Jeremiah 36:29
And thou shalt say to Jehoiakim king of Judah, Thus saith the LORD; Thou hast burned this roll, saying, Why hast thou written therein, saying, The king of Babylon shall certainly come and destroy this land, and shall cause to cease from thence man and beast?
The verse is God's rebuke to Jehoiakim king of Judah for cutting up Jeremiah's roll with a penknife after three or four pages had been read in his hearing and casting it into the fire. He burned it because he rejected its warning that the king of Babylon would certainly come and destroy the land and cause man and beast to cease from it. The burning was motivated by exposure of his character and his refusal to obey the binding claims of God's law. Burning the written warning did not cancel or destroy God's announced judgment, for the message that Babylon would come and devastate the land still stood. God's Word never returns void.
God commanded the former words to be written again in another roll. The same Holy Spirit who gave the first testimony that was refused and burned gave the very rejected message again through the servant of God who had caused the first roll to be written. The warning was repeated with added judgment pronounced on the king and his people, and with a great deal more added to it. Destroying God's straight, plain message to get it out of sight does not end the message by any means. The attempt to consume and dismiss it only gives it increased publicity and confirmation, while the whole transaction stands recorded so that those who refuse to be corrected pronounce their own sentence against themselves.
The act is to be studied as a warning example of what men do when they pass the boundary line and trifle with God. They turn from light to follow selfish devisings and trust their own wisdom, so that they act in darkness. They spend in criticism the time that should be given to repentance and reform. The chapter shows that similar rejection of divine messages would occur in later times, including the writer's own day. Some in recent years have virtually repeated Jehoiakim's act by burning the messages of the Spirit of God, but as of old the messages of warning are repeated. The same spirit is seen in the persecution and suffering Christ endured and in the treatment of faithful servants in every age.
When God sends a message to correct any man or woman, minister or doctor, to change principles and turn the heart to repentance, refusing correction and working to make the message of no effect and destroy its influence leaves wickedness and deceit remaining. It would be better for those who justify and vindicate the one corrected and build him up in his crooked, unjust, unrighteous course never to have been born. They will suffer with the transgressor unless they humble themselves with repentance that needeth not to be repented of. Yet the high and holy One who inhabiteth eternity will be vindicated in seeking to save erring men from destroying their usefulness and to have sins registered in the books of heaven blotted out, even when ministers and doctors step between God and those reproved.