Fleeting Wisdom
Johanan does temporarily come to his senses before making a
grievous error. Before making a final
decision to go to Egypt, he gathers up the rest of the leaders and the people
and approaches Jeremiah. They do come
before the Lord. In fact, the even
promise to listen to what the Lord has to say – for good or for bad.
Here we see that Ishmael has not destroyed what God had started to
do. Under Gedaliah, God had started to
bring the people back under His authority.
He had begun to teach them prosperity through humbleness to God. In the opening verses of Jeremiah 42, we see
that all is not completely lost. Sin may
have come against God’s plan, but sin had a chance to be thwarted. The people are at least presenting themselves
as humble before God by being humble before Jeremiah.
What’s really neat about this is that the people who remain in
Judah appear to learn the lesson – or at least learn how to play the game. They had listened to Jeremiah warn them about
Jerusalem falling – even if they disagreed when they heard it the first time. They had watched those warnings come
true. They watched as God tore them off
of their self-made pedestal. They had
begun to see how their disobedience had brought this calamity upon them. So now they are careful to promise
obedience. They know that the first step
in repentance is recognizing your error and promising to act according to the
proper behavior.
Jeremiah’s Response
Jeremiah hears the people and promises to pray. I can only imagine what he is thinking at
this point in the story. For perhaps one
of the first times in his prophetic career, Jeremiah actually sees people
genuinely presenting an image of repentance!
Sure, there was the earlier incident when the Hebrew people in Jerusalem
gave up their slaves. But then they took
them right back! Here it seems like the
people are genuine in their seeking after the Lord. How great this moment must have felt for
Jeremiah!
The word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah after some time before the
Lord. Here’s another interesting
point. Notice that we clearly hear that
the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah after ten full days. It’s a good thing the people under Johanan
were not a people of immediate gratification!
The word of the Lord takes ten full days to come.
We as human beings are impatient.
We want an answer now. We desire
an immediate response. We have an inner
need to know and do. Most if not all of
us don’t sit and wait very well. I know
I don’t.
God, on the other hand, is not quick to move. God takes His time. This means that if we truly want to be on the
same page as the Lord, sometimes we need to display patience instead of
courage. Sometimes we need to display an
attitude of waiting rather than surging forward. Sometimes we have to give God time to allow
His grace to go before us.
As God’s word comes upon Jeremiah, it is a consistent word. If the people go to Egypt, then the wrath
that had fallen upon them in Jerusalem would follow. This makes sense. Once more the people find themselves with a
choice to make. Do they desire to abide
in God and humble themselves under Nebuchadnezzar as God desire? Or would they prefer to strike out against
God’s wishes and live according to their own sense of right? Once more we find the truth of the Old
Testament resolving to a single question.
Are we willing to humble ourselves to God’s ways?
Truth is Hard
A few days ago I commented that we don’t like truth because truth
reveals who we really are. We especially
don’t like God’s truth because it is always accurate in revealing precisely who
we are. How Jeremiah’s heart must have
sank as the fullness of God’s word was revealed to him.
God essentially tells Jeremiah that the people aren’t going to
listen. Their hearts were already made
up before they inquired of the Lord. What
looked like genuine repentance wasn’t really repentance at all. It was a sham. They had set their heart on journeying to
Egypt. They believed that in Egypt they
wouldn’t have to fear Babylon and they wouldn’t hunger for bread as they had
done in Jerusalem. Although God warned
them against going there, Jeremiah hears from the Lord that this is precisely
the course of action that the people desire to do.
As we might expect, God’s word to Jeremiah ends with a curse. They will die by the sword, famine, and
pestilence. An act that had begun with
great promise – turning to the Lord and asking His desire – was going to once
more end poorly. The people hadn’t
learned their lesson after all. They
gave all the outward appearances of being repentant, but they had none of the
internal fortitude for repentance.
No wonder Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet.
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