Jeremiah 8:5
A Continuous Backsliding
Outline:
I. \\#Jer 1:1-19\\ Jeremiah’s Calling
A. \\#1:1-3\\ Jeremiah’s Background
B. \\#1:4:10\\ Jeremiah’s Commission
1. \\#1:4-5\\ What God FORMED Jeremiah to do.
2. \\#1:6-9\\ What God ENABLED Jeremiah to do.
3. \\#1:10\\ What God COMMISSIONED Jeremiah to do.
C. \\#1:11-19\\ Jeremiah’s Conditioning
1. \\#1:11-12\\ Something Is About to Happen
2. \\#1:13-16\\ Something Is About to Boil Over
3. \\#1:16-19\\ Someone Needs to be Ready
II. \\#2:1-37\\ God’s Case Against Judah
A. \\#2:1-8\\ Judah Blessed but Not Satisfied
B. \\#2:11-13\\Judah Abandoned God.
C. \\#2:30\\ Judah Refused Correction
D. \\#2:9\\ Judah Called to Repentance.
E. \\#2:36-37\\ Judah Facing Judgment
III. \\#3:1-25\\ Israel’s Three Time Zones
A. \\#3:1-5\\ Their Past State
B. \\#3:6-19\\ Their Possible State
C. \\#3:20-25\\ Their Continuous State
IV. \\#4:1-6:30\\ Sins and Judgments
A. The Sins
B. The Judgments
C. The Mercy
V. \\#7:1-\\ Some Specific Messages
A. \\#7:1-34\\ A Message to the Religious
B. \\#Jer 8:1-22\\ A Message to the Continuous Backslider
As far as we know The thing to remember in
this message is that it was preached to the religious of Jeremiah’s
day — \\#Jer 7:2\\ Jeremiah preached it standing in the temple — so
these verses should have a special significance to us as believers
and to our nation as once having been a "Christian" nation.
I. What is a continuous backslider?
A. \\#5-6\\ Here it is a nation that is perpetually going
the wrong direction, backwards.
1. They hold "fast" (hard, with stubbornness, with
determination" to being deceitful and evil.
2. They refused to "return" or turn around.
a. To "turn around" is what the word repent means.
b. They will not repent.
c. \\#6\\ The term "repent" is used.
3. So a backslider is someone who knows that what they
are doing is wrong but they will not repent.
B. This condition can and does happen to individuals.
1. In the New Testament sense of the word, this is a
condition that can only happen to saved individuals.
a. Technically, a person can not go backward unless
he has made a genuine step forward.
b. The first and only step forward a person can make
is salvation.
2. Sometimes the word gets applied to the lost people
who come to church for while, maybe clean up their
act some, and then drift back into their old ways.
a. I do not believe that is the correct use of the
term.
b. I believe a more correct term would be those
people are becoming apostates or committing
apostasy.
(1) That is the state of betraying or turning
against the gospel.
(2) It comes from a hardening of the heart by
constantly rejecting the work of the Holy
Ghost.
(a) Apostates must be exposed to the Bible
and to Holy Ghost conviction, but they
do not yield to it.
(b) Instead, they move away.
(3) Although very similar to backsliding,
apostasy is far more serious.
(4) A backslider will always be a Christian
while an apostate is lost and with a
hardened heart, he damns himself to be
that way forever.
1Jo 2:19 They went out from us, but they were
not of us; for if they had been of us, they
would no doubt have continued with us: but they
went out, that they might be made manifest that
they were not all of us.
2Peter 2:20 For if after they have escaped the
pollutions of the world through the knowledge of
the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again
entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end
is worse with them than the beginning.
21 For it had been better for them not to have
known the way of righteousness, than, after they
have known it, to turn from the holy commandment
delivered unto them.
22 But it is happened unto them according to the
true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit
again; and the sow that was washed to her
wallowing in the mire.
Heb 6:4 For it is impossible for those who were
once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly
gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost,
5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the
powers of the world to come,
6 If they shall fall away, to renew them again
unto repentance; seeing they crucify to
themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to
an open shame.
c. While apostasy has more serious consequences than
backsliding, the Christian should not look on
backsliding as being any less dangerous.
(1) Apostasy is the most deadly act a lost
person can commit for if he hardens his
heart, he will certainly die lost.
(2) Backsliding is the most deadly act a saved
person can commit for although he remains
saved, he loses…
(a) …his fellowship with God.
(b) …his rewards. \\#1Cor 3:11-15\\
(c) …his blessings. (things like peace,
power, protection)
(d) …and possible even his life.
\\#1Cor 11:30\\
C. However, we need to understand that the word "backslidden"
in the Old Testament is different from the way we use it
in the New Testament.
1. The Old Testament is where the church gets the word
backslide from; however, the word is never used in
the New Testament.
a. The church "adapted" the term to our needs.
b. We use it to mean someone who is saved but living
in known sin.
c. However, there is no term in the New Testament to
describe that kind of a person because there is
not supposed to be that kind of a person.
d. The closest to a descriptive term for a saved
person living right is "Christian" or Christ-like
and the only term for a person not living right
is a sinner.
e. There is not one Scripture where the Bible
comforts a worldly Christian by telling him that
he is only backslidden.
(1) That is not to say that the Bible teaches
that every Christian who sins is lost or
that if you sin you are lost.
(2) It is just that they never try to comfort
them by telling they are backslidden.
(3) And we should not either for you make an
an assumption that you are saved and you
may not be.
(4) The only proof of salvation is a yield
heart and if your heart is not yield, you
may not be a Christian no matter how much
you think you are.
2. In the Old Testament, the term backslidden is applied
not to an individual but to a whole nation, i.e. the
nation of Israel.
a. Whenever Israel backed away from following God,
they were called backslidden.
b. Typically, this occurred when a new generation
arose that did not know God at all.
c. Hence, backsliders in the Old Testament were most
often lost.
d. As a rule, people who get saved and love God will
never quit.
(1) Their dedication may wane some, but once
an individual falls in love with God, he
will love him until he dies.
(2) However, his children may love him less and
his grandchildren may not love him at all.
(3) This has been happening in America since the
1950s. Now, as President Obama said,
America is no longer a Christian nation.
(4) We have followed Israel into national
backsliding.
3. What is the difference?
a. The difference is God will deal with nations who
are backslidden like lost people (because they
are) but He deals with individuals who are
backslidden as saved people (because they are).
b. So God is about to deal harshly with Judah.
C. There are some additional descriptions of a backslider.
1. \\#7\\ They do not know (or care) about the judgments
of God.
a. This is directed to a nation who has backslidden.
b. The reason they are abandoning God is because they
have think they know God but they never learned
truths about Him, such as just how terrible the
judgments of God are!
2. \\#11\\ They have false preachers who are comforting
them in their lost condition.
a. These false prophets preach about God and maybe
even give some of truth about God but they are
only half truths which makes them whole lies.
b. A favorite theme of every false prophet is peace
and love.
(1) They tell the people that they are alright
because God is a loving God.
(2) Of course God is a God of love, peace, and
prosperity but He is also a God of justice,
law, and judgment.
(3) Joel Osteen is one of the most popular feel-
good preachers of this decade as Robert
Schuller was in the last half of the last
century.
(4) In my opinion they are apostates who have
helped to make the damned feel better about
themselves and they will stand before God
because of it.
3. \\#12\\ In the end, these national backsliders live
sinful lives and have no shame about it.
II. So Jeremiah is about to tell Judah that God is going to judge
them.
A. God chastens the saved. He does not judge them, but these
Jews are not saved. God still calls them "His nation,"
because He has sovereignly declared them to be His, but
they will still die and go to hell.
B. What is God about to do to them.
1. \\#15\\ Trouble is about to come.
a. Their preachers can keep talking about peace and
prosperity but it is not going to happen.
b. Those are gifts God gives to the righteous but not
to the ungodly.
c. Sadly, just as the ungodly who live in a godly
nation partake of the blessings of God so the
godly who live in an ungodly nation will have to
partake of the curses of God.
2. \\#18\\ There will be sorrow.
3. \\#21\\ There will be hurt.
a. I mentioned that Jeremiah was know as the weeping
prophet.
b. This is why he wept!
Jer 9:1 Oh that my head were waters, and mine
eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day
and night for the slain of the daughter of my
people!
10 For the mountains will I take up a weeping
and wailing, and for the habitations of the
wilderness a lamentation, because they are
burned up, so that none can pass through them;
neither can men hear the voice of the cattle;
both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are
fled; they are gone.
4. \\#22\\ Backslidden nations will find no help or
healing for God. There will be no healing balm and
the Physician will not come to their aid.
5. \\#20\\ And why not? Because they are lost and will
not be saved.
Judah was about to have the kind of picnic that no one was to enjoy.
So is it with all nations that forget God.
Ps 9:17 The wicked shall be turned into hell,
and all the nations that forget God.
Let us remember that religious does not mean saved.
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