Year 9, Day 68: Jeremiah 15

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Today’s chapter starts right where yesterday’s left off.  Not only did God tell Jeremiah to not longer pray for the people, today God tells Jeremiah that He is tired of relenting!  I cannot imagine hearing the Lord say that He is tired of relenting.  After all, to be tired of relenting means that He grace, love, and mercy are expired.  It must be an awful place to be at the end of God’s grace, love, and mercy!

Then God tells Jeremiah that He doesn’t really care which punishment they choose.  To the people that outright want to die, let them have the sword.  To those who can’t face the sword, they can have pestilence.  To those who don’t want disease, they can hunger.  Those who want none of the above can choose captivity.

The real sorrow in this understanding is that God is telling them that He really doesn’t care how they die.  He doesn’t care if they go away mad, He just wants them to go away!  Jeremiah gives us a great glimpse into the absolute frustration God feels over His people.

In the end, Jeremiah continues to plead.  Jeremiah trusts that a God at the end of Hs rope is still a God of grace, love, and mercy.  Jeremiah asks one more time for mercy, and God shows Jeremiah what is truly at the heart of God.

God tells Jeremiah that even now, if the people repent, that God will have mercy.  He doesn’t say that they will be able to avoid the consequences.  He certainly doesn’t promise that life will go easy on the people.  He merely says that if the people repent, God will restore them.

In fact, we know that God is true to this word.  God does restore them.  After seventy years in captivity under the Babylonians and then the Persians, God allows the people to come back to the Promised Land.  The people do return to the Lord.  In captivity, the people relearn His ways.  In captivity, the people learn to trust in the Lord.  God is true to His word.  It takes captivity to bring it about, but God does restore them when they return to Him.

For me, I think this is the real lesson over the last two chapters.  I can’t imagine being in the place where God tells people not to pray for me.  I can’t imagine being in a place where God doesn’t care how I die.  I can’t imagine being in a place where God says, “Don’t go away mad, just go away.”  But the truth about God is that even when He is in any of those places, He is still open to restoration.  In fact, He wants restoration.  He doesn’t want to be in a place where His people frustrate Him.  He wants to be in a place where His people are a joy to Him.

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