"The Purpose Is Correction and Restoration" – Jeremiah 32:33 Our mind must be renewed in order to understand and live the will of God, and that renewal shows itself in humility and in soundness of mind. We live fixed in our own personality, and personality is almost always ruled by what we have picked up from others. But God's purpose is correction and restoration: your life must undergo corrections. God calls His people continually, and the people show their stubbornness; and that stubbornness is dangerous, because when the heart turns rebellious it stops hearing, and after rebellion comes the breaking.
I. The renewal of the mind shows in humility and soundness of mind.
A. What soundness of mind is.
1. It is a sensible state of mental health: all of one piece, straight.
2. The storm comes, let it come; the lightning comes, I step aside so it does not fall on me.
3. Personality is almost always ruled by what you have picked up: from mother, from father, from a way of life, or because it suits you.
4. If we renew the mind, we will be humble people who always face others.
5. You are not victims here: victims are for the slaughter; here we are fighters who learn.
B. Burdens no body can bear.
1. I know what states of depression are; the burdens are sometimes so violent that no body can bear them.
2. With a single trouble at home, one's appetite goes, one wants to shut himself in and wants no one to ask how he is.
3. Because if they ask us how we are, one does not speak: one pours it all out.
4. Sometimes what one feels is a stillness; and not because there is no volcano within, but perhaps because of the volcano within.
5. That volcano, when it turns fierce, begins to pour out lava, and it burns, and there is no water to quench it.
C. Watching over oneself.
1. In growth in God one must watch over himself, to know how he is going in the process God is taking him through.
2. We must open our eyes and not be so taken up with this and that, but with ourselves.
3. Life is a hurricane: the circumstance, what has been lived, what looms ahead.
4. But when God takes our lives, He leads us by His hand; the matter is that He tightens His grip and we let go.
5. If I let the affliction of the soul torment me, the one who destroys me is my own soul.
D. The best act in life is to set the foot back.
1. The beautiful thing about the Scriptures is that God wants to form us according to His image.
2. The human being always sets his foot forward and never back.
3. But that step you were going to take forward turns into a fear, and that fear is saving your own life.
4. Our spirit develops fear to put us on alert; for the soul seizes the flesh, directs it and drives you.
5. But our spirit, joined to the Holy Spirit, wants to work in us calm, quiet and peace.
6. And that is not gained by giving yourself therapy in the mind: we cannot avoid anything, we must face it with our spirit joined to the Holy Spirit.
E. Your life must undergo corrections.
1. When I go to prayer I always ask God's forgiveness and point at myself.
2. There comes the pain, the lament, the tears, and my soul is cast down.
3. When one takes that up and goes to God, the soul is brought under, because you decide to live in the spirit.
4. And the Holy Spirit joins Himself to your spirit.
II. And they have turned unto me the back, and not the face (Jeremiah 32:33).
A. God calls and the people show their stubbornness.
1. Stubborn is when one does not change easily, but goes on as before.
2. That stubbornness is dangerous: so we will act, so we will speak, and so we will harm the one we meant to and the one we did not.
3. Stubbornness drags everyone into the tangle.
4. But God is constant with the human being; a moment will come in your life when God speaks.
5. What we must strive for in order to live on earth is a meek and noble spirit that bends us.
6. For we are like a match: we catch fire quickly. Take it gently, stop talking, be calm.
B. The harm you do to yourself.
1. If you want to live troubled seven days a week, live it; if you want to live in stubbornness for months and years, live it.
2. And the sad thing is that time passes and life's opportunities run out, because everything ends.
3. God is constant, firm, steady and unchanging; God is faithful in what He does.
4. He who stands firm in faith, in prayer and in obedience does so in spite of every difficulty.
5. Difficulties are all those situations that make a goal harder to reach; and there are plenty of them.
6. We live tangled in situations: our daily way of acting is based on situations.
C. They have turned unto me the back.
1. This is a people that hardened the neck.
2. To turn the neck is a message you want to send others: I neither look at you nor speak to you.
3. And that is a more dangerous act than speaking, and it is done very often.
4. It means they refused to bow and to obey God.
5. Disobeying comes easily; you tell someone not to do it, and he turns around and does it. And what will you do? The consequences come.
6. It is turning the back on God, hardening the neck like an animal that will not obey; it is an image of obstinacy, because we pretend we know a great deal.
D. And not the face.
1. They refused to look at Him face to face; that is, they did not seek God nor His will.
2. God invites us to examine ourselves: are we turning our back on Him in some area of our life, or do we seek Him face to face with a heart ready to obey?
III. Jeremiah and a people that would not hear.
A. Where Jeremiah stood at that moment.
1. Jeremiah was in Egypt: he had gone with a group while Nebuchadnezzar carried the people to Babylon.
2. They managed to escape with a band; and it was those same men who later killed Jeremiah.
3. Nebuchadnezzar sent word by his most trusted man that Jeremiah should come to Babylon, where a house outside the capital awaited him so he could do his work in peace.
4. But Jeremiah said no; and by that act he shows what he was: a strong and determined man.
5. He did not seek to protect himself, but to persuade them to return; he chose to go with the lawless band, and we were left without him.
B. Though I taught them, rising up early and teaching.
1. They did not give Jeremiah their face so that he would go on speaking to them, because they did not want to do God's will.
2. God, in His patience, spoke to them insistently through the prophet, with dedication and with urgency.
C. Yet they have not hearkened to receive instruction.
1. The people chose to ignore the warning and would not change their ways.
2. We are stubborn, and that is that; and we say: I was born this way.
3. But we are speaking of God, we are not speaking of you.
4. And what did they do to Jeremiah? The people did not love him: they destroyed him, and it is said he was killed by the sword.
5. When a heart turns rebellious, it is capable of killing.
IV. I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiffnecked people (Exodus 32:9).
A. While Moses was on Sinai.
1. This happens while Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the law; imagine it: Moses was seeing God.
2. And below, the people of Israel had made the golden calf and were worshipping it.
3. Those stones of Sinai are dead matter; the Holy Spirit in our lives became living matter in us, who are His temple.
B. God describes His people as a stubborn people.
1. If you have ever been called stubborn, what was meant is that you do not easily change your mind.
2. That you do not listen to counsel nor accept correction.
3. That people was obstinate and would not readily submit to their God nor to His will.
4. Because they thought that they knew what to do with their own lives.
5. But today I do not know what I must do with my life tomorrow: I know today's part, that I must rise earlier and go to God in prayer.
6. For when one goes to meet with God, he has already learned that spiritual sense, when it is no longer your flesh; because the flesh destroys you and brings you a curse.
C. Not a single act of disobedience, but a persistent attitude.
1. The expression speaks of a persistent attitude of rebellion.
2. And what is rebellion? Not obeying the rules.
3. Let us not come with the nonsense that you did not understand, or that things were not so: we are in 2025 and knowledge is there for everyone.
V. Nay; but we will have a king over us (1 Samuel 8:19).
A. The people asked for a king like the other nations.
1. Samuel tried to warn them that having a king would bring burdens, because things change.
2. It is not the same as God Himself leading them as a nation.
3. The first thing that comes with a king is taxes.
4. And military service, because they are now bound to it.
5. And with military service, loss of liberty: nothing belonged any longer to the home nor to the man of God who led his family, but to the State.
B. They rejected the warning and preferred their desire.
1. Because often one is more brash than thoughtful; and we must be thinking human beings.
2. Why did they not say to Samuel: let us pray?
3. What they wanted was not the will of God; there was no sense of God, and it was as though God did not exist among the people.
4. The people had turned their back on God, and afterward they had to suffer.
C. An obstinate determination to be like others.
1. They wanted the same as the other nations, instead of trusting in God, who had always been their king.
2. Here it connects with the idea of the stiff neck: stiff neck, stubbornness and rebellion are bound together.
3. It is easier to copy than to do what falls to us to do in life.
4. And out of stubbornness or pride we ask for things that are not best for us. Take care what you ask for.
VI. He sent prophets to them to bring them again unto the LORD; but they would not give ear (2 Chronicles 24:19).
A. The reign of Joash.
1. Joash began to reign very young, and at first he did what was right, because he was guided by the priest Jehoiada.
2. While Jehoiada guided him, he would tell him: do not do this, do that; here God is with you, here God is not.
3. He had a spiritual guide.
4. But Jehoiada dies, already an old man, and Joash grows up, and around him begin those who give opinions and suggestions.
5. And Joash grew hard, because he began to listen to those around him, since he no longer had anyone to lead him by the hand.
6. Let us stop being so full of opinions; what we must do in life is keep quiet.
B. God seeks the opportunity before judgment.
1. When the man of God dies, God still seeks the opportunity to bring them back to Him before judgment.
2. The prophet was no longer there, and the people fell into disorder.
3. The purpose was that, faced with corruption, restoration would come; but the prophet had gone.
4. Time passes: write it on your mind, the times pass and that time does not return. Take care with the times.
5. But they would not give ear: it reflects the stubbornness and rebellion of the people.
VII. As for the word thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the LORD, we will not hearken (Jeremiah 44:16).
A. The people who went to Egypt.
1. Jeremiah was speaking to the people who had gone to Egypt after the destruction of Jerusalem.
2. There they went on worshipping other gods, especially the queen of heaven, an image idolized in that time in various lands.
3. And the people of God took it as an idol too and worshipped it: something that cannot be touched, something that works no miracle.
B. We will not hearken unto thee.
1. They answer openly and defiantly: it is a plain declaration of total rejection.
2. That is not mere indifference: it is a conscious act of rebellion.
3. And that is what one must guard against in his life: rebellion.
C. After rebellion comes the breaking.
1. It is a process: rebellion, and what follows is the breaking.
2. Pain will come and sadness comes, because that is how rebellion works in our existence.
3. It is not a matter of what someone said or someone did: one brings the rebellion and one brings the consequences.
4. The LORD blesses the meek and humble in spirit; that is a promise.
5. But at this point stubbornness and obstinacy are at their height: they close their ears and their heart, rejecting the prophet and God Himself.
6. We must examine ourselves: do we hear God's correction with humility, or do we reject it? When one silences the voice of God, rebellion has already advanced.
VIII. But they refused to hearken… and stopped their ears, that they should not hear (Zechariah 7:11).
A. One need not stop his ears.
1. You may already be rebellious, and the word will not enter, because you have no heart ready to receive.
2. Having none, one rejects it, and it bounces off, and does not enter.
3. Zechariah speaks to the people who had already returned from the exile in Babylon.
4. And God reminds them that their fathers were punished because they refused to hear the prophets He sent them.
IX. Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! (Acts 7:51).
A. The words of Stephen.
1. They are spoken by Stephen, the first martyr of the church, in his address before the council of the Jews.
2. He was recalling how throughout history Israel rejected the prophets sent by God.
3. And he was wholly directed by the Holy Spirit.
4. He tells the religious leaders of that time what their condition was, and Stephen had to know that the next step in his life was death.
5. The prophets of the Old Testament spoke the word and went away; most were not killed, because they had somewhere to hide.
6. In the time of grace it grows harder: they kill the Master, they kill the disciples, and they go on killing.
B. Uncircumcised in heart and ears.
1. Heart and ear: both were affected.
2. It was not an outward problem, but an inward one.
3. They had the outward sign, the circumcision in the flesh; but their heart and their ears were closed.
4. Finally Stephen shows them that they did the same with Jesus: they resisted the Holy Spirit and delivered up the Messiah.
C. Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost.
1. It is a continual attitude of rejection of God's guidance.
2. Do you know how many times you may have resisted the Holy Spirit?
3. In the time of grace, our problem is a rejection of God's guidance for our life.
D. As your fathers did.
1. It connects the rebellion of past generations with that of the present.
2. Children, take care with what your father tells you.
3. If the father is a man of prayer, reads the word, is faithful to God and lives in holiness, then we are speaking.
4. But if he is quick to answer back, does not pray and lives in rage, are you going to be the same? Of course, or worse.
E. A soft heart and open ears.
1. Life is not rosy; decisions must be made, for God gives opportunity, but a moment comes when God says: enough.
2. The first thing is to have a soft heart and open ears, ready to obey God.
3. And for that there must be in your life a life of prayer and of seeking.
4. If you go lightly and do not pray, it will be your flesh that directs you through the day.
5. If you do not open the Bible, you have no spirituality: you are plain, common and ordinary, like what you have learned to say on the earth.
6. Everyone has his sayings; but who has wisdom in his mouth?
Christian Church Mega Zoé · Pastor Edermira Cruz
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