Jeremiah 18:1-23.  In verses 1-17 God continues to warn the people of Judah about the trouble he is going to send their way.  God uses a familiar example to help the people understand what he is doing, why, and how they might avoid the trouble; it is the example of a potter making an object out of clay on a pottery wheel.

The wheel was a sort of table that the potter could spin around in a circle with a lump of clay on it.  The potter would then use his hands to form cylindrical object like a cup, vase, or bowl.  Sometimes as the potter was forming the spinning object it would get messed up and he would push it down and form something else.  The clay belonged to the potter and it was up to him what he did with it.  God uses this example to inform the people of Judah that he has the same sort of right over them.  The Jewish people had been chosen by God for a special mission; he wanted them to be an example to the nations around them of what He would do for the people.  In order for the world to understand God through the Jewish people they needed to live only for him and honor him with their lives.  If they obeyed God then he would take care of them and the world would learn about God’s care, but if they disobeyed him then he would have to punish them so the world would see that God is pure and has certain standards.  As we saw in an earlier post God made it very clear to the Israelites that there were rewards for obedience and there would be punishment for disobedience.

Notice though in verse 7 that God’s actions sometimes depend on our actions.  He might decide to destroy a nation but then the people turn to him and he holds back the destruction.  This happened to the city/nation of Ninevah in the book of Jonah.  It also happened in the personal life of one of the last kings of Judah, Hezekiah, who God was going to destroy.  Hezekiah had been proud before God but change and cried to God for help and forgiveness, God decided not to kill him at that time but promised and added 15 years to his life (2 Kings 20:1-6; 2 Chronicles 32). The opposite situation is also mentioned in verses 9-10 where God plans to make a nations secure and prosperous but then they do evil and he decides to punish them instead.

In verse 12 Jeremiah then applies the principle to the people of Judah, they are like the second example, people God planned to make secure and cared for but who rebel against God.  While God hopes that the people will “repent” (change the way they are going) the people decide that they are going to follow their “stubborn evil hearts”.  In verses 13-17 we see that this type of treatment of God is unheard of, the nations show much more respect to their lame useless fake gods that Israel is showing to the true God who has done much for them (like saving them from 185,000 invading troops in the days of Hezekiah about 70 years earlier).  Although the people of Judah were going to miss out on the good they could have enjoyed God’s purposes would still be fulfilled; they would be an example to the nations of what happens when you show disrespect to the one true God (Jeremiah 18:16).

In verse 12 the people rejected God and in verse 18, after telling them that their actions were unbelievable, the people turned their anger and rejection toward Jeremiah.  In very religious sounding language they tell each other that Jeremiah must be a false prophet because there is no way all the other prophets and priests can be wrong.  They aren’t even honest in what they say they are going to do to him, they say they are just going to “tell him off” (“strike him with our tongues”) and ignore him but Jeremiah tells us that they have dug a pit to capture him and imprison him in (vv. 20, 22).  Clearly they intended to do more than just ignore him (later in the book we will see that they actually do throw him in a hole in the ground and keep him there for quite a while).

In verse 20 Jeremiah asks if good (the warnings he had been giving the people) should be repaid with evil.  Jeremiah then asks God to let their children starve to death, kill the people with the sword, and let the women become childless widows.  It sounds like Jeremiah is asking God to get revenge on them for the way they want to treat him.  But notice that Jeremiah asks God to “deal with them in the time of [His] anger” (v. 23) not according to Jeremiah’s hurt and anger.  Also notice that Jeremiah had been talking to the people so that God’s ‘wrath” would be turned away (by them turning back to God see verse 7).  Rather than looking for personal revenge Jeremiah may be saying to God, “I give up, they really are that bad, go ahead and do what you planned to do to them, bring on the famine and the sword.”  Notice in verse 21 that Jeremiah is talking about the men being struck down and dying and that the young men dying “in battle”.  In an earlier post I mentioned that sometimes God holds back punishment because one of his people is looking for revenge.  God is going to follow through on the invasion in Jeremiah’s lifetime and so I think that this is more about Jeremiah asking God to follow through than it is about his own personal feelings.

If I am right then the lesson we can learn is that we need to leave the revenge up to God.  And look at how God responds to evil, he will punish it, but he gives opportunity to come back to him.  God is perfect and pure and he is willing to forgive, we are not so perfect and pure so we should be even more willing to let go when people treat us wrongly.  We see that Jeremiah had feelings though and that he was hurt by others.  We see that he wanted justice, he had done right and didn’t deserve the treatment he was getting.  But he was willing to leave the justice up to God.  More importantly he seems to want the people punished because of how they have treated God.  He wants the punishment by God in God’s timing.

In 2 Thessalonians 1:4-10 Paul lays it out to the believers in Thessalonica (a city in ancient Greece).  He admits that they are suffering for being believers but that it is a sign of their true trust in Jesus.  He then tells them that God will judge the people who have treated them badly and that it will be right for God to punish them because they have treated the believers so badly.  Paul also tells them that those people won’t be punished until Jesus returns to rule on the earth.  It seems unfair but Paul told another group of believers on one occasion that Heaven won’t be available for those who stay locked into their sinful lives; those who have blown God off and lived the way they wanted to live.  He then reminded them they some of them had been like that (1 Corinthians 6:11).  Paul himself had gone around arresting and killing believers before he turned his life over to Jesus.  Peter gives us the answer in 2 Peter 3:9 when he tells some of the early believers that God is holding back, for now, so more people can turn to him.  God’s timing is the best timing and we need to let him deal with the timing for punishing evil.  In the mean time we need to be faithful in helping the world know about God’s love, our evil, and the possibility of either forgiveness or judgment.  We also need to remember that it may cost us here and now but it will be great in eternity for us.

God thank you for waiting long enough for me to turn back to you.  Don’t let me be selfish and want you to deal with sin and trouble right now.  Let me be patient like you, let me have your heart toward a lost and dying world.  Let me endure the small amount of pain living for you brings as I help those around me find eternal peace with you.  Give me strength, give me the words, give me the life to back up the message.  Thank you for loving me and the world.  I know you will do the right things at the right times.  You are the one true God; awesome!

Jeremiah 17:14-27.  In yesterday’s reading Jeremiah returned to a major theme of prophets, warning of coming punishment.  But even in the strongest language we saw little tiny bits of hope’ a person who puts their hope in God will be blessed (Jeremiah 17:7-8).  The Hebrew word translated “blessed” is also translated “kneel down”, “salute”, and “praise”, the idea seems to be one of thankfulness; a blessing is something that we are thankful for and want to bow down, praise or thank God for, and salute him. Jeremiah also saw God as a fort or safe place for him (sanctuary, v. 12).  So we saw that the real source of help for us in life is the one true God.  We will not find help for life and eternity in false gods, others, or in our own schemes.

In some translations verses 12-13 are groped with 14-18 as a paragraph.  I had us read them yesterday because they sort of sum up the thoughts from the other verses we read, but they also work with the first part of today’s reading too.  In verses 14-18 (or 12-18) we have Jeremiah looking for help, the kind of help he just told us we would not find without God.  In 12-13 he tells God (and us) that God is the only real place to go for help and that people who look somewhere else will be ashamed.  The Hebrew word translated “shame” is sometimes translated as “confounded”.  “Confonded” means to be mixed up or confused and has the idea of not having our expectations met.  People who look to false gods, others, or even try to work out life and eternity without God are not going to see their expectations met; they will be confused, confounded, ashamed, and very, very sorry.

In verse 14 Jeremiah is not having such a great life either; he asks God to “heal” him and to “save” him.  The two Hebrew words that Jeremiah wrote here are “rapha” and “yasha”.  Healing of course is the idea of fixing something that is broken; making it like new.  The idea behind “save” is to deliver or bring to a safe place.  Many people hated Jeremiah because of his messages, he certainly needed to be brought to a safe place, but he was also in danger from within.  Remember one of the things he was warning the people about was not to trust in their own schemes (Jeremiah 17:9-11); the heart is desperately wicked.  Jeremiah was just a man like the rest of them (and us) and certainly was tempted to “go with the flow”.  Paul, who clearly loved Jesus and was trusting him to be his savior (he also was used by God to write about half of the New Testament), struggled a great deal with this type of temptation (see Romans 7:14-25).  But he has already told us that God is the safe place we need to go (v. 12 where the throne represents God).  At the end of verse 14 Jeremiah expresses a similar idea when he says that God is his “praise”.  That word in his language is “tehhillah”.  It comes from the Hebrew word “halal”.  “Halal” is part of the word “halleluiah”, the other part is the abbreviated name of God, “Ya” (as in Yahweh).  “Halal” means to “shine”, “boast”, or “celebrate”.  What we have in that word is a picture of celebrating about who God is or what he has done.  We might say that Jeremiah is giving God a “shout out” in this verse.

In verse 15 we see the first type of trouble in Jeremiah’s life; trouble from the outside.  Some people keep challenging him to give them God’s words.  They seem to think the words that Jeremiah have been delivering aren’t God’s.  As Jeremiah continues to talk to God about his life we see that his words have been faithful to God.  He hasn’t abandon the job God gave him of trying to lead the people of Judah but has been a faithful shepherd.  In ancient time shepherds would walk ahead of the sheep and call to them.  If the sheep were “connected” to the shepherd (mentally in some way) they would follow him.  The way a prophet leads is mostly through their words, though their actions also speak to the people.  Although Jeremiah’s message has contained a lot of words about coming trouble and punishment he has not been mean about it; he has not desired that the punishment come on the people (he has asked God to deal with his enemies though).  He then tells God that his words have been out there where God could see them.  In this part of the prayer we see that he understands that “God is watching”.  These words imply that he has been faithful to what God asked him to do and say.  If he had been unfaithful he would have expected to be corrected by God.

In verses 17-18 we learn that the trouble from outside wasn’t just verbal; guys disagreeing with him, but that he was suffering physically too.  In verse 17 when he asks God not to “be a terror to him” it does not mean that he thinks that God is sending the trouble on him but that he realizes that the trouble is there because he is speaking the truth for God.  Jesus told his followers in John 15:20 that if people hurt Jesus that they would also hurt his followers, Jeremiah was suffering for following God.  So Jeremiah was asking for protection from God, the second half of verse 17 makes this very clear; God is his safe place.  In verse 18 we see an example of Jeremiah looking for God to deal with his enemies.  In verse 16 he told God he didn’t really want to see the people of Judah suffer the “woeful day” (the invasion he had been predicting), but here he definitely wants his enemies to be punished, even asking for a double destruction.  The idea behind “double destruction” seems to be that it is complete and final.

Verses 19-23 are kind of interesting.  Jeremiah asks God to deal with the people who have been giving him trouble for representing God.  So what does God do?  He sends Jeremiah to the various gates into Jerusalem; he specifically makes a point not to miss the gate used regularly by the king.  He’s putting Jeremiah on network television, on all the channels at the same time.  Then he tells Jeremiah to speak to the “kings” of Judah and all the people.  For the most part Judah only had one king at a time.  Later on in Jeremiah’s career there were several kings, one after another, this message was to all of them.

In verses 21-22 the message is one of the ten commandments, “remember the Sabbath (seventh day of the week, Saturday in a Jewish week and ours too) and keep is special”.  Jeremiah also makes it very clear how they were to make that day special, they were not to carry any loads in and out of the city nor out of their houses on that day; no work.  Then he reminds them that this commandment goes way back; It’s one God gave their ancestors.

In verse 23 we see that the people totally rejected what Jeremiah told them.  It’s interesting that instead of hiding Jeremiah in some safe place; letting Jeremiah lay low for a while, that he sends him right back out to keep preaching. I’m sure Jeremiah might have liked a vacation instead.  But the message Jeremiah was given could not have been any clearer; this was definitely from God.  In verse 15 the people asked, “Where is the word of the LORD (Yahweh)?”  In verse 21 Jeremiah says to them “Here is the word of the LORD (Yahweh)…”  It was clearly God’s words and they rejected it.

In verses 24-27 Jeremiah continues the message from God even though the people are not listening.  This part of the message lists certain things that will happen depending on how the people respond to the message Jeremiah has just given them.  If they will obey the commandment then God will bring the forever kingdom of David that the people have been looking for but it thie do not obey then God will allow the very gates of Jerusalem (you know the one used by the kings and the ones used by the people) to be burned to the ground along with the palace.  God had promised the people of Israel that one day there would be a permanent kingdom and that a descendant of David would rule permanently as king (2 Samuel 7:8-17).  That prediction or promise made by God to David (then the king of all Israel) had some fulfillment in his son, Solomon, who built the first temple for God in Jerusalem.  But other parts of the promise or prediction have not yet come true and will not until the events of Revelation 19-21 happen.  In those chapters we see the final king of Israel, Jesus the son of David and of God, ruling not just Jerusalem but the entire creation forever.  But before that day comes God is building his kingdom one person at a time.  The conditions that Jeremiah laid out were about loving and honoring God or not.  If the kingdom is just castles and fields and rivers and streets it is nothing.  God’s kingdom is about the people and Jeremiah is challenging the people to turn their lives back to God.  If they would listen and act on God’s words to them the kingdom would come and God would be honored in their midst. But if they didn’t listen and obey the kingdom would have to be delayed.

God will fulfill his promises but he has the bigger picture in mind, one that results in a multitude of people with him forever, honoring him and praising him (Revelation 19).  Jesus will be king (Revelation 19:11-16) but he is also the good shepherd (John 10:11-16) and he came to give his lie for his sheep (us) so that we could live with him (John 10:16) and have a full life (eternally with him, John 10:10, 28; 1 John 5:11-13).  In time and space there will be a forever kingdom of God filled with people who will live eternally with God.  But there are also those who will not enjoy this forever kingdom.  God has given us a choice just like he gave a choice to those in Jeremiah’s day.  In Jeremiah’s day the choice was about the Sabbath.  Keeping that law or any of them would not bring people into God’s forever kingdom (Romans 3:20) but the choice they had to make was symbolic of their commitment to God.  If they had shown a dedication and commitment to God then God would have done the rest.  We have a choice too.  In John 1:12 we are told that as many as received Jesus, those who believe in who he is (God in human flesh) and what he has done (died in our place to deal with the penalties of our disobedience), will be given the right to be with God forever.  God has given you the choice, God is calling to you.  Have you stiffened your neck or are you turning your head to listen?  I hope you are responding to God and I hope to spend eternity forever with you and God.

God thank you for calling out to me.  Thank you for helping me hear and listen and respond.  Let me continue to respond to you each day.  Help me hear your Spirit.  Let me do the things that please and honor you.  Thank you for taking the time to write down your words to us.  Thank you for making your message clear.  Thank you for the warnings too.  You are so loving and so fair.  Help many read your words and turn to you.  Let these posts help others clearly understand the choice they have and how to live with you and for you for eternity.  Be honored by my life.  Thank you for eternity with you.