The importance of yieldedness to God, drawing from Jeremiah's message to the exiles in Babylon. It argues that true peace and prosperity come not from rebellion or self-will, but from trusting God's plan and submitting to His ways, even when circumstances are difficult. The message highlights that God's thoughts are for peace and an expected end, urging believers to believe He knows what is best, to listen to His word, and to commit to His path. Ultimately, yieldedness is presented as a voluntary act of love and gratitude for God's salvation, leading to a more fulfilling and peaceful life.
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Well, it certainly is nice to be together on this Lord's day, a lovely time of remembrance of the Lord Jesus and fellowship with one another and with His Word and with God Himself. It's a great blessing and a privilege, and you don't know what to say when you said that. It always had a sense that we don't say enough in gratitude, but we say it's what we can, and you kind of let it stop there. And I said to my wife, if I'd known that the... You can't know everything, see. No one does. I seem to know less than others from time to time. But if I should have really brought my harmonica into play for the children, but I didn't think of that because I really didn't know they'd be here. And the rest of you are sober, mature, adults who don't need that sort of thing. But this morning I'll read in Jeremiah twenty-nine.
Jeremiah twenty-nine and talk with you for just a little bit in one of these continuing concepts about the word of God and our performances. In our discussion yesterday I looked at the book of Micah and the book of Amos. to stress how we need to build life upon the truth of God and keep our focus on God as we go on. Last night we talked about the gospel a little bit and how God invites the blessing and those who are weary and tired ought to look to him in Isaiah fifty five. And here in Jeremiah twenty nine we have a great lesson that needs to be emphasized in every age. I'll read starting at verse one. I'll read down. Well, I'll read till I stop. So when I stop we'll all stop. Jeremiah chapter twenty nine.
Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem unto the rest of the elders that were carried away captives into the priests, into the prophets, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon. After that, Jeconiah the king and the queen and the eunuchs and the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, and the carpenters and the smiths were departed from Jerusalem. By the hand of Elasa he sent it, the son of Shefa, then Gemariah, the son of Hilkiah, from Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent unto Babylon, to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel unto all that are carried away captives, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build ye houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat the fruit of them. Take ye wives and beget sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands.
That they may bear sons and daughters, that ye may not be increased there and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city, whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it. For in the peace thereof shall ye have peace. For thus, that the Lord of hosts the God of Israel. Let not your prophets and your diviners that be in the midst of you deceive you, neither hearken to your dreams which he caused to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely unto you in my name. I haven't sent them, says the Lord. For thus says the Lord, that after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you and causing you to return to this place. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
Then shall you call upon me, and you shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And you shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me, with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord, and I will turn away your captivity. And I will gather you from all the nations, from all the places where I have given you, saith the Lord. And I will bring you again into the place whence I cause you to be carried away captive. Jeremiah is a fascinating book. It is the longest book by word count in the Bible. that sometimes surprises people. And when you know it, it's not some great truth to shock everybody else with. But that's what it is. It is a long book, a fascinating book. I've always found chapters, from about chapters three to chapter twenty, I've always found them very tough reading because it goes over the sin of Israel again and again and again.
And after a while, you get tired of reading about the sin again and again. But I found it to be an interesting book. But the great theme of Jeremiah for the whole book is a very simple one. It's built around yieldedness to God. And the great message that Jeremiah has to our day and age in which we live is this very simple concept. Let God's people be yielded to him. Let the people who profess to be God's people be yielded to him. We can't always make a distinction between those that just profess and those that claim those that really are. Only God can make the final word in that. But let all those who profess to be God's people be yielded to them. And we who have just sat through a worship meeting by professing to be God in testimony in a special sense.
Let us have hearts that are yielded to him. And by yielded we mean hearts that are agreeable to his will and to his word and desire his particular way in our lives. I've always stressed that yieldedness can't be forced. You can beat somebody to pieces that they may not be yielded. And I've thought about the time when I was a little boy. I've recounted the story at least five thousand times in my lifetime. Everybody in my family is sick and tired of it by now. But most of you haven't been around long enough to have to endure it. I have a brother who is two years younger than I. and they're made mostly for fighting with, brothers that are two years younger. We stood together in the public school, I'm glad to say, but at home he was a great pain and a nuisance. He was always bigger than I was and always tougher and teased me mercilessly.
I would have sent him back many times if there'd been some way to do it. But when it came to the public school, we stood together there. You'll be glad to know. But at home, it was another story. But one day, one day, one day, I got the better of him. Maybe one day out of ten years I got the better of him. I'm not sure what happened, but I had knocked him down, knocked him down, and I was kneeling on him. I had his arms pinned with my knees, and I was hitting him on the side of his head in various proportions. See, we're not big men. We're not two hundred pound giants. We're little boys. He's crying and wailing, and I'm hitting him every time I feel like it. No, it felt so good. It felt so good. And people sometimes say, what was your mother doing there?
My mother was probably in the house watching. That's what? My mother believed that you should let the boys settle their fights and they learn how to live with each other. And she would sometimes break up the girls when they fought because girls get pulling hair and it never stops. But the fellow she thought, so she was probably watching. I really had him pinned and I was hitting him mercilessly. He was crying and begging me to stop. It's hard to remember. I exaggerate a little bit today, but that's about the way it was. And so I said to him, I said, I said, well, you promise never to tease me again. He promised, never again. I got six lifelong promises out of him. He promised six things that you'd hardly believe a kiss.
He promised them absolutely. And I said, well, I'm going to let you off. But I said, remember you promised. I hit him a couple extra times just for fun. I said, remember you promised. He said, I promised. So I let him up. He jumped up, grabbed a board and hit me on the head. And I learned a lesson right there. I learned a lesson that yieldedness cannot be beaten into people. Yieldedness is a voluntary act. You come to God and say, Lord, I thank you for this great salvation you've given. I thank you for this wonderful Savior in whom we live and breathe. I thank you for the Holy Spirit who teaches and guides us. I thank you for your word. And now, Lord, I present myself to you in the language of Romans twelve, a living sacrifice. I'm yielded to you. I'm your person, Lord. And that's what the Jeremiah wants for the people of his day.
And that's what we want for the people we have today. For myself too and for you too. Let God's people be yielded to him. Let God's people say to God, you are our deliverer. And all that is certain to us is what you've provided by Jesus and the salvation is ours. And now we yield ourselves to you. I'm going to tell you that's a generalization. But when you bring it down into reality, it does a lot of things. I've been at sometimes the assembly business meeting where the brethren got yelling at each other about the dumbest things. They were not yielded to God. If I'm yielded to God, I'm not going to speak hatefully to you. We may disagree, but I'm not going to speak hatefully to you because no man who loves God can hate his brother if he's yielded to God.
You understand that? I faced those circumstances in a seminary a lot of times where I worked. The administration would make some of the dumbest policies. Small school. Small school. Not a big university, a small school. Nice Christian group and we prayed together almost every day and lots of blessing there. But the administration, I'd get a thing from the dean, a five-page thing from the dean that he wanted to fill out to show how the progress in academics was going. And I'd look at that thing and I'd say, don't I have more important work to do and to fill out forms for the dean? We had a dean once who could devise forms in his sleep in the night and manufacture them the next day. I'd look at that thing and I would just, I would just, I can hardly tell you how I felt because I hate that sort of thing in the first place and doubly so when you had a lot of work to do.
And I would sit there and look at it and mumble and the Holy Spirit. No, I didn't hear an audible voice but the Holy Spirit in my heart would say, and remember who's the dean and who's the dean's worker. Remember that. Just get over this proud fit you're in and do what you're supposed to do like a happy Christian should, saying to them, I think I always got my forms in first. But it wasn't because I was good or perfected. It's because the Lord said to me, if you're yielded to me, you'll do what the dean wants. Unless he wants you to sell drugs or something, you'll do what the dean wants. The dean won't have any problems with you if you're yielded to me. But if you're running your own show, then everybody will be troubled with you. I hate to tell you too many things like that, but that's a big thing.
And Jeremiah goes over that in the book again and again. The problem with Israel was they would not yield to God and they've been taken captive. Judah now is going through the same thing in captivity, and now they still don't want to be yielded to God. And down in Babylon, they want to rebel. They hear a word from Jerusalem that they rebel. There's a new leader in Jerusalem that can deliver them from Nebuchadnezzar. They'd like to rebel. They're down in Babylon. They've got a half million Babylonian soldiers around them, and this handful of Jews thinks they can successfully rebel. And the Lord says to them through Jeremiah, who's still in Jerusalem, he said, Listen, the only way you're going to prosper is to be yielded to me. You're crazy if you think you can rebel. You should have learned that. But they don't learn very easily.
And sometimes we don't learn very easily, too. Sometimes it's our rebellion against God that ruins everything from individual lives to assembly orders. Sometimes it is that. Once in a great while, some material thing stands out that means special notice. But nine times out of ten, a failure in yieldedness to God is the great trouble that many believers have. I struggle with it. I'm not going to be hypocritical at all. I struggle with it. I'll be reading through Proverbs and read how a soft answer turns away wrath, and I'll say to myself, is that so? Is that so? I have better success with a smart answer. We easily think we know too much. And that's what Israel did. And Jeremiah says you're not going to be happy unless you're yielded to God.
And this chapter is just typical of the whole book of Jeremiah. So you and Babylon, he said, what I want you to do is to plant the garden, build the houses, have families, have your families, have families. And I want you to pray for Babylon. That's right. Because if Babylon has peace, you'll have peace. And in seventy years, I'll smash Babylon and bring you back home. But for the moment, I want you to be yielded to my will. And that becomes a dominant thrust for the light. Let God's people be yielded to him. Let them be yielded to him. Let them have an attitude and hardened life that what God says is right. And that's what they want to do. Now I will make two or three quick observations in Jeremiah at twenty nine. First of all, let the people believe that God knows what's best.
Let them believe that God knows what's best. The Lord says, I want to tell you that my ways are the right ways towards you. Verse eleven. I know the thoughts. You think that all I'm doing is causing you trouble, but I know the thoughts. Mine are thoughts of peace, not trouble. I want to give you an end that will be beautiful, something you'll expect and love. Then you'll be able to call on me and pray and to enjoy me, but that's my thoughts. I know that. I'm not a God who plays games with you. It goes back pretty much into Isaiah fifty-five where he says my ways are higher than your ways. The idea is about the same, but let them believe that he knows best. Somehow you've got to sow it into your heart that God really knows and that you and I don't. And consequently, the things he prescribes are right for us and will always be right for us.
Therefore, there's very little point in my getting angry with my brother. Now listen, there are some things you have to stand for and contend for the faith. No argument about that. But there's little point, very little point in my getting angry with my brother. Very little point in my getting angry, I'm kind of stuck on that. There's very little point in my getting angry with my brother because God tells me to love him. To love him. And if I'm yielded to God, then I'm ready to do that. It doesn't mean I have to agree with everything he says, because my brother might not be as intelligent as I am. You can't really know. I know that the only kind of really good ice cream is chocolate ice cream. I know that. I know that every other kind of ice cream is something they tried to make into chocolate and failed, and they had to name it tootie fruity or vanilla or something like that.
And my brother may like one of those things, so we don't have to agree on everything, but I can't hate him for it. I've got to love him, and I've got to enjoy him for what he is if I'm yielded to God. It's what makes a fellowship wonderful when yielded to God brings us into a binding union. Let them believe, let me believe, let you believe, let us believe that God really knows what's best. And let's not spend a lot of time trying to second-guess him. In Philippians one, when Paul is in prison, he says it very boldly. He says, the things that have happened unto me have fallen out the further into the gospel. God knows what is best. It's hard for me to believe that anybody's better off being thrown in prison. But Paul knows that that's what God is using for his glory, and Paul is willing to be there.
He will witness the Caesar's household. He'll write the letters that have made his name famous to this day. He will do what God's will tells him to do because he's yielded to God. I have to say that to myself a lot of times. Let God's people be yielded to him. Let them believe that God knows what's best. And that means that what God has said in the word is right, and it will always be right. God knows what is best. And I'm at my best when I'm yielded to him and committed under the things that he gives me to do. I could press that a little further, but I've only got about eighty minutes of other stuff to say. But relax, we'll cut it down. But God knows what is best, and let those that are God's people believe it.
I always had trouble believing that my parents knew what was best, because they were human like I was, and I worried about them. But the Lord is divine. omnipotent, omniscient, all-powerful, all-knowing. He knows what is best. I need to school myself in that. Arguing with God, you are the loser right away. Doing what he says you shouldn't do, you are the loser right away. Now, you have to know your salvation in Christ to really appreciate what that means. But when you know that you're saved, then the joy of knowing God means that he knows what is best. He knew it for you in your life, and he will know it for everything else. So first of all, Jeremiah says, let them believe that God knows what is best. Secondly, secondly, then let them listen to him.
Let them listen to him. How long is the captivity going to last? Seventy years. Seventy years sounds like a long time when you're starting it. But believe me, when you get to it, it doesn't seem so long. I was pretty little seventy years ago. I was around, but I was pretty little. There's a time when you're six and you wonder if you'll ever be ten. And then there's a time when you're ten and you wonder if you'll be sixteen. I was never in a hurry to grow old. I always looked old. It's a little kid I looked old. I had an old face as a little boy. So pictures of me as a little boy show a grumpy little kid sitting there looking like you ought to be in a retirement home somewhere.
I just kind of looked like that. But I was never in a hurry to get old and suddenly you're there. It's hard to know where old starts. I used to think it started at thirty. Then I moved it up to forty, fifty, sixty, seventy. I'm now convinced it begins about ninety. Anything up to that is just advanced middle age. But the Lord says, listen, seventy years. That's how long. Seventy years. Seventy years is not all time. Seventy years is a pretty good shot of your lifetime under the provision of God, but it's not all time. He said, I want you to listen to me. This captivity period is going to be seventy years, and it's going to be that whether you like it or not. They were already into it for several years at this time if you take the dates from the first couple of verses in chapter twenty-nine.
They were already into it, so they had about sixty-four years to go or something like that. So I just want you to listen to me. You've got that time to go. A lot of you will not live through it. So settle down, build your houses. The king of Babylon was really treating them pretty nice, except for those occasions that are referred to in Psalm. He's really not doing badly by them. Many of the Jews became leading authorities in his court, and many became great advisors of whom are Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and they're probably only typical of many others. So he said, build your houses, plant your garden, harvest your crops, raise your children, teach your children to marry and have godly homes. Be ready. In seventy years, I'll bring you back. But it's not going to be by a revolt tomorrow.
If you revolt tomorrow, you're only in trouble. So you first of all have to know what God says is best, and then you have to listen to Him. He doesn't give us many dates like that for where we are right now. And the false prophets stood up down in Babylon, a number of them referred to in chapter twenty-nine. The false prophets stood up and they said, oh, this isn't right at all. And back in Jerusalem, Hananiah said, in two years, God's going to break the yoke of the king of Babylon. And Jeremiah said, well, you prophesied falsely in chapter twenty-eight, God will kill you before the year is over. You won't live to see that anyway. The false prophet stood up and said, here's your advice. And the Lord said, that is not what I've spoken. The people like to listen to them because it tickled their ears and pleased their egos. But it wasn't what God had said.
You have to listen to God. I know that we who preach sometimes get such ego building ourselves that we think the people should listen to us more than God. Sometimes we do. I hope it isn't true. Well, you hope it isn't true of yourself or anybody you know, you hope that. But throughout the long history, that's how we get popes and bishops and a lot of other characters, people who think that their authority is really exceeds God's authority. We have to be careful with that. Certainly we advise and encourage and strengthen one another. We want to listen to one another. It's how we live and it's how we grow. But we want to remember that any truth or any concept, let's say concept, any concept that I would preach or that Dan will preach or that any of you men will preach, any concept that we will preach is no better than the Scriptures build upon.
And if it's not biblically solid, it's not sound. And we ought to be pretty careful with what we do with those particular things. Let them listen to God. Let them listen to him. If you move over in this chapter beyond where I was reading at verse twenty-one, you find the names of some of the false prophets. They said, I'll deliver them out of the hand of Nebuchadnezzar. God said, no, you won't. He said it repeatedly. Nebuchadnezzar, he said, is my vessel to teach my people a lesson. They're going to be under his hands and then under the hands of his kingdom for seventy years. And nothing they do is going to shorten that particular thing. Let them listen to him. And that is a big challenge to us. Listening to God is not a mystical thing so much as it is listening to the word, reading it and stunning it.
I'm not denying that there's a mystical aspect in God's dealing in life. I've had some experiences like that myself. You have to be careful with them. I know that God has laid a particular burden on my heart that you couldn't find any chapter and verse in it. You couldn't find it there, but you might find some principles that help with it. I was telling a group, I was with a group of workers a month ago, I guess. And we were having a long prayer meeting in the afternoon, a long prayer meeting and whatnot. And one of the brothers, burdened by a particular thing, began to pray. and his heart was greatly burdened and he suddenly began to cry in an uncontrollable fashion. His heart was burdened. He began to cry in an uncontrollable.
Uncontrollable means you just sniffle and snuffle and can't say anything, that's all. There were only thirteen or fourteen of us all together, I think, in the room and I'm kind of sitting here and he's kind of sitting over there and I could hear him sobbing and trying to pray but not being able to say anything. And in my heart I said, You ought to go over and sit beside this brother, just put your arm on him and say, we love you, or something like that. Say something like that. You ought to do it. I sat there for a while because the tailors are not embracing people. When people come to embrace us, we think they want to wrestle and we get ready to either be thrown or thrown. See, whatever the case is, I'm not an embracing type. You have to work with a brethren who, but I'm not naturally an embracing type. I shake hands at a distance, a respectful place out.
But the Lord said, you know, this brother needs comfort and he needs help. He's a brother. So after about five pushings by the Spirit of God, I got up and I just walked around quietly and sat down beside him and put my arm around him and joined him in his prayer. Some other man came and stood behind both of us and put his weight on both of us. We sat as a little trio in the group and it was an interesting kind of thing. But you know, I just kind of felt I needed to do it. And when the prayer meeting was over and we were walking out, this brother came again. He wasn't embracing brother. He gave me a hug and he said, thank you for your prayers and your health and all that sort of thing. It meant a lot to him to know that somebody stood with him in a particular trial, a particular heavy trial. But you couldn't find any verse in the Bible that says, Tom Taylor at two-thirty in the afternoon, go and sit next to the schnook and hug him.
But you'll find a lot of things about loving your brothers and whatnot and the Spirit works on those things and you'll have that too. I was down at a conference and I heard that Bob Brown was coming out through this part of the world. It looks to me like Easterners are taking over the Midwest, listening to the rest of that conference schedule yesterday. So I was down at a conference and Bob Brown's work down in Louisiana a long time ago, and a man gave me twenty dollars in what you call a brethren handshake. That's where you're not sure if he has some disease or what. But anyhow, he passed on twenty dollars to me. I was glad to get it, but I really didn't need it desperately. There are times when you need money and times when you don't. And I really didn't need it so desperately. And I looked at the man who had been singing. He was the singer for the conference. He was wearing kind of shabby-looking clothes and looked like he'd fallen out of the goodwill the day before.
And I just thought, boy, he could use this more than I could. So I gave him a similar handshake and passed that twenty dollar bill onto him. I don't know what all happened to that twenty dollar bill. I don't know what all happened to it. But as we were shaking hands when the conference was over at the door, somebody shook hands with me and there was that twenty dollar bill. and I reached over and dropped it in the box for the assembly I dropped it in the box assembly and I thought about that a lot of times I said the Holy Spirit was busy that day speaking to a lot of people about sharing with somebody else see but you don't exactly find their names and designations and amounts in the scripture you just find that it's great to share so when we say listen to God is primarily listening to the word of God the scripture but then being sensitive enough to that that when God the Spirit puts something on your heart you're ready to do it too And Jeremiah says, that's it.
Let all of you who profess to be God's people be yielded to him, be yielded to him, believe that he knows what's best, and then make it a life practice of listening to him rather than listening to lots of other things. If you'll forgive me, I get tired of seminars and whatnot that take up, and I've even given some of them, but I get tired of seminars that take up, you know, everything from how to tie your shoes to how to comb your hair. Combing hair is getting a lot easier for me, and some of you fellows should understand that too. Tying shoes I've known since I was three years old. But whatever the case is, I get weary of those things because too many times they are too humanly centralized and too little biblically centered. Not always, but too often they are.
And so you get five hundred pieces of advice on something, but no real biblical foundation for it. And so we wind up listening to people in spiritual areas where we should be listening first to God, and then people as they help us. And I'm thankful for people to help me. Please don't misunderstand me on that. But that's about it. It's all I can say on it. Make it a point to listen to him. That means you're attentive to his word. That means you have to be a reader of it, a student of it, a listener of it. You've got to enjoy it and let it be part of you. Because you can't listen to it if it's covered with dust on a shelf somewhere. But that means that you're attentive to his word. You're listening to God. And you're listening to as the Spirit of God moves your heart one direction or another.
And in the third place. I'd like to say finally, but that's a bad word for preachers. None of them really know what that means. None of them. If you're going to use an adverb, you should use one of people. No, like continually or something like that. But in the third place, let them, his people, commit to his ways. That's what Jeremiah says. He says, I will be found of you, and I will turn you to your captivity. I will bring you back where you were, but you've got to be committed to my ways. If you rebel, the king of Babylon may hang you on the walls of Babylon. If you rebel, you will have no peace and no blessing. If you rebel, you will not gain the ends that you want. But when you look for me, when you trust me, when you seek me, then I will be found of you and I will deliver you and restore you in accord with my will.
Now that's a short way to say it. But the concept is that until God's people are committed to his way, they're always in the danger of doing things that are contrary to what God has wanted done and running out and blowing something up. committed to his way. In life, when we work with people a lot of times, we find the ways that people prescribe for us don't always go right. But with God, it's different because he does know what's best and he is all powerful. So when he says, plant your garden in Babylon, you plant your garden in Babylon. You can maybe grow zucchini. I think it must have originated in Babylon, but you can maybe grow something. But you plant your garden. That's his way. You do it. And you wait to see what God will do and God will act it in time. But there has to be a commitment to his way.
Sometimes in life we get a hurry on that. You get witnessing to people about the Lord Jesus and they don't want to listen and don't want to hear. There are just times of discouraging and witness. But remember that God takes a long time to work sometimes. And so we pray and we trust him. I remember the brother in the York Assembly in Pennsylvania. He was somewhat older than I was. There are less of them every year, but he was at that time, older than I was somewhat. And so I asked him how he'd gotten saved because I'd never seen him before. And he told me that he'd been raised. He said, he said, I went to this assembly as a boy. He said, well, I was eighteen years old. He said, I was eighteen years old. He said, well, I was here. But he said, when I was eighteen years old, he said, I'd had enough of it.
He said, I'd been telling my parents for years I didn't want to go. So he said, when I was eighteen, he said, I left home and left them and left this meeting. And he said, I spent the next forty years wandering around living in the world. He said, you know, he said, my mother and father prayed for me every day. And he said, nine years ago, nine years ago, you can kind of compute his age on this, but he said, nine years ago, he said, I gave my heart to Jesus and I came into a real knowledge of redemption. He said, the only thing that's sad about that is that my parents died a couple of years before I came back to God. I said, I'm sure they know about it. But I said, they prayed for forty-some years for you. God doesn't always act in five minutes.
You commit yourself to his ways. And it doesn't always mean that everything will work out as beautiful as that did, but it does mean that God who knows best will execute his will, and you'll be satisfied with it. But if you insist on your own way, it's hard to tell where you'll wind up. I don't know how many times my wife and I have managed to get lost in driving because I've insisted on my own way, or she's insisted on her own way. We are both pretty obstinate in those particular things. You might sit for half an hour at the Y on the road while we try to thrash it out. I confess that it's my fault because I know as a man that we're never lost.
We're never lost. And she's pretty sure as a woman that we're always lost. So in between those two things, we work it out and you'll have to work in that in your own, I think. But the concept is that when people try to describe ways to you, they're often wrong. And we sometimes transfer that without realizing it to God. And so we read in the scripture about how he wins people and works and how he does, and we conclude that there must be some faster way to do it. We decided we'll build a Sunday school by giving away a new Chevrolet, the first person who brings twenty kids. No one has done that yet. If you find out where it is, let me know. I could use a new Chevrolet. We just get my grandchildren and do it. But whatever the case happens to be, we do things like that. Now, it's easy to be a critic on the platform. Do you understand that?
It's easy to be a critic. And I don't mean to sound critical, but I will tell you, that God's word prescribes what he wants us to do. And he doesn't give us every action. He gives us good judgment to use those things. So whether you want to have the breaking of bread at eight o'clock in the morning and the Bible hour at ten or whether you want to reverse it, that's something for your judgment and it's not something for guys like me to criticize. But if you suddenly decide that you'll just have the breaking of bread once a year but only on leap year, then that we can criticize. That we can say a lot about. Do you understand the difference in that? It's too late to ask anybody for response on it, but we understand a difference in that. And there ought to be plain to us. So the concept is fairly simple. Let them commit to His ways. My, when I read through the Sermon on the Mount, that is not a kingdom passage.
Believe me. Nobody's going to sue you in the kingdom. Nobody's going to beat you in the kingdom. But it has kingdom truth and life truth and everything else. But when you read through it and hear the Lord Jesus saying, pray for your enemies. Can you commit to His way? And you don't just pray that your enemies will suddenly drop in a hole somewhere and die. Bless them that curse you. Blessing them is not making a better curse than they have. We should understand that. And when I read through the epistles and see his ways and his love and his care, the only logical say is they ought to be committed to God's ways. Certainly I'm going to make mistakes. But if I remember that great salvation that God has given us and how Christ has done with sin and with its root and all those things, then I ought to be wise enough in my soul and in my spirit to say, Lord, you're the God.
and I'm just a person that you've brought into your family by your grace. I know that you know what's best. I listen to your voice and I commit to your ways. Let God's people be yielded to him. There are lots of other pressures that are put on us in life by all sorts of sources and all sorts of organizations, lots of things. But let God's people be yielded to him. Let God's people look up and be thankful for their salvation and let them say, Lord, if you want me to build a house in Babylon, I will do it. Now the book of Jeremiah covers a lot more material than what I've touched on quickly this morning. But the great point is yieldedness to God. And the great challenge is that God's people be yielded to Him.
And I will tell you without any apology that about seventy-five percent of our problems would be solved immediately if yielded to God was the rule. About seventy-five percent. And you can always think of some ordinary rascal beside yourself who isn't yielded a lot to be. But I'll tell you. Yieldiness starts in your heart, in my heart. And it's not something we're beaten into. It's something that in love for Jesus and appreciation for the grace of God, we voluntarily do. We say, here I am, Lord, a living sacrifice given to you. Say it's nice to be together in the Lord's day, don't you think? And it was nice of the Lord to give us cool weather, don't you think, to enrich our lives by making you wear sweaters instead of wishing you had air conditioners.
God is so good to us. Let God's people be yielded to him. Let's pray. We give you thanks this morning, Father, for your mercy and your love, for your tender care and your great grace. We thank you for the truths you gave to Jeremiah, to the apostles, and by the word of God you've passed on to us. Help them to guide our lives. Help us to stand as thankful believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.