Scipture Burner

Proposition:  Why do men want to destroy the word of God?

Introduction

Men have been trying to destroy the word of God for years.  Tyndale’s bibles that were translated into English were destroyed.  The church authorities didn’t want the bible in the English language to spread among the people.  They were afraid that if the people read the bible for themselves they would loose their power.

One clergy man told Tyndale, "We had better be without God's laws than the Pope's." In a swelling of emotion, Tyndale made his response: "I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spares my life, I will cause the boy that drives the plow to know more of the Scriptures than the Pope himself!" (Foxe, John; Book of Martyrs, Chapter 12)

Recently bibles were sent to a soldier in Afghanistan in the Pashto and Dari languages.  Soldiers are forbidden by U.S. Central Command's General Order Number 1 forbids troops on active duty -- including all those based in Iraq and Afghanistan -- from trying to convert people to another religion.  (Reuters, U.S MILITARY SAYS AFGHAN BIBLES HAVE BEEN DESTROYED, May 2005,http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP481223.htm)

One chaplain told the troops in the bible study that they were not allowed to proselytize, but they could give gifts.  Al Jazeera filmed the soldiers in the bible study and with the bibles.  They put this on television.  The bibles were seized by chaplains and destroyed.  In Afghanistan it is a capitol crime to be a Christian, but God can get his Word into Afghanistan even if men want to keep it out.

Read Jeremiah chapter 36

Jehoiakim cut the Word of God up and threw it in the fire.  But that didn’t stop God’s word.  God told Jeremiah to make another copy.  We have the book of Jeremiah with us to this day.

I. They have no fear of God  (Why do they have no fear of God?)

A. Jeremiah 36:23-24

B. They don’t want to keep his commands

1. Exodus 18:21

2. Jehoiakim was the king.  He was a leader of God’s people.  He should have feared God.

3. He didn’t fear God he taxed the people and continued to live in luxury

4. II Kings 23:34-37

5. Even though he taxed the people to pay Pharaoh he built himself a luxurious house and didn’t pay the laborers for it.  He was like many politicians.  They never have enough.  They think the people should pay more and more taxes to fund their projects.  They don’t want to cut programs or their wages when they are out of money just raise taxes.

6. Jeremiah 22:13-19

7. Jehoiakim was a covetous man.  He wanted what was not his.  He was a thief. 

8. Some people are covetous thieves.

9. Malachi 3:8-12

10. Those who don’t tithe are like Jehoiakim.  They want to keep money that is not theirs.  God gives us everything.  He just wants us to give ten percent back.  He promises to bless us if we give him a tithe if not he will curse us. 

11. We are to pay our bills and not use other people’s money to fund our luxuries, which many people do.  They get money from government programs like free medical care, food stamps, and other things and then they buy themselves all kinds of electronic gadgets, toys and many other things they don’t need and let somebody else pay the bill to feed them and pay for their medical care.  Our government wants to pass a medical bill, but the main problem with our medical system is that many people think everyone else should pay for their medical care.  I was talking to Dr. Klock a few weeks ago.  He works in the emergency room on weekends when it is his turn.  He said he gets a lot of people on Medicaid that come in for pimples and runny noses.  He was exaggerating a little, but he said that is why our medical care is so high is because the people who pay their bill are paying for those who don’t.  That is just like Jehoiakim.  He wanted someone else to pay his bill so that he could have more stuff and a nice house.

12. If we keep the Lord’s commands we won’t be covetous.

C. They don’t recognize the power of God.

1. He should have realized that God was more powerful than he was.

2. Proverbs 21:1

3. He should have known that God would do with him whatever he wanted.

4. He didn’t want to hear that Nebuchadnezzar was coming to destroy the land and that he would remove man and beast from the land.

5. He didn’t believe God would do what he said he would.

6. Jeremiah 23:29, God’s word is like a hammer.  Jehoiakim burned the word of God, but God’s Word would burn and crush him.

7. We can ignore the word of God, but if we do, we can expect the same as what happened to Jehoiakim.  We will be shattered and burned.

8. Thomas Jefferson didn’t recognize the power of God.  He didn’t believe the miracles of the bible.

a.  Jefferson accomplished a more limited goal in 1804 with “The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth,” the predecessor to Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.[4] He described it in a letter to John Adams dated 13 October 1813: 

In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites and Gamalielites, the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their logos and demiurges, aeons and daemons, male and female, with a long train of … or, shall I say at once, of nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines.

Jefferson frequently expressed discontent with this earlier version, however. The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth represents the fulfillment of his desire to produce a more carefully assembled edition.

b. Many people are like Jefferson.  They don’t believe the power of God.  They may not use a razor and cut out the portions of the bible they don’t believe, they just ignore them and focus on the ones they like. 

c. Many know John 3:16 and Romans 10:9-10, but they ignore Acts 2:38 and Acts 22:16.

d. Some don’t believe in the bodily resurrection.  They don’t believe Daniel 12:2.  What part of you sleeps in the dust of the earth?  Your body, your spirit, or your soul?  Obviously your body does. 

Some want to claim they believe the bible, but they don’t believe that God will raise the body out of the dust of the earth.

e. Matthew 22:23-32

II. They don’t want it to spread (Why don’t they want the Word of God Spread?)

A. The Word of God spreads

1. Mat 13:33  Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

2. The kingdom of God spreads like leaven.

3. We want to spread our message and persuade men to repent and change their ways because judgement is coming.

4. Paul wanted to spread the Word of God.  He ended up in jail because of his preaching, but even in jail he wanted to spread the Word of God.

5. Acts 26:27-29

6. That is what we want to do.  Persuade people to be a Christian.  Not persuade them to be a Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Jehovah Witness, or Mormon but a just a Christian.

B. Satan is behind them he doesn’t want the Word of God to spread.

1. Jehoiakim was a murderer

a. Jeremiah 26:20-24

b. Satan is behind all murderers.  Satan is a murderer.  He has been a murderer from the beginning. 

c. John 8:44, he caused the death of Adam and Eve spiritually and physically. 

d. If we hate our brother we are a murderer

e. I John 3:15

C. They know they will lose some of their power.

1. Jehoiakim knew that if what Jeremiah said was true he was going to lose his power. Jehoiakim didn’t want to lose his power to Nebuchadnezzar.  Jehoiakim didn’t want to be subject to Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar

2. Acts 4:17

3. The priests and the Sadducees didn’t want the word to spread because they knew if it continued they would lose their power and influence over the people.  So they arrested Peter and the apostles.  Then they threatened them and commanded them to speak no more in the name of Jesus.

III. They hate the message (Why do they hate message?)

A. They don’t want sound doctrine

1. I Timothy 4:1-4

2. They want teachers for themselves who will say what they want to hear.

a. Jeremiah 18:18

b. They wanted to hear someone who didn’t have the same message as Jeremiah

c. Jeremiah had sound doctrine.  His doctrine agreed with the scriptures.  The priests and the other prophets’ message didn’t agree with the word of God.

3. They didn’t want to hear a message about repentance and the destruction of their land.  They wanted to hear a message that Babylon was going to be crushed and they could go on living in their sin.

B. They like sin

1. Jehoiakim and the princes like their sin. 

2. They weren’t with the people in the temple listening to Jeremiah’s message read by Baruch.  They were sitting around the fire in the king’s winterhouse, Jeremiah 36:22.

3. They liked their sin.  They didn’t want to hear a message from God.

4. Many people are like this they would rather be somewhere else than in the house of God listening to his word. 

Conclusion

Man can try to destroy the word of God.  They will never accomplish their goal.  The word of God is like a fire and a hammer consuming and crushing all who are opposed to it.  God can preserve his word.  He preserved his word from Jehioakim’s knife and his fire.  He has preserved his word for us today.