The Babylonians are Coming!

By: Stan Moody

Jeremiah 9:1-6
Jude 17-23

The overarching theme of the Bible is that God speaks to and through His chosen people in order that His elect would hear the Gospel, repent and bear witness to His love.

That is the overarching theme of the Bible. The leap from God’s chosen people as the nation of Israel to God’s chosen people as the Church of Jesus Christ has not changed the message nor the mission. God seeks to speak to and through His people to an unbelieving world. The message of the weeping prophet, Jeremiah is the same as the message of the voice crying in the wilderness – John the Baptist: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight His paths; every valley shall be filled in and every mountain and hill be made low. The crooked ways shall become straight, the rough ways smooth, and all mankind shall see God’s salvation.”

How effective it might have been if that crazy man in the desert, John the Baptist – clothed in a camel’s skin and eating locusts and wild honey, had catered to the masses. We are told that all of Jerusalem went out to see John and be baptized. What a missed opportunity to build an empire. If only John had had the vision to Focus on the Family. If only he had had the vision to preach the “Purpose-Filled Life.” Instead, here is what he said to the crowds coming out to be baptized: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Luke 3:7, 8).

John the Baptist may have missed the great opportunity to kick the Messianic age into high gear and build for himself a high-flying career in the Gospel business. Instead, he barely gets going, and he winds up with his head on a silver platter at Herod’s birthday as payment for a sexual dance.

My friends, it fell on the church of the OT to cry for repentance. If fell on the transitional church of John the Baptist to cry for repentance. If falls on the Church of Jesus Christ today to cry for repentance. God cries for His church. He no longer cries for the nation-state of Israel; He cries for His church. He does not cry for America; He cries for His church – His chosen people.

Last week, we talked about the first recorded instance of idolatry in Israel – the story of Micah, a wandering Levite for sale, an ephod and a shrine. When you mix a little gospel with a little self-esteem, what you get is a church that gets along – “The church of what’s happening now!” You get a church that is no longer holding itself to a biblical standard but is working hard not to upset non-believers. The first thing to go in such a church is the doctrine of sin and redemption. Without the doctrine of sin and redemption, the people of God soon forget why they are there. The church becomes another social service club, doing good works in the strength of human ingenuity, money and organization.

I concluded that sermon with a strange thought. That is, that if we drag our sin baggage up Golgotha Hill in exchange for a free trip to Heaven, we know nothing about sin, repentance and redemption and know even less about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior is no quid-pro-quo deal – Heaven in exchange for repeating the Sinner’s Prayer. Acceptance of Jesus Christ must come out of the utter hopelessness of our sin and our gratitude for God’s mercy. I suggested that the true Christian must be so overwhelmed with the love and trustworthiness of Jesus that he would worship Him, serve Him and love Him even if there were the possibility that he would wind up in Hell anyway because he failed to come to grips with his own depravity.

We live in a world where success and enjoyment of the good life are valued over all else. There is nothing wrong with success and the good life until it interferes with the mission of the church to call itself to faithfulness and repentance. Today, the good life has infected the church to the degree that instead of calling itself to faithfulness and repentance, it is calling America to faithfulness and repentance. You can talk all you want about the moral decay of America. The main reason we are experiencing this moral decay must be set squarely on the shoulders of those of us who are Christian leaders and on those of you who hire Christian leaders and dictate any other gospel than that of the Word made flesh.

Denomination after denomination has sold its birthright for popular appeal. Evangelicals have opted for strategic silence on matters of discomfort to their congregations. In wanting to be user friendly; in seeking praise and acceptance by the world, we have befriended the world and scorned Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul nails our condition in 1 Cor. 14:8, “If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?” We have spent far too much time trying to make America look holy and far too little time calling God’s church to remain in a state of repentance.

Jeremiah, the Weeping Prophet, was a failure. He was not a trendsetter. For 40 years, he was God’s spokesman to Judah. When he spoke, nobody listened. He was poor and deprived. He was thrown into prison and into a cistern. Finally, he was taken to Egypt against his will as the Babylonians prepared to attack. He was stoned to death by his own people in Egypt.
Jeremiah’s message was that the judgment of God was coming against His people. He kept warning Israel that the Babylonians were coming and would be God’s instruments of judgment. “Repent, or the Babylonians will come!” Israel opted, instead, to listen to their positive-thinking preachers. They preferred the message of peace, peace and prosperity. They liked hearing that they could think and grow rich and that if their minds could conceive it, they could achieve it. They liked being the chosen people of God and assumed that because they were chosen, they were under His protection despite what they did and how they lived.

“What are you weeping about, Jeremiah?” “Oh that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people. Oh that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers, so that I might leave my people and go away from them; for they are adulterers, a crowd of unfaithful people.”

Come on, Jeremiah; what’s wrong with you? Why do you have to dwell on the negative side of things? Don’t you know that the preaching of sin and repentance will not draw a crowd? Don’t you know that it is better to preach positive things such as God’s obligation to prosper you and make you happy now?

The weeping prophet only says, “Oh that you would understand. It breaks God’s heart to have to use terrorists from Babylon to judge you and to humble you. It breaks God’s heart to have to use unbelievers and scoffers to mock the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of His church. It breaks God’s heart that His church leans not on the Everlasting Arms but on their entertainment and their fleshly marketing skills. It breaks God’s heart that His church has despised the call to suffering with Christ. It breaks God’s heart that we have bought into the lie that God’s plan for us is that we be healthy and happy. It breaks God’s heart that we handle our congregations with kid gloves so that we not make unbelievers too unhappy.”

Jeremiah abandons himself to sorrow. He cries for God’s people and hears nothing but the echo of his own voice. He weeps and wishes he could weep more so that he might rouse a stupid people with the judgment of God. The Savior said, some 600 years later, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” We could finish that thought by saying that as long as the mourners are here, there may be no rainbow after the storm but only more storm clouds. Comfort may not come in our lifetime; comfort is not guaranteed to the faithful church. Comfort now is an American ideal – not a Christian ideal.

Jeremiah cries for the slain of his people – those of the church who are about to come under God’s judgment: “I would weep day and night for the slain of my people.” Who are “my people?” Why, they are the elect of God worldwide. They are the Palestinians who worship Jesus Christ as Lord. They are not only among the 4,100 Americans who died in Iraq; they are among the up-to 1.2M Iraqi civilians who died in the American assault on Iraq. They are the people all over the world who are brothers and sisters in Christ but who suffer because of an apostate church in America that passes judgment on everyone else but itself.

“Oh, that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers, so that I might leave my people and go away from them…” How we all long for a cabin in the woods somewhere, away from God’s people! Yet, Jeremiah stays and preaches a sermon that has no audience. “Why not retire, Jeremiah?” “Why not get away from all this adultery and unfaithfulness – this worship of prosperity and success God’s desire for the nations and His blessing on the faithful?” He stays because he cannot go out of the world, as bad as it is, before his time. He cannot give himself into a life of golf and luxurious retirement. There is work to be done; there is preaching to be done. He must stay. If he cannot reform them, he can bear testimony against them, even as it makes him weary of his life to see them dishonoring God and destroying themselves. Paul said it this way: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

We have an interesting twist of events, reminding us of how easily and how quickly things change. 400 years earlier, David writes from the wilderness that he longed to be in the courts of God’s house. Here, Jeremiah writes from God’s house that he longed to be in the wilderness. “They have taught their tongues to lie; they weary themselves with sinning.” They dare not trust their friends nor their brothers, “for every brother is a deceiver, and every friend a slanderer.

How difficult it is to always be on your guard and to trust no-one. How difficult it is to live as one who must always screen every word through a web of caution and deceit. Yet, is this not the climate in which we live today? “You live in the midst of deception; in their deceit they refuse to acknowledge me,” declares the Lord.

Jude writes that “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires. These are the men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.” We are called to preach to such people – folks who are so consumed by their own agendas and their own web of deceit that they have no time for God or the things of God. More tragically, we live in a time when church people are so busy with survival mode that the things of God simply detract from their self-appointed schedules.

Jude suggests a remedy. “Build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.” “Build, pray and keep” – those are the active verbs of the life imbedded in God through Christ Jesus.

The mission of the church, according the Jude, is something quite different from what we see in our day. “Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear – hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.”

Mercy mixed with fear – that is mission impossible. This message is to the church. We are to show mercy to those who are corrupt, all the while hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh. What does this mean?

It means that we are to turn away from what is profitable to what is prophetic. God hates unrepentant sin in His church. We are to risk extending mercy to those who doubt and those who have not locked onto the mercy and longsuffering of God. The more we focus on looking good and feeling good, the more discontented God’s people become. Focus on communication in marriage, and the divorce rate goes up. Focus on money and the debt rate goes up. Focus meeting perceived needs, and God’s people become more desperate and depressed and unfulfilled. We have forgotten that we are to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness in order for our real needs to be met.

Sentimentality is choking the evangelical church in America. Preach the Gospel, and you will be accused of being a bigot, arrogant, narrow-minded, a homophobe – even an anti-Semite, as I have been called. More to the point, however, you will not draw a crowd. Preaching on Hell, a subject of which I know precious little, will turn people off, they tell us. Preaching salvation by the blood of Jesus Christ alone will turn people off.

Jeremiah was a prophet of doom. Nobody likes to be in that position. He could have softened his approach and saved his skin, perhaps. Like all of us, he must have wanted to be liked and accepted. But it comes down to that matter of accountability – what will be our answer at the Great White Throne? Have we been faithful rather than popular.

As I go through my days at the prison, I wonder how being loving to sinners can ever turn their hearts. How can I love the person and hate the sin? How can I shed tears over God’s church as Jesus shed tears over Jerusalem, especially when I myself am complicit in the church’s apostasy? The wonder of the church is that we can advocate for repentance from our sin condition even though we know very well that we are sinful ourselves. That is the beauty of brokenness before God. Because I am a sinner saved by grace, I can share that message with you. It is not a message to reclaim some past vision of America; it is a message to reclaim the presence of the living Lord within His church.

“The Babylonians are coming!” They are always there to bring God’s people back to His heart. Moral reform of a nation is a function of the faithfulness of the confessing church. A church that confesses that Christianity offers a good code of successful living is a church in decline of witness and outreach no matter how many people enter its doors. A church, however, that confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, is an instrument for renewal.

There is an old song that the kids used to sing years ago. It was among a series of revival choruses that we were accustomed to singing in the church in which I was raised. While it was then and is now the hope of the church to revive the outside world, one little chorus slipped in: “Lord, send a revival. Lord, send a revival. Lord send a revival, and let it begin in me.”

The only thing that will revive America is revival of God’s church. I mentioned last Sunday the observation of a Chinese Christian who visited America and said when asked, “What is amazing about America is how much they are able to accomplish without God.”

Perhaps we have been too successful over the years in accomplishing things in the church without God. Perhaps we have been too quick to condemn those who find no solace or hope within the church because it is too much like the local service club. Perhaps we have failed to speak the truth of the Gospel when we feared it would offend someone. Perhaps we have failed to believe that God loves His church so much that He gave His Son to die for it.

I pray that this little fragment of the Church of Jesus Christ in America will never lose its commitment to truth. We will have heard Jeremiah’s weeping; we have been convicted of our selfishness and our self-righteousness. Let us never lose sight of the truth.