Bible Reading Challenge Blog

We read about the covenant that God made with the people of Israel when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.  We see that mentioned in vs.2-3.  The covenant that God made with the people of Israel was that if they followed his commandments then he would provide for them a land flowing with milk and honey.  He goes on to state that he fulfilled his end of the bargain.  He provided the people of God the land which was Israel and it was the promised land, the land that had been set aside for the people of God, by God.  So God did his part, but the people did not obey God’s commands.  

You read in vs.10 the final verdict: “the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken the covenant that I made with their ancestors.”  God did his part, but the people did not do their part.  As result of the people breaking the covenant God says: “assuredly I am going to bring disaster upon them that they cannot escape.”  He even tells Jeremiah to not even pray for the people.  

Can you imagine that?  Can you imagine that you are a pastor at a church and you are teaching them the way that God has placed upon your heart to teach them, but they don’t follow it and God tells you that they are going to be destroyed and you aren’t able to pray for your flock.  Consider  the pain of Jeremiah in this passage.  What it would mean that he  could not even pray for his family, his church family, as they were being set up to be destroyed because of their unfaithfulness.  Just consider this chapter and how Jeremiah was feeling.  Do you see now why he was called the weeping prophet?

As we continue along with the author predicting the doom that will come, we do find an interest appeal in vs.23ff.  We find the author asking to be corrected.  That doesn’t normally happen, that we ask God to correct us.  But notice that the request is that we be corrected, “In just measure.”  Basically asking as we see in the New Testament the request that we be tested but not “beyond our strength.” I Corinthians 10:13.  This request in Jeremiah is a request that we be corrected but only in just measure.  Basically the request is: Be nice God, please.

But the author continues and asks, also, just in case you were thinking about it, please don’t correct me when you are angry.  Walk away, count to ten, and then come back if you don’t mind.  When I am counseling young couples as they get married and we get to the place where we discuss children and the discipline of children, because if couples re not unified on this then it can cause problems, I always remind them that they should never ever punish a child when they are angry.  It always leads to bad things.  The same request is made of God.  Please don’t punish us when you are angry.  It can lead to bad things.

We find another chapter where Jeremiah prophecies what is to come for the people of Israel.  The beginning is interesting because the speaker states that he wishes that his head were a spring of water.  This would allow him to weep day and night.  How nice it would be to have provided for us the means by which we could express our emotions in a very public way.  What we find described can be a public mourning for events that were cataclysmic to the nation.

It seems as if in vs.4 we have a Soviet era warning which is: “Beware of your neighbors.”  During the time of the Soviet Union people were not able to trust anyone, not their neighbors nor their kin because it would not take much for them to report each other if they suddenly became unhappy with each other for any reason.  Here we find the author saying that society is so corrupt that no one is willing to follow God.  No one.  As a result we find in vs.7: “I will refine and test them.”  

Throughout this entire chapter there is a warning for all those who put trust in their own wisdom, in their own might, in their own wealth, that if they boast, they should boast in the Lord.  God will always act with steadfast love, justice and righteousness.  Those are not the standards that we use to define our actions.

I want you to look at vs.11 where it states: “They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “peace, peace,” when there is no peace.”  The leaders of the day of Jeremiah promoted false optimism in a time of national crisis.  They pretended that everything around them was fine while people were dying and taken off into captivity.  The more things change in history, the more they stay the same.  This same concept is brought up in chapter 6:14 where we see the leaders of the land pretending that everything is fine while society was crumbling around them.  God does not look with favor upon the leaders when that happens.

The people do not see a solution, in fact in vs.15 this is what they say: “We look for peace, but find no good, for a time of healing, but there is terror instead.”  We then hear the words of the famous hymn: “Is there no balm in Gilead?”  That is a rhetorical question which is answered, no, and the Lord has abandoned His people because of their sin.

There are a number of points that I need to bring up in this chapter which are fairly significant. 

1.  In the first verses we see that the temple is still standing and the temple was always considered not only the house of God but also the place where God resided.  So if God is dwelling there, and it would have been in Jerusalem, then we are safe if we go there, no matter what we do and no matter what we think.  Jeremiah says…, well, no, not really.  Look at vs.5-7 and we see the conditions that he sets: if you amend your ways and your doings, and if you truly act justly with one another…then I will dwell with you in this place.  But we see later on, vs.27ff, that the Israelites will not do this so they were destined to be brought low before God. 

2.  We see a verse that should be familiar to us.  Look at vs.11 and it should sound a lot like Matthew 21:13, go ahead and look it up and see if you agree.  We find the words of Jesus as he drives out the money lenders from the temple using eerily similar words that Jeremiah uses to describe the debauchery that was taking place in Jerusalem and in the temple during  his time.

3.  This is probably the most disturbing part of this entire chapter.  It is very clear that there were kings within the reign of God’s people who encouraged and participated in human sacrifices.  Look at vs.30ff and you see that they “go on building the high places (sacrificial altars)…to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire…”  Yeah, that’s pretty disturbing and understandably God was pretty angry about it because, “I did not command, nor did it come into mind.”  While all the other gods in the region were involved in human sacrifice, it had not even entered into the mind of the God of Israel to be involved in such a heinous act.  

It is clear that God is not happy with the people at this time.

We find ourselves in the midst of another long and difficult chapter.  We find the completeness of the destruction that is to come to Zion described consistently by the words: “parents and children together, neighbor and friend shall perish.” vs.21.  The description of what is to come according to  Jeremiah is not piecemeal and does not differentiate between the just and the unjust.  All will fall to the sword that is to come.  Jeremiah tells the people to flee for safety, leave Jerusalem and find refuge in places where your ancestors found refuge: caves, wilderness, forests.

So what can we learn from this?  How are we able to glean anything from these words which obviously are directed at a people who are meeting certain doom?  We do find words  which describe the why this is happening.  Look at vs.13 and following.  We find that everyone is greedy for unjust gain and everyone deals falsely.   They acted shamefully and they committed abomination.

The advice that we are given is seen in vs.16 where we read: “Thus says the Lord, stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.  But they said: “We will not walk in it.”  If we are not going to walk in the way that the Lord lays out for us then we should not be surprised if we find ourselves in the midst of violence, upheaval, division and discord.  These are all fruits of our actions.  For the people of Israel in Jeremiah it was too late.  I hope and I pray that we find ourselves before the point of no return.

Today my heart immediately takes me to what is happening in our nation as I read this 5th chapter in Jeremiah.  Look at vs.12 where you read: “they have spoken falsely of the Lord, and have said, “He will do nothing.  No evil will  come upon us.”  We have lived in a security in this country that is unparalleled in history.  We have not seen a war on our soil in generations, in many generations, and it has lulled us into thinking we are blessed.  We have experienced random and spaced apart attacks on our soil but they have been so sporadic and not on the scale of a war that we feel to a certain extent that we are invincible.

Often that invincibility carries over with it a sense of comfort and expectations that we deserve the good that we receive.  But then the senseless killings and the unrest, and the virus and its continued march (almost 200,000 people have died in our country as a result), shakes us from our slumber of comfort and elicits a protest from our mouths.  But for most of us our protest is exactly as the people in Jeremiah protest.  We ask the question of vs.19: “Why has the Lord our  God done all these things to us?”  God answers, “You have forsaken me.”  Those of us who have not been blessed by nature’s sun don’t understand why people are so upset.  “Can’t we just go back to the way things were?”

I want to shout from the mountain tops the words of vs.30: “An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land.”  As Christians we must recognize that we are like the prophet Jeremiah who is commanded in vs.1 to “run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look around and take note!  Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly and seeks truth.”  It should remind us of Abraham making a deal with God in order to save Sodom and Gomorrah.  Those cities could not be saved.  

I say this not as a doomsayer, but hopefully as a truth teller.  Until we are able to live in a way that is reflective of Matthew 5-7 we will continue to have violence on our streets as we seek a justice that must come from loving God and loving our neighbor.  Unfortunately the evangelical church at this point is satisfied with only loving God and is content in letting the neighbor fend for themselves.  As a result: “An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land.”

This chapter depicts one of the primary reasons why Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet.  You can see in vs. 5 and following the great destruction that is being foretold.  This is all due to the fact that “The fierce anger of the Lord has not turned away from us.” (vs.8)   This anger then would inevitably lead to “disaster overtakes disaster, the whole land is laid waste.”  

In short, the scene that Jeremiah sets is one that the people of Judah, and especially those residing in Jerusalem, need to be aware that the destruction of the land was upon them.  All of this forecasting comes after the first four verses of the chapter where Jeremiah tells the people that if they are able to return to the Lord…Now, returning to the Lord is actually a very simple task.  It simply means taking away and removing the abominations, the temples, the idols that are dotting the landscape and which are a sign of unfaithfulness to God.

If we were to return to God…”then nations shall be blessed by him, and by him they shall boast.”  That is true for us today as well.  If we turn away from those things which we have made idols, such as power, or greed, or the conviction that we are right, then we will be blessed by God.  God withholds His blessings when we seek out our own gain and our advancement, often at the cost of God’s commands.  

This chapter is pretty hard to read.  There is constant talk of Israel being the “whore”, and how the nation allowed itself to be used and sought out lovers from other cultures and those who worshipped other gods.  Just a bit of clarity here.  The terms Israel and Judah need to be defined.  If you were following in the last 90 Day Challenge we were able to see the split of the nation of Israel after the reign of Solomon into two separate kingdoms, the Northern Kingdom, or Israel, and the Southern Kingdom, or Judah.  Judah is where Jerusalem is located so the temple remained in the South.

So when Jeremiah speaks about Judah and how they also were not obedient to God, that is still God’s people, but they are now divided into north and south, Israel and Judah.  Okay, back to Jeremiah and the analogy that he uses of a loose woman.  We need to begin by saying that at least it is offensive and at worst, it is downright incendiary.  But I think it is meant to be.  The graphic language that Jeremiah uses catches the attention of the reader and allows the reader to understand the seriousness of the charges against the nation.  

But notice the transition that we find in vs.12 where we read: “I will not be angry forever.”  But the first step in receiving the grace of God is to: “only acknowledge your guilt.”  That always is a hard step for any of us to admit that we are wrong, that we have hurt our families, that we have hurt our co-workers, that we have hurt our church.  Whatever the group or individual may be that we have sinned against, we have a hard time approaching them and asking for forgiveness, to acknowledge our guilt.  But that has to be the first step.  

Don’t forget the theme that we find in vs.15 and following because it will pop up later as well.  God is going to send shepherds to tend for the flock, for his people.  They will be shepherds after  God’s own heart.  Jesus was a shepherd after God’s own heart.  

Jeremiah gives a basic message to the people of Israel which has been a message to the people of Israel since God created and made covenants with humans.  Look at vs.28 and we see the center of the trouble in which Israel finds itself: “But where are your gods that you have made for yourself?  Let them come, if they can save you, in your time of trouble; for you have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah.”  

We find this complaint when the people of Israel make the golden calf to worship back with Moses.  We see this complaint when Elijah fights against the prophets of Baal.  We see this complaint when Paul is walking in Athens and notes the many gods that were present.  But there is a difference between Paul’s audience and the audience to which Jeremiah is speaking.  Paul is speaking to Greek pagans who always worshipped other gods.  That was their way of being.

Jeremiah, on the other hand, is speaking to Israel whose ancestry worshipped and obeyed the commandments of the God of Israel.  The single, sole, only God of Israel.  Jeremiah speaks out against taking on any of the gods from the surrounding countries such as the Egyptians gods, or the Assyrian gods.  But the history of the people of Israel has been apostasy as he states in vs.19.

While we would never profess to worship other gods, preachers are quick to point out false gods that abide in our lives with whom we certainly spend time.  We spend time with the gods of materialism, wanting to be comfortable and have enough to buy what we want.  We spend time with the gods of safety which sacrifices the risks of relying upon the God of Jesus Christ exclusively, and we lean into the gods of security and safety.  We spend time with the gods of cultural acceptance where even though we know that the God that we worship in Jesus Christ commands us to welcome to stranger, we quickly look to set up walls and flagellate our citizens of color in the name of law and order.  

Those who say they are followers of Jesus Christ tend to have  the best kept secret gods that they hide away and disguise as cultural norms.  We must we aware and listen to the Jeremiahs who remind us that a tree is not our father and a stone did not give us birth (vs.27).  Jesus has claimed us and anything which might take us away from Christ is a god.