The Answer
The beginning section of Jeremiah 17 really caused me to think
today about what exactly I believe to be true about humanity. These first 8 verses are deeply
profound. They come as a complaint from
the Lord against His people.
God tells them that because of their disobedience they will be
sold into slavery. Their precious wealth
is the price that they will pay for choosing to have their places for
worshipping false gods. The Babylonians
will cart off all the treasure with which God had blessed them. In fact, God tells the Hebrew people that
they will “loosen their grip upon their heritage and God will make them serve
as slaves to a foreign people. The
Hebrew people wanted to choose gods made by foreigners; now they will serve
foreigners and see if the foreign gods can do anything about it.
Then we hit the curse.
Cursed is the person who trusts in man and makes flesh his
strength. This really got me
thinking. I often hear, “The answer to
our problems is found in our human creativity!”
I often hear, “As a human race, we can think our way out of any problem!”
I have to confess. I don’t
always disagree. In fact, I have
actually been a proponent of teaching that our mind is the greatest gift that
God has given us. It is what
fundamentally separates us from the rest of creation. Certainly God does want us to think and use
the gift of intelligence that He gave to us!
That naturally leads us to the wonderful image of Jeremiah
17:7. Blessed is the man who trusts in
the Lord. He is like a tree, planted
beside a stream, which sends out roots into the stream. This is – in my not so humble opinion – one
of the best images for the human mind.
The tree produces much fruit, but ultimately its fruit can only come if
the tree can receive live-giving water.
In the same way, the human mind can only conceive a true answer to
humanity’s problems if that answer comes from God. Our mind is our greatest tool. But our mind is only great when it is fed by
God.
We should not rely upon the greatness of our mind. We should rely upon the God who can make our
minds great.
A Word of the Lord
The middle section of text gives Jeremiah an opportunity to come
before the Lord. This is a prayer. This text should be read as an honest time
for Jeremiah to come and present himself honestly before his God.
You see, Jeremiah has been among the leaders. As he says, he has not shied away from being
their shepherd. He’s tried to bring
God’s words before the people. He has
tried to give the message that God has called him to give.
Yet, the people have not listened.
They’ve heard the words, but they’ve not responded to the Spirit. They have not received Jeremiah’s message as
though it came from the Lord.
Elsewhere in Jeremiah we have heard about the false prophets. The leaders loved the false prophets because
they talked about peace. They loved the
false prophets because they said things the people wanted to hear. Unfortunately, Jeremiah said none of these
things. Therefore, they are asking him
where “the message of the Lord” is. They
are mocking him because they believe the message of the false prophets to be
real while they believe Jeremiah to be absolutely wrong.
Jeremiah’s prayer saddens me.
First of all, it saddens me because it is not easy to be mocked when you
are trying to bring God’s Word to people.
I feel Jeremiah’s pain. However,
I also am saddened for the people. They
have God’s Word in their midst, yet they will not listen. They have everything they need to hear in
Jeremiah, yet their ears are deaf to it.
This really is a prayer of sorrow.
Sabbath
In the third section of this chapter we see Jeremiah being told to
go to a prominent gate in Jerusalem and proclaim an important message. Jeremiah is to remind the people that they
are to keep the Sabbath holy. In this
text, Jeremiah declares that they are to do no work. From a New Testament perspective, Jesus
teaches us that we could refine this by saying that the people were to not do
any of the world’s work on the Sabbath.
There were to keep one day holy – or separate – for the Lord.
I find it really interesting that this is one of the complaints
that God had against the Hebrew people as they fall into the last stages of
life prior to captivity. Could it be
that when a nation forgets how to keep a day separate for the purposes of accomplishing
the work of the Lord that they are in danger of becoming captive to the
world? There are six days to accomplish
the work of the world. What does it say
about a culture’s relationship with God when they cannot even keep one day
separate from the rest of the other days?
Now there’s something worth pondering for a while.
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