Text: Jeremiah 20:8-11
Proposition: Why Is the Lord the Dread Champion?
Introduction
In Chapter 19 Jeremiah bought an earthenware jar. He took the elders of the people and some of the senior priests to the valley of Ben- Hinnom. He told them that God was going to bring calamity on Jerusalem for their sin. He then broke the clay jar and said, “Just so shall I break this people and this city, even as one breaks a potter’s vessel, which cannot again be repaired,; and they will bury in Topheth because there is no other place for burial.”
Pashhur heard this and had Jeremiah beaten and put in stocks.
Read 20:1-6
Jeremiah changed Pashhur’s name, which meant freedom or release, to Magor-missabib, which means terror on every side.
Jeremiah took this beating pretty well, but people were laughing at him and mocking him for his message of destruction and violence. Jeremiah is down in the dumps after showing the elders of Jerusalem and Judah the broken jar in the dump. He is discourage because it seems that everyone is against him and won’t listen to his message.
He remembers the Lord is with him. When the Lord is with you that is all you need. He is better than Goliath. Goliath was the dread champion of the Philistines. They thought all they needed was Goliath to defeat the Israelites. For forty days morning and evening Goliath taunted the army of Israel with a challenge. He asked that they send one man to fight him. If he won they would be the Philistine’s servants. If their man won they would be the Israelites servants. No one wanted to fight Goliath. Everyone forgot about the Lord, the dread Champion. David hadn’t forgotten the dread Champion. He knew the Lord was with him. He asked for Saul’s permission to fight Goliath. He took his sling, his staff and five smooth stones from the brook.
1Sa 17:43 And the Philistine said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.
1Sa 17:44 The Philistine also said to David, "Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field."
1Sa 17:45 Then David said to the Philistine, "You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted.
1Sa 17:46 "This day the LORD will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you. And I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel,
1Sa 17:47 and that all this assembly may know that the LORD does not deliver by sword or by spear; for the battle is the LORD's and He will give you into our hands."
David killed Goliath with a stone from his sling.
David knew that the Philistines had a dread champion, but they didn’t have The Dread Champion.
I. He can overthrow the persecutor (How can God overthrow the persecutor?)
A. People were mocking Jeremiah
1. Jeremiah 20:7-8
2. They were laughing at him and mocking him. They didn’t believe his message. They wanted to make Jeremiah look like a fool for preaching violence and destruction against Judah.
3. Verse 10, they were whispering and denouncing him. His trusted friends were no longer his friends. They were hoping that he would be deceived and fall.
B. He makes the persecutors stumble and not prevail.
1. At this time in Jeremiah’s life his persecutors have the upper hand. They are the ones mocking Jeremiah and beating Jeremiah.
2. Later the Lord was going to beat them and mock them. Pashhur was going to be a terror to himself and to all his friends. His friends, those who were mocking Jeremiah, were going to fall by the sword. (20:4) Some were going to starve during the siege and eat the flesh of their sons and daughters (19:9)
C. The word of God never fails
1. They were not only mocking Jeremiah, they were mocking the word of God.
2. Jeremiah 23:29
3. John 10:35
4. Matthew 24:35
5. Fighting against the word of God will never be successful. Jeremiah was speaking the word of God. His enemies were speaking against him. They were doomed.
6. Our president mocks the word of God.
7. Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.
And even if we did have only Christians within our borders, who’s Christianity would we teach in the schools? James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount – a passage so radical that it’s doubtful that our Defense Department would survive its application?
(Senator Obama’s Call to Renewal Speech, June 28, 2006)
D. Don’t be surprised when people persecute us or mock us.
1. John 15:18-20
2. Matthew 27:39-41
3. Matthew 5:10-12
II. Our Dread Champion protects against the deceitful (How does He protect against the deceitful?)
A. Jeremiah thought the Lord had deceived Him.
1. Jeremiah 20:7
2. The Lord had not deceived Jeremiah. Jeremiah had deceived Himself. Sometimes we may think the Lord has deceived us, but we have deceived ourselves.
3. God had told Jeremiah that He was, “appointed over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” Jeremiah 1:10
4. Jeremiah liked the sound of that. That job had some prestige and power to it. He would have the respect of the people. He would be someone people would listen to.
5. God also told him
6. Jeremiah 1:18-19, kings and priests had fought against the prophets before him. This should have come as no surprise to Jeremiah that people would not like his message.
B. He has given us His word
1. We can compare what the prophet is saying with the word of God.
a. Acts 17:11
b. We have so great an opportunity with the word of God that many people in history did not have.
c. You can buy a bible for few dollars. Many times you can get one for free if you ask. On the Internet you can download bibles, commentaries, bible dictionaries, bibles in foreign languages, and bible maps for free. I use a free program downloaded onto my computer and the church computer almost every day. If I bought all the books it would cost hundreds of dollars and take up lots of bookshelf space and they are all within a mouse click of each other.
d. Before John Gutenburg invented the printing press a bible would cost a year’s wages. (Halley’s Bible Handbook Page 752) Most people were poor, but can you imagine paying $30,000 for a bible. How many of you would have a bible if it cost $30,000?
e. Or what if you were in Jeremiah’s day and they had lost the bible and no one knew where it was. That was the situation when Jeremiah was a young boy. The bible was found in the House of the Lord when Josiah had the temple cleaned up and repaired. They read it, repented, cleaned out the idolatry in Judah and worshipped as God instructed.
f. Also in Jeremiah’s day there were prophets saying the opposite of Jeremiah. They were saying that Babylon was not going to conquer them. There would be no sword, famine, or pestilence. Even though the bible was rare you could go to the house of the Lord and see what it said.
g. I Kings 9:6-9, what Jeremiah said was consistent with the Word of God. They could go back and read this in the book of I Kings. They could read Leviticus 18:24-28 and Deuteronomy 29:26-28 and see that what Jeremiah was saying was right. The other prophets were wrong.
h. That is why knowing the word of God is so important. If you know God’s Word you can listen and know if the prophet is telling the truth or he is a liar.
2. We can look at his fruit
a. Matthew 7:15-23
b. Pashhur didn’t have good fruit. He was a priest and a false prophet. He beat Jeremiah without a trial. He fought against a prophet of God
c. His prophecies didn’t come true.
d. Deuteronomy 18:20-22
3. We won’t be worshipping a creature instead of the creator.
a. A false prophet wants you to worship him instead of God. He wants you to do whatever he says.
b. Jim Jones was an extreme example of a false prophet. He didn’t believe in God. He didn’t believe the bible. He said he needed to destroy the paper idol, the bible. He fathered children by several different women. He had sexual relations with men. He had a drug problem. He had several people killed.
c. Jones also began preaching that he was the reincarnation of Jesus of Nazareth, Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha, Vladimir Lenin, and Father Divine. In the documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, former Temple member Hue Fortson, Jr. quoted Jones as saying, "What you need to believe in is what you can see...If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend. As you see me as your father, I'll be your father, for those of you that don't have a father...If you see me as your savior, I'll be your savior. If you see me as your God, I'll be your God." ( a b c Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. American Experience, PBS.org) (I took it from Wikipedia)
d. Then he convinced his followers to commit mass suicide. He convinced the people to drink cyanide laced Flavor Aid. More than 900 people died. He also killed himself or had someone do it for him at the same time. He wanted people to worship him.
e. If those people would have read the Word of God and believed it they wouldn’t have followed Jim Jones. They would have known he was a dangerous liar.
C. He makes the deceitful a terror to themselves and those around them.
1. Passhur was going to be a terror to himself and those around him.
2. He had a great position as priest. He had power and influence. He was somebody. When God was finished with him he was “a nobody.” He had no power or influence. His mind was filled with scenes of terror. People starving to death. People killed by the sword. People dying by disease. All because they had listened to Passhur instead of God’s Prophet, Jeremiah. Those who listened to Jeremiah. Were ones like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. They knew the Word of God.
3. False Prophets become a terror to themselves and to those around them. They see that what they have said has caused people a pain and suffering and death. They are terrorists to themselves. They can’t stand themselves and they end up in hell forever.
D. He sees the mind and heart of all men.
1. Jeremiah 20:12
2. He knows what they are thinking. He knows if they are trying to deceive you or not.
III. He can help you out of depression (How can he help you out of depression?)
A. Jeremiah was depressed. He wished that he had never been born. He curses the day he was born. He curses the man that brought the news to his father saying, “A baby boy has been born to you.”
1. Jeremiah had a tough assignment from God. He couldn’t marry. He couldn’t go to feasts or weddings. He couldn’t go to funerals.
2. People mocked him. They didn’t change their sinful ways. He was beaten, put in stocks, put in prison, and put in a miry pit.
3. His people were about to be conquered and carried off into captivity for 70 years. This would be enough to depress anybody.
4. Jeremiah had no choice about being born.
5. Jeremiah 1:4-5, God made Jeremiah and gave Jeremiah to his mother and his father. God was potter who made Jeremiah. Jeremiah was mad at the Potter.
6. Isaiah 45:9-11
7. Jeremiah was striving with his maker. He didn’t like how things in life were going for him.
8. As far as we know, God didn’t rebuke Jeremiah for what he said in these verses. God let Jeremiah record them.
9. Sometimes we may feel like Jeremiah. None of us had the choice to be born or not. We are the clay. It is not for us to argue with the potter about how things are in our life.
B. Speak the Word of God to those who need to hear it.
1. Jeremiah didn’t want to speak, but when he did he knew the Lord was with him.
2. Jeremiah 20:11
3. Jeremiah knew God saw the heart and mind of his enemies and he knew that God would bring vengeance on them.
4. Let God take vengeance on those who persecute you. He will do a better job of taking vengeance than you ever could.
5. Romans 12:19-20
6. Getting revenge won’t help you out of depression.
7. Feeding your enemy will.
C. Don’t worry about tomorrow
1. Matthew 6:33-34
2. Worrying about tomorrow makes you depressed.
D. Let God be your champion
1. God makes all things work together for good
2. Romans 8:28
3. Jeremiah loved God and he was called according to his purpose.
4. When we forget about the Dread Champion we get depressed. We try to conquer all of our enemies and problems ourselves. When God is with us there is nothing that can’t be conquered.
5. Romans 8:35-39
Conclusion
Revelation 19:11-21
Our Dread Champion conquers every enemy.
| 
