Text: Jeremiah 14:1-3
Proposition: What can we learn from a drought mercy?
Introduction
A drought is when there is no rain. In Jeremiah 14 there was a drought. The farmers were ashamed. They wanted to work, but they couldn’t. The ground was cracked and dried out. It was too hard to plow. Even if they could plow there was no moisture to make the seeds sprout. They were doing nothing. The children were thirsty. The cisterns had no water in them. Everything was dry. There was no grass for the doe. She left her fawns to die because she had no grass to eat or water to drink to make milk. The donkeys stand on bare heights looking for grass, but they can’t find any.
In Jeremiah 14 there is another kind of drought. There is no mercy from God. There is a drought of God’s mercy.
I. When man sins all creation suffers
II. False prophets don’t profit
III. Prayers are wasted
I. When man sins all creation suffers
A. Children suffer
1. The nobles sent their either their servants or their children to get water, but they returned with no water. Whether they sent their children or servants the result is the same. Even the wealthy couldn’t buy water.
2. We have people call for help with their light bill, or gas bill or rent bill, or sometimes they need food. I have never had anyone call and ask for water. Water is abundant. They don’t even charge for a glass of water if you go out to eat. Judah was in trouble. They didn’t even have water.
3. Children suffer when their parents sin. Adam and Eve took one bite out of a piece of fruit and their descendants have been suffering for that sin since then. We are all going to die because of the sin of Adam and Eve.
4. Children suffer when their parents get divorced. They suffer when their parents get drunk. They suffer when their parents fight. They suffer when their parents are hypocrites. They suffer when their parents used drugs.
B. Animals suffer
1. Jeremiah 14:5-6
2. The doe and the wild donkey were suffering from the drought. They had not sinned, but they were suffering because of the sin of the people of Judah.
3. Animals suffer because of man’s sin. Before Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil there was no death. The animals all ate plants.
a. Genesis 1:29-30
b. Lions didn’t kill deer and eat them. Cats didn’t kill mice and birds. It was peaceful. There were no cries of terror and pain from animals being killed and eaten.
c. My dog likes to kill. Rabbits that can’t out maneuver her die. Skunks that don’t spray her quick enough die. Raccoons that don’t climb trees fast enough die a slow painful death. Raccoons are a tough critter they are fierce fighters. When Chloe gets a hold of a coon she does some howling in pain. The raccoon bites her and scratches her. The coon is crying and it sounds terrible. It wouldn’t be so bad if she could learn to kill them quickly. The only things that she doesn’t kill are her own cat and our cat’s kittens. She doesn’t kill ducks. She will bring ducklings to you uninjured.
d. Our cat is even worse than our dog. She likes to torture everything that she kills. She plays with the mice she catches. She brings them to the front porch so we can see what she has caught. I ruin her fun and stomp on their head. She kills rabbits, birds, shrews and squirrels.
4. Before man sinned it was not this way.
a. Isaiah 11:1-9, this passage is about the peace that the Messiah would bring, but it gives an idea of what creation was like before Adam and Eve sinned. It was peaceful.
b. Sin brings suffering. Sin is the reason that there is suffering in the world. It is the reason that a man will kill a woman at work and hide her body in the wall. It is the reason that people suffer from wars. All creation is fighting and killing and suffering because of sin.
c. Sometimes we are like Jeremiah and we ask God what is going on can’t you do something.
d. Jeremiah 14:8, it seems like God has become a stranger to us who doesn’t care about us. It seems like he is a man who is dismayed. It seems like he is a mighty man who can’t save.
e. God does care, but when we sin and don’t repent he won’t save us. There are some things God can’t do. He can’t lie. He can’t sin. He can’t save unrepentant sinners. He becomes a stranger to us. He turns His face against us and he lets His creation suffer.
f. His mercy dries up and his mercy does not fall like rain anymore.
II. False prophets don’t profit (Why don’t false prophets profit?)
A. God didn’t send them
1. Jeremiah 14:12-15
2. If God didn’t send them, then who did? Satan did. They volunteered to work for Satan. He is a liar and the father of lies. This is what false profits speak. So they are from him.
3. They say:
- One religion is just as good as another.
- It is okay to worship God and idols.
- We need to be tolerant.
God is intolerant of other gods – He said, “You shall have no other gods before me.”
Christianity is intolerant – Jesus said “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” (John 14:6)
- We need to respect the religion of other people – We do need to respect others, but false religion makes a mockery of God and Elijah didn’t have much respect for the false prophets of Baal. He mocked them. They were wrong. They were deceitful liars. He made fun of them. That just isn’t very thoughtful of him. He should have been more respectful of those liars.
- One church is just as good as another.
Jesus said, “Upon this rock I will build my church.” (Matthew 16:18) He didn’t come to build the Roman Catholic Church. He didn’t come to build Luther’s church or any one else’s. He came to build His church
- As long as you believe in Jesus that is all that matters.
James 2:19, You believe that God is one, you do well, the demons also believe and shutter.
John 8:31-32, Jesus is speaking to the Jews that believed in Him. In John 8:44, He tells them they are of their father the devil.
B. They are destroyed
1. Jude 4-7
2. Eternal fire is coming on false prophets
C. They are prophesying of the futility and deception of their own minds.
1. They were saying the opposite of what God was saying. God was saying, “Sword, famine, and pestilence are coming.” They were saying there would be no sword or famine.
2. There was already a drought. Later there would be no bread in the city because they were under siege.
3. Jeremiah 37:21
4. Jeremiah 38:9
5. The prophets deceived themselves and they deceived the people. They were the blind leading the blind. They let the people continue in their sin and they said, “Don’t worry about the consequences.”
6. We have many false prophets today. They have deceived themselves and they deceive those who follow them. They ignore God’s word. They try to keep the people ignorant of the scriptures, and twist the scriptures (II Peter 3:9)
7. Jeremiah 23:23-32, God’s word is like a hammer.
8. Jeremiah could see what was coming. He loved the people and wanted to warn them. He mourned over their sin and pled with God to have mercy on them. No mercy came only a rebuke from God to Jeremiah to no longer pray for this people.
III. Prayers are wasted (Why are prayers wasted?)
A. The time for mercy is over. Judgment has come.
1. Jeremiah 14:11-12
2. God had told Jeremiah this two other times
a. Jeremiah 7:16
b. Jeremiah 11:14
3. Fasting and burnt offerings would not change God’s mind. No amount of pleading would change anything.
4. Jeremiah 15:1
a. Moses interceded for the children of Israel many times. God was ready to destroy them and make a nation out of Moses, but Moses plead for his people
b. Numbers 14:12-20
c. God pardoned the people.
d. Samuel interceded for the children of Israel. They had gone after foreign gods. Samuel preached and they repented.
e. I Samuel 7:8-9
f. I Samuel 12:23
g. I Samuel 16:1, Samuel grieved over Saul after the Lord had rejected him.
h. Jeremiah reminds God that they are his people and they are called by his name, Jeremiah 14:9 and 21. Jeremiah is concerned for the glory of God if God rejects His people. God says to Jeremiah even Moses and Samuel couldn’t intercede for this people.
B. God didn’t reject the everybody in Judah
1. Those who listened to Jeremiah were taken care of.
2. There were some who listened to Jeremiah and Jeremiah’s prayer for his people was answered. The name of God was glorified through them.
3. Jeremiah 15:19, Jeremiah extracted the precious from the worthless. It takes tons of gold ore to get an ounce of gold. Jeremiah was mining for the precious among Judah. There were a few
- His scribe Baruch
- Ebed-melech – the one who pulled him out of the pit
- Micaiah, Elnathan, Delaiah and Gemariah
- Jeremiah 36:10-25, the king said to seize Baruch and Jeremiah, but God had hidden them.
- Some listened to Jeremiah they were the precious among the worthless.
- They received God’s mercy
- God was with the captives in Babylon. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego brought honor and glory to the name of God among the Babylonian empire.
- Daniel was a young man when Jeremiah was prophesying. When he was old he read Jeremiah’s book.
- Jeremiah 9:2, Daniel, now an old man in his eighties, had the words of God in a foreign country, but when Jeremiah was a young boy the word of God had been lost in the house of the Lord. II Kings 22:8-13
Conclusion
God’s mercy had returned to his people when they turned from their wickedness. They had been disciplined for 70 years as captives in a foreign land. Never again would they turn to foreign gods. God’s mercy began to rain on them again. The drought was over. That is one good thing about droughts. They have an end. The rain returns when men begin to seek God again. The suffering is over. The false prophets are destroyed and prayers are heard again. We need to repent so that God will hear our prayers, and His mercy will rain on us again.
| 
