Jeremiah 36:24
Yet they were not afraid, nor rent their garments, neither the king, nor any of his servants that heard all these words. Yet they were not afraid, nor rent their garments, neither the king, nor any of his servants that heard all these words.
The reading took place in the winter house in the ninth month, with Jehoiakim and the princes of Judah gathered around an open hearth fire while Jehudi read aloud Jeremiah's roll of reproof and warning. After three or four leaves had been read, the king cut the roll leaf by leaf with a penknife and burned the whole roll in the fire, though Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah pleaded with him not to burn it and he would not listen. After the roll was destroyed his wrath turned against Jeremiah and Baruch to seize them, but the Lord hid them.
To hear all these words without being afraid and without tearing garments was to hear God's full warning without fear of the danger hanging over themselves and their people, without grief or mourning over sin, and without repentance. That lack of response was contempt for the message and trifling with the Lord, a fearless and unrepentant refusal to be corrected and to receive the reproofs sent to ancient Israel, passing the boundary line into settled defiance. The message so refused was a straight plain message sent by God in mercy to change principles, turn the heart to repentance, save the erring man from his wrong and crooked course, preserve his usefulness, and have his sins recorded in the books of heaven blotted out upon conversion.
Burning the roll and wanting the message consumed and put out of sight did not destroy God's word, for the same message was written again and enlarged with more added, so the attempt to destroy it only gave the dismissed and repulsed message increased publicity and confirmation. Consuming the message does not end the matter, for the whole transaction is recorded, those who take part by refusal pronounce their own sentence against themselves and bring upon themselves God's pronounced evil and punishment, while the high and holy One who inhabits eternity is vindicated in His purpose to bring men to repentance.
The verse exposes the conduct of people separated from God and His light, and its rejection would be repeated in a later day and generation, when probationary time meant for repentance and reform is instead spent in criticism and in following man-formed opinions and selfish devisings, joining the enemy and fighting on his side while Satan plays the game of life for souls and gains victory after victory. Those who through Satan's devising justify and vindicate the one God corrected and sustain him in presumption, deception, falsehood, and underhand dealing make the reproof of no effect and destroy its influence, leaving wickedness and deceit in him, and every soul who builds him up in injustice and unrighteousness will suffer with the transgressor unless humbled before God with repentance that need not be repented of. Such a course of rejecting warning is of the same character as the persecution and suffering inflicted on Christ by wicked men and the treatment of the Lord's faithful servants in every age.