Year 9, Day 90: Jeremiah 37

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God is a God of restitution.  Even in the bleakest of times, God restores.  Even after death, God restores.  There is nothing that God cannot fix, either in this life or the life to come.

In Jeremiah 37 Jeremiah is imprisoned.  The Babylonians leave the siege of Jerusalem in order to go and fight the Egyptians and send them back to Egypt.  They do this very thing.  As they are gone, however, Jeremiah is accused of defecting to them.  He is thrown in prison.  In a city that has been besieged, he finds himself imprisoned.

He is not forgotten, though.  Much like Joseph in the Pharaoh’s prison at the end of Genesis, Jeremiah finds himself in need of the king.  Zedekiah comes to Jeremiah and asks for a prophecy.  Jeremiah speaks the truth to him.  Jeremiah then asks why he is imprisoned.  He reminds the king that if he is kept in prison by his enemies, he will likely die.

God, working through Zedekiah, finds a way to spare Jeremiah.  While Jeremiah remains in custody, he is moved to a more favorable place.  He is even guaranteed bread for as long as the city has access to bread.  In the midst of aggression, God spares Jeremiah because of his faithfulness.

God is indeed a God of restitution.  He finds a way to spare Jeremiah, even though Jeremiah is in the midst of enemies in the middle of a besieged city.  He is the God of the impossible indeed.

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Year 9, Day 89: Jeremiah 36

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Jeremiah 36 gives us a mix of perspectives.  This chapter speaks of obedience.  This chapter speaks of leadership.  This chapter speaks of complacency.  These are all good topics.

First, take obedience. God tells Jeremiah to write down all the words of the prophecies.  Jeremiah obeys.  He has them written.  Jeremiah tells Baruch to go and read them.  Baruch is obedient.  Some of the city elders hear the words and tell Baruch to come read them in front of everyone, Baruch obeys.  Throughout this entire chapter we hear obedient servant after obedient servant pursuing God’s will.

The chapter also speaks about leadership.  Kudos to the city leaders for hearing the words and wanting to take them seriously.  They ask Baruch to come and read them before everyone.  They even go so far as to tell Baruch and Jeremiah to hide while they go before the king and read the words.  They handle themselves in righteousness in the midst of a very trying time.

On the other hand, the chapter speaks of Jehoiakim.  He could have heard and repented!  The whole point of God’s action was to prod him and his people into repentance.  Instead of repenting, he burns the scroll.  This is a significant issue for leadership.  In this one act of rebellion, he also hinders the people’s ability to repent as well.  He certainly doesn’t prevent their repentance, but he absolutely makes it more difficult for them to come to repentance!

Unfortunately, this allows a revisit of the leaders in Jerusalem.  They did marvelously in bringing the content to the king’s attention.  Unfortunately, history tells us that Jerusalem never came to repentance.  Babylon defeated Jerusalem and went into exile.  The leaders could have gone to the people themselves.  They could have circumvented the king.  They didn’t.  When the king burns the scroll, the fade back into the shadows rather than risk asserting themselves against the wishes of the king.

This brings up the topic of complacency.  Humans beings often choose the easy way.  We choose the path of least resistance.  The bold person stands up to do bold things in times of trial.  The average person fades into the shadows, not wanting to buck the system r risk losing what they have.  In the end, God gives the people an opportunity to save themselves.  The leadership fails the people because complacency is easier than boldness.

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Year 9, Day 88: Jeremiah 35

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Today we get a chapter of unsung heroes: the people of the house of the Rechabites.  Here are a group of people whose ancestor gave them a command and they have listened to it.  They are obedient.  Even long after their ancestor has died, they continue to adhere to the command.  That’s loyalty.

In comparison, God speaks to the Hebrew people of Jerusalem.  They have not listened.  They have not obeyed.  They have followed their own paths.  This is not news to any reader of Jeremiah or the prophets.

God’s point is deeper than this, though.  It isn’t just the case of listening versus not listening.  It is the case of desire to listen.  After all, the Rechabites are listening to a person who has been long dead!  They want to listen and therefore they are adhering to the command of an ancestor.

The Hebrew people, on the other hand, are not listening to living prophets who are speaking in their midst.  They have living testimony to God’s will in their very midst.  Yet, they do not listen.  They don’t listen because they don’t want to.

So often, obedience is more than a case of force.  Yes, given the right circumstances obedience can be mandated.  Most of the time, though, obedience is a case of desire.  People obey because they want to and because they see the reason in it.   People disobey because they want to follow their own will instead of the will of another.  That’s the main point here in today’s chapter.

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Year 9, Day 87: Jeremiah 34

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Jeremiah 34 is a chapter that amuses me.  The Hebrew people owned slaves.  That’s not the amusing part.  Many ancient cultures had forced labor systems.  Whether the slaves came through conquest, economics, or government imposition it happened.  That certainly is not the amusing part at all.

What is amusing is to remember the context of the passage.  The Babylonians are assaulting Jerusalem.  The people are holed up in Jerusalem.  Their supplies are dwindling every day.  What need do they have of slaves?  It isn’t like they have grand wealth to put on display.  It isn’t like they have enough supplies to create unnecessary extravagance.  Here are a people who are literally hiding behind walls to avoid becoming slaves themselves, and they have their own slaves!  I find this utterly ridiculous.

It certainly speaks to humanity, though.  Nobody wants to be the bottom dog.  I genuinely believe that these Hebrew people under siege from Babylon have slaves so that they have someone upon whom they can take out their frustrations!  They have slaves so that when they are having the worst days imaginable, they still have someone to order around.

If this doesn’t speak to the very base nature of humanity, I don’t know what does.

Actually, maybe I do.

Continuing on in the passage gives another context to analyze.  The Hebrews seemingly give up their slaves.  They repent.  They let their slaves go free.  It seems like a great moment.

It’s actually not.

The Hebrew people give up their slaves because they are almost defeated by the Babylonians.  They give up their slaves because it is the last thing they can do to possibly appease God. 

For a second, it works.  Nebuchadnezzar’s force is threatened by the king of Egypt.  Nebuchadnezzar leaves the siege of Jerusalem to go fight off the Egyptian force.  As the Babylonian’s leave, though, the Hebrew people reclaim their slaves.  They illustrate that they didn’t let their slaves go free because they wanted to do so or because they were convicted morally.  They let their slaves go to buy God’s mercy.  Rather than genuinely repent, they reluctantly do the right thing just to spare themselves.

The Hebrew people show their true character.  They didn’t act righteously in letting their slaves go.  They were selfish and self-seeking.  Not only are these Hebrew people keeping slaves so that they have someone lower on the proverbial totem pole than themselves, but they only let go of the slaves to save their own skin!  This shows the true depravity of the human condition like few other chapters in the Bible can.

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Year 9, Day 86: Jeremiah 33

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Jeremiah 33 gives us a great witness.  Yes, it proclaims the restoration of the Hebrew people.  They will not be forgotten, and their exile will end.  Furthermore, it gives us the promise of the line of David that will never be broken.  That points us to Christ, which is also important.

What’s really powerful in this passage, though, is the Lord’s reminder about how He treats covenants.  Human beings can break them.  Human beings can forget them until it’s convenient to remember them.  But not so with God.  God remembers His covenants.  He doesn’t go against His Word.

After all, hasn’t the Lord made the sun rise every day?  Hasn’t the Lord made the sun set every night?  Don’t the seasons come and go?  If God can keep His covenant every single day of the year for millennia, isn’t it reasonable to think that He will keep His covenant with people with whom He has developed relationship?

God is trustworthy.  He isn’t trustworthy because we’ve earned it.  He isn’t trustworthy because we deserve His trust.  He is trustworthy because it is in His nature to be trustworthy.  He is trustworthy because He is God.

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Year 9, Day 85: Jeremiah 32

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This chapter is by-and-large what is seems to be.  Jeremiah is told to buy a field by the Lord.  He does buy it.  He pays the full sum for it. It’s all done proper and legal.

There’s just one issue.  Jerusalem is under siege and the people are going to be led away.  The deal makes no sense whatsoever.  God has even told Jeremiah that the exile would last for approximately Jeremiah’s lifetime, id not a bit longer.  Jeremiah will never benefit from the purchase of the land. He’ll never farm it.  Jeremiah wonders why it is that the Lord had him buy it.

The answer is fairly simple, although not so much for Jeremiah.  God is sending a message to the people.  The land will once more be theirs.  They will till the fields.  They will reap its harvest.  They will buy and sell and trade.  Life will go back to normal.  The exile will not last forever, there will be a regathering of the people who were scattered.  God’s point is that while the exile seems like a bad thing, it will be temporary.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t really help Jeremiah much.  In the end, he’s bought a useless field.  His city is besieged, and there won’t be much farming going on.  But the message has been sent to the people.  Sometimes following God is more about the message we send and not the sense it the actions we take.

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Year 9, Day 84: Jeremiah 31

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Jeremiah 31 begins with an interesting passage.  Jeremiah 31:3 says, “I have loved them with an eternal love.”  Of course, I take no issue with this verse.  Naturally, God’s love is eternal.

However, remember the historical context of this chapter.  Assyria marched on Israel and dragged them into captivity.  They marched on Judah and nearly dragged them into captivity, too.  Along comes Babylon and finishes the job.  Babylon conquers Judah, makes them a vassal, drains them of their natural resources and takes the wealth of the temple to Babylon.  Then, after a little political rebellion from the Hebrew people, Babylon comes back, finishes the task, and takes the people into captivity.  Both Israel and Judah are no more.  People are either starving, on the run, or captive.  It is this context into which God says, “I have loved them with an eternal love.”

The reason tat I love this passage is because it shows us the true breadth and depth of love.  Love is not simply making someone happy.  Love is putting people in a position to make them better.  Love isn’t appeasement and freedom from conflict.  In fact, when people get close enough too love there is often great conflict!  Love is pushing through the conflict and finding the places where all parties involved become better people.

That’s why the exile is God demonstrating His love for the people.  As was discussed yesterday, love is present at the start of the exile, not just at the end of the exile when people come home.  When God says that He has loved them with an eternal love, it means that God is always doing what is in the best interests of the people – whether they like it or not!  God isn’t there to make the people happy, He is there to make them better!

That is such a powerful statement about God and His love.  It is such a powerful statement about humans and how we show love, too.  True love makes people better, not appeased.

At the end of this chapter we come to the passage about the new covenant.  This new covenant will be written on people’s hearts.  It will dwell within us.  This passage wraps up the history of the Hebrew people nice and neatly.  Here’s how.

In the beginning, God had a covenant with Abraham.  It was based on what was in his heart.  However, that was great when it was just God and Abraham.  As the people grew, not everyone had the same heart.  To make an illustration, God gave them the Law.  He gave them His ways to live by.  However, the Law proved insufficient.  The people under the Law eventually fell away, rebelled, chased their own gods, and went into exile under Assyria and then Babylon.  To put it quite bluntly, while the Law of the Lord is perfect, you can’t legislate the human heart.  The Law was given so people could know God, but the Law is really only useful to those whose heart is also in the game.

That’s God’s point during the time between King David and the Babylonian exile.  The Law was great, but the people’s hearts weren’t.  Therefore, from this point going forward, God’s people will be defined by those whose hearts are in the game.  God’s people will not be those who are under His Law; God’s people will be those whose hearts are aligned with God’s heart.  God’s people will know them because their hearts know Him and His ways.

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Year 9, Day 83: Jeremiah 30

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Jeremiah 30 is a deep passage when it is allowed to be.  The problem is that people who are looking for iconic verses settle in on a few specific verses and pluck them out of context.  For example, Jeremiah 30:11 is a strong verse.  “I am with you to save you, declares the Lord.”  What a powerful message!  Or Jeremiah 30:22, which says, “You shall be my people, and I will be your God.”  This is another great verse with an easily overlooked context.  These are great verses, indeed.  But the context of the verses should not be overlooked.

How many times in this passage does God talk about pain and anguish?  God speaks about people holding their stomachs like pregnant women.  He speaks about cries of panic and terror without peace.  He speaks repeatedly about the incurable hurt of the Hebrew people.  The exile has been hard.  We need to remember God’s message of salvation comes within the midst of a message of mourning.  God will indeed save them, but He will save them out of a time of misery. 

To be fair, I think it is always worth noting that in order to be saved, one must be in a location with poor enough circumstances to warrant being saved.  One is not saved out of the lap of luxury.  One is not saved out of a time of peace and prosperity.  One is saved out of misery and turmoil!

Yes, God will save.  That is the overarching point of all of God’s Word!  God knows that human beings are inherently sinful.  We need His salvation at every moment of our life and at every turn of a decision.  We need His Son’s death.  We need His Spirit.  We need His grace and mercy.  But we need it because as human beings we are either in or put other people in times of concern, turmoil, or misery.

God Himself reminds the people that they have been put in exile because their guilt was great.  They brought this upon themselves over the span of generations of rebellion against Him.  They pursued the desires of their own hearts.  They oppressed the easy victim – the foreigner, the orphan, the widow.  The powerful took what the powerless could not protect.  They needed saving, sure.  They needed saving from themselves.

I think this is the point of this chapter.  The salvation started at the beginning of the exile.  God sent His people into exile to start the salvation process.  He needed them to be placed in a situation where they didn’t have control of their life to pursue the evil in their own hearts.  When their freedom for evil was stripped away, He could show them their pain.  Once their pain was revealed to them, then He could save them in truth.

God does restore us.  He is the great redeemer!  His restoration often begins well before we think it does.  He begins restoring us in the pit of our misery.

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Year 9, Day 82: Jeremiah 29

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Once more we deal with the idea of false prophets.  God judges Shemaiah’s false prophesy because he gives false hope that opposes the work of the Lord.  A dark lesson can be learned here.  Giving hope is not always right.  There are times when good intentions don’t give good results.  We want to encourage people and give them something to believe in, but the reality is that it is best to be in line with what God is doing.  When false hope is given and it is contrary to God’s will, it results in leading people against God.  Good intentions do not equate to righteous behavior.  We cannot truly know what is good for us.  Good comes from God alone.

As if to prove the point, Jeremiah writes a letter to the exiles.  These are the people who have gone off to Babylon.  They are no longer in Jerusalem.  They have given in to their fate and are in Babylon starting over.

Jeremiah tells them to grow where they are planted.  He tells them to proper.  He tells them to work hard and impress the Babylonians.  He tells them to have families and settle in.  Essentially, Jeremiah is telling them to prepare for the long haul, because God’s not done teaching His people.  Jeremiah knows that to bring the people to full repentance is going to take time.

All good lessons are learned as a process.  We seldom ever learn the most meaningful lessons in a single moment.  Life lessons are experienced, struggled against, and grown into.  They push our growing edges.  They cause us to change.  Jeremiah is resolute in his desire for the people to experience God’s judgment so that they can be purified as He desires.

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Year 9, Day 81: Jeremiah 28

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This is a favorite chapter of mine within the book of Jeremiah.  The reason that I love this chapter is because it teaches a very basic yet important message.  God won’t be mocked.  God doesn’t suffer fools.  If you get in God’s way, He’s not opposed to removing you in whatever way He deems appropriate.

Hananiah the false prophet comes before the people and professes that in two years span God will restore the fortune of the Hebrew people.  He will free them from the bondage of Assyria.  He will return the holy items out of the temple that Nebuchadnezzar took.

There’s a serious problem with this message.  This message goes against everything that the Lord is trying to do.  God is putting the people under bondage to teach them to repent.  He is putting them under bondage to remind them that God and His ways are important.  It is the freedom of the people that got them into trouble, God is removing their freedom to refocus them.  The message of the prophet is contrary not only to the hand of God but to His primary motivation for action!

There’s a secondary problem with this message.  The message gives people false hope.  God doesn’t mind the people having hope, but He doesn’t appreciate false hope!  If the people continually buy into false hope, they will miss what God is doing in their life.  If the people ever see the Babylonian occupation as an opportunity to repent, they never will!  They will simply continue their own life thinking that God will restore them, no repentance necessary!

This is the danger of false prophets who tell us what we want to hear.  When we are in relationship with people who simply stroke our egos and bring pleasing messages, we find ourselves stagnating and believing in the wrong things.  This is why Hananiah is so offensive.  He’s not offensive because he wants to believe in a better life; he’s offensive because his belief gets in the way of the repentance that will bring about a better life.

In the end, Hananiah’s message is proven wrong and God claims Him from the world.  He is punished, much like God will punish the Hebrew people under the Babylonian exile.  He gives a message that leads people away from God’s action and he is punished for it.

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Year 9, Day 80: Jeremiah 27

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Jeremiah 27 is a prophet’s worst nightmare.  Imagine God coming to you and telling you the following list of objectives.  First, go to various leaders and tell them that they need to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.  Tell them that if they obey him, God will allow them to remain in their land; but if they rebel, God will scatter them.  Then, Go specifically to the king in Jerusalem and tell him the same thing.  While you are at it, make a point to tell them that the king of Babylon will be taking all the valuable things of the Lord in the temple with him back to Babylon.

Imagine how all those conversations would go.  I doubt any leader of the people will willingly say, “Sure, I’ll pay tribute to a foreign king every year.  I’ll let the wealth and hard work of my own people go and bless some other king and some other people.”  How many of those conversations go well?

Yet, this is exactly what God expects Jeremiah to do.  He needs to go and have those awkward conversations.  He needs to go and set the record straight.  He needs to go and be the harbinger of bad news.  The prophets gets to be close to God.  The prophet also gets to deliver the truth, for better or for worse.

There’s one other point to make in this chapter.  Once more we see that God is interested in the heart of the people and not the stuff of the world.  God won’t protect Jerusalem because His people are there.  In fact, God won’t protect His temple because it have lavish stuff in it.  All the stuff will go away to Babylon, and God won’t bat an eyelash at it.  In fact, God says that He will go and visit it in Babylon.

God doesn’t much care about where His stuff is located because the whole earth is his!  He’s not interested in the what and the where.  He’s interested in the how and the why.  He wants to know how the people will respond and act and why they will behave the way that they do.  The stuff simply just doesn’t matter as much as the obedience to His ways.

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Year 9, Day 79: Jeremiah 26

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If you want to know a person speak the truth to them.  Don’t tell them what they want to hear.  Don’t only tell them happy things.  If you want to truly understand who a person is, speak truth to them.  To know a person, watch how they handle the truth.  Anyone can be nice when hearing what they want to hear.  Anyone can be friendly when things are going their way.  Show a person the truth and watch how they handle it and you’ll see who they really are.

This is the experience of Jeremiah.  He tells the people that they are going to be judged by God.  He warns them of the impending wrath of God.  He tells them about the judgment that is coming because of their rebellious nature.  He gives them the truth and watches how they handle it.  In fact, he tells them that his whole life is in their hands, they are free to respond however they want.

The people in the immediate vicinity are angered.  They threaten him.  They tell him they want to kill him.  They are so offended by his prophecy against them and against Jerusalem that they rise up and demand the death sentence.  Jeremiah sure sees their character.  He gets to watch the ugly side of the people as they rise up against the truth.

Can there be any wonder that God was bringing judgment against them?  When people respond this violently to the truth, how can anyone expect to see repentance and humbleness?  Hearing this passage, there can be no doubt that God only had one recourse: Babylon.

The people drag Jeremiah in front of the rulers.  They have a bit more wisdom.  They tell the people that in former days the people didn’t kill prophets who called for repentance.  They remember back to a time when prophets decreed judgment, the people repented, and the Lord relented.  These leaders seem far wiser than the rest of the people.

Lest the leaders be passed over in judgment, though, Jeremiah feels inclined to tell us about the prophet Uriah.  Uriah wasn’t spared.  In fact, he was dragged back from Egypt to pay for his prophetic moments.  The king struck down Uriah because of his prophecy.

What does this really tell us?  It tells us that Jeremiah had some friends.  The last words of this chapter tells us that Jeremiah was spared because he had someone within the circle of influence of the king who could spare his life.  This story is given to us to balance the fact that Jeremiah’s life was spared.  Jeremiah wasn’t spared because of the wisdom of the leaders after all.  Jeremiah was spared because of the connections he had into the leaders.  He was spared because he had a few people willing to stand up for him.

Want to see the core of a person?  Present them with he truth.  See how they handle the truth.  Just remember, though, that when we present a person with the truth we get their true being in response.  Priests and prophets alike died because they presented people with the truth.  Jeremiah was spared, but not because he told the truth.  Jeremiah was almost killed because he told the truth.

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Year 9, Day 78: Jeremiah 25

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Jeremiah gives us another perspective of judgment in this chapter.  While the result is the same – Babylon is coming to decimate the Middle East – the focus is different.  Today the focus isn’t on a particular grievance.  Today God’s complaint is that the people have not listened to the prophets.  They have not repented.

Reading through this passage reveals that at the time of its writing Jeremiah had been a prophet for 23 years.  Imagine telling people for 23 years that they need to change and repent.  Imagine seeing little movement.  Imagine seeing little fruit for the effort.  Imagine seeing a culture that in spite of the greatest prophecies that could be brought, they are still flinging themselves headlong into God’s wrath.  Imagine living among a people who are deaf by choice.  Imagine living among a group of people who will not heed warnings because they refuse to believe it could happen to them.  Imagine this for 23 years.

First of all, this is probably why Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet.  (Actually, it isn’t.  It is because he is likely the author of the book of Lamentations in addition to the number of weeping poems contained within the book of Jeremiah)  It goes to motive, though.  If you spent more than two decades pursuing a goal and showed no positive gain, I imagine it would cause a person to weep.

Come to think of it, I seem to remember the definition of insanity as doing something the same way but expecting different results.  At first blush, this sounds like Jeremiah.  He gives prophesy after prophecy and nothing changes.  Should we think of Jeremiah as insane?  Absolutely not!  Jeremiah isn’t insane because he doesn’t expect different results.  Truth be told, God has been very forthright to Jeremiah.  God’s told him to do it and he’s also told him it won’t work.  Therefore, Jeremiah hasn’t been trying all of these things hoping that it would work and the people would repent.  Instead, Jeremiah has been prophesying simply so that at the end God could look at the people and say, “I told you.”

What does all of this mean?  It means that sometimes we will be asked to toil in a field that produces no fruit.  It means we cannot judge success by the amount of fruit born but rather by our willingness to do as God asks.  If God asks us to go out and reap the harvest, then we will get fruit.   But if God asks us to go out and plow a spiritually dead field, success is simply getting the field plowed.

This feels almost like a defeatist mentality.  I want to hope.  I want to believe that fruit is always possible.  But the realist in me understands that sometimes reality doesn’t look like hope.  Sometimes reality looks like people who are running headlong into poor choices and won’t listen to anything.  In those days, we have to just get up and plow the proverbial field.  In the days when we are called to bear God to people who have no inclination to listening, success is simply bearing God to them and watching them not listen.

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Year 9, Day 77: Jeremiah 24

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Understanding the history of the exile is important to this chapter of Jeremiah.  Babylon had come.  They had beaten the Hebrew people into submission.  Nebuchadnezzar has taken captives.  He has allowed some people to remain as his vassals and who were expected to pay regular tribute.  These vassals would occasionally submit, but as we hear in today’s lesson they would turn to Egypt and inspire mini-rebellions thought would periodically need to be put down.

In this context, God sends a clear message.  Those Hebrew people who went into exile would be celebrated and allowed to return as a faithful remnant.  Those who remained and who inspire the rebellions against Babylon would continue to be persecuted.  They would be rejected by God.

Be careful here, because a wrong interpretation would lead to a horribly wrong teaching.  It is not that God minds uprisings against leadership.  Bad leadership needs to change.  In fact, that is the very point God is making by bringing Babylon!  The leadership of the Hebrew people needed to change.

The reason that the people who stay in the Promised Land are rejected by God is because they have rejected God’s attempt to reform them.  In searching for help from Egypt, they are inherently rejecting the very help that God is trying to give them through the Babylonian exile.  What from one perspective looks like people trying to lift of a veil of Babylonian oppression is actually people trying to get out from under the correction of God.

This is an important lesson to learn.  Freedom is a powerful right.  It is good to be able to make one’s own decisions and choices.  However, true freedom only comes from God.  When seeking freedom, we need to be sure that the freedom we seek is not actually freedom from God’s plan.  The people left in Jerusalem after Nebuchadnezzar’s attack make that very mistake.

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Year 9, Day 76: Jeremiah 23

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In Jeremiah 23, God addresses the issue of righteous prophets and false prophets.  I used to be fearful of being a false prophet.  I used to worry that I was a shepherd who scattered the flock instead of being a shepherd who gathered the flock.  To answer this debate in my mind, I had to focus on the words scatter and gather.

I used to think that scattering the flock was akin to making people mad.  I worried that when there was a debate and people couldn’t see eye to eye that it was a sign of being a bad shepherd.  I grew concerned when I would talk to people about Jesus and others wouldn’t immediately see the wisdom of Christ.

Such thoughts are the work of temptation within.  There needs to be a new understanding of the word scatter.  From God’s perspective, scattering happens when people get further away from God.  Scattering happens when the hearts of people are no longer aligned with the hearts of God.  Scattering isn’t when people debate, scattering is when people stray from God. What that means is that people can scatter even in community!  Should an entire body of people willingly follow a leader as a group while losing sight of Gods ways, the flock is scattering!

This, actually, is God’s point.  God isn’t concerned that the people are arguing and fighting and losing community cohesion.  In fact, the opposite is true!  God is concerned that the collective of God’s people don’t seem to care that they are going away from God!  God is concerned that His very prophets are allowing this to happen because they are not confronting people about their journey away from Him!

The false prophets are those who allow the flock to scatter because they do not challenge people.  The false prophets allow the flock to scatter because their messages are lies that the people want to hear.  The false prophets are those who give messages that make them popular instead of messages that they have heard as the counsel of the Lord.

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Year 9, Day 75: Jeremiah 22

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Jeremiah 22 gives us a perspective that truly shows how humanity is fundamentally different than the divine.  Here is another way of saying the same thing.  Jeremiah 22 is a great chapter to study when we want to look at a human attribute that most humans can consider a growing edge.  This chapter is a great perspective on human nostalgia.

Human beings become emotionally attached to stuff.  Our first car.  A favorite phone.  Our baby’s first word.  The memories of a first day of school for our kids.  A favorite book.  A sacred place.

As you read through this chapter, it becomes very clear where the heart of the Lord can be found.  God cares about the way we treat one another.  God cares about what is in our heart.  God cares about how we view one another.

This is why God has a huge issue with the mistreatment of orphans or widows.  This is why God has a problem with merchants who use unfair weights or scales.  This is why God has an issue with oppression of one people by another people.  These things, and things like them, are all indicators that our heart has a perspective than is unlike God’s perspective and God’s heart.

In fact, the Lord is willing to watch His own city go into destruction to make this point.  This is God’s city.  This is His place.  But places and things are nothing when compared to His ways.  If we want to be a person after God’s own heart, we must realize that God’s ways take precedents over the stuff of life.  If our heart is wrong, our place and our stuff will not save us.

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Year 9, Day 74: Jeremiah 21

Theological Commentary: Click Here

This is a most interesting chapter.  Put yourself into the shoes of the people in Jerusalem as Nebuchadnezzar comes to conquer your city.  You go to a prophet who is known for talking with God.  You ask him to inquire of God.  God gives a response, which is very simple.  God says that He Himself with fight against the city to ensure the Hebrew people go into captivity.

In fact, it is worse than that.  God said that those who surrender to the Babylonians will live, while those who stay in the city will not survive the ordeal.  Imagine hearing God say that He is fighting on the other side and the only way to survive is to voluntarily go into captivity.  This is a bleak message indeed.

Naturally, this confirms what we’ve been told all along.  God has had it with the rebellion of Hebrew people.  He’s turning to captivity to teach the people about faithfulness.

This brings us to an even harder lesson to swallow.  Some lessons can’t be learned except through the hard way.  Another way of saying this is that sometimes spiritual captivity is the only way to learn what God has to tell us.  Sometimes our own human arrogance becomes such a hindrance to God’s message that the only way to tear it down is captivity.

This is a bleak message for a bleak time.  There is always hope, though.  Remember, God isn’t using captivity to destroy the people.  God is using captivity to reform them and to restore them.  It’s a bleak message, but it isn’t a hopeless one.  With God’s ways, there is no such thing as a hopeless plan.

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Year 9, Day 73: Jeremiah 20

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Jeremiah 21 gives us an interesting perspective into the life of the prophet.  So many Christians think it would be awesome to hear the voice of the Lord and be called upon to deliver messages from God to others.  This chapter answers that oversimplified fairy tale.

Jeremiah is thrown into the stocks because of the message he brings.  He tells the people that they will not be saved from the Babylonian threat and they toss him into the stocks.  He’s already been in prison, too.  His friends come by and mock him.  Worse, his friends come by and agree with the people who put him there!  To be Jeremiah means to bring an unpleasant message to a group that doesn’t want to hear it and then have to deal with the consequences of being the irritant in everyone’s life.

Of course, Jeremiah could choose not to do it.  He knew the people wouldn’t listen to him.  The fact that he’s being rejected is not really any surprise.  Had he chosen to not speak out because of the rejection he knew would come, though, he would have a burning fire within his chest.  To be a prophet means being put between a rock and a hard place.  He can either speak a message and deal with the people’s reaction or not deal the message and deal with the guilt of what he’s done to his relationship with God.

Jeremiah chooses the better option.  Better to obey God and deal with the wrath of mankind.  It may not always lead to the happiest of temporal consequences, but it will reap eternal reward.  What we really learn from this chapter of Jeremiah is that he is a man who has what it takes to choose the eternal over the temporal, the godly over the mundane.  He has the heart of God, and this chapter puts it on display.

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Year 9, Day 72: Jeremiah 19

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Today we continue the pottery themed images in the book of Jeremiah.  In today’s lesson, Jeremiah is to go buy a clay flask.  He is then to go to people and break the flask.  It is to be a sign to the people that like the flask, they are to be broken as well.

There’s a neat dynamic to this story.  My wife does a lesson every year in her classroom that is about archeology.  She has the kids draw on clay pots and then give them to another student.  The class gets to go out and smash them by dropping them.  Then they pick up the pieces they can find and glue them back together.

The cool part of this story is that the kids find most of the big pieces.  Since the pots are drawn upon, they can put them back together in a few class periods.  However, they are never put back together completely.  They can’t find all the small pieces.  They get the big parts.  They even get the small pieces.  But they don’t get every piece.  Even after two or three weeks of walking across the parking lot where they are broken we find small pieces of pottery that were overlooked.  The pots are never completely reassembled.

This is also a message that is near and dear to the western world.  How many of our stories about broken people trying to put their lives together.  How often are we nostalgic back to times in our life when things were simple, together, and whole?  Is this not the point of the Children’s Rhyme Humpty Dumpty?

God is sending a message to Jeremiah.  Their lives are going to be broken.  After they are broken, they will try to put their lives back together.  They’ll try to return to normal.  They will be unsuccessful.  Some will be scattered.  Some will be dead.  Some will be maimed and injured.  Some will be in exile.

The broken flask is a sign to the people that judgment is coming and they’ll never be able to go back to right.  They won’t be able to come through judgment and recover.  Their only option is repentance.  Only God can put them back together again.  Sounds like a lesson Humpty Dumpty could have benefitted from learning, too.

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Year 9, Day 71: Jeremiah 18

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Jeremiah and the potter.  This is a classic story within the scope of the major prophet.  God tells Jeremiah to go and visit the potter.  While he’s there, the potter sees that his creation isn’t working out.  The potter changes course midstream and shapes it into something else.

The plan may change, but there is an important distinction to make.  The plan changes, but the clay is still used.  The plan changes, and the clay is still valued.  It isn’t like the clay is thrown out, discarded, or banished.  The plan simply changes, that’s all.  The clay becomes a different shape than the potter intended.

God says the same thing to the Hebrew people.  They have rebelled, and God changes how he plans to use them.  God doesn’t want to cast them away, He simply wants to reshape them as a people.  All he asks is that they repent. They simply need to come back to Him.  He can still reshape them and use them.  We know, unfortunately, that this doesn’t happen until 70 years of captivity.

Interestingly enough, God’s message isn’t received well.  The people mock Jeremiah.  The plot against him.  They plan evil against him.  The aren’t interested in being God’s clay and they certainly aren’t interested in being reshaped.

Jeremiah hears the muttering and feels the breath coming down his neck.  He turns to God and asks for protection.  In fact, He asks God to uphold him and punish those who plan evil against him.

Remember when God asked Jeremiah to not pray for the people?  Jeremiah now knows why.  Jeremiah understands the heart of the people.  He knows that while he cannot predict the future, he can see into the heart of the people.  They will not repent.  They will not listen.  They will not change.  We end this chapter with Jeremiah asking God to refrain from forgiving the people.

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Year 9, Day 70: Jeremiah 17

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Jeremiah 17 gives great opportunity to compare the heart of mankind.  This chapter poses that there are two different kinds of hearts.  There is the heart that trusts in their fellow human beings.  There is different heart that trusts in God.  Each of us has one of these two hearts.

The heart that trusts in other human beings is to be rather pitied.  God compares this heart to that of a shrub in the desert.  It has to struggle just to eek out some sort of pathetic existence.  It fears the heat.  It fears the drought.  It has no stamina, no hope.  It has nothing enduring in which to be rooted.

On the other hand, the heart that trusts in the Lord is to be envied.  It is like a tree planted by fresh water.  It has nearby water in which it can be rooted.  When heat or drought comes its way, it has a means of enduring hardship.  It has both stamina and hope.  It has everything that endures in which to root itself.

The problem with the human heart, God says in Jeremiah 17:9, is that it is incredibly deceitful.  It has no problem convincing the user that it is the rooted heart instead of the heart that is to be pitied.  The problem, though, is that we are human beings.  We prefer to root ourselves in the people around us, the things we can touch and feel, and the materialism we can amass.  We like to claim we are rooted in God, but unless we are exceptionally diligent we become rooted in ourselves and our own life.

As a test case, God offers one simple test as proof.  He tells Jeremiah that if the people will simply honor the Sabbath that He will spare them.  All they have to do is have a single day each week where life is not a burden.  They simply need a single day each week where they remember God and relish in the company of each other instead of becoming a burden to God and each other.  If they can do that, God will relent.

We know the truth.  The Hebrew people don’t.  They either can’t or they won’t.  Either way, God is right.  The human heart is entirely all-too deceptive.  We like to think we know what right and wrong is and where we stand in the spectrum, but our hearts deceive us.  Only the Lord can search our hearts, and only He knows what lies within.

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