Jeremiah 32:36–41
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Would you pray with me? Father, my heart is full because, among other things, you have granted me the privilege to stand at the front while the cascades of the singing of this congregation broke like waves of blessing over my head to help me be ready to preach. So I thank you for this people.
I thank you for a song that you have created. I thank you for truth sung and preached and lived. I thank you for sovereign, sustaining grace without which we would not survive. We wouldn't make it to the end. And I pray that you would help me be faithful now to this passage in Jeremiah 32. And this people would be made strong to be absolutely confident that in the darkest hour of their life, you are there to sustain with all your heart and with all your soul.
I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. If you have a Bible, I hope you'll turn with me to Jeremiah 32. There are breathtaking promises in this paragraph. And they were written not to you first, but to Israel. And they are yours if you are in Christ Jesus. Right? So I'm going to preach from Israel's scripture, which has become our scripture because of Messiah Jesus, Because the Bible teaches that if you trust Messiah Jesus, you are a son of Abraham, Galatians 3.7.
If you trust Messiah Jesus, you are a true Jew, Romans 2.29. If you trust Messiah Jesus, you are an heir of the new covenant that Jesus bought with his blood. And this text is a form of the new covenant. if you trust in Jesus you are in Christ Jesus and he looks into your eye and he says every promise that was ever made in my old book is yours okay so this is yours if you're in Christ Jesus by faith and it's breathtaking so I'm going to read it and then we'll talk about it starting at verse 36 in Jeremiah 32 now therefore thus says the Lord the God of Israel concerning this city which you say it is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword
by famine by pestilence behold I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger and in my wrath and in great indignation And I will bring them back to this place. And I will make them dwell in safety. And they should be my people and I will be their God. And I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me forever.
For their own good and for the good of their children after them. I will make with them an everlasting covenant. And I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing good, in doing them good. And I will plant them in this land in faithfulness with all my heart and with all my soul.
That's breathtaking. Now I'm turning to this text. I'm choosing this text for you. In part because a couple of weeks ago, Noelle and I celebrated our 57th wedding anniversary. And as we stepped back, which we do, we go away for a couple of days and we step back and think about the year. I wrote a poem for her called, It was a hard and happy year.
It was. It was a year of broken bones and heart attacks and family strife. And it was a hard and happy year. And we reflected on how in that year, God sustained us as he has for 57 years of marriage. We love sustaining grace. We live on God's sustaining grace.
We can't live without it. At our wedding on December 21, 1968, my father, I asked my father to read Habakkuk 3. It goes like this. Though the fig tree should not blossom. Now picture yourself, you're just beginning your marriage. I mean, this is the happiest day of your life. And you choose a text like this. Are you weird? Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, the field yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, there be no herd in the stall, yet will we rejoice in the Lord.
We will rejoice in the God of our salvation. He makes our feet like hinds feet and leap upon the mountains while we starve. Because there's no food. That was the vision we had of how we would make it together. And that has been a good text for us. So I want to define sustaining grace, illustrate it.
Most people put their illustrations at the end of the sermon. I'm going to put them all up front. Because I don't think you really get what I mean unless I do. And then we're going to go to the text. So you're going to be wondering halfway through this message, is he going to get to the text? And I am. The definition goes like this, sustaining grace, not grace to bar what is not bliss nor flight from all distress, but this, the grace that orders our trouble and pain and then in the darkness is there to sustain.
Now that's a tricky first line because it's got two negatives in it. I know it's hard to hear the first time. Not grace to borrow what is not bliss means sustaining grace doesn't prevent sorrow. It doesn't. Sustaining grace does not prevent pain. That's the meaning of the first line. Nor flight from all distress.
It doesn't grant you flight from distress. instead it orders our trouble and pain and then in the darkness is there to sustain so a couple of examples of what I mean Bob Ricker was the president of the Baptist General Conference of which my church has been a part for 70 years plus since the 1940s 80 years he had a daughter who was in a car accident at age 18 he was telling this in a sermon at our church which is where this little two rhyming couplets came from I wrote those in response to what he said she was in an accident and it was very serious she was not breathing, she was turning blue
and the car behind them So drove up, and there was a doctor in the car. And he happened to have in his pocket a device for doing emergency tracheotomies. And he had the courage in our litigious society where you get sued for such a thing of actually thrusting it into her throat and saved her life. And now he is, a few years later, he says, preaching to her at her wedding day with scars right here.
And he looked at her and he said, those scars are memorials of sovereign, sustaining grace. Because God had ordained that there be a doctor in a car pulling up behind. He ordained that he have a device in his pocket. He ordained that he have the skill and the courage to use it to save her life. Now Bob Ricker's not stupid.
He knows that if God's sovereignty and sustaining grace has the wherewithal to see to it that there's a car pulling up, a device in the pocket, a doctor who can use it, he could have prevented the accident that almost killed her. Yes, he could have. He absolutely could have. And he didn't. Not grace to bar what is not bliss nor flight from all distress, but this, the grace that orders our trouble and pain, and then in the darkness is there to sustain.
Another illustration. This one's from our family. Every family has family lore. This is one of our favorites. My wife, Noel, and son Barnabas, and Abraham and baby Talitha, just three of them, four of them, were traveling from Minneapolis to Georgia, and I had gone to speak somewhere. I would meet them in Georgia, and Talitha's a baby, Abraham is 16 and Barnabas is 12. Just south of Indianapolis the car dies, it's Saturday afternoon, a wife and three kids, a baby in the middle of nowhere and a car pulls up behind, there's a farmer in it and she says this pre-cell phone may be Maybe you could help us find a motel.
Maybe Monday morning we could find a garage and they could fix the car. I have no idea what's wrong with this car. And he says, would you like to come stay with my wife and me on our farm? Now, ladies, what would you do? And so my wife said, no, no, I checked all this with Noelle before I wrote this down so I can get this right.
He could tell she was hesitant, of course, and he said, you know, the Lord said when we serve others, it's like serving him. And so my wife responds by saying, well, could we go to church with you tomorrow morning? That's pretty clever, I thought. And he said, if you can take a Baptist church. So he took them to his farm.
They stayed overnight. He went on Monday morning, bought the radiator. He was a retired aviation mechanic. He put it in. He charged her nothing and sent them on their way. and in the meantime, to put icing on the cake, my 12-year-old son, Barnabas, who's the only fisherman in the family, takes his rod out of the back of the car, finds a pond on the farm, throws the rod, the hook, into the pond, and God ordains that there be a 19-inch catfish that bites this hook, and he pulls him in.
Best vacation he's ever had. And now you know exactly where I'm going, right? If God can ordain that there be a farmer who's a retired aviation mechanic, who has a heart for people in trouble, who's got a hospitable wife, who's got resources and willingness to get a radiator, put it in the car and send them on their way and ordain that there be a fishy swimming around the bottom of the pond and latch on to Barnabas' hook, he could have saved the radiator.
This is life, folks. This is just baffling life. If you have been a Christian for a decade or eight, you can look back on seasons of life that are calamitous, sorrowful, dark, and you remember, you can remember there was this grace in it and this grace in it and this grace in it and this grace in it.
So amazingly did God work in the mass and horror of it all that you got through it such that you could ask, if you're going to use so much wisdom and grace and power to do all those amazing things in the mess, just prevent the mess, please. And he won't. He just won't. I had a young man say to me a while back who was suffering from a physical condition that wasn't being healed.
He said, Pastor John, it would just be so much easier if Jesus had just not healed anybody and given strength to endure instead of hoping for healing. And I said, well, you don't have to choose between those two. He did both. You remember, don't you, young man, That 2 Corinthians 12, God ordained through Satan that Paul be given a thorn in the flesh to keep him from being conceited.
And when Paul three times pleaded that you would take it away, the Lord said, my grace is sufficient. Not to prevent the thorn. I gave you the thorn. My grace is sufficient. My power is made perfect in weakness. And so Paul responds, Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For when I am weak, then am I strong.
Paul's gladness in the midst of suffering makes God's grace look great. I will all the more gladly boast not grace to borrow what is not bliss nor flight from all distress but this, the grace that orders our trouble and pain and then in the darkness is there to sustain. He's not going to take it away, folks.
This is why I'm preaching this. I would like young people to just settle it. When the crisis comes, when the darkness comes, when the horrible phone call comes, mom is dead. I got that call at age 28. She was in a car accident. When that phone call comes, I want you to know what's going on. I want you to know what resources are at your disposal, what God might be up to in the big picture. Because if you have some naive notion of health and wealth and prosperity, as what's coming in the Christian life in front of you, you could be so disillusioned.
And many people walk out on him. I don't want you to walk out on him. Through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom. Acts 14, 22. All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. 2 Timothy 3, 12. We are fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him. Romans 8, 17. In the world you will have tribulation.
Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. But you'll still have the tribulation. Just be of good cheer. My sustaining grace is enough in the darkness. Here we are, Jeremiah 32, finally. This is a text about sovereign, sustaining grace. This text holds the key to why you can be confident that you're going to make it through it all.
Through it all. You're going to make it. Verse 36, they were in distress. it starts with the people in distress now therefore thus says the Lord God of Israel concerning this city of which you say it is given into the hands of the king of Babylon by sword by famine by pestilence that's what they say and that's right it was and God had ordered it so grace had not spared his people the exile and the suffering of going into Babylon.
And he won't spare you. Your trial, your exile, may come for purifying judgment because of your sin, or it may come as a refining fire, a painful pruning, not because of any particular sin, but to make you more fruitful, Caused you to rely more heavily on Christ. So that's what they say, but that's not the last word.
Verse 37. Behold, I will gather them out of all the lands to which I have driven them in my anger and in my wrath and in great indignation. And I will bring them back to this place and make them dwell in safety. So God had ordered their pain. I have driven them out.
That's what he says. I did that. And I'm going to bring them back. Really, the question I want to answer for the rest of our time is, how can you be sure that sustaining grace will get you to the end through it all, through the darkness and through the pain. How can you be sure? In this text, God is laboring to make you sure.
Grace is going to overcome every obstacle. It's going to preserve your faith. It's going to preserve your holiness. It's going to preserve everything that needs to be done in your life in order to make it home. I wonder if you, I'm sure you do, sing here this song and if you pray this way. I mean, there are Christians who don't like to pray this way. Oh, to grace, how great a debtor.
Daily I'm constrained to be. Let your goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here's my heart. Take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above. What's a fetter? Give me another word for fetter. Shackle or another one.
Chain. I like chain. I like shackle too. I hadn't thought of that one. Let your goodness like a shackle, like a chain, bind me to you. You pray like that? You better. Because if you are left to yourself, you will leave him. It's just so many Christians who think it's on them. You're going to make it. You're not going to make it without sovereign sustaining grace.
Let your goodness... And the reason that shackling and chaining is not slavery is because it's goodness. Let your goodness chain me to you. When you are chained to God by goodness, you are free, not slave do you pray God, keep me preserve me defeat every rising rebellion in me overcome every niggling doubt that rises in my mind, deliver me from destructive temptation nullify every fatal allurement that comes to me Expose every demonic deception.
Tear down every arrogant argument. Shape me, incline me, hold me, master me. Do whatever you must do to make me get home. You pray like that? If you woke up a believer this morning, why did that happen? If you woke up believing in Jesus, Why? Why did you not wake up a non-believer this morning? And there's only one right answer.
God! He sustained you. He held you. He kept you. If you don't believe that, you won't come dancing with thankfulness to celebrate with the people of God. You'll just take it for granted. It's what I do. It's what I do. It's what I do. It's not what you do. It's overcoming what you do. Your heart without Jesus is prone to wander. We're on our way out.
I think one of the big problems in the world today is, and it has all kinds of effects, is that we don't grasp the depths of sin. We don't know what sin is. How corrupt and deep it is. In every saint. Dead though we are to it. We must press on with promises like this to make it to the end. So yes, pray like that.
Pray, hold me, keep me, sustain me. Now let's read verses 38 to 41 to see what God says to help you do that. They shall be my people. now I believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ died to purchase this promise for you if you are in Christ Lord please help these people to feel the wonder of what it is to be in Christ and the beneficiary of these promises and they shall be my people and I will be their God and I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me forever for their own good for the good of their children I will make with them an everlasting covenant that I will not turn away from doing good to them and I will put the fear of me in their hearts
that they may not turn away from me that's why you woke up a believer I will rejoice in doing them good and I will plant them in this land with faithfulness, with all my heart, and with all my soul. Just notice four things, four breathtaking things. Number one, God says to you in Christ, I will be your God. Verse 38, they will be my people, and I will be their God.
I think all the promises of God are summed up in the promise, I will be your God. I think they're all there. I will be your God. I will be everything that I am as God. Every attribute that I have, I will be that for you. All my wisdom, for you. All my strength, for you. All my grace, for you. I will be your God. Number two.
God will cause you to fear Him. Otherwise you wouldn't. Verse 39. I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me forever. So He gives you the heart that fears Him for their own good and for the good of their children after them. In other words, God didn't just stand by to see if we, by our own powers, would come to fear him or keep fearing him.
He didn't. He didn't watch. He acted. And the action was to take out the heart of stone, put in the heart of tender responsiveness to God, And tend that heart forever to cause it to fear him. Love him. Trust him. That's why you woke up a believer. That's why you will make it home. Whether it's one year or 80 years from now. There's no other way you can make it except that promise.
He will cause you to fear him. Number three. He will not let you turn away from him. He won't let you. The little princess here. I'm happy to affirm the doctrine of eternal security. I like the term perseverance of the saints better because I grew up with one point Calvinism namely eternal security and and it meant if you believe when you're six you can live like the devil until you're 96 and go to heaven because you signed a card or walked the aisle or prayed the prayer that's not true
that's not true you have to keep on believing and you have to bear the fruits and evidences of belief and what this text is saying is God will see to it that that happens if you say to a non-Calvinist that you have to keep on believing you have to keep on obeying he'll say oh salvation by works I'd say you don't have a clue about the sovereignty of God you do not have a clue he didn't just bring you to himself, he keeps you he keeps you believing he makes promises and he provides the wherewithal for doing the promises, that's what this text says, verse 40, I will make them I will make with them an everlasting covenant that I will not turn away from doing good to them and I will put the fear of me in their hearts that they may not turn from me, I'm going to be 80 years old in a few days.
Good night, that's old. It's good to be old. It really is good to be old. It means more to be thankful for and amazed by in his keeping, and the best thing in the world is just around the corner. I mean, it's just good to be 80. But here I want you to realize that the only way anybody's a believer at 80 is because of verse 40. That's the only way.
I love verse 40. It gets better. There is one more step in this four points. And it gets better than verse 40. But verse 40, almost as good as it gets. I will make with John Piper an everlasting covenant. I will not turn away from doing him good. I will put fear of me in him and I will not let him turn from me. Good night, that's glorious. Do you know how many times that could have been otherwise?
In marriage, in church leadership, in arrogance and fear. How it could have been otherwise. Why wasn't it otherwise? Shall I put my thumbs in my armpits and say, what a good boy was I to persevere? It's God's sustaining grace that brings you home.
Okay, one more step, the best. Number four. God's going to do this. All this with infinite intensity of desire. With divine, infinite intensity of desire. Like, there's no reluctance in God to keep me. There's no reluctance in God to not do you good.
Did I say that right? I think there were too many negatives in that word. There's no reluctance in God to do you good. Yes, that's right. verse 41 I will rejoice over them to do them good I'm saying you I tried to give you the biblical rationale for why I'm saying you here Christians in Christ and not just Jewish people in Jeremiah's time I will rejoice over third avenue and all the guests who are in Christ to do them good.
I will faithfully plant them in this land with all my heart and with all my soul. So at the front end of the verse, you have a statement of God's joy. I will rejoice in doing them good. And at the end, you have an intensification of that joy by saying it's not partial in God it's all his heart and all his soul how can we say this how intense is the energy of the joy of God described in with all his heart and with all his soul suppose you took
the desire of all the all the desire for sex food money fame power meaning friends security just all the desires you can think of in the human heart and gathered all those desires from 8 billion people on the planet and put them in a container. That's a lot of intensity and a lot of desire.
And then you put God's desire expressed in I will rejoice with all my heart and with all my soul in a container. And then compared the two containers, what would they be like? And to understate it, they would be like a thimble in the Pacific Ocean. Because God's heart is infinite and God's soul is infinite and all eight billion humans are finite and you can't, I mean, just do the math, multiply any number times finite and you don't get infinite.
Oh, how I wish I could cause you to feel this. I was sitting down there a minute ago thinking, my nose is running, I'm coughing all night long, and I don't want to mess up. And God said, you believe your text. You believe your text. I am so eager to bless this people. I want to do good to this people with all my heart and all my soul.
I want to do good to them. I want to do good to you. It's all my heart. All you need to do in order to enjoy this is believe it. So many of you don't. So many preachers like me don't. We just don't believe it. We grumble. Isn't it the reason that in Philippians 2 and Matthew 5 you're called the light of the world when you don't grumble? it's because it's just so different it's just so different because if you believe that the God of the universe infinite in power and wisdom and love was not only bent on doing you good but rejoicing to do you good and not only rejoicing to do you good but rejoicing to do you good with all his heart and with all his soul you could not grumble you wouldn't sit there fretting over whether you could preach
you won't fret you won't be fearful so four reasons you can be confident you're going to make it through the dark one I will be your God two I will cause you to fear me trust me love me I will cause it three I won't let you turn from me I'm going to hold on to you four I'm going to do with do this with the infinite intensity of all my heart and all my soul as the overflow of my happiness not grace to bar what is not bliss nor flight from all distress but this the grace that orders
our trouble and pain and then in the darkness is there to sustain to your home Father please for any outside Christ draw them in your arms are wide whoever thirsts let him come to the water set free and for those who are in Christ grant that this church and all the churches represented in the guests would be so profoundly gripped by your new covenant commitment to do us good with all your heart and with all your soul would transform their lives I pray this in Jesus name Amen.