for his famous passages, such as those about the new covenant or God’s word being a fire shut up in his bones or Jeremiah 29:11, where God says he knows the plans he has for his people, plans to prosper them, not to harm them.
He’s also famous for his object lessons, for the ways the Lord calls him to dramatize the story of Israel. There are serious ones, such as when a clay jar is smashed and when wooden yoke bars get smashed. There’s the time when a potter at a wheel messes up the clay he’s working with.
There are funny ones too, funny from our perspective. In chapter 13, God tells Jeremiah to take his loincloth and hide it in the rocks outdoors for a long time. Basically, his loincloth was like his underwear. And when God tells him to get his underwear that has been outside for like a year and ruined, he’s told to show his loincloth to the people of Israel and say something like, “You have become to me as useless as a pair of moldy underwear.” That’s really not much of a paraphrase actually.
Because we’re so unfamiliar with the history of Israel and the Old Testament generally and the book of Jeremiah specifically, I want to spend about twenty minutes orienting us to the book with another dramatic illustration of sorts, that of digging a hole.
In chapter two, which Pastor Ron will be preaching next week, there’s a famous passage where God says through Jeremiah that “my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
In other words, Jeremiah is saying, God is the source of delight. He is clean, fresh, pure, living water. And the people look at him and say, “No thank you. We’ll dig our own well.” And they dig a hole. And though they dig deep, the well becomes broken, and though the water is poisoned, still they gulp it down.
All this to say, when we pick up Jeremiah, the people of God are in a deep spiritual hole. And yet they did not get there overnight. In fact, let me say it like this: no one gets into a spiritual hole with a backhoe. No one gets into a spiritual hole with heavy machinery; rather you and I get there with a shovel one scoop at a time.
It wasn’t always so.
Genesis to Exodus
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” we read in Genesis 1:1.
God created Adam and Eve, our first parents. They were created in the image and likeness of God and placed in an environment where they would flourish.
We often say that they “fell.” But it would be more accurate to say they rebelled. In fact, you could say they looked at the provision of good, clean pure living water, and they decided to dig their own well instead. So the digging begins.
But God was not going to leave himself without witness. There was Abraham, who we preached about last summer. Abraham was in miniature what Israel was to be, namely to so express satisfaction in the God, that all the world would stop and say, Ahhh, this is what it is like for a nation to love and be loved by God!
And as time went on, the descendants of Abraham found themselves in the land of Egypt, multiplying greatly. They began to increase so much that it became a problem for Pharaoh. And this King of Egypt began to tighten the cords of oppression to a suffocating extent.
So God sent a deliverer named Moses. And through many signs and wonders and God’s outstretched arm, the people were delivered, the Red Sea was parted, Egypt was crippled, and God gave birth to the nation called Israel.
They were supposed to immediately go possess the Promised Land, the land of Canaan, but there were sins and delays. And they dug the hole. After forty years of wandering the desert, the people began the conquest of the land. This is the time frame of Israel under the leadership of a man named Joshua.
Joshua
This is subjective, but I take it to be the high-water mark of OT Israelite faithfulness. This is simply a way of saying that if the rest of Israel’s history is mostly digging a hole, then in the book of Joshua, the stack of dirt is never taller.
I say this for several reasons. Consider the miraculous conquests that were taking place, such as Jericho. Yes, there were defeats and setbacks to be sure, as in the sin of a man named Achan, but even the way Joshua and the people dealt with sin and setbacks was godly.
In fact, at the end of the book, it appears that one tribe has constructed a false altar; a degenerate place of worship. That’s a bad thing. So the rest of Israel gets together they march over to where this tribe dwells. And they say, “Hey! What are you doing! That’s an altar. There is only one altar, and you can’t have that. You better repent, or we’ll fight you because Israel is loyal to YHWH!”
And this tribe in question, which happens to be the tribe of Benjamin says, “Oh oh oh, you think that over there is for false sacrifices? No no, not at all. You see, brothers, we know that’s not a the altar. We’re not going to use it. We live so far away from the real altar we just didn’t want people to forget that we too worship YHWH, so we made a copy.”
And the other tribes say, “Very well. Carry on. Put your weapons away, gentlemen; it’s just a copy. They are not going to use it.”
Judges
When the leader Joshua dies and all the leaders who were with Joshua die, the Bible literally says there “arose another generation . . . who did not know the LORD” (Judges 2:10–12). It’s the tragedy I referred to the other week when we did child dedications. The book of Judges is the time when, as the book says, “there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25; cf. 17:1; 18:1; 19:1).
This period is called the time of the Judges. It’s called that because whereas Joshua led all of Israel, after his death, smaller, more localized leaders emerged, and they were called Judges. During the time of the Judges, the digging really got going.
In fact, there is an appendix to the book of Judges, as if to make the point, If you thought it was bad before, just look at this.
In the appendix, which is Chapters 19–21, there is a civil war. In Joshua there was almost one over this false altar business, but in Judges there is a war, but far less noble.
There was this priest who didn’t marry his girlfriend but lives with her, and, as an aside, nobody seems to have a problem with it. Anyway, through a series of terrible events, she’s abused and murdered. The priest sends a graphic notice throughout all of Israel, summoning the people to action. The tribes come to the tribe of Benjamin, who did this, and they demand Benjamin to surrender. They say, essentially, “We’re not going to surrender the people who did this. Leave us alone.” And so they go to war, and many people die.
And the hole is dug deeper.
Samuel
With that, the book of Samuel begins.
Without a doubt the book introduces us to some very godly characters, such as Hannah and Samuel himself and King David. But there are scoundrels as well.
Very early in the book we met two priests named Hophni and Phinehas. These two are pieces of work. The Bible literally calls them “worthless men” (1 Sam. 2:12). The very first time we meet them they receive an offering from an individual. And they are saying, “Give me the offering when and how I want it “or I will take it by force” (1 Sam. 2:16).
And so they begin to dig the hole.
Later in the same chapter, we learn that they sleep with the women working at the Tabernacle.
And the hole gets deeper.
Later, Israel gets in a battle against the Philistines and they are not sure exactly what to do. And so they get a bright ideal. The elders of Israel say, “Fetch the ark of the covenant” (1 Sam. 4:3 KJV). Now the ark was the physical manifestation of God’s presence among his people. If anything was holy and sacred, it was the ark. It was the item that went in the very holy of holies.
And guess which two goofballs bring the ark out to the battlefield? Yeah, Hophni and Phinehas. Imagine how they must have strutted like peacocks with their feathers unfolded.
Perhaps the idea to bring the ark could have been okay, but what is clear is that they start to treat God like a lucky rabbit’s foot. Their faith becomes nothing more than superstition. “It doesn’t matter if we are sinners and wicked because we have the ark!” they tell themselves.
The lose the battle, the ark is captured, and Hophni and Phinehas are killed. There’s a neat story about how they get the ark back, but that’s for another time.
Later in the book, the people say, “Gee Samuel, we know you have been a great leader, but your kids are not so great, and we really, really want to be like the other nations, so can you please give us a king?”
King Saul
So what does God do? They want a king who is like all the other nations—a king that is tall and strong and handsome and selfish and insecure and godless and power hungry—so what does God do? He gives them what they ask for. They get King Saul.
Now don’t get me wrong, Saul had his moments where he showed promise. In the beginning, he even saved the citizens of a town called Jabesh-Gilead, who were under serious attack from a foreign enemy. It was a good thing.
But at the end of his life, we see this petty, insecure, angry man. You must walk on eggshells around him. Saul drifted so far that he even consulted the Witch of En-dor to have her bring somebody back from the dead for a conversation.
God says in 1 Samuel 15 that Saul was so bad that God literally regretted making him king. It’s not good. In the end, Saul spends the last parts of his life hunting down young David, the next heir to the throne.
And the hole gets deeper still.
King David
Just using round numbers, we are roughly 1,000 BC; that is, 1,000 years before the birth of Christ.
It is in this time that we meet the most famous of all Israelite kings: King David. This young shepherd boy who could kill the bear and lion and even a giant named Goliath.
David is this larger than life character. He is warrior and manly-man and handsome and great leader, and he is also tender and spiritually connected to God in deep ways. Several times, even in the New Testament, the Bible describes him as “a man after God’s own heart” (Cf., 1 Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22). So we should probably fill the hole we have been digging up a little.
But not everything is as it seems. Still there are dark clouds over his reign. “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David . . . remained at Jerusalem” (2 Sam. 11:1).
He sleeps with Bathsheba and kills her husband, who happened to be one of mighty men.
At another point David takes a census of the people and his kingdom, which on paper may not have been all that bad, but it is clear from the context that it is all about pride. David thinks, “Look at this grand kingdom I’ve built. Let’s get it recorded down so that all posterity will know how great I am.”
And he’s a terrible parent.
So, while we put some dirt back in, we took a lot out as well.
King Solomon
David passes on the kingdom to Solomon.
Picture this: Solomon is smarter than Albert Einstein and he has more money than Bill Gates. So the potential is high. And he does some wonderful things, like building a temple, the dwelling place for God. A Queen from a faraway place hears about how great Solomon is and she comes to test him with hard questions. And the end of her visit she says, “When I heard about you, I didn’t even believe it because it sounded too good to be true. But now that I am here, I realize that I didn’t even hear half of your greatness and the greatness of your God.
But like with David, not everything is as it seems. Because in his later years, his heart turned from the Lord. He abused his power. And he married many, many, many foreign women. And the problem is not that the women are foreign, per se. Moses’ wife was foreign. Ruth was foreign, and so were others. The deal was that these women worship other gods. They had different religions. It would be like saying, Solomon married many Buddhist women, many Hindu women, many Muslim women, and many atheist women.
And the hole gets deeper.
King Rehoboam
After Solomon came Rehoboam. He gets it all handed to him, the kingdom, the power, the wealth. And rather than being grateful, he wants more.
Some advisers come to Rehoboam asking how they should handle the division of labor in the kingdom. They say, “It might be good, King Rehoboam, to lighten things up a bit.” But you know what he says? He says, “My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions” (1 Kings 12:11).
Well, it was too much for the people to bear. As a result, Israel split into two halves: the northern kingdom, most often called Israel, and the southern kingdom, called Judah.
Israel Kings to Exile
I don’t have time to focus on the northern kingdom, but if you have ever heard of King Ahab and his wife Jezebel, you know something about how it went. There is a reason that parents do not name their kids Jezebel.
And about one hundred and fifty years go by and nineteen wicked kings later, Israel goes into exile. Now I said that no one gets into a spiritual hole with a backhoe or heavy machinery, but perhaps they get close.
Judean Kings, Abijah to Ahaz
As for Judah, we’ll have to pick up the pace. I’m going to skip over King Abijah through King Ahaz, which is about ten kings and one queen and two hundred years. During that time, yes of course we would put some dirt back in the hole, but as has been the case thus far, the hole only got deeper.
King Hezekiah
In Judah, a king named King Hezekiah did many good things. At one point, when he and the kingdom were in a really tight spot, God worked a miracle. He saved the king and he saved Jerusalem. Jerusalem was surrounded by enemies and about to be crushed, and in the middle of the night the angel of the Lord fought for Israel.
But not all was well with Hezekiah. In his later years, he grew proud and showed off the greatness of his kingdom to people who came to visit.
And God was not pleased and sent the prophet Isaiah to confront him. This is recorded in 2 Kings 20. Isaiah essentially says, “Because your heart has departed from the Lord, I am going to bring disaster upon your house. You, King Hezekiah, will die in peace, but some of your very sons will be castrated and carried off to foreign countries to serve foreign kings.”
You know what Hezekiah says to that? And I quote: “The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good . . . Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?” (2 Kings 20:19).
Now picture if you are one of his kids and you hear your dad say, “What do I care if bad things happen my kids, as long as I am taken care of?”
And the hole is about to get really deep.
Manasseh to Amon
People often think that the wickedness of King Manasseh came out of nowhere, but I doubt it. I have often wondered if Hezekiah said this in the hearing of his son Manasseh.
Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned fifty-five years. It is a long reign and a godless reign. When we talk about Manasseh, well, we need a bigger shovel.
All the good things that his father Hezekiah stood for, Manasseh ran ninety miles per hour in the other direction. At the time, Assyria was the big kid on the block, and in an effort to court favor, Manasseh incorporated Assyrian gods and practices into Israelite worship. One of these false gods was so evil, so demonic, that to worship him you had to burn one of your sons in fire. And Manasseh. The Bible says that “Manasseh led them astray to do more evil than the nations had done whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel” (2 Kings 21:9).
And it is here, in this debauched spiritual climate, that a young man is born who would stand for the Lord, who would preach righteousness in the face of wickedness. His name was Jeremiah.
Now, Manasseh did have a son named Amon. He, too, was wicked, but he only reigned for two years because his servants put him to death in his own house.
But it is with Amon that we have our first concrete link to the book of Jeremiah. Let me read the opening verses of Jeremiah to you.
Jeremiah 1:1–3,
1 The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2 to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. 3 It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.
You see the mentioning of these various kings in Jeremiah 1:1–3 function as timestamps. While short, they are invitations to ponder the spiritual milieu of the times and seasons. For those who know the stories, the names evoke vivid connotations, the same way simply mentioning President Washington evokes thoughts about the birth of the nation, the way President Lincoln evokes the Civil War, and the way President Kennedy brings to mind the cultural revolutions of the 60s and the Apollo moon landings.
King Josiah
Now I don’t know if you caught it, but there was a king mentioned twice. His name was Josiah.
When his father Amon was killed, the people made him king at the young age of eight. Can you imagine selecting a man from the children’s wing to not only lead our church but a nation? The year is 640 BC, and Josiah, believe it or not, was a wonderful king, a very godly man.
Politically at the time, while Assyria was the superpower of the day, that was beginning to change. Assyria was under strong opposition from Babylon, fighting to survive, which helped Josiah throw off Assyrian elements in worship.
Now, we don’t fully know what part Jeremiah’s preaching ministry had on Josiah in the early years; we know it had some effect later, but when Josiah was in his mid-twenties, he began some wonderful and long overdue reforms. In the course of these reforms, they begin to clean out the temple.
When they do, surprise, surprise, they find what is called “The Book of the Law.” It never actually says what is meant by this phase, but it is fairly safe to assume that it refers to some portion of the books Moses wrote, especially some part or all of Deuteronomy.
Now, at first, when you hear this, you may say, “Yeah! Great. They found the Bible.” Which is a good reaction. I get it. But then you start to think about it some more. You start to think, “They found the Bible? Where did it go? When did they lose it? How long has it been lost?”
Even today, I have this question about some churches and denominations that have lost the Bible. And you wonder, “Where did it go? When did they lose it? How long has it been lost?” I do not have answers to these questions, but I can tell you that it didn’t happen overnight; it happened one shovel at a time.
Anyway, in 609 BC King Josiah found himself in a pickle. Assyria and Egypt joined forces (picture the geography of this!) against Babylon. King Josiah didn’t think that was a good idea, so he tried to stop Pharaoh Neco, and sadly in the process lost his life (at Megiddo).
Jehoahaz
Josiah had a son named Jehoahaz. He was made the new king. Now, you can probably understand this, but if Egypt killed your father, you would probably be pro-Babylon. And Jehoahaz was. But it didn’t go well for him. He didn’t last long. He made it only three months before Egypt, “That’s enough.”
Jehoiakim
They kick him off the throne, and place instead, Egypt places his half-brother, Jehoiakim, on the throne.
Essentially they say, “We killed your dad. Your brother tried to play us for fools. You want a try?”
Jehoiakim has been characterized as the worst and most bloodthirsty of Judah’s kings. He cared nothing for the worship of the God of Israel, extracted exorbitant taxes, used forced labor without pay, and had no regard for authorized prophets of God.
Perhaps one of the most famous scenes in the book of Jeremiah occurs with Jehoiakim. In 605 BC, through a few battles with Egypt, Babylon became the world superpower. Jeremiah writes the king a message from God that it is the will of God that Israel surrenders to Babylon. Jehoiakim wants nothing to do with it. He has someone read the scroll, and after each paragraph, he takes his knife and cuts it off and throws it in fire section by section (Jer. 36).
In 605 BC, Babylon expresses their annoyance with Jehoiakim by taking a first wave of exiles to Babylon. For example, one of these exiles is the young man Daniel. Incidentally, all of you have heard of the King of Babylon at this time, namely Nebuchadnezzar.
At this point, again, the hole is deep.
Jehoiachin
Well, Jehoiakim continues to tick off Babylon, so a half dozen years later when Jehoiakim dies and his son was put on the throne, King Jehoiachin—with an n. He only makes it three months and Babylon has enough.
In his short reign, this teenage king showed himself to be wicked enough. He opposed Jeremiah, God’s authorized spokesman, and thus opposed God. Babylon sieges the city, they take him off the throne, and take more exiles to Babylon. This time they also grab a man named Ezekiel. The year is 597 BC.
Zedekiah
After that, Babylon places a new king on the throne. His name is Zedekiah, or should I say, that is the name Babylon gave him. Zedekiah might be best characterized as a weather vane, whichever way the wind blows, that’s where he points.
And now, after many years of God’s supreme patience, the most devastating moment in Old Testament history is about to take place, namely the collapse of Judah, the southern kingdom, and the destruction of the Jerusalem and the God’s holy temple.
The year is 586 BC. Babylon has surrounded the city for two years. Finally, the Israelites crack. Zedekiah attempts to escape, he is captured, he watches his sons killed, his eyes are poked out, and he remains a prisoner for the rest of his life.
And the people go into exile, with a capital “E.” This one is for keeps; only the poorest of the poor are left.
Gedaliah
To sum up the context of the book quickly, Babylon sets up a guy named Gedaliah as governor over the land of Judah.
What’s interesting is that one of the few people who helped Jeremiah was Gedaliah’s father, who saved Jeremiah’s life.
He was killed by pro-David Israelites who, fearing the repercussions of Babylon, asked Jeremiah what they should do.
Jeremiah waited for an answer from God. The answer: Don’t flee to Egypt. What do they do? Not only do they go, but they drag Jeremiah and his only friend, his scribe, Baruch, with them.
The last picture of this faithful man after forty years of ministry was one of confrontations, where those dragging him to Egypt have the gall to essentially say (44:15–19) that they are in this mess not because they didn’t follow God, but because they stopped following all their pagan idols and thus their favor with the gods vanished.
I can only imagine Jeremiah’s sorrow and confusion. Jeremiah’s last recorded words are this: they “shall know whose word will stand, mine or theirs” (44:28), to which we might paraphrase, “Time will tell” who was right.
And time has told. God’s Word through the prophet has stood. The people of God, if only a small remnant, are in a deep hole and they are crying out to God.
Conclusion
This is where the gospel is so important. Mere religion could tell this same story, but the ending would be something like either 1) There’s no hope. It’s always going to be bad, so just give up, or 2) Be better. They’ve failed, and you’ve failed, but try harder. Be better.
But that’s not at all what the Bible says. Jeremiah, to those people in a deep spiritual hole, we read passages of undeserved mercy and grace. We read of the promise of a Messiah, a savior.
Consider chapter 23. God promises to send a people in a hole a Messiah who would become a righteous branch. He would be a new plant. And he would be called by the name, “The Lord is our righteousness” (Jer. 23:6).
We know that person to be Jesus. When Jesus comes, he doesn’t come in a palace. He climbs deep into the hole. And he lets the pile of God’s wrath collapse upon him on the cross, dying in our place. And he gives us his righteousness, which is to say, God views all the good deeds that Jesus did, as though we did them.
I don’t know if you feel in many ways in a spiritual hole or if you merely feel like those around you are in one. But the book of Jeremiah neither says, “There is no hope,” nor “Look inside and be better, if you want hope.” Instead, the Lord says to those who would surrender, he will become our hope; he will become our righteousness.
And I hope as we preach this book all summer long, that will become more and more clear.
Let’s pray as we invite the music team up, and we’ll participate in the communion together.
“Dear heavenly Father…”
Sermon Discussion Questions
Before listening to this sermon, what did you know about Jeremiah?
How well do you know the history of Israel? What stood out to you from this sermon that was new?
Read Jeremiah 2:11–13. How has this verse been true in your own life?
Benjamin mentioned there is a wonderful gospel, good news oasis in the book of Jeremiah—a promise of hope to those who surrender. Read Jeremiah 23:1–6 to see one of those promises. How does this promise relate to Jesus and the gospel? How is this hope different than “mere religion,” which promises either “no hope” or “you are the only hope”?
The theme this sermon series is “hope for those who surrender.” Do a word search for surrender in the book of Jeremiah and talk about what you see.
How do you feel you need to surrender to God today?
