The Audacity of Unbelief Text: Jeremiah 19:14-15
Introduction: The Point of No Return
There is a point in every rebellion, a point well-known to God but often invisible to the rebels themselves, where the door of repentance clicks shut. It is not always a loud slam; sometimes it is a quiet, final latching that goes unnoticed by those who have spent a lifetime ignoring the knocking. We like to think of God's patience as infinite in its application, as though we can sin indefinitely and presume upon His grace indefinitely. But the Scriptures teach us a different lesson. God's patience is indeed vast, but it is a patience with a purpose. That purpose is repentance. When a people, or a man, demonstrates conclusively that they have no intention of repenting, that patience gives way to judgment. And that judgment is always righteous, always spoken, and always comes to pass.
Jeremiah’s ministry was a long and tearful declaration of this principle. He was sent to a people who were experts in the art of religious observance and masters of the craft of spiritual deafness. They had the temple, they had the sacrifices, they had the law, but they did not have ears to hear. Their hearts had grown calloused, their consciences seared, and their necks, as our text tells us, had become stiff. A stiff neck is the physical posture of a proud and defiant heart. It is the refusal to bow, the refusal to listen, the refusal to submit.
In our passage, Jeremiah has just concluded a graphic and terrible object lesson in the valley of Topheth, the very place where Judah had offered their own children as burnt offerings to pagan gods. He smashed a potter's flask, symbolizing how God was about to smash the nation beyond all hope of repair. And now, fresh from that scene of abomination and judgment, he walks directly into the house of the Lord. He doesn't soften the message. He doesn't adjust his tone for the religious sensibilities of the temple crowd. He stands in the court of God's own house and delivers the verdict. This is the nature of true prophetic ministry. It does not cater to the audience; it confronts the audience with the unvarnished Word of the living God. And the central charge, the reason for the coming destruction, is not their idolatry in the abstract, but the root of that idolatry: they refused to listen.
We live in an age much like Jeremiah's. We are drowning in information but starving for wisdom. Our churches are filled with Bibles, our internet is filled with sermons, and yet our culture and, too often, our own lives are characterized by a resolute determination to do as we please. We have become connoisseurs of Christian content and amateurs in obedience. This passage is therefore a bucket of cold water for us. It reminds us that God's central demand is not that we appreciate His words, or analyze His words, or blog about His words, but that we hear and obey His words.
The Text
Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where Yahweh had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the house of Yahweh and said to all the people: “Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I am about to bring on this city and all its towns the entire calamity that I have spoken against it because they have stiffened their necks so as not to hear My words.’ ”
(Jeremiah 19:14-15)
The Prophet's Pulpit (v. 14)
The scene is set with Jeremiah's movement from one location to another, and this movement is theologically significant.
"Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where Yahweh had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the house of Yahweh and said to all the people:" (Jeremiah 19:14)
First, notice the geography of judgment. Jeremiah comes from Topheth. This was in the Valley of Hinnom, Gehenna, a place so defiled by the sin of child sacrifice that its name would become a byword for hell itself. This is where the sin of the people had reached its most grotesque and depraved expression. God sent His prophet there to declare a judgment that fit the crime: a place of idolatrous death would become a place of covenantal slaughter. The prophet is steeped in the reality of their sin before he addresses them. He doesn't come from an ivory tower or a quiet study. He comes directly from the scene of the crime, with the stench of their apostasy still in his nostrils.
Second, notice the location of the proclamation. He goes from the valley of abomination to the very court of the house of Yahweh. This is a direct, holy confrontation. The judgment is not some distant rumor; it is brought right to the doorstep of their religious life. They thought the temple was a talisman, a magical charm that guaranteed their safety regardless of their behavior. They chanted "the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord" (Jer. 7:4) as if the real estate could save them. But Jeremiah stands there, in that very court, to announce that the owner of the house was about to foreclose. God's judgment always begins at His own house (1 Peter 4:17). The most severe rebukes in Scripture are reserved for the covenant people who have gone astray.
Third, notice the scope of the audience. He speaks "to all the people." This is not a private word for the king or a secret memo for the priests. This is a public declaration of war from the throne of Heaven. When a nation is under judgment, the responsibility is corporate. Every man, woman, and child was implicated in the nation's sin, and every one of them would be caught up in the nation's punishment. There is no private Christianity when the culture is collapsing. You cannot retreat into your personal quiet time when the city walls are about to be breached.
The Divine Verdict (v. 15)
Having established his position and his audience, Jeremiah delivers the message. And it is crucial to see that he is not giving his own opinion. He is a messenger, an ambassador, and he speaks with a delegated authority.
"Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I am about to bring on this city and all its towns the entire calamity that I have spoken against it because they have stiffened their necks so as not to hear My words.’ " (Jeremiah 19:15)
The message begins with the ultimate authority: "Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel." This is the God of the armies of heaven, the covenant-keeping God who brought them out of Egypt. He is reminding them who He is. He is not some local deity to be trifled with. He is the Lord of all, and He is their God, which makes their rebellion not just foolish but treacherous. It is cosmic treason.
The sentence is then pronounced: "Behold, I am about to bring on this city and all its towns the entire calamity that I have spoken against it." The word "behold" is a call to pay attention, to look at the awful reality about to unfold. The calamity is not random. It is not an accident of geopolitics. It is something God Himself is actively bringing. God is sovereign over disaster. He is sovereign over the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar is God's servant, His tool of judgment (Jer. 25:9). Furthermore, the calamity is precisely what He had "spoken against it." God is not making this up as He goes along. He is simply executing the curses of the covenant that He laid out centuries before in Deuteronomy 28. He is a God who keeps His promises, and that includes His promises of judgment.
And here we come to the heart of the matter, the reason for it all: "because they have stiffened their necks so as not to hear My words." This is the foundational sin. All the other sins, the idolatry, the child sacrifice, the social injustice, all of it grew out of this one bitter root. They refused to listen. The Hebrew for "stiffened their necks" paints a picture of a stubborn ox that refuses to accept the yoke. It braces itself against the farmer's guidance. This is a picture of active, willful resistance. It is not passive ignorance; it is a deliberate refusal to be told what to do.
This happens gradually, and then suddenly. As Solomon says, "He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy" (Proverbs 29:1). Each time a prophet spoke, each time the law was read, each time their conscience pricked them, they had a choice. And each time they chose to harden themselves, to stiffen their necks, they were adding another layer of stone around their hearts. They thought they were getting away with it. The sun still came up. The rains still fell. But all the while, the accounts were being kept in heaven, and the day of reckoning was drawing nearer. Their refusal to hear was not just an insult to the messenger; it was a direct assault on the character of God. To refuse to hear God's Word is to call God a liar. It is to say, "Your threats are empty, Your promises are void, and Your authority is illegitimate." This is the audacity of unbelief.
Conclusion: Ears to Hear
The story of Judah is a standing warning to every generation. It is a warning against the great sin of presumption. It is a warning against thinking that external religious forms can protect us from internal moral rot. And most of all, it is a warning against the fatal condition of a stiff neck.
How does a nation or a person get a stiff neck? By the same process Judah did. It begins with small compromises. It begins by treating the Word of God as a suggestion box rather than a book of commands. It happens when we hear a sermon that convicts us, and we walk away and do nothing. It happens when we read a passage of Scripture that challenges our lifestyle, and we quickly find a way to explain it away. Each act of ignoring God's Word is like a single hammer blow, compacting the soil of our hearts until they become hard, impenetrable, and unable to receive the seed of the Word.
The application for us is therefore sharp and personal. We live in a civilization that has stiffened its neck against the God of the Bible. Our laws, our schools, our entertainment, and increasingly our churches are monuments to this defiance. We have been warned repeatedly, and the calamity is no longer on the horizon; it is at the gates. The smashing of the potter's flask is happening all around us. The foundations are being destroyed.
But the gospel announces that there is a cure for a stiff neck. The same God who brings calamity because of sin has brought salvation through His Son. The ultimate judgment, the "entire calamity" that we all deserved, fell upon Jesus Christ at the cross. He bore the full force of the curse for all who would repent and believe. And through the power of His resurrection, He sends His Spirit to perform a divine chiropractic adjustment on our souls. He takes our stiff, stubborn necks and He gives us the grace to bow. He takes our deaf ears and He opens them to hear His voice.
The call, then, is simple. Do not stiffen your neck. Do not be like Judah, who heard the words but refused to listen. Hear the word of judgment against your sin, and flee to the cross. Hear the word of grace in the gospel, and receive it with a soft heart and a bowed head. For the same God who spoke calamity against Jerusalem has spoken life in His Son. And His Word always, always comes to pass.