Month: September 2020

We find another chapter where Jeremiah prophecies what is to come for the people of Israel.  The beginning is interesting because the speaker states that he wishes that his head were a spring of water.  This would allow him to weep day and night.  How nice it would be to have provided for us the means by which we could express our emotions in a very public way.  What we find described can be a public mourning for events that were cataclysmic to the nation.

It seems as if in vs.4 we have a Soviet era warning which is: “Beware of your neighbors.”  During the time of the Soviet Union people were not able to trust anyone, not their neighbors nor their kin because it would not take much for them to report each other if they suddenly became unhappy with each other for any reason.  Here we find the author saying that society is so corrupt that no one is willing to follow God.  No one.  As a result we find in vs.7: “I will refine and test them.”  

Throughout this entire chapter there is a warning for all those who put trust in their own wisdom, in their own might, in their own wealth, that if they boast, they should boast in the Lord.  God will always act with steadfast love, justice and righteousness.  Those are not the standards that we use to define our actions.

I want you to look at vs.11 where it states: “They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “peace, peace,” when there is no peace.”  The leaders of the day of Jeremiah promoted false optimism in a time of national crisis.  They pretended that everything around them was fine while people were dying and taken off into captivity.  The more things change in history, the more they stay the same.  This same concept is brought up in chapter 6:14 where we see the leaders of the land pretending that everything is fine while society was crumbling around them.  God does not look with favor upon the leaders when that happens.

The people do not see a solution, in fact in vs.15 this is what they say: “We look for peace, but find no good, for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.”  We then hear the words of the famous hymn: “Is there no balm in Gilead?”  That is a rhetorical question which is answered, no, and the Lord has abandoned His people because of their sin.

There are a number of points that I need to bring up in this chapter which are fairly significant. 

1.  In the first verses we see that the temple is still standing and the temple was always considered not only the house of God but also the place where God resided.  So if God is dwelling there, and it would have been in Jerusalem, then we are safe if we go there, no matter what we do and no matter what we think.  Jeremiah says…, well, no, not really.  Look at vs.5-7 and we see the conditions that he sets: if you amend your ways and your doings, and if you truly act justly with one another…then I will dwell with you in this place.  But we see later on, vs.27ff, that the Israelites will not do this so they were destined to be brought low before God. 

2.  We see a verse that should be familiar to us.  Look at vs.11 and it should sound a lot like Matthew 21:13, go ahead and look it up and see if you agree.  We find the words of Jesus as he drives out the money lenders from the temple using eerily similar words that Jeremiah uses to describe the debauchery that was taking place in Jerusalem and in the temple during  his time.

3.  This is probably the most disturbing part of this entire chapter.  It is very clear that there were kings within the reign of God’s people who encouraged and participated in human sacrifices.  Look at vs.30ff and you see that they “go on building the high places (sacrificial altars)…to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire…”  Yeah, that’s pretty disturbing and understandably God was pretty angry about it because, “I did not command, nor did it come into mind.”  While all the other gods in the region were involved in human sacrifice, it had not even entered into the mind of the God of Israel to be involved in such a heinous act.  

It is clear that God is not happy with the people at this time.