Death is No Escape
Jeremiah continues the thoughts on judgment as we open this new
chapter. The dead will not escape
judgment. Their bones will be spread out
before God and creation. As the people
are dragged into captivity, their dead will not find proper burial. Those who remain alive will wish they were
dead. There really is no escaping the
judgment of the Lord.
This verse on death being preferred to life is really striking to
me. I do wonder what has to happen for a
person to genuinely prefer to be dead instead of alive. In fact, much of my teenage life and early
adulthood was spent dealing with incredible bouts of depression. As a teen and a young adult I wrestled with
this question perhaps more than any other question within my soul. For well over a decade I sought the answer to
the question: “Is death preferred to life?”
At the heart of this question is pain. When the things that happen in this life
bring more pain that a person can bear, we seek escape. When the escapes we seek only serve to
increase our pain, we begin to see only one escape: death. That is what Jeremiah warns the Hebrew people
about their life to come. Jeremiah is
saying that in captivity, life will be so bad they will desire to seek
escape. But the escapes they seek will
only increase their pain. People will
literally want to die – but they likely won’t have the will to end their
life. They’ll wish they were dead, but
not actually be able to get there. This
is about as miserable of an existence as a person can ever know. It makes me mourn to think of those Hebrew
people heading into exile. It makes me
mourn to think about the people who live right now who see no end to their pain
therefore they long for their death.
They are hopeless – trapped in an existence of pain that they do not
want. I’ve been there. I know that feeling. I mourn for those who cannot see a way
out. In fact, I openly invite
conversation. If you or someone you know
is there, talk to me. The way out is
difficult, but there is a way.
You Can’t Keep a Good Man Down
No doubt you’ve heard that expression before. When you see someone trip and stumble, you
expect to see them get up. When you see
someone dealing with stress, you long for the time that they eventually overcome
it. Human beings are resilient. We don’t like living in the pit, we are
always trying to climb and scratch our way back out.
In verses 4-7, however, God makes a case that His people are just
the opposite. When they stumbled from
righteousness, they wallowed in the filth of sin. When the sickness of sin came infectiously
among them, they enjoyed being sick.
There was no resurgence to repent and try again. There was none of the humbleness and fear of
the Lord that we see in David. The
Hebrew people became engorged in the thrill of their sin. They fell, and they stayed down. Perhaps the old saying is true. You can’t keep a good person down. But a person who is wallowing in their sin is
difficult to get back on their feet.
Peace? There is no Peace.
One of my favorite and least favorite passages of Jesus’ teaching
is Matthew 10:34. “Do not think that I
have come to bring peace to the earth. I
have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
I’ve found that passage difficult because I know we love to talk about
Jesus as a person of peace. In fact,
Zechariah – John the Baptizer’s father – says of his son that John will “give
light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.” {See
Luke 1:79} John the Baptizer came to
point the way to Christ. Christ points
the way to God. In fact, we teach that
Christ is the bringer of peace between God and men.
You see, there is the reason why I find Matthew 10:34 so
haunting. Jesus came to bring peace
between God and mankind. But in doing
so, those who find peace with God will automatically find war with the rest of
humanity. Jesus leads us to peace with
God; Jesus leads us into strife with the world that rejects God.
Why have I jumped to the New Testament in the study of
Jeremiah? Jeremiah 8:11 and its context
is a very similar passage. The prophets
in Jeremiah’s day were all about talking in terms of peace. They proclaimed being at peace with God {when they really weren’t}. They proclaimed peace in Jerusalem {when God was really bringing destruction}. They proclaimed peace with the foreign powers
{when the Babylonians were really going
to enslave them}. You see, false
prophets always like to talk about peace in this world. But this is simply not true. True prophets know that they only way to be
at peace with the world is to be at war with God. Even then, we are usually not at peace in the
world. Trust me, being at war with God
is not the answer any of us seeks.
No, the only way to find true peace is to find it with God and
accept that world peace is not going to happen.
We find true peace with God when we humble ourselves. We find peace with God when we realize how we
are shamed in our sin and brought to repentance. Until then, while we may declare “peace” the
reality is that there is no peace.
Grief
As we ended yesterday, so we end today. Jeremiah grieves for his people. He grieves because He knows the Lord should
be the star in Jerusalem but He is not.
He grieves – much like we talked about yesterday – because there is no
reason to pray. Yesterday the Lord told
Jeremiah to stop praying and today Jeremiah sees the reality. The Lord is not King in Jerusalem – although
He should be. There will be no peace
with God or the outside world. The
harvest is past. The summer has
ended. It is time to prepare for the
bleak spiritual winter.
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