Month: August 2018

God placed the judgment and correction of His people before the honor of His name. The defeat and destruction of His people would sacrifice His reputation in the eyes of His people and the people of every nation. He judged them anyway. That is no different than the apparent defeat when God’s Son hung on the cross, and when He died a criminal’s death and was buried to end all hope of salvation through Him. It only looked like defeat.

King Zedekiah didn’t believe that God would judge him even after Jeremiah explicitly told him that God would indeed judge him and the entire nation. He thought that because he had escaped deportation two earlier times, he was favored enough to avoid judgment completely. His fate seems horrible: the last thing he saw before the Babylonians put his eyes out was his loved ones slaughtered. You can bet they didn’t use anything to dull the pain when they put his eyes out, either. He marched to Babylon in shackles with those wounds fresh. He had been mistaken about knowing God’s mind. He was ridiculously obtuse in his refusal to believe; can you believe his asking Jeremiah to pray to God on his behalf? Do you know anyone so obtuse about the truth of God’s word? Do you know anyone who is so convinced that he knows God’s mind that he believes God won’t do what He says He will do? Such people won’t escape judgment, any more than Zedekiah did.

Others believed Jeremiah’s warnings, but not enough to act on them. Such belief amounted to disbelief, for the results it produced.

These examples are warnings for us, according to I Corinthians 10:11 and 12. So if we think we are standing firm, we’d better be careful so that we don’t fall.

Even in the last few years before the first deportation to Babylon, God gave Judah the opportunity to repent. He sent Jeremiah’s scribe Baruch on a risky mission to warn the people, giving them yet another chance to turn back to God in repentance and humility, and be forgiven. The effort gained nothing and put Jeremiah’s and Baruch’s lives in jeopardy. That was hard on God’s two servants, to be put at risk for the possibility that their people might be saved. It’s not that He cared nothing for Jeremiah’s and Baruch’s lives, but that He cared so very much about the spiritual welfare of His people. He risked even more in sending Messiah to earth to suffer in death. Does God’s practice with His Old Testament people and His servants have any implications for your life?

God speaks further in these chapters about His plan to effect His people’s salvation from sin, and what that looks like. You may wonder what buying and selling land has to do with salvation. It speaks of transformation and hope. Think of the transformation of the land if it goes from a desolate, uninhabited and likely uninhabitable waste, to land that people want to buy. Buying and selling speaks of commerce, improvement, activity, life. Have you had seasons of life where you felt like a desolate waste? Perhaps you’re there now. That’s the effect of sin – not necessarily your own sin, but the effect of living in a sin-cursed world where such things happen. But that was never God’s design for us, and He doesn’t want that to be our end. Instead, He wants the desolate places rebuilt, bringing Him renown, joy, praise, and honor. That is quite a transformation. He wants salvation to make the same kind of dramatic change in your life. Would you call your life more a desolate waste or something built up for God’s renown, joy, praise and honor? If it’s the former, you are not living out the salvation God has provided for you.

As you read these chapters, contemplate the descriptions of restoration and what God is saying about what He wants to do for you. Consider how the salvation you’re experiencing measures up to the salvation He wants to give you. If it needs to look better, please don’t wait to confess that to God and ask Him to do the necessary transformation in you. Then trust Him to do it.

In any case, we all owe praise and thanks to God for His great salvation.

God’s message of restoration for His Old Testament people is vitally important to us. We shouldn’t read it with half-hearted attention, or we will miss precious truths that God has preserved for us.

The first precious truth in this passage is that God is a saving God. But before we can appreciate that, we must understand how desperately His people need a Savior. In verses 30:12-13 He tells His people, “Your wound is incurable, your injury beyond healing. There is no one to plead your cause, no remedy for your sore, no healing for you.” That wound is sin; sin’s effects leave us damaged. Think of the worst wound you have seen; I think of my daughter’s knees the summer she scraped off several layers of skin and they oozed pus for weeks. While I treated those wounds my stomach did weird and uncomfortable things. About the time the pus dried up, she fell again and the pus oozed again. Those wounds seemed incurable. We are all in that position, wounded by sin, suffering incurable wounds that have marred the beautiful creatures God made us to be. Further, “There is no one to plead your cause, no remedy for your sore, no healing for you.” We are hopeless in our wounded state. But in verse 17 God says, “I will restore you to health and heal your wounds.”

How will God do that, when every time God rescued them they proceeded to neglect Him, then forget Him, and they broke their covenant with Him? He planned a new covenant that He would make with them. (This is really important, because we are New Covenant people!) This time God would “put (His) law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” The terms of this covenant are that God would do a transforming work in their hearts and minds so that they would truly be His people and know Him in the way He wants to be known, the way He created them (and us!) to be known.

As you read through these chapters, make note of what God’s salvation looks like. Some quick snatches from these passages that might help you get started are:

• Freedom from bonds and enslavement.
• Peace and security,
• Freedom from fear
• Healing
• Rebuilding

What needs healed in you? What needs rebuilt in your life? Can you appreciate the blessings of peace and security and freedom from fear in this unstable world? This is a picture of the salvation God offers you, to be enjoyed now. If perhaps the healing isn’t the physical healing for which you hope, or the peace and security don’t equate to material abundance, don’t disdain God’s salvation as a lie; rather, use your questions to draw closer to God. Entrust Him with your honest confessions, ask Him to give you the salvation He longs to give you, and choose to trust that He will do it. Doubtless, the salvation He gives you will prove far superior to what we could even think to ask Him.

Everyone wants to claim Jeremiah 29:11 as a promise from God, because we all like the idea that God wants to bless us with prosperity. I challenge such claimants to examine the context of that verse to determine whether they can rightly claim it as God’s promise of prosperity. What do you think – can you rightly claim it as God’s promise to you? In case you need some guidance on that, let me ask some helpful questions. To whom was the promise given? Are you included in the group of recipients?

Although the promise clearly isn’t given to us, but to a specific group of God’s Old Testament people, we can still cherish it because it gives us precious insight into God’s character. The recipients of the promise, the exiles to Babylon, were not living in the place of God’s promise. They had been sent away by God in judgment for their sin, suffering the consequences of their breaking their covenant with God. According to the terms of that covenant, they had no reason to expect God to continue pursuing a special relationship with them now that the covenant was so broken that He had to send them away from the Promised Land. But God wasn’t finished with them. He had given them hope for another chance after seventy years of exile. But in the meantime, He didn’t intend for their exile to be utter misery; no, in that place of exile He wanted to give them hope and prosperity.

Another feature of this promise that we shouldn’t miss is the nature of the prosperity with which He intended to bless them. Ultimately it wasn’t about material prosperity, as we generally think of prosperity, but about relationship with Him and restoration to the place of living in His promises.

His phrasing when He said that He will be found by them, indicates that He wants to be found by them. Even though God had to exile them, even though they were not living in the place of His promise, God wanted to have relationship with them. Nevertheless, as eager as He was for relationship with them, it would only happen if they sought Him with all of their hearts. They had to really want to find Him.

So what application can we draw from this promise for our lives? We can understand that God wants to see His people prosper, not suffer harm. While we New Testament people are not given the same promises as God’s Old Testament people, we understand that it isn’t because He wants to see His New Testament people suffer. He wants to bless us with prosperity even though He doesn’t give us those promises. We can also see that His idea of prosperity isn’t necessarily the same as ours; while we think primarily of material prosperity, He thinks first of relationship with Him. And even though He wants us to prosper, the kind of prosperity He most wants to give us is conditional upon our seeking Him. So He gives no promise to the one who wants the gifts and not the Giver.

There are some important prophecies in today’s reading that we shouldn’t miss. But first, let’s make sure we’re fully aware of the historical context of these prophecies. The northern kingdom of the split nation of Israel, which retained the name Israel, had been carried into exile by Assyria and ceased to exist as a nation. The southern kingdom, Judah, had miraculously escaped deportation by the Assyrians, then by another miracle the world-dominant Assyrians were destroyed by the Babylonians. The Babylonians took over the vast empire built by the Assyrians, and sought to expand it. God used their aspirations to judge Judah. The exile to Babylon that He foretold happened in three waves: the first ended the reign of Josiah’s son Jehoiakim with deportation to Babylon. The second ended the short reign of Jehoiakim’s son Jehoiachin in the same way. In both of these deportations, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar carried away the leading people of the land, some of whom we’ll read more about, and their treasures. He placed Judah’s last king on the throne, expecting him to be his puppet. This was King Zedekiah. Jeremiah lived and prophesied through all of this and beyond. Chapter 24 places the first important prophecy of today’s reading at this point in Judah’s history.

Understand the situation of the exiles. They clearly had suffered God’s punishment. Think about what God had told them in Deuteronomy: exile was the ultimate judgment, and there was no hope of correction at that point. They believed they had been forsaken by God because exile meant the covenant between God and Israel was broken. They were living outside the place of God’s promise. Exiles and remnant both believed that those still living in the Promised Land had not been rejected by God and thus were the favored ones. They thought that the remnant were superior to their exiled brothers who were obviously more sinful and deserving of punishment. The people who had not been carried away were still living in the Promised Land, still possessed their inheritance, still enjoyed God’s presence in their midst. They believed that God would be with them forever and allow them to retain the land because of His promise to Abraham, no matter what they did. The remnant grew more corrupt in their pride and security, contrary to God’s intention that they would be corrected and would humble themselves and seek Him.

The first important prophecy in today’s reading was introduced in yesterday’s reading: the incredible pronouncement that God would be with not the people who remained in the land after the exile, but with those who were carried away into exile. That situation was counter to the people’s and their leaders’ expectations. That God would be with the punished exiles instead of the favored remnant was startling both to the remnant and to the exiles themselves, who feared that God was done with them. Contemplate God’s mysterious ways revealed in this startling plan. We’d better never think that we have God’s higher ways and thoughts figured out. We’d better never grow prideful thinking that we are God’s chosen remnant and all others have been forsaken; that prideful state leaves us deserving of God’s judgment and too corrupted to be able to discern our rejected standing before God.

The second important prophecy in today’s reading is that God intended the exile to last seventy years. He doesn’t always make such clear pronouncements in prophecy. We can measure that one to see how reliable God’s prophecy was.  History will prove it to be accurate.

Imagine how the remnant and the exiles received these prophecies. The former wouldn’t hear them; they were deaf in their pride, comfort and security. Some of the humbled exiles would find the prophecies too incredible to believe – could God really be that forgiving and merciful?! Others would cling to them in hope. If God’s Old Testament people are examples to us of what all mankind is like – indeed, what we are like, which group are you most like?

We may get rather bored with the repetition in Jeremiah, for sometimes it seems like the many words don’t say anything new. Jeremiah’s original audience felt the same way, and got tired of hearing it. His friends became his enemies. The prophet himself felt deceived, that God would foretell destruction and foretell destruction that never came about. One wonders why God would sort of discredit His word by foretelling disaster so long before He actually brought it about.

The account of King Zedekiah gives us one reason. Jeremiah had been prophesying openly, foretelling destruction like a broken record, gaining many enemies in high places and a bad reputation, when Zedekiah sent for him to inquire of the Lord about the looming threat from Babylon. If he had heard the message Jeremiah preached, he should have humbled himself and led the nation in doing the same; however, he acted as if he had not heard a word Jeremiah had said. “Perhaps the Lord will deal with us according to all his wonderful deeds and will make (the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar) withdraw from us,” was his hope. If the king, the leader of the people, didn’t get the message, not many would.

This seems incredibly obtuse, but it is what God meant when He spoke to many of the prophets about people who had ears to hear but didn’t hear, and had eyes to see but failed to see. He called them the deaf and the blind. People are no different today. The example of God’s Old Testament people challenges us to examine ourselves: do we hear God any better than they did? Are we hearing only what we want to hear from Him, or are we hearing what He wants us to hear? How do we know if we are hearing Him, or are only thinking we hear Him when we are truly putting our words in His mouth? He alone can tell us, but will only do so if we are seeking Him. How would a true seeker respond to the challenge presented in today’s reading?

Jeremiah changes voice abruptly and skips around a lot. In many cases that change in voice is not indicated; we simply have to discern from the clues that a change of speaker has taken place – and then go back and read that part again from where the speaker changed. This book is not easy reading! So if you are struggling to follow it, there is a good reason. I encourage you to go back and read passages whenever you grasp the fact that there is a change of speaker halfway through it, and who that speaker is.

Since Jeremiah ministered during the last forty years of Judah’s existence as a nation, he obviously has much to say about upcoming judgment and God’s reasons for it. Jeremiah seems caught in the middle between God and his people. He’s sometimes appalled at the people’s sin and sometimes appalled at God’s harsh judgment. He is the perfect person to be the intercessor. What will an intercessor ask for? Mercy! Help! This is where we see Messiah in the book.

Look what Jeremiah has the nerve to ask in chapter 14: “Although our sins testify against us, O Lord, do something for the sake of your name. For our backsliding is great; we have sinned against you. O Hope of Israel, its Savior in times of distress….” Jeremiah is also a very emotional man. (Don’t think that he’s girly for that; people of that ancient Near Eastern culture didn’t hold back their emotions.) He felt Judah’s pain acutely, and his deeply-felt emotions made him cry out on their behalf. As grieved as he was, he understood that there was no justification for their behavior, and not nearly enough good in them to outweigh the bad. There was nothing to plead on their behalf but God’s mercy and help. That’s the place where any human being needs to be: helpless, hoping only in God.

Think about that and offer praise to God. In our hopelessly sinful state, God is approachable. He’s beyond approachable – He’s our hope, hope for salvation from sin and healing from sin’s wounds. Do you grasp how important hope is to us? We may have the luxury of taking that for granted, and thus don’t value it as we should. I encourage you to offer God thanks and praise now for His help for us and the hope He offers us.