103 - JEREMIAH’S SCORCHING TAKE ON HYPOCRISY Jeremiah 6-11 July 27
In Jeremiah chapters 6-11, the prophet’s tirade against Judah’s rebellion and wickedness continues. I am using this entry, which covers three days of reading, to discuss some of the PAST ILLS OF OUR FELLOWSHIP OF CHURCHES. If you don’t know what I am talking about, then just praise God and be happy that your congregation is fine and/or that you have become a Christian recently. Feel free to skip this entry if you prefer. However, I believe that these passages, specifically in chapter six, relate to some of the problems of our past, contain some poignant and scary warnings for us now, and hold the key to the way forward in our fellowship of churches. I am putting them in my own order to suit my purposes HA HA WRITER’S PRIVILEGE!
13 "From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. 14 They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace. 15 Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when I punish them," says the LORD.
Wow, if there was ever a scathing rebuke of leaders and the people who are following them, it is here! Now I don’t for a minute think that everyone who was leading in the ICOC was evil, greedy, or deceitful. But I do believe that many of us who were leaders lost our way and stopped doing the things we had loved doing, the things that caused us to go in the ministry in the first place. Worse still, some leaders did become greedy and deceitful. We needed reformation! Praise God for the changes since 2003. (This is not an endorsement of open forums, by the way, which I believe did more harm than good after visiting many congregations that are but a shell of their formal selves.) But Amen to the rooting out of shameful conduct, number crunching, lack of transparency, and all the other unChristlike practices and beliefs that were allowed and sometimes even encouraged! To God, this is shameful and I am fairly sure that is why our upheaval had to be so radical, to make sure we learned the lessons!
10 To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so they cannot hear. The word of the LORD is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it.
Having said all of the above, woe to us if we allow ourselves, because of fear of the past, to feel OFFENDED by the word of God. As mentioned above, our fellowship of churches had an upheaval that was very needed. The faith of many had been very damaged by the wrongful and hurtful practices that were allowed before 2003. However, since then, sweeping reforms HAVE occurred and most of them have been extremely necessary and life-saving! Not surprisingly, most of us also have the feeling that we would NEVER AGAIN go back to the old harmful ways! Amen! However, in many cases, unfortunately, this fear, however justified, has become the predominant “doctrine” at the centre of the decisions made in the church rather than just a helpful warning in the back of our minds. If you fear going back to the old ways, and if this fear is causing you to be lukewarm, neglecting the word of God, please read Jeremiah and decide what you should REALLY fear! Let us never be people who find the word of God offensive, for whatever reason, but let us take pleasure in God’s word, as a refuge from the world.
So if we want to follow God, make Jesus our Lord, and practice New Testament Christianity, where do we go from here? Verse 16 has the answer:
16 This is what the LORD says: "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Jeremiah’s constant plea – go back to the bible! Go to God’s word. Don’t criticise your leaders – become knowledgeable of the bible and help them out. We will have strength in unity, but we must be following the ancient paths to get there. Mike Taliaferro preached a great sermon back in October 2004 to help us in the ministry all shake off our fog and do the job we are paid to do. He warned of the dangers of over-correcting. (He shared about how he was driving and swerved and when he tried to get back on the road, he overcorrected and had a wreck!) He called us to preach courageously about sin and righteousness. He said, “The apostles preached that people should repent, and they had some great training!” After specifically challenging us to preach hard about purity, he facetiously asked, “Isn’t that ‘old school’?” And then he answered himself, “No, it is ‘ancient school’!”
All this and I haven’t even got to chapter seven yet! Good grief…
Chapter 6 ends with a description of how cruel the enemy will be. We can apply that to the open forums of 2003 if we want to, which God perhaps had to use to do the damage needed (I hate that thought, but maybe it is true??? Remember though that just because Babylon or Assyria or the Pharaoh had been used by God to humble and destroy, that didn’t mean that God approved of them either!!) or we can apply that to Satan himself, who is the ultimate in cruel adversaries! However, God expected his “crucible” to purify Judah, and instead, they just ended up becoming “rejected silver”. O God, please help me, in my lifetime, to learn from the hard times, the discipline allowed by you, and become more Christlike because of it!
Chapter 7 (finally!) begins with a condemnation of false religion. We can certainly relate this passage to the down side of the way things were in the “old days”…After the so- called “melt down” of early 2003 in our fellowship of churches, we hosted an all-Asia church leaders gathering in Singapore for whoever wanted to show up! Our goal was to help these folks find a way forward (and ourselves as well). After a time of prayer, worship and scripture reading, my husband, John, did an amazing opening lesson on “Reflection” and encouraged all of us to reflect on the past and learn from it – to remember the good, the bad and the ugly, so to speak. In the afternoon, we had an open session with three large white boards, which were labelled, The Good (what we should keep), The Bad (what we should reject), and What We Should Learn For the Future. Several hours later, with tears, all 70 of us had processed much of the hurt we were feeling and were beginning to see a way forward for ourselves and our churches. We then began to draft a statement of Unity from the Asian churches, containing an affirmation of our core beliefs, our “fundamentals”, and appointed a committee to tweak that document and send it out. All the churches represented were encouraged to facilitate working groups in their home congregations to discuss the flash point issues of the times, and to help their churches mature in a godly fashion. That list of “Rejects” was certainly used by the Singapore church as a guide for our working group presentations, as the staff, the board of trustees, the deacons and the other lay leaders promised to “Reject” unhealthy practices and beliefs, and hold only to the “Fundamentals” in the future. It was a very maturing time for us. Let us not be those who say, “this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord the temple of the Lord” while oppressing others, trusting in deceptive words, and making things safe for those who practice detestable things!!
At the same time, we can also relate chapter seven to those who would water down the gospel, who would bring our fellowship of churches to a place of lukewarmness and sin, just because of a reaction against some of the abuses of yore. Woe be to us if we literally throw the baby out with the bath water! I don’t want my kids to grow up in a church upon which the unquenchable wrath of God will be poured! (see verse 20!) Twenty-nine years ago, when I was baptised, I didn’t sign up to be in a church that was following “the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts… going backward and not forward…” If you are in leadership, or even if you aren’t, and if you feel the congregation is not being serious about practicing the word of God, try preaching like Jeremiah! Sure, he was rejected, but he died with a clear conscience. And thousands of years later we are still inspired!
Chapter 8 has a sad line, “Even the stork in the sky…observes the time of their migration, but my people do not know the requirements of the Lord.” In verse 11, the passage from 6:13 is repeated…only deceitful leaders say, “Peace, Peace when there is no peace.” We must preach the word! We must follow the bible! We must hold to Jesus’ teaching! If you are reading this article, you are probably someone who cares about knowing God’s word, amen?! But what about those around you? Be a light to them…hold out God’s word like a lamp to their feet (to steel from the Psalmist…) and share your biblical convictions with others…start a bible study club at church or even at your workplace…let’s be People of the Book!
Chapter 8 ends on such a sad note…God is weeping a fountain of tears for his people! “Is there no balm in Gilead to cure this sinful sickness?” Praise God, the balm is in Jesus, in his blood, in his church, in his word, and in his people, if we will but apply it!!!!!
Let us not be the “friends” of chapter 9 who deceive with words & weary themselves with sin but let us instead “Speak the truth in love,” so that “we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” (Eph 4:15-16) Amen!
In the rest of chapter nine, God calls on the people of Judah to perfect the art of mourning and lamenting. They have been boasting of their religiosity and of many worldly achievements, but the chapter ends off with one of my all-time favourite passages - a description of “righteous boasting” :
This is what the LORD says: "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches,
but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the LORD.
This can so easily apply to us – we boast (perhaps inwardly if we are too smart to do it outwardly) about our degrees, social status, wealth, fitness level, even skin tone…but God says that there is only one thing to feel good about – our relationship with Him! Remember this when you are tempted to feel smug, or to look down on others, or thinking that church isn’t getting you anywhere!
The chapter ends with God telling his people that he is looking for a circumcision of the heart. We later read about how this happens in Christianity in Colossians 2:11-12:
In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.
God has ALWAYS been about the heart!!
Most of Chapter 10 is a reminder of the inefficacy of idols, much like the one back in Isaiah 44. (See Entry 98). How can we compare the true God with images of wood and stone? And what about today’s modern idols? Read up on the lives of Hollywood stars to see how “effective” money, career, success or beauty are in making people really fulfilled…These days many of Hollywood’s movies are also reflecting this message – several vehicles starring Adam Sandler over the past few years do a fabulous job of exposing the lies of the world and what is really important in life (“Spanglish”, “Click”, and “Reign Over Me”). The remainder of the chapter warns of the coming captivity and ends with a humble prayer, “I know, O Lord, that a man’s life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps.”
Chapter 11 is filled with more hard preaching, against which the people rebel, and they plotted to take Jeremiah’s life. If the members of a congregation or a movement rise up against unrighteous leadership, that is probably a good thing (as long as they act like Christians themselves while doing it!) but when a congregation rises up against a leader for preaching the word, that is sad…and it shows that the church is full of unspiritual people. What does God say to those folks? “I will punish them…Not even a remnant will be left to them, because I will bring disaster on the men of Anathoth in the year of their punishment.” Whew! Let us never be like those guys, but instead let us love the word of God, and godly preaching…so that we never go down that road again!! [email protected]