Jeremiah, Pt 1Lesson 6
Run With the Footmen Now
Kay Arthur
Jeremiah 12:5
5 “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, Then how can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace, How will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?
Or to put it into modern day terms, if you are running now in a land of peace and growing faint and growing weary and not persevering, and not continuing in the word of God, how are you going to make it in the days of ahead. Because is about to shake the things that can be shaken especially in the USA and in the rest of the world. How are you going to make it in that thicket of turmoil and chaos? How are you going to make it if you can’t run with the footmen? What are you going to do?
Let’s look at it.
Let’s go to Jeremiah 12. I want to go backwards for a minute because that is where our verse is.
Jeremiah 12:1-2
1 Righteous are You, O Lord, that I would plead my case with You(I can come to you and I can talk to You because You are righteous); Indeed I would discuss matters of justice with You: Why has the way of the wicked prospered? Why are all those who deal in treachery at ease?
2 You have planted them, they have also taken root; They grow, they have even produced fruit. You are near to their lips But far from their mind.
You and I look at our society today and we see that wicked people have prospered. The wicked people have been at ease and so the common man is suffering greatly.
Jeremiah 12:2-4
2 You have planted them, they have also taken root; They grow, they have even produced fruit. You are near to their lips But far from their mind.
3 But You know me, O Lord; You see me; And You examine my heart’s attitude toward You. Drag them off like sheep for the slaughter And set them apart for a day of carnage!
Then he asks in verse 4:
4 How long is the land to mourn and the vegetation of the countryside to wither? (What is He talking about? If the land I mourning, if the countryside is withering, what in all probability is going on? There is not enough rain.)
4… For the wickedness (that’s why) of those who dwell in it, Animals and birds have been snatched away, Because men have said, “He will not see our latter ending.”
God’s not involved with us. We can live anyway we want to. And God turns to him, this God that he is questioning, this God that he is dealing with, and He says:
Jeremiah 12:5
5 “If you (Jeremiah) have run with footmen and they have tired you out(If you are tired right now,), Then how can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace, How will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?
I want to commend those of you who are listening – and those of you who are listening are the ones that are here that have stuck with this course, that have come all the way to lesson 6 of Jeremiah. I want you to think of those who got tired along the way, those that said, “This is difficult; this is hard.” And I know that sometimes it is. And I know that in some of your classes that you are saying, “I can’t get it. I can’t get it. But then when I get to class and I listen to the rest of us, I get it. It all works together.” You are to be commended because you didn’t get tired. You didn’t stop running. You are going to be so glad that you didn’t stop running. Those that stopped running because they got tired are going to regret it someday because they are not going to have the light that they need for the time darkness that is on the horizon.
He says:
Jeremiah 12:5
5 “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, Then how can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land (now get this) in a land of peace, How will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?
When He says - and you fall down in a land of peace – He’s talking about them, what king of these 5 kingswho are the last of the kings of Judah, is the king that is ruling. Which king was ruling when they had peace? It would have been in the days of Josiah.
Josiah Jehoahaz Jehoiakim Jehoiachin Zedekiah
640-609 609 – 3 months 609-597 Jeconiah 597-586
Coniah
597 – 3 months
When Josiah found the word of God that had gotten lost in the house of God, when Josiah hearing the word of God tore his clothes, and wept before God and humbled himself. He cried out to God. It would have been during Josiah’s time that it would have been a land of peace. And yet what was happening? God is saying to Jeremiah, “Are you getting weary? Are you getting weary at this time? Listen, what are you going to do because it is not going to stay peace? The horsemen are coming! What are you going to do when they get here?”
Jeremiah 12:5-6
5 “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, Then how can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace, how will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?
6 “For even your brothers and the household of your father, Even they have dealt treacherously with you, Even they have cried aloud after you. Do not believe them, although they may say nice things to you.”
“Listen, you are getting persecuted by your family right now. But oh, there is more to come.”
What is God doing? I believe – and I want you to listen carefully – I believe that God is training Jeremiah. God is honing Jeremiah. God told Jeremiah what he was going to face. But now Jeremiah is facing it. Now he is in it. And it’s going to get worse. And God is saying, “Wait a minute. This is not the culmination of what I said is going to happen to you when they fight against you and I make you like a pillar of iron and a wall of bronze.” He says, “That’s not it. It’s going to get worse.”
Now some of you are going through trials. You are going through rejection. You are going through rejection by your family. You’re going thought rejection from your mate. You’re going through rejection from your own children. They are rising up against you. And it’s hard; you want to quit. You want to faint. You want to weep and you want to be sorrowful and get in bed and pull the covers over your head. Honey, and listen to me – you haven’t seen anything yet. It is going to get so much worse.
You say, “I don’t want to hear that. Give me somebody that’s going to tell me it’s not going to get worse. We’re going to have peace. We’re not going to suffer as a nation. That’s not going to happen. It’s ok.”
Oh, listen. He says, “If you fall down in a land of peace, if you can’t make it now, if you don’t have any endurance or perseverance, what are you going to do? How will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?”
Then in verse 7:
Jeremiah 12:7
7 “I have forsaken My house, (I want you to remember this.) I have abandoned My inheritance; I have given the beloved of My soul into the hand of her enemies.
The horses are coming. The horses are coming.
I want you to go to 2 Kings 23 – we are going to be coming back to this passage. I want us to see this land of peace right now. I want to see the land of peace, and I know you’ve studied this but review is always good – but I want you to see the land of peace that is going to be overcome by the horsemen.
2 Kings 23:29
29 In his days Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates. (Syria and Egypt are in a conflict.) And King Josiah (King Josiah was going to try to stop him) went to meet him, and when Pharaoh Neco saw him he killed him at Megiddo.
And remember another account it records that Neco said, “Hey, don’t fight with me. This is God.”
Josiah didn’t listen.
2 Kings 23:30
30 His servants drove his body in a chariot from Megiddo, and brought him to Jerusalem and buried him in his own tomb. Then the people of the land took Jehoahaz the son of Josiah and anointed him and made him king in place of his father.
Well, that’s good. The only problem is he was king for only 3 months. So what do you have? You begin to have some turmoil in that land, don’t you? You have Josiah who reigned 31 years. Now this wonderful king is gone. The peace is stopping because who is in charge now? Who is the one who puts Jehoahaz on the throne? The people. But who is the one that takes him off the throne? Pharaoh Neco.
2 Kings 23:33-34
33 Pharaoh Neco imprisoned him at Riblah in the land of Hamath, that he might not reign in Jerusalem;
So now what do you have? You have an economic crisis. Because what does he do?
33….and he imposed on the land a fine of one hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold.
34 Pharaoh Neco made Eliakim the son of Josiah king in the place of Josiah his father, and changed his name to Jehoiakim. But he took Jehoahaz away and brought him to Egypt, and he died there.
So Jehoiakim is the one that is turning over the silver and the gold. So now we are at 609 BC.
Remember Jeremiah starts in what year of Josiah? 13th year. So we have moved from this time to 609 BC.
2 Kings 23:36-37
36 Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Zebidah the daughter of Pedaiah of Rumah.
37 He did evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his fathers had done.
So all of a sudden what do you have? You have a change in kings. You have Egypt ruling. You have a kingdom now that is moving into the thicket of the Jordan. The land of peace is gone.
And so then the question is why? So you go to Jeremiah 13 – and we are going to come back to Kings.
You go to Jeremiah 13 and you know why. You know why because they have not clung to God as the waistband clings to the waist of a man. They have not wrapped themselves around God. They have not trusted God. They have become what? The waistband has become what? Worthless. Worth – less. Has no value. Why? They did not cling.
What did they choose instead? Well, they choose pride.
Jeremiah 13:9
9 “Thus says the Lord, ‘Just so will I destroy the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.
Listen to me very carefully. Very carefully – when you think that you can get away with not being in the Word, with not clinging to God, with not depending on Him, when you get in a crisis and things are rough, and you take the word of God and you lay it aside because you’ve got to work and you’ve got to strive and you’ve got to …. And the economy is falling apart and I’ve got to do this and I’ve got to do that, and sorry – I don’t have time to be in the Word of God. You have ceased to cling to God as the waistband clings to the waist of a man, and you are full of pride. You are full of pride because you think you can get yourself out of the situation when the situation has been filtered through God’s sovereign fingers of love. The situation has a purpose. The purpose is to judge non-believers, the ones that are disobedient and it has a purpose to refine, to separate the precious from the worthless in the lives of those who know Him and are clinging to Him. Remember, He said to Jeremiah:
Jeremiah 6:27-30
27 “I have made you an assayer and a tester among My people, That you may know and assay their way.”
28 All of them are stubbornly rebellious, Going about as a talebearer. They are bronze and iron; They, all of them, are corrupt.
29 The bellows blow fiercely, The lead is consumed by the fire; In vain the refining goes on, But the wicked are not separated.
30 They call them rejected silver, Because the Lord has rejected them.
See, but in the midst of the fire is when it comes in our lives, God is preparing us; He is getting us ready so that in the thicket of the Jordan we can run with the horsemen!!! We won’t fall down at that time.
This is what He is saying. I want you to remember this because I’m going to take us to the New Testament. There is pride. Ok. What else is there? There is stubbornness of heart. Just stubborn. And sometimes God just says, “I chasten you, and I chasten you and you don’t respond.” There is stubbornness of heart. And the third thing and you see it in verse 10
Jeremiah 13:10
10 ‘This wicked people, who refuse to listen to My words (that’s pride), who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts and have gone after other gods to serve them and to bow down to them, let them be just like this waistband which is totally worthless.
The minute – now listen, the minute in the land of peace or in the thicket of the Jordan, the minute you think, “Hey, I can make it. I’m strong. I know how to do it. I’ve got it figured out.” The minute - wherever you are – the minute that you think you can do it apart from God and you don’t need God, do you know what has happened? You are not clinging anymore.You are not clinging anymore.
And so this is what He is saying to them.
Now it talks about serving idols.
This was in the Chattanooga Times Free Press (McClatchy Newspapers) February 15, 2009. Real Estate Edition. “Desperate Home-Sellers Turn to St. Joseph” St. Joseph is a Catholic saint that has been appointed over the houses. In Philadelphia they are turning to St. Joseph. The hottest thing you can buy is a statue of St. Joseph. “We have 5,000 items in our store. (She owns the St. Jude Shop in Havertown, Pennsylvania) the number one item being sold is the St. Joseph statue. She buys the figurines by the gross. Real Estate agents purchase up to a dozen at a time. She estimates that she sells 6,000 to 8,000 diminutive Josephs in the last year. They are not a deal-breaker - a 2-inch figure you can get for $1.39. But she says it wasn’t until the real estate market really tanked that St. Joseph took off the way that he did.”
Now I am not disparaging what the Catholic Church has declared a saint. But I am saying they have gone after an idol to rescue them. Why didn’t they get on their knees? Why didn’t they cry to God? Why didn’t they run to the Word of God? Why didn’t they say, “God, what are You doing?” Maybe some of them did. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this – it used to be a best seller, but now the statue of Joseph is a super best seller. It is so good that a Jewish woman who is in the real estate business went and got one. She dug a hole in the hard cold ground in order to bury this statue of Joseph with its head down with its feet in a certain direction and she’s excited that she has sold those homes where she buried the statutes.
Idols? Idols? How many of those people were walking with the footmen in the land of peace? How many? And now are they turning to an idol.
Jeremiah 13:12-17 God is about to fill the land with what? Drunkenness. (Kay acting it out.) I’ve never been drunk, I’ve just watched them. Just want to let you know. He has filled the land with drunkenness.
12 “Therefore you are to speak this word to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, “Every jug is to be filled with wine.” ’ And when they say to you, ‘Do we not very well know that every jug is to be filled with wine?’
13 then say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Behold I am about to fill all the inhabitants of this land—the kings (Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah) that sit for David on his throne, the priests, the prophets and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem—with drunkenness!
14 “I will dash them against each other, both the fathers and the sons together,” declares the Lord. “I will not show pity nor be sorry nor have compassion so as not to destroy them.” ’ ”
15 Listen and give heed, do not be haughty, For the Lord has spoken.
16 (What is His call?) Give glory to the Lord your God, Before He brings darkness And before your feet stumble On the dusky mountains, And while you are hoping for light He makes it into deep darkness, And turns it into gloom.
17 But if you will not listen to it, My soul will sob in secret for such pride; And my eyes will bitterly weep And flow down with tears, Because the flock of the Lord has been taken captive.
“Give glory to God” in this context means to confess your sin. In Joshua 7:19-21 when Achan sinned and took part of the spoils of war. Then they found out what he had done. What did they say before they put him and his family to death? Give God the glory. Confess your sin.