PSA Bible Reading Challenge 2025-2026

We find ourselves in a difficult book of the Bible which is said to have been written by the prophet Jeremiah, which is why he is given the nickname of the weeping prophet. Besides the destruction of Jerusalem, he is also weeping because for his 40 ministry not a single person came to love God as they ought to have, even though he was sent to the people of Israel. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a pastor for 40 years and not have a single person who gives of their life to the Lord.

There is one section that should be highlighted because it is from here that we get a very popular hymn. In the midst of all the complaining and the clear indications that things are not at all going the way that the prophet wants and so God will seek His revenge, we find this in 3:22-23 – “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” I guess this is good enough to keep the Lord before us.

Finally, we get to hear that God is going to destroy Babylon, and not use Babylon as a club to bash the nations around Israel, including Israel itself. We see that the future promise that Babylon one day will lie in ruins is a promise not for the present, but certainly for the future. We see that this promise does not come about, and is not fulfilled, until well after Jeremiah is around. But nevertheless, the promise is made and so the people get to count on God redeeming his people. I was struck by the detail of the number of people who make their way out of Israel as a result of the destroying forces of Babylon. Babylon will get what they deserve, but not until after they destroy the temple and all of Jerusalem. That does happen.

We find ourselves in a very unique time in Jeremiah. The prophet tells the people that they are to remain, we saw that yesterday, in Judah. But the people want to go to Israel, and so they go and they take the prophet Jeremiah with them. The whole time Jeremiah is telling them, hey folks, this is not a good idea. We should not be going to Egypt, we should be staying in the land, this is where God has told us to go. The prophet tells the people that if they go to Egypt then Babylon will pursue them all the way to Egypt and so Egypt itself will be destroyed as a result. The people do not listen, in fact they say point blank that God did not speak to Jeremiah and tell him this.

We find the people of Israel back in Egypt, somewhat fulfilling their request when Moses brought them out. Oh if only we were back in Egypt when we had water to drink and food to eat. Remember their lament before the quail and the manna? Psalm 56 speaks about putting tears in a bottle which a people in exile would want to do so that they can remember their homeland, from where they were far away.

In Psalm 55 we find a verse that sustains us as we move forward in our readings. Cast your cares upon the Lord and he will sustain you. That tends to be where we end that verse, but there is more to it. He will never let the righteous be moved. Jeremiah clearly is being told by the Lord what is going to happen and people ask Jeremiah to tell them what the Lord says about a certain situation, but only if it aligns with their preconceived idea of what is happening. He tells the people to succumb to the Babylonians, but they fight them and are slaughtered. He tells them to remain in Judah and not seek to go elsewhere, but they look to go to Egypt, and they are slaughtered. There are consequences to actions, and sometimes those consequences are severe.

We find ourselves more in the narrative of the life of Jeremiah than we do in his prophecies. We see that he writes a scroll, the king burns it, and then he is commanded to write it again. The reason the king burns it is because the content is not flattering to the king. Jeremiah tells words of truth that do not complement the king, in fact they are words that put the kings existence into jeopardy. The king has the power to destroy the scroll, and so he does destroy the scroll. Jeremiah then goes to a city in Benjamin, could it be Bethlehem?, in order to claim his land and he is arrested there. Once again he pleads his case and he is kept in house arrest and given food even during the siege, which is more than what most people had at the time.

Jeremiah consistently did not give words that were encouraging to the people and the rulers because they were not times where there was much encouragement, except for the times that he tells the people that all this will be restored. But that restoration was going to be 70 years from now. Who wants someone around who is consistently telling bad news? That was the fate of Jeremiah’s ministry, to give bad news for the most part.

Do you want the good news or the bad news? The good news is that God will restore the fortunes of Israel and that all the inhabitants will be able to resettle the land, in fact Jerusalem will even be expanded. All the items of the temple will be brought back and the people will be able to settle and have children and live their normal lives back in the promised land. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it will not happen for another 70 years, so you might as well get used to this place and start to have your families here and get settled in here and buy your houses and drink your wine here, and not wait for 70 years before you live your life.

This is what Jeremiah said, even though there was one prophet who said that all this was to take place in 2 years, and Jeremiah joined along until God told him that this guy was not actually a prophet of the Lord. So this is what happens and Jeremiah, who is still in Jerusalem while the city is under siege, sends a letter to the Israelites in Babylon telling them to get used to their surroundings because things are not going to change for quite some time.

Jeremiah is basically encouraging the people of Israel to lay down their arms and allow the Babylonians to capture them. This will allow the city to be saved. He says that those who fight against them will find their imminent destruction. It is always curious to me how God chooses to use those who do not believe in him to do his will. The Babylonians did not fear God nor did they worship him. And yet here clearly they are being used by God to carry out His purposes, which is to punish the Israelites for their disobedience. This is curious to me.

We see in the Psalm a great synopsis of what takes place in our Jeremiah Scripture. The Psalm ridicules the one who is unfaithful to God and says in vs. 7 that those who take refuge in wealth and not in God are mocked and given in derision. But then the psalmist compares himself to a green olive tree that is planted in righteousness and justice, which is what the Israelites lacked. They lacked this not only in relationship to each other, but also to other nations. Jeremiah continues along demanding that the people listen and recognize that even God himself will turn his back on them in the midst of the troubling times.

There just seems to be a lot of bad news in these chapters, especially if you call yourself an Israelite. Granted they deserved all that they got according to Scripture, but Jeremiah is not one who was there to preach rainbows and unicorns. It is quite the opposite, he is to let them know that not only did they sin so their land would be thrown down and taken over, but also the future generations were to have the sin of their ancestors written with ink upon them and they were to carry that sin for generations to come. Maybe it would be like a tattoo that would never come off and be a part of their lives forever.

Without a doubt the sins of past generations do come hard upon the future generations when we talk about current day. And it is not just the sin of the past, but the sins committed against your people do to this day have an impact on generational wealth, or generational stability today. This is definitely something that we see written on ink in certain demographic groups. For example, I was shocked when I went to West Virginia and the generational assumption that everyone would be receiving benefits from the government because it was simply easier to do it that way than to try to break the mold. That is generational.

I have to say that Psalm 103 caught my attention and especially verses 8-14, we will use them this Sunday as our Assurance of Pardon. We have Jeremiah who is given a multitude of issues that describe the people of Israel and their unfaithful. We see the idols that they make which have to be carried around, we see their unfaithfulness even in the midst of the presence of God whose faithfulness is without question. Then we move to a celebration in Psalm 100 where we are told to praise the Lord, even as we are still hearing ringing in our ears the words of Jeremiah who reminds us of the certain destruction which is to come because of our unfaithfulness.

But then we get Psalm 103 which reminds us of the faithfulness of God because his throne is set in the heavens and there is nothing that anyone can do to separate us from the love of God. Remember that in Romans 8? Read those verses again and tell me that you don’t feel the presence of the Lord wash over you with a tremendous feeling of relief and security and confidence.