Jeremiah 40-42 - Outline

[Jim Watt]

“*TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE” MINISTRIES*

*Jim & Marie Watt*

*Tel: 253-517-9195 - Email: jmbetter at gmail.com*

*Web: www.2rbetter.org*

January 5, 2013


 *AUG 8 - JEREMIAH 40-42 - HYPOCRISY IN THE REMNANT*


 *1. 40:4 (40:1-6, ESV) REMNANT: JEREMIAH LIBERATED. “Now, behold, I
release you today from the chains on your hands. If it seems good to you to
come with me to Babylon, come, and I will look after you well, but if it
seems wrong to you to come with me to Babylon, do not come. See, the whole
land is before you; go wherever you think it good and right to go.” *Father,
You indeed reign over *all* the affairs of men! *Hallowed be your :name!*


 *2. 40:9 (40:7-12) REMNANT: REGATHERING OF THE JEWS. “Gedaliah the son of
Ahikam, son of Shaphan, swore to them and their men, saying, ‘Do not be
afraid to serve the Chaldeans. Dwell in the land and serve the king of
Babylon, and it shall be well with you.’” *Yes Father, You always foresee
our need, and make provision ahead of time for it! Before we call upon You,
You have *already* answered. *Your :kingdom come.*


 *3. 40:14 (40:13-16) REMNANT: PLOT AGAINST GEDALIAH. “And Jonathan said to
him, ‘Do you know that Baalis the king of the Ammonites has sent Ishmael
the son of Nethaniah to take your life?’ But Gedaliah the son of Ahikam
would not believe them.” *Forgive us Father, for so often being naïve and
unbelieving! You try to spare us from pain and hardship, yet we blindly and
stubbornly go our own way! *Your :will be done, As in heaven, so on earth.*


 *4. 41:2 (41:1-10) REMNANT: PLOT SUCCESSFUL. “Ishmael the son of Nethaniah
and the ten men with him rose up and struck down Gedaliah the son of
Ahikam, son of Shaphan, with the sword, and killed him, whom the king of
Babylon had appointed governor in the land.” *O what peace we often
forfeit; O what *needless* pain we bear: All because we do not carry *
everything* to God in prayer. Father, forgive our sin of unbelief and
stubbornness! *Our :daily :bread Give us this day.*


 *5. 41:17-18a (41:11-18) REMNANT: JOHANAN BECOMES LEADER. “And they went
and stayed at Geruth Chimham near Bethlehem, intending to go to Egypt
18a because
of the Chaldeans.” *We reap what we sow. Our troubles we bring upon
ourselves. Then we blame You for the the law of sowing and reaping. *And
forgive us our :debts, As we also have forgiven our :debtors.*


 *6. 42:4 (42:1-6) REMNANT: JEWS INQUIRE OF JEREMIAH. Jeremiah the prophet
said to them, “I have heard you. Behold, I will pray to the LORD your God
according to your request, and whatever the LORD answers you I will tell
you. I will keep nothing back from you.” *How You seek to help us Father,
in our blind and foolish ways. We deserve more chastisement than You in
your mercy give us. *And bring us not into temptation.*


 *7. 42:7 (42:7-22). REMNANT: GOD’S MESSAGE TO THEM. “At the end of ten
days the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah (in a dream, 31:26; Numbers
12:6-9).” *How faithful You are, O great Jehovah Father! Lift us above the
dream level, where like Moses, we speak to You face to face! We would go
above prayer to *meditation* on Your Word! *But deliver us from the evil
one!*


 *NOTE**: 42:20 (42:7-22) REM**NANT: JEREMIAH REVEALS THEIR DECEPTION. “For
you have gone astray at the cost of your lives. For you sent me to the LORD
your God, saying, ‘Pray for us to the LORD our God, and whatever the LORD
our God says declare to us and we will do it.’” *Nothing is hidden from
You, Father. We are *sure* that our sins will find us out! We cast
ourselves upon You and Your mercy!


 *C.H. Spurgeon Quotes: * God, by his Spirit, brings old truth home to the
heart, gives new light to our eyes, and causes the word to exercise new
power over us; but he reveals no new facts, and he utters no words in man’s
ears concerning his condition and state. We must be content with the old
revelation and with the life and power and force with which the Holy Spirit
brings it to the heart. Neither must any of us seek to have any additional
revelation, for that would imply that the Scriptures are incomplete.


 *Our Psalm for the day: 38:18 (38) DO NOT FORSAKE ME, O LORD. “I confess
my iniquity; I am sorry for my sin.” *Father, we honor You when we see
ourselves as Your Word reveals us. We honor You when we acknowledge that *no
* good thing dwells in our flesh (Romans 7:18)! We *hallow Your :Name* when
we *justify* You in *all* You have said!


 Title: “A Psalm of David, to bring to remembrance.” David felt as if he
had been forgotten of his God, and, therefore, he recounted his sorrows and
cried mightily for help under them. The same title is given to Psalm 70,
where in like manner, the Psalmist pours out his complaint before the Lord.
It would be foolish to make a guess as to the point in David’s history when
this was written; it may be a commemoration of his own sickness and
endurance of cruelty; it may, on the other hand, have been composed by him
for the use of sick and slandered saints without special reference to
himself.

Among the things that David brought to his own remembrance, the first and
foremost were: (1) his past trials and his past deliverances. The great
point, however, in David’s Psalm is to bring to remembrance; (2) the
depravity of our nature. There is, perhaps, no Psalm which more fully than
this describes human nature as seen in the light which God, the Holy
Spirit, casts upon it in the time when He convinces us of sin. I am
persuaded that the description here does not tally with any known disease
of the body. It is very like leprosy but it has about it certain features
which cannot be found to meet in any leprosy described either by ancient or
moder writers. The fact is, it is a spiritual leprosy, it is an inward
disease which is here described, and David paints it to the very life, and
he would have us to recollect this.


 38:1. *O Lord, rebuke me not in Your wrath. *Rebuked I must be, for I am
an erring child and You a careful Father, but throw not too much anger into
the tones of Your voice; deal gently although I have sinned grievously. The
anger of others I can bear, but not Yours.


 38:5. *My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. *Conscience
lays on stripe after stripe till the swelling becomes a wound and
suppurates, and the corruption within grows offensive. What a horrible
creature man appears to be to his own consciousness when his depravity and
vileness are fully opened up by the law of God, applied by the Holy Spirit!
Even the most filthy diseases cannot be so foul as sin. No ulcers, cancers,
or putrifying sores, can match the unutterable vileness and pollution of
iniquity. Our own perceptions have made us feel this. We write what we do
know, and testify what we have seen; and even now we shudder to think that
so much of evil should lie festering deep within our nature.


 38:8 *I am feeble. *The original is “benumbed,” or frozen, such strange
incongruities and contradictions meet in a distracted mind and a sick body
- it appears to itself to be alternately parched with heat and pinched with
cold. Like souls in the popish-fabled purgatory, tossed from burning
furnaces into thick ice, so tormented hearts rush from one extreme to the
other, with equal torture in each. A heat of fear, a chill of horror, a
flaming desire, a horrible insensibility - by these successive miseries a
convinced sinner is brought to death’s door.


 38:11. *My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore. *It is very
hard when those who should be the first to come to the rescue are the first
to desert us. In times of deep soul trouble, even the most affectionate
friends cannot enter into the sufferer’s case. Let them be as anxious as
they may, the sores of a tender conscience they cannot bind up. Oh, the
loneliness of a soul passing under the convincing power of the Holy Spirit!


 38:18. *For I will declare my iniquity. * When sorrow leads to hearty and
penitent acknowledgment of sin, it is blessed sorrow, a thing to thank God
for most devoutly. *I will be sorry for my sin. *To be sorry for sin is not
atonement for it, but it is the right spirit in which to repair to Jesus,
Who is the reconciliation and the Savior. A man is near to the end of his
trouble when he comes to an end with his sins. 38:19. *But my enemies are
lively, and they are strong.* However weak and dying the righteous man may
be, the evils which oppose him are sure to be lively enough. Neither the
world, the flesh, nor the devil are ever afflicted with debility of
inertness; this trinity of evils labor with mighty unremitting energy to
overthrow us. If the devil were sick, or our lust feeble, or Madame Bubble
infirm, we might slacken prayer; but with such lively and vigorous enemies,
we must not cease to cry mightily unto our God.


 38:20. *Because I follow the thing that is good. *If men hate us for this
reason, we may rejoice to bear it: their wrath is the unconscious homage
which vice renders to virtue. This verse is not inconsistent with the
writer’s previous confession; we may feel equally guilty before God and yet
be entirely innocent of any wrong to our fellowmen. It is one thing to
acknowledge the truth, quite another thing to submit to be belied. The Lord
may smite me justly, and yet I may be able to say to my fellowman, “Why do
you smite me?”



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