Year 6, Day 87: Jeremiah 34

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Bear Fruit

• Bear Fruit: We bear fruit after we grow.  Bearing fruit is ultimately the goal of abiding and the goal of being called into the Kingdom of God.  However, while bearing fruit is our calling, it is not the end.  We bear fruit so that we can then prune, abide, grow, and bear more fruit in another season.  Bearing fruit is not the end, but rather only a portion of the whole rhythm of life into which God has called us.

I felt a little weird picking this topic today.  After all, Jeremiah 34 is about going into captivity under the Babylonian threat.  How on earth can this chapter be about bearing fruit?

The way to bearing fruit starts with God’s mercy.  God sends Jeremiah to the elite in Jerusalem.  He tells them that if they give up their slaves that God will be merciful.  Interestingly enough, they do give up the slaves!  Emancipation abounds!  The people in Jerusalem bear fruit in their relationship with God.  They listen and obey!

Historically speaking, what happens is this.  The Babylonians surround Jerusalem getting ready to take the final steps towards conquest.  The people in Jerusalem emancipate their slaves.  Suddenly, Pharaoh comes out of Egypt – no coincidence in timing, of course – and the Babylonian army has to give up the siege to defend themselves against the Egyptians.

But then they take their slaves back.  They break the emancipation.  They prove that their fruit wasn’t real fruit.

Historically speaking, here is what happens.  When the siege is broken, the Hebrew people realize how much clean-up needs to happen.  They’ve torn their city apart.  The Babylonians left all kinds of debris outside the city.  With so much work to do, the elite decided they needed someone to do it.  They took their slaves back to make them do the work of clean-up.

Unfortunately, we see the dark side of humanity really well in this chapter.  The Hebrew people repent, but why do they repent?  They repent because they want to escape punishment.  The repent because they want to get out of the crummy life they were in.  But their repentance wasn’t because they genuinely wanted to be godly.  They repented because they wanted God to make their life easier.

In God, we are to bear fruit in keeping with our repentance. The problem we see here is that there is no repentance.  The Hebrew people bear fruit in keeping with God’s command, not in keeping with their repentance.  Their fruit isn’t real.  It doesn’t last when the consequences are withdrawn.

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