Month: August 2022

An object lesson that is well known because Jeremiah used it is the wooden yoke.  He uses it to describe the captivity of the people of Israel.  Another prophet comes along and says, yes, we will be captive, but it will only be for two years, so here, let me take that wooden yoke and break it.  Jeremiah comes along and this time he has a steel, metal yoke for he tells the prophet and the king that the captivity will last at least 70 years, which we read in the Psalms is the length of a lifetime.  He basically tells the king that it will be the next generation that will be able to leave captivity.  This is very similar to the wandering in the wilderness where it is the next generation that will be able to inherit.

The key verses in this section are found in 31:31-34 where we read that God will establish and create a new covenant in the heart of his people.  It will be a covenant where the people do not have to try to obey and follow the Lord simply because they will want to follow him and love him.  God tells Jeremiah about the people: “For I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”  We know that this covenant was realized in Jesus.  

Psalm 53 is a lament which has as its content the recognition that no one is worthy to be called a child of God.  But then it ends with another recognition, one that is dramatically different and yet a result of the completion of the years of captivity.  We find the ending of this Psalm a promise of deliverance and restoration.  That’s a great way to end.

I have to admit that the beginning of these chapters follow along in the same discourse as the previous chapters with the prophet warning the people of the wrath to come.  But the last two chapters are very interesting.  The prophet of the Lord is telling His people that they are to subject themselves to the Babylonians.  Allow yourselves to go into exile.  Do not fight back against the invading powers.  If there is a prophet that tells you to fight back, well, they are not of the Lord.

Again, that is not what we are used to.  We are used to God saying: I am on your side, you can go up against anyone even if the numbers are skewed and you will win.  The difference is that the people had perpetually turned their back on God and now it was time for a break for them.  In fact, God says that those who remain in Jerusalem and in Judah and do not bow down in service to the Babylonians will have no part in  God’s future.  Only those who went into Babylon as captives will return one day and carry out God’s plans.  Strange to see God tell the people to accept defeat.

We find mentioned for the first time the name of the northern country that is going to come down and take over Jerusalem and all of Judah and lead its people into captivity.  The name of that nation is Babylon and the name of the ruler, who is also mentioned, is Nebuhadnezzar.  

At the beginning of this chapter we have the classic metaphor of the potter and the clay and the ability for God to use the clay as he sees fit because He is, after all, the potter and we are the clay.  It is well within God’s ability and right to use the clay in any way shape or form that God wants to use the clay.  

We find the scene of Jeremiah arrested and beaten by the officer of the gate.  When Jeremiah is finally released he tells the officer that one day he and all of his family will go into exile in Babylon and they will experience the same thing that Jeremiah had just undergone.  

Twice we read Jeremiah tell the rulers of Judah what God wants them to do.  So it is not focused so much on obeying God and God alone, which is the primary command of God, but also, and this is important and mentioned twice in these 5 chapters: “Do what is just and right, rescue from the hand of his oppressor the one who has been robbed.  Do no wrong or violence to the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood.”  This list of moral imperatives seem to follow the people of God both in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament.

I can’t help but feel a bit depressed as we make our way through Jeremiah.  He continues his consistent message of laying out the deception and the infidelity of Judah all the while promising that the day will come when the people will be either destroyed or carried off to the North to a foreign land.  Throughout these chapters we read Jeremiah prophesying against the people of God.

We do find a bit of a caveat in chapter 17 where Jeremiah is now no longer speaking to the people about the destruction to come, but rather starting in vs.14 where he asks God for help and not to be included in that number to whom he is preaching.  He is asking for help to not be destroyed or carried off like everyone else.  It then ends with a reminder about the Sabbath.

Remember when Jesus enters into Jerusalem after the triumphal ride on a donkey and the first thing that he does is go into the temple and clear it and he says there:  “It is written, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.” Matthew 21:13.  Well, that comes from Jeremiah 7:11, the whole den of robbers thing.  He is warning the people of Judah that they are not to try to take refuge in the temple as if God would somehow save them from the destruction that is to come. They have already chosen other idols and it is too late to ask for God to come and save them.  They have already made the temple something other than what it was intended.

You have probably heard about the balm in Gilead as well?  Well, we find that in Jeremiah 8:22 that asks the rhetorical question whether there is going to be healing or not.  The Balm in Gilead was supposed to be able to heal all things.  But the land is too sick to be healed.  There is then a plot against Jeremiah in 11, but the good news is that God said that not a one of them will survive.  So Jeremiah had that going for him.  Thought you might want to hear the hymn: There is a balm in Gilead.

We quickly find out why Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet.  He is given the task to speak to the people of Judah, the southern kingdom.  God tells him specifically that he is given the task to: “uproot, tear down, destroy and overthrow.”  That’s not very comforting.  Jeremiah is given the task to be a prophet of the Lord right at the time when Jerusalem is about to be overthrown, which is literally the worst thing that could happen to the nation both politically and spiritually.

I love the calling of Jeremiah where he states that he is too young.  God rebukes him and tells him that he had been chosen from even before he was born to carry out this task.  The Providence of God always wins out over our own reasoning and thinking.  As in most of these prophecies what God is most angry over is the fact that his own people have turned their back on him and have taken up in worship the gods of the surrounding nations.  They have completely been unfaithful to him.

He tells the nation of Judah, the southern kingdom, that disaster is going to come from the north.  We end in chapter 6 with the siege of Jerusalem.