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104 - JEREMIAH LOVES GOD’S WORD Jeremiah 12-20 July 30

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104 - JEREMIAH LOVES GOD’S WORD Jeremiah 12-20 July 30 104 - JEREMIAH LOVES GOD’S WORD Jeremiah 12-20 July 30 In Jeremiah chapters 12-21, the prophet’s tirade against Judah’s rebellion and wickedness continues. In this entry, which covers three days of reading, discusses HYPOCRISY, VISUAL AIDS, LOVE, COMPASSION, JUDGMENT, AND LOVING GOD’S WORD. Dr. Smith prefaces Chapter 12 with this narration, Perhaps because of this first brush with serious persecution, Jeremiah feels the need to be reassured both of his mission and of God’s support. He is probably both frightened and angry at the thought of what almost happened to him (in chapter 11). For whatever reason, it does seem that chapter 12 begins with the prophet being frustrated with sinners getting away with murder, reminiscent of what Asaph, David’s music director, wrote about in Psalm 73. Jesus quoted Isaiah in Matt 15/Mark 7 about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, but he could have just as easily been quoting this passage, “you are always on their lips but far from their hearts.” God answered Jeremiah, basically telling him that the evil people of Judah who just tried to kill him would reap what they have sown, and that all the surrounding nations who tried to take advantage would as well. Jehovah ended on a positive note, saying that someday, he would once again have compassion on the people. Interestingly, in chapter 13, God gave Jeremiah a tangible sign of the coming destruction – perhaps Jeremiah was feeling a bit like Noah, who preached for years before the flood actually came. The Linen Belt sign was meant to encourage Jeremiah. God uses visual aids with us. What visual aid has God used with you recently? Are you paying attention? God was very serious when he said he would punish his people for their sins. He used very graphic language. I can’t read this chapter without feeling, “Whoa!” If we try to read the bible now only focusing on grace and forgetting to focus just as much on truth (judgement, etc), we are only preaching/living half of the gospel, as it were, and we are in danger of what Paul warned Timothy about – if we don’t watch our life and doctrine, we might not save ourselves! Chapter 14 is filled with more doom and gloom. Here we learn that God caused a drought to come. The people of Judah became desperate. They even prayed, but God told them it was too late. The plants dried up, the animals starved, but God would not change his mind. Jeremiah told God that the other prophets were prophesying that everyone should trust God and that there would be no famine or sword (the opposite of what Jeremiah had been told to say). God had no words of comfort for the false prophets – leaders who were facilitating ungodliness instead of following HIS words. God said that those prophets would themselves die by either famine or sword, and that there would be no one to bury them. How sad. We do our churches no favours when we try to soften the word of God and when we allow impurity and greed to run rife in the name of grace and mercy. Jesus taught us to LOVE THE SINNER but to HATE THE SIN. It is a hard balance, but we are called to do both. Jeremiah finished his conversation with the Creator by begging for mercy and appealing to God’s sense of “covenant”. But God answered (chapter 15) Jeremiah’s appeal for grace with a low blow – “Even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people!” Wow, God was really angry. He attributed the final straw to Manasseh’s sin. There are not many places in the bible where we read God saying, “I can no longer show compassion.” In fact, just typing this makes me cry. I feel so sad. How could God’s people drift so far that God could get to this point? What should we learn from this? Could it be that God will only put up with lukewarmness, worldliness, idolatry and greed for so long? O Sovereign Lord, please lead us and let us learn the lessons from the ancient past and the recent past so that we don’t reach this place of no compassion. In the middle of God’s rant, Jeremiah expressed a bit of self-pity, cause he knew he was so hated!! But God comforted him and told him that one day his enemies would beg him for mercy…Jeremiah continued to focus on his own predicament for a moment, and verse 16 is an upward call to all of us: “When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O LORD God Almighty.” (And God promised to take care of him…) Wow, what a great attitude. Jeremiah loved God’s word so much. This is a beautiful passage. As the psalmist wrote in Psalm 15, “who can stand on God’s holy hill? The one who keeps his oath even when it hurts…” That can mean many things, but it certainly could be applied to preaching the word, even if it hurts! Chapter 16 begins in the opposite way we might think it would…just after Jeremiah has sought reassurance from God, Jehovah told him, “by the way, you can’t marry or have kids…” Oh man, he already sacrificed everything else…now God was telling him he couldn’t even have a family? God also told Jeremiah to not attend funerals or weddings. And when the people asked why God would be so cruel, Jeremiah was to tell them that firstly, their fathers had not obeyed God, and secondly, that the people themselves were even worse than their fathers had been: “But you have behaved more wickedly than your fathers. See how each of you is following the stubbornness of his evil heart instead of obeying me.” God then promised Jeremiah about a remnant in the future….One of the beautiful qualities of God is the ability to see things as they should be…I appreciate that! Perhaps chapter 17 is a better-known section of Jeremiah because of the passages on trusting God and the deceitfulness of man’s hearts. When read in context of chapters 12- 16, and the strong opening section of chapter 17 where God rails against Judah’s love of idolatry, v5-10 pack even more punch!!! I love this part so much I will copy and paste it here: 5 This is what the LORD says: "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD. 6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. 7 "But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. 8 He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." 9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? 10 "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve." The sermon by James Lloyd (delivered in London in the mid-80s) entitled “Are You A Tree or A Bush?” is a classic. It was a truly convicting sermon on the need to take our relationship with God seriously. The sermon used Jeremiah 17 to call us to make sure our prayer times were regular and were helping us to get closer to God, and that our personal bible study was deep and sustaining us in our Christian walk. Very memorable, considering I heard it over 20 years ago! How are you doing in this area? Sometimes I feel more like a dried up Texas tumbleweed than a flourishing tropical bougainvillea… But I know that all it takes is me getting back into my positive routine (not that I want to have “routine” QTs) and I am back on track…Lack of discipline is usually my nemesis… But honestly, our whole Christian life and personal happiness is related to how close we become to God and how much we trust in His promises. We can choose to be a flourishing, flowering, fruitful tree or we can choose to be a withering, weather-beaten bush…as the song said, “If I don’t read my bible, it is nobody’s fault but mine…” In the context of depending on God, no wonder Jeremiah wrote that the heart is deceitful. Our own opinion is often diametrically opposed to God’s point of view…that is why we are supposed to use the bible to guide our thinking, not our own “logic”. The warning here is strong: ignore God’s word at your own peril! God is watching, and there is a judgment day! After this challenging delivery, Jeremiah prayed an interesting prayer – he asked God to make sure that he was vindicated in front of his mockers. How I have often felt that way…and amazingly, God always does bring out the truth. Now, sometimes I was the one in the wrong, and then the other person needed to be vindicated! How wide was my smile, however, either inwardly or on the outside, when I was the one who was vindicated…of course, gloating is also a sin (smile).
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