Year 3, Day 58: Jeremiah 5

Not Even One?

Jeremiah 5 opens with a bit of a scavenger hunt.  God challenges Jeremiah to run through Jerusalem and see if he can find even one faithful person who treats his fellow Hebrew person as God desires.

At first, this story smacks of the conversation that Abraham has with God just prior to the destruction of Sodom.  There Abraham argues God down to find lower and lower number of faithful people within Sodom.  Eventually, only Lot and his daughters are spared.  {See Genesis 18-19}

This situation with Jeremiah is a little different.  In the story in Genesis, God is bringing divine wrath through a divine means in a very imminent fashion and making a point about Gentiles to Abraham.  God chooses to spare Lot, although we all know that Lot had his own fair share of sins.  In Jeremiah 5, God is still making a point about all people – but mostly about His own people.  All people, Hebrew people alike, are sinful.  Not one person is righteous. 

After all, Jeremiah was in Jerusalem himself.  He could have stopped and said, “Hey, Lord, I’m here!  Am I not even one person?”  But Jeremiah doesn’t.  Jeremiah knows God’s point.  Nobody is righteous.  Jeremiah in the Old Testament and Paul in the New Testament know what the picture looks like from God’s perspective.  “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  {Romans 3:23}

Even Among the Leaders?

In verses 4-5 Jeremiah makes a case that he was only able to go and visit the poor and the street people.  He says to God that perhaps there are some among the leadership who are righteous because maybe they know more or have studied more.  But even there he can find nobody.  All have broken their yoke.  All have abandoned God.  As I said earlier, all have sinned and fallen short.  Wealthy, poor, educated, uneducated, leader, follower, Jew, Gentile … all.

Fed to the Full

As we get to Jeremiah 7-9 I think God makes another incredibly true statement to Jeremiah.  When God fed the people to the full – in other words, when He lavishly gave His blessings upon them – they only turned away faster and farther and harder.  When life is easy, we turn aside to the lusts of our hearts even more quickly!  The more we have, the more we want.  The more we have, the more aware we are of what is just out of our grasp.

False Prophets

As we come to the end of this first section, we revisit a recent topic.  The prophets – the leaders! – in Jerusalem are saying that no disaster will come.  Whether they don’t believe in God or don’t believe that God would do anything bad, they are clearly in the wrong.  God is not a type of Santa Clause who waits in the shadows to hand out gifts and blessings.  No.  God is a God who desperately loves, but He understands that true love is willing to chastise and build up His people through tough love as well.  After all, maturity happens through discipline.  Like much of the modern opinion of God, the prophets of Jerusalem have fallen into the problem of thinking that God is only found in the rainbow.  They miss that God is equally in the storm that comes before the rainbow.

Fear the Lord!

As we move deep into the next section, we hear God pronounce judgment upon His people through the words of Jeremiah.  And it isn’t until we get to verse 22 and 24 that we discover the depth of the problem.  The people no longer fear the Lord.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom! {Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 1:7, Proverbs 9:10}  This piece of advice is so important it is said repeated three times in the Old Testament.  Without the fear of the Lord, everything else in the spiritual life crumbles like a house of cards.  In fact, it is precisely the loss of our ability and desire to fear the Lord that brings about the belief that God is only in the good things.  It is when we stop fearing the Lord that we stop also believing in His judgment and His wrath.  When we stop fearing the Lord we stop being able to properly see the errors of our ways.  We become blind to the guilt we bear before our Lord.  When we stop fearing the Lord life becomes all about how great we are.  Our self-monger comes out and we utterly and completely lose perspective.

One Great Question

After talking about the coming judgment and how much the Hebrew people are deserving of that judgment, Jeremiah leaves the Hebrew people {and us} with one incredible question.  What will you do when the end comes?

The false prophets said, “God won’t judge us.”  We know historically that He did.  We know it was a pretty painful process as they spent 70 years in exile.  They weren’t prepared for the end.  God’s judgment came upon them as a surprise.

We will all stand before God.  We will all stand before the Creator of this world and be accountable for our lives.  Will we believe the false prophets of today who say, “God loves everyone, you don’t have anything to fear!”  Or will we learn from the Hebrew people and take the warning of God’s impending judgment upon all of us and take the time we have now to fashion a relationship with Jesus Christ who can rescue us from the grip of death and the judgment of condemnation?  What will you do when the end comes?

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