Year 3, Day 69: Jeremiah 16

As Dung on the Surface

Have you ever spent a nice day out in a city park enjoying the sunshine?  Perhaps you’ve even taken to walking laps around a lake or a pond.  All of a sudden, you realize that there is something on your shoe.  Yup.  Some irresponsible pet owner thought that either they didn’t need to clean up after their dog or they don’t leash their pet so it becomes a nuisance to others.

Let’s rewind a second.  Let’s say you are taking that walk and all of a sudden you see the pile of shoe-defiling substance just before you step in it.  Deftly you avoid the catastrophe.  Imagine how your heart swells with gratitude as you know you avoided contact with the life-tainting substance. {As a multiple-dog owner who picks up his own yard after every trip outside, I know about that which I speak.}

 Here’s my point in those opening paragraphs.  God is telling Jeremiah that in Jeremiah’s day the Hebrew people are like that life-tainting pile on the ground that everyone wishes to avoid at all costs.  They are a stench before the Lord.  They will die from famine and disease and sword.  They will be dragged into captivity.  They are not to be messed with.

In this section, God gives Jeremiah a very serious command.  Do not marry one of them, for they are all going to die.  Jeremiah is told that with respect to Jerusalem and God’s chosen people, Jeremiah is not to have sons or daughters or a wife from among them.  I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty serious.  Marriage and family are kind of staples in life.  Here we find out that Jeremiah is forbidden from them.  Suddenly being a prophet takes on a whole new level of meaning.

Then, we find out that Jeremiah isn’t even supposed to express normal emotion when someone dies.  He isn’t to go among the funeral masses.  He isn’t supposed to go in where they are eating and drinking and celebrating the life of the dead person.  Normal human behavior is slowly being stripped away.

All of these things are points that God is trying to make to the Hebrew people through Jeremiah.  First, the point that God is making is that His love and company and protection has been removed.  The prophet Jeremiah was to not be among the people as a symbol that God was no longer among the people.  Jeremiah would not marry within the Hebrew people of Jerusalem as a symbol that God was not longer going to be the husband of the Hebrew people of Jerusalem.

Second, God was telling the Hebrew people that captivity was not going to be much fun, either.  There would be nobody to console them in Babylon.  There would be nobody to protect them.  The Babylonians surely weren’t going to watch out for them!  It would be a dark time for them as the God they had forsaken has a time of forsaking of His own.

Naiveté – or is it Ignorance? - of Humanity

God tells Jeremiah that as he explains these things to the Hebrew people they will ask, “What have we done?”  I have to laugh.  It sounds like a middle school child as they go about their life doing what they want to do and not realizing how much their life choices are affecting all the people around them.

The sad truth is that ignorance is no excuse.  Just because I don’t take the time to know what God wants of me does not give me any freedom to violate His ways.  It is not His fault that humanity cannot bring itself to care enough to know His ways.  He has made His truth clear.  He has even made a way for us to repent and ask for forgiveness.  He does not seek perfection, merely humbleness!  It is not His fault that we are not aware of our own arrogance.  It is not His fault that we chase after false gods all the time and don’t even know it.

Mercy

However, here in this 16^th chapter of Jeremiah we finally have a snippet of grace.  Finally we hear that judgment and wrath will not be forever.  In fact, we hear that God’s plan for grace has begun even before the true wrath has come!  God tells Jeremiah that not only will God bring the people back after judgment, but His “fisherman” are already being brought forth!  The people who will draw the remnant back are already being put in place.

This is the neat thing about God.  Yes, He is righteous in His wrath.  Yes, His wrath is terrible in its righteousness.  But for those who will turn and repent – even in the midst of His wrath – there is salvation waiting.  There is a plan to find Him.  But we must repent.  We must turn to Him.  We must respond to His call.  There is always an avenue for the repentant remnant to return to Him.

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