Year 9, Day 73: Jeremiah 20

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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

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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

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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

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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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Year 9, Day 69: Jeremiah 16

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Once more we hear about the destruction of the Hebrew people and their lands.  The Lord will forsake them.  He has already.  He is actively bringing the Babylonians from their home to the land of Judah.

Once more we hear God speak about why.  There are several main reasons that the Lord gives.  They usually involve something about the people turning away from the Lord, His ways, or the abuse of the defenseless.  Today’s chapter is no different.  The reason that the Lord gives in this chapter is that the people have turned away from Him and are pursuing other Gods.  We know that the Lord calls Himself a jealous God in many places in His Word.  Chapters like this prove it.

The Lord is patient.  He is slow to anger.  He is gracious in His forgiveness.  But when His anger is aroused, He is a jealous God, too.

That being said, God says that He plans on restoring the Hebrew people.  He says that He will no longer be called the God who brought the people out of Egypt.  He will be the God who brought His people out of the countries to the north.  He is the God who brings His people out of Assyria, Babylon, and Persia.

Ultimately, this is what this chapter – and the last chapter – are about.  God is a jealous God for certain.  However, He is a restoring God even more.  He wants to be remembered more for His restoration than His wrath.  He wants to be the God who frees people from oppression, not the God who oppresses.

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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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Year 9, Day 67: Jeremiah 14

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Jeremiah 14 reminds us that God had brought drought and famine upon the land in hopes to get the people to pay attention to their choices and their relationship with Him.  In a nutshell, it didn’t work.  People still sought their own way out of the drought and did not turn to Him.

This leads God to a very haunting piece of advice that He gives to Jeremiah.  He tells Jeremiah to not pray for them or for their welfare.  He tells Jeremiah that although they fast, He will not listen to them.  Instead, He promises to consume them through the sword and through fire.  Judgment is coming and it has crossed the point of no return.

I can’t imagine living in a time when God said to stop praying for a certain group of people.  I can’t imagine being so distant from God that He essentially throws up His hands in exasperation and sees that the only course ahead is destruction.  Yes, I realize that the whole world will get there at some point prior to the return of Christ.  I just can’t imagine getting there.  I am such a firm believer that there is always a possibility for repentance.

That being said, I also have to acknowledge that I see through my rose-colored glasses of hope and not through clear glasses of reality.  I can’t know the future, nor can I know the hearts of people.  I can only live through hope, not reality.  Living in reality is simply depressing.

As a math teacher I get up every day and teach a people whom I hope will care.  On any given day, I know that some will.  I know that others won’t.  I know that some will be able to care every day while others won’t care a single day.  But I teach because I hope that each day will be the day that every student cares.  The reality, though, is that I don’t think I’ve ever had that day happen.  The reality is that there are always those who can’t find it within themselves to care.

It’s true for math, and its true for faith.  There are people who every day will get up and turn their back on God.  It won’t matter how much we pray, cry out, teach, educate, and invite.  There will be people who don’t care.  God sees this righteously and knows the truth.  In this truth, knowing that the uncaring population has grown well beyond the tipping point, God turns and tells Jeremiah to no longer pray for the people.  I can’t imagine living in such a day.

Following this advice, an interesting conversation between Jeremiah and God ensues.  Why is God so convinced that there is no need to pray for the people?  The people have lying prophets who are easing their mind.  The people have prophets who are telling them what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.  When given the choice, people will always listen to what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.  Only a mature person with a proper perspective can chose to hear what they need to hear over what they want to hear.

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Year 9, Day 66: Jeremiah 13

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Today’s chapter begins with the story of the loin cloth.  At first glance, this seems like a completely strange analogy to make.  When we think of a loin cloth, we typically think of underwear.  Who would compare a beloved person to your underwear?

However, think about what a loincloth is.  The loincloth was a personal piece of fabric worn to protect sensitive areas, keep them safe, and keep them clean.  It is a piece of fabric you want to remain clean.  Should it become dirty or ragged, there are all kinds of consequences.  The same is true about the Hebrew people.  God meant for the Hebrew people to be a display of His love to the world.  They were supposed to be the example.  However, by the time Jeremiah is on the scene they are dirty and ragged.  They are causing God to chafe.  They are causing friction.  Instead of being an exemplar, they are detracting from what God is going to do.

What does one do with a loincloth that is ragged and dirty?  What do you do with a loincloth that is beyond needing a simple cleaning?  You do the only thing you can do.  You toss it away and start over with a new one.  That’s God’s point here.  The Hebrew people have become so despoiled that it is time to start over.  The Babylonians come so that He can do just that.  The Babylonians will take away the Hebrew people so that God can pull a faithful remnant out of what remains.

However, we shouldn’t get the wrong idea.  It isn’t as though God is simply going to remove the hedge of protection He put upon them and let the world have its way.  God is going to actively pursue their destruction.  He will measure out their destruction.  He will lift their skirts over their faces.  He doesn’t allow other people to do it, He will do it Himself.  God will strike down the Hebrew people.  The Babylonians will be His sword.

This is a dark chapter, but it is an important one.  God is indeed a loving God.  He can have great mercy upon us.  He can bless us with unthinkable goodness.  However, when we take advantage of Him, when we quit listening to Him, and when we start to chase after other gods He will take measures against us.  Yes, He will warn us and caution us.  He will try to pull us back.  But if we continue to ignore Him and force His hand, He will take vengeance upon us.

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Year 9, Day 65: Jeremiah 12

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Jeremiah 12 is a gut-check chapter for Jeremiah.  He has a complaint.  In fact, he has a list of complaints.  He wonders how it is that an evil people can be allowed to prosper in God’s land.  He wonders how God can watch it happen.  He wonders how evil people can dominate over the righteous ones.  All of these are thoughts that are common among human beings.  I have had these conversations with many people.  I know I am not alone in these thoughts with Jeremiah.

The reason that this is a gut-check chapter is because Jeremiah finally has the courage to take these complaints before God.  As Jeremiah voices his thoughts, though, God seizes the opportunity to respond.  God is more than happy to listen to our complaints.  He is more than happy to give us the freedom to speak our mind.  However, God will also take the opportunity to teach us.  Rather than let us abide in our attempts at understanding, He will show us truth.

The reality is that God is not allowing evil to win.  God is allowing evil to show its true form so that it can be properly judged and punished.  Jeremiah’s problem is that he is only looking at the present and not his future.  There will come a day when evil is judged.  It simply isn’t the day that Jeremiah would have picked!

This leads God to ask Jeremiah a few questions about his character.  If Jeremiah is stressed from living among God’s people, how on earth is he going to handle living in captivity?  If Jeremiah can’t handle the pressure from those like him, how will he handle living among those who are vastly unlike him?

Fortunately, there is a second side to this coin.  We are often hurt by those closest to us.  We are disappointed most when those who should understand don’t.  While living among people who don’t know God has its own difficulty, living among people who should know God but who are rebelling against His ways is difficult in its own way.

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Year 9, Day 64: Jeremiah 11

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Jeremiah 11 doesn’t give us much new information.  The Lord is angry because the people have broken the covenant.  We know this.  The fact that the Assyrians and the Babylonians come into the Promised Land is one of the major points of the prophets.

What does come out of this passage is a reminder of the context.  The people are breaking a covenant that is hundreds of years old.  For those of us in the Western World, understand that the same amount of time between the giving of the covenant and Judah falling to Babylon is roughly the same as from current day and when Richard the Lionhearted was king of England and the Third Crusade took place.  For people who don’t know when that was, it was roughly three hundred years prior to Columbus getting on some boats and sailing west.

Readers of the Old Testament should be careful and not think that this generation of Hebrew people had broken a covenant that had been kept since the time it was given. Remember, even the people to whom it was given were rebellious!  The Hebrew people were constantly cycling between faith and apostasy.  A faithful generation would come along, and that would be followed by several faithless generations that would drag the culture down.  A faithful generation would restore the nation, only to be brought low again by their successors.  Generally speaking, the faithfulness of Jerusalem is like a rollercoaster ride that goes up and down but generally is always getting closer and closer to the ground.

This is powerful to remember.  This shows us the patience of God.  In the midst of the prophets, it is easy to see God as a God of wrath and vengeance.  However, He has been watching this spiral happen for dozens of generations.  He has been patient for almost a millennium.  He has been giving chance after chance after chance.  He has allowed generations to grieve Him, only to hope for a loyal generation to come along and return to Him.  Our God is a patient God who is indeed slow to anger.

However, even His patience is not endless.  There comes a time for judgment.  There is a time for correction.  That time is during the time of Jeremiah as Babylon heads west for Jerusalem.

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Year 9, Day 63: Jeremiah 10

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Jeremiah 10 gives us an opportunity to hear what seems like a ridiculous argument.  In our modern understanding of life, biology, physics, and astronomy we hear things about the ancient culture and wonder how stupid they could have been. After all, how could anyone take a piece of wood, carve it themselves, and then think that it was a god?  How could anyone see a stone and think that it had power over the rain, ground fertility, crop production, or victory in battle?  From our highly educated perspective, it seems hard to believe that anyone could see a god in an inanimate object.

On the other hand, in our modern world, how many of us worship our cars, our bank accounts, our homes, or our jobs?  These are things of our own making, yet we worship them!  Is worshipping our car or our house any different than worshipping some rock or carved figure?  Perhaps we worship our own physique, our strength, or our intelligence.  Is that not also something of our own making?

Fundamentally, here are why all of those things break.  Suppose something is of my own making.  I worship that thing.  How can that thing have more power than me if I made it?  How can it have more wisdom than me if I made it?  How can anything I make – figurine, object, attribute, or possession – actually do anything more than I can do on my own?  If that’s true, then how can it be a god?  If I cannot walk out of my door and change the weather, why would anything of my own making be able to do the same thing?

This is why God is so upset.  He made the world, not us.  We can simply reform what He has given to us.  He deserves our worship.  He deserves to be the center of our focus.

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Year 9, Day 62: Jeremiah 9

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Jeremiah 9 is all about the struggles of the human heart.  What is it we want?  What is it we pursue?  What are the consequences of these choices?

Naturally, the human condition is one of sin.  We don’t do what is right.  We break relationships.  We lie, cheat, steal, and violate trust.  When push comes to shove, all of our hearts have that selfishly black spot that thinks of nobody except ourselves.

This is where we are at most conflict with God.  To put it simply, our hearts can only pursue one master.  We can follow our own desires, of course.  Or, we can follow His.  We can be our own master or we can submit to Him.  It’s a pretty basic choice when you boil it down to that level.

Who is as wise as God?  Who is as powerful as God?  Who is capable of creating like God can?  Who is worth following besides God?  Are our own hearts actually able to lead us as well as God can lead us?

This is why God ends the chapter with a passage on boasting.  Wise people boast in the Lord, not themselves.  Wise men submit to the ways of the Lord.  Wise people realize the joy in doing love, peace, and justice.  When it comes to having a fulfilling life, we’re far better off when we pursue the things of God and not the things that lie within our own heart.

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Year 9, Day 61: Jeremiah 8

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In Jeremiah 8, we hear more words from the Lord about His people.  It is prudent to take the warning of Jeremiah 8:17 seriously.  “Behold,” the Lord says, “I am sending you among serpents and adders and they shall bite you.”  God is promising judgment.  He is promising a judgment from which He will not relent.  It’s one thing to see a snake.  It’s another to come in contact with it.  It’s still another thing to hold it.  The experience isn’t really bad, though, until it bites you.  That’s God’s point.  The time for warning and pleading is past.  Judgment comes, and it will hurt.

What is the offense?  Interestingly enough, it isn’t correct to say that it is their sin.  Of course, God is offended by their sin.  Sin breaks relationships.  But God isn’t railing on in this passage about the Hebrew people’s sinfulness.  He does that in other chapters, but not so much in this one.  In this chapter, God is offended by the fat that they won’t repent.

God knows that human beings sin.  He knows we are not going to be perfect.  Once we bite into the fruit of sin and taste it, we can’t help but continue to eat from it.  God knows this fact.  It is why He sends us a savior.

What God can expect us to do, though, is to repent.  He can expect us to see the error of our ways, recognize how the sin hurt us, and stop.  He can expect us to resist the sin.  God is offended that the Hebrew people aren’t repenting from their sin.

Perhaps even worse, the Hebrew people don’t even know how to blush from their sin.  The people don’t see it as wrong!  The people aren’t shamed – or even capable of being shamed.  This is how God knows that it is time to deal with the people harshly.  The fact that they cannot even be shamed means that it is time for the Hebrew people to not just see the snake but to be bitten by it.  God brings judgment down not so much because of their sin but because of their inability to be shamed by it.

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Year 9, Day 60: Jeremiah 7

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Jeremiah continues the case against the Hebrew people.  Once more we hear that the people are stealing, murdering, committing adultery, giving false testimony, and chasing after other gods.  It’s a veritable laundry list of typical human behavior.  People are making decisions with their own desires at heart and their own interests in mind.

God tells the people through Jeremiah that the people need to reform.  They need to start doing justice, stop oppressing the sojourner, care for the orphan and widow, cease shedding innocent blood, and stop pursuing other gods.  In other words, they need to stop thinking of themselves first and start caring about the needs of others before their own.  If they do this, then God will relent and allow them to continue in the land.  Of course, we know that they don’t.  The people go into exile because they can’t part with their own self-centeredness.

There’s another dynamic in this chapter worth recognizing.  God spends time focusing in on His holy temple.  He knows that the people are saying that God won’t let Jerusalem fall because this is the home of God’s temple.  How could God possibly let foreigners march all over the place where He dwells?

God is quick to refute this thinking.  What is a manmade temple to Him?  Is not the whole earth His footstool?  In fact, God reminds the people of Shiloh.  Shiloh is the place where the tabernacle resided when the Hebrew people overtook the Promised Land – prior to the David lineage building the temple in Jerusalem.  After the time of Eli the priest, the Philistines likely come and destroy Shiloh.  Here was the place of the tabernacle of God resided, yet it was now in ruins.  If God allowed that to happen once, is it so hard to believe that it could happen again?

The truth is that a place is nothing to God.  God can come and go to any place of the earth.  He can use everything and anything He wants.  He does not hold the kind of attachments to locales that we as human beings do.  He is holy in Shiloh.  He is holy in Jerusalem.  He is holy wherever He wants to work.  There is no place that is so holy that God is willing to allow any amount of desecration.  God cares more about our hearts and our desire to do His will than the personal reputation of any geographic point.

Does God spare Jerusalem?  No.  In fact, even after the Hebrew people return the Greeks come in after the Persians and take it away.  The Romans come after them.  After Jesus, Jerusalem becomes a place of struggle between the Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  That struggle continues even to this day.  That alone should warn us that God cares more about our hearts than our location.

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Year 9, Day 59: Jeremiah 6

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There are three distinct messages in this chapter.  The first message is that the Lord wants the Hebrew people to know that He is not happy.  He is angry enough to bring judgment against His own people.  He knows that they won’t listen to reason so He has to teach the lesson the hard way.  God is not ashamed to use tough love.  Like most beings, God would rather accomplish love the easy and productive way, but tough love as a last resort is also a tool in God’s toolbox.

What is it that the Hebrew people have done?  This is a question often answered in the prophets.  They won’t listen to the prophets.  They won’t admit there is a problem, much less admit they.  They don’t even feel shame when they are sinning!  In fact, it’s gotten to the point that God finds their offerings detestable. 

This is a great point to learn.  So often we think that we can appease God by doing certain things.  We go to church every Sunday.  We pray at meals.  We wear a cross.  We put a Bible on our shelf.  But do our actions mean anything if the heart isn’t there to support it?  Do our actions earn anything if we have no meaningful relationship with God?  Do our outward appearances have any kind of lasting impact if we don’t have the inner spirit longing to be obedient to the ways of God?

To answer this question for the Hebrew people, God sets up Jeremiah as a litmus test.  God puts Jeremiah into the midst of the people to be the mirror that reflects the behavior of the people back at them.  He is to be the voice of reason among them, illustrating their error.  Jeremiah isn’t called to be the popular one, or the smart one, or the powerful one.  Jeremiah is called to be the voice of reason and the voice of truth.  It isn’t a role that is coveted or popular.  It is a role that is necessary and mature in the midst of a deaf and rebellious people.

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Year 9, Day 58: Jeremiah 5

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The Lord continues to give His case against the Hebrew people as we march through Jeremiah.  Much as we saw in Isaiah, the front of the book of Jeremiah focuses on the trouble in the land.  Before God gets to the judgment and consequences, He wants to talk about what’s wrong.  After all, you can’t fix what’s wrong if you never identify it. 

That is a key understanding in the prophets.  It is easy to feel like the prophets are simply going off on the people and wailing complaints against them.  They can come across pessimistic, angry, bitter, and uncompassionate.  They aren’t looking to humiliate the people or to show them as worthless.  The point of the prophets is that you can’t fix what you don’t recognize as broken!  The prophets are pointing out the issues of humanity so that we can try to work against our flaws and faults.  The reality is that since we don’t want to see our flaws and faults, we perceive them as angry, bitter, and spiteful communicators that have nothing positive to saw.

What is wrong with the people, then?  Today, God focuses in on the self-centeredness of the people.  The Hebrew people are ignoring righteousness and justice.  They aren’t standing up for the rights of the poor.  They aren’t standing up for the orphans or the widows.  They are blessed beyond measure and they are hording their blessings instead of sharing.  Because they are blessed, they are assuming that they are invincible; God won’t punish them, surely.  God proclaims them as hard of hearts, blind in the eyes, and deaf in the ears. 

This isn’t the last word with God, though.  While this chapter is predominantly judgment, there are a few voices of grace.  God tells the people that even in the midst of their judgment He won’t destroy them completely.  He tells them that should they return to Him He will receive them once again.  He informs them that when they mature and ask why judgment has come upon them, God will be there to present them with the truth of their rebellion.  God may loathe their behavior, but He does not loathe the people.  Even in the midst of impending judgment He has left the door open for the future.

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Year 9, Day 57: Jeremiah 4

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Jeremiah gives another warning.  It is always amazing to hear a prophet speak about the wrath of God.  They pull no punches; they do not stop when it is uncomfortable.  They speak truth as it is, not as humanity can tolerate.

Do you hear Jeremiah’s words?  The whole land is laid waste.  The cities are laid up in ruins.  The land is desolation.  The cities will be forsaken.  The anguish of Judah will go forth as a woman in labor.  It will be as though in the presence of murderers.

Sometimes I think human beings simply don’t get it.  If the Lord wants to bring destruction, He can do it!  He can burn up a city with fire from the sky.  He can send plagues upon a nation.  He can lead a nation into bondage.  However the Lord wishes to bring about punishment, He can do it!  How will want stand against Him should He desire to bring us to our knees – or worse?

This illustrates the importance of the earlier verses in this chapter.  Jeremiah calls the people to repentance.  He asks them to turn from their sinfulness.  Jeremiah knows that this is the only effective weapon in our arsenal.  The only thing we can do in the face of God’s wrath is to repent and hope that He relents!

Of course, repentance is really what God is after.  It isn’t like our repentance tricks God into forgetting our wrongdoing.  When we repent, we demonstrate to God that we have gotten the message.  We show Him that we understand.  This is all God asks of us.   That’s why He respects repentance so much.  This is why Jeremiah encourages repentance.  It isn’t that Jeremiah wants to appease God, it is because Jeremiah knows that repentance is the very thing that God is after!

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Year 9, Day 56: Jeremiah 3

Theological Commentary: Click Here

There are three neat dynamics in this chapter.  First, we experience a great theme throughout many of the prophets, both major and minor.  God compares faithlessness to marital infidelity.  Essentially, God is saying that when we turn away from Him and out our trust in false gods, it is like a person turning away from their spouse and finding greater pleasure in another person.  Just as the rightful spouse is supplanted by an illegitimate lover, so too is God supplanted by an illegitimate god.

As easy as this concept is to understand, it is quite hard to appreciate and live out.  Human beings are all the time supplanting God.  Our hearts go to many different kinds of things instead of God.  Even good things take the place of God because they become the focus.  We love to invent all kind of ways to bring joy, peace, power, love, and other similar feelings into our life.  We love to ignore that God is the true lasting source of all of these things.

Perhaps even worse, even when we know this reality we cannot stop ourselves.  God is more harsh in His judgment against Judah than against Israel.  Yes, Israel was the first to rebel.  They were also the first to go int exile!  Judah had the benefit of seeing what happened to Israel when they went into captivity under Assyria!  They even had the benefit of seeing God’s mighty hand of power when He turned the Assyrian army around at the very gates of Jerusalem.  Yet, they did not learn the lesson.  They, too, fell into falsehood.  They, too, pursued other gods and profaned the relationship that they have with God.

Thank the Lord that this second truth is not the last truth in this chapter.  The third truth is the greatest one.  God is a forgiving God.  He will hand out consequences, surely.  However, there is forgiveness.  There is peace.  There is restoration.  All we need to do is to realize what we have done and return to Him.  He will always accept us back.  There is no sin that repentance and forgiveness cannot erase so long as the repentance and forgiveness is legitimately expressed.  God will restore both Israel and Judah.  He can restore us, too.

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Year 9, Day 55: Jeremiah 2

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Jeremiah first focuses on the complaint from the Lord.  He asks the important questions right up front in the very beginning.  What fault did the preceding generations find with God?  When reading  bit more closely, we realize that God is not actually believing that others found fault in Him.  God is not looking for the mysterious chink in His proverbial armor.  God is asking the Hebrew people why they have stopped being in relationship with Him.

God rescued the Hebrew people out of Egypt. From that moment, the relationship with the Hebrew people has always gone in cycles.  The people would fall away until God raised up a judge to save them.  Then there were the kings.  The faith was strong with David as king, and it waned until Josiah was king.  Then it was strong for awhile before waning until Hezekiah was king.  Then the people went into captivity.  What we see are cycles of faith and unfaith.

This should be able to teach us two things about humanity and our relationship with God.  First, people will naturally fall out of relationship with God.  We are inherently self-interested and self-serving; therefore, we will seek our own ways instead of God.  This is why we need the faith of the previous generations to speak into our lives.  The faith of the prior generations helps to correct us when in our youth we stray after our own desires.  Jeremiah recognizes this, which is why God asks what fault the fathers of the current generation found in Him.  God knows that the contemporaries of Jeremiah are straying because the generations ahead of them are not grounded in Him.

The second thing that we can learn about this chapter is that it takes a serious event to correct a people when they fall away from faith.  In the Hebrew people’s past, it takes a war.  Outside threats of domination bring people into a realization of how much they need their relationship with God.  It is when the Hebrew people are struggling against Egypt, or Syria, or Assyria, or Babylon that they ultimately turn back to God in earnest.

Learn the lesson.  We keep the faith because of the wisdom of the generations that come before us.  When that wisdom has evaporated and is no longer present, then it usually take a large event like a war to force people to recognize the gaping hole in their life that they can otherwise ignore.

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Year 9, Day 54: Jeremiah 1

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Today begins another major prophet.  Jeremiah deals with the same overarching issue with which Isaiah dealt.  The Hebrew people are falling away from God and judgment is coming.  Unlike Isaiah, whose writing spanned the fall of both kingdoms and even looked into restoration, Jeremiah will have a narrower focus.  Jeremiah tends to look at Jerusalem specifically, occasionally speaking to Judah generically, and deals more with the specifics of rebellion.

Unlike Isaiah, who gives us prophecy for several chapters before we hear his call, the call of Jeremiah begins this book.  It is the first thing we hear about after his introduction.  What makes the call of Jeremiah neat is that we can hear God’s plan for Jeremiah from the very beginning.  God intended Jeremiah to be a voice into the world.

It’s also neat to realize what isn’t said.  The book doesn’t talk about all the mistakes Jeremiah made along the way.  It doesn’t talk about the many things Jeremiah tried and did trying to figure himself out.  It doesn’t speak about his sinfulness, which we know had to be present, or his greatness, which we know shouldn’t be the focus anyways.  What we hear is God’s plan to use an imperfect human without focusing on the imperfection at all.  God is willing to use us, warts and all, if we are willing to listen.

We do hear about Jeremiah’s doubt, though.  His sinfulness is irrelevant to God’s ability to use him, but his internal doubt is important.  His sin cannot stop God, but Jeremiah’s doubt could stop Jeremiah from listening to God.  So often we get hung up on our past, our mistakes, our bad choices, and our sin.  God has dealt with our sin.  Our greatest threat to God working through us is our internal doubt and how easily we can convince ourselves that we cannot succeed.

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Year 9, Day 53: Philemon

Theological Commentary: Click Here

People often write and speak about Philemon in terms of slaves and masters.  I’ve done so in the past, it is part of what the book is about.  People also write and talk about Philemon in terms of how to write a letter that effects change in others.  I’ve also done that in the past.  It is a part of what this letter is about.  Today, though, I’m going to look at a different angle.

Philemon is also about relationships.  It is about how we lead.  There are many great sayings about leadership.  One such saying is that if a leader has nobody following, then the leader is simply a radical outlier and not a leader at all.  Another such saying is that all leaders must chose if they wish to lead through compulsion or through character.  I think both of these sayings are pertinent to Paul’s letter to Philemon about his slave Onesimus.

Paul tells Philemon that he has been working with Onesimus, a slave that belongs to Philemon but who has run away.  In working with Onesimus, Paul has convinced him to return to Philemon and return to the role in life that has been given to him.  Paul isn’t telling Onesimus to subject himself to utter slavery.  What Paul is doing is asking Philemon to examine his leadership style.  If he has been claiming to belong to Christ, yet his slaves won’t follow him, is he really being a leader in the church?  If his own slaves would rather run from him than submit to him, what kind of a leader is he?  Isn’t he simply an outlier, proclaiming belief in one thing but unable to get anyone to really follow?

Along with this question comes the question of character.  Anyone with enough power can lead through compulsion.  If you hold enough of the cards in people’s lives (their paycheck, their land, their livelihood, etc) you can compel them to act a certain way.  No person enjoys being led by compulsion, however.  It is better to lead by character.  It is better to invite people into relationship and show them why following you is better than the alternative.  True leaders lead because they have willing participants, not compulsive ones.

In the end, Paul raises an important question for Philemon to ponder as Onesimus is returned to him.  What kind of a leader is he?  What does his record indicate about those who follow him – or in this case, don’t?  Does he lead by willing example or through domination?

Most importantly, what is the example we see in Christ?

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Year 9, Day 52: Titus 2-3

Theological Commentary: Click Here

As Paul continues his letter to Titus, he looks more closely at the behavior of those who are in Christ.  Before getting to the behaviors, it is important to understand the perspective of Paul. Why is it that he asserts the behavior that he asserts?

Paul teaches, as Christ taught before him, that we are saved by the grace of God.  It has nothing to do with our greatness or our earning salvation.  We do not impress God with our accomplishments.  He wants relationship with us, so He provided a way for that to happen.  We are solely in a position of receptor, not at all in a position of deserving earner.

Because of this understanding, Paul teaches the followers of Christ to be humble.  We are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, and steadfast.  We are to teach the next generation to be the same.  We are not to be braggarts, or entitled, or people who make demands on others.  As people who receive grace, we are to pass along the same grace to others. 

It is God who is great. It is God who is generous.  It is God who deserves the praise and the glory.  It is God who deserves the focus.

Yes, occasionally we do something cool.  Occasionally we take a leap in understand that is worth acknowledgment.  What is important is not that we’ve done something amazing, though.  After all, what can we do that God has not already done or understood?  We acknowledge our growth, not our accomplishments.  We acknowledge God’s power behind our growth, drawing us closer and closer to Him, Hs ways, and His power.

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