Jeremiah 17:1-13.  In yesterday’s reading we saw God dealing with the sin of Judah.  Specifically we saw that he was dealing with their living for false gods.  Because of their bad example he was going to banish them from the land.  But we also saw the mercy of God because he was eventually going to bring them back and give them another chance.  Today’s reading returns to the fact of their rebellion against God.  It is common in the books written by the prophets for there to be this sort of back and forth; it is important for us to see that we have broken our relationship with God but it is also important to have hope.  Several months ago there was a story in the news of a young man who went up to the roof of his High School jumped off into the courtyard, killing himself.  He was a senior and had been a very good student but friends said his girl friend had just broken up with him.  He clearly felt alone and had no hope for his future so he ended his life.  That is very sad.  God created each of us to have a relationship with him forever.  That relationship was broken by our cheating on him, but there is hope; our relationship can be restored and even better if we allow Jesus to take care of the mess and allow the Holy Spirit to help us make less messes in the future.

In verse 1 we see that God does not just ignore our cheating though.  A stylus is a tool for writing.  This one is made of iron, a strong metal.  It needs to be strong because it has a hard stone tip (some translations say diamond others say flint) so it can make a good permanent mark on a tablet (the word usually refers to stone, metal or wood).  This is no weak pencil mark that can fade or wash off.  In this case the permanent mark is on the harts of the people.  What is written on their hearts is a record of their rebellion against God; their unfaithfulness to him.  A second copy is written on the “horns of their altars”  An altar is a place where sacrifices are made, like a table; a chopping block or place to build a fire up off the ground.  The word horn can also mean “rays”; like sunshine.  Maybe part of the decoration to their gods was some sort of sun rays built onto the altar (kind of like some portrayals of Jesus or the apostles or angles with a “halo”).  Different words used for worship or honor in the Bible have the idea of glowing or shining so maybe that was what the altar builders tried to put here.  When the people would come to their altars not only would their hearts “speak” to them about their unfaithfulness but they would be reminded by the words written on these fake halos.  In verse 2 we see this is a good place to put this reminder because they were thinking about these places of false worship as much as they thought about their children.

Because of al of this unfaithfulness God was going to let the land be overtaken.  He especially points out that the very center of their false religions, the high places where the altars were built, would be taken over by the invaders.  The sad thing is that the people had been unfaithful for so long that they were going to willingly walk away from the great place God had given them and the great relationship he was offering too.  In Leviticus 26 we see the land promised to the various tribes of the Israelite people called an inheritance.  It was something permanent that each family was to own (Leviticus 26:53).  In the first part of Leviticus 26 we see a description of the relationship between God and the Israelites as they live in this land.  IN Leviticus 26:12 we see that God wants to “walk among them”.  But there were conditions described in the surrounding verses.   The Israelite people were warned about what we see going on here in Jeremiah’s time in those conditions (Leviticus 26:14-39).  We see in verse 4 that God is very upset about their unfaithfulness.  Don’t make the mistake of seeing God as evil and destructive though.  God is upset because of how serious it is when people reject him; an eternity without the good of God in our existence is very bad and because God loves us so much it makes him very mad when he sees us walking away.  It’s like a parent who sees their kids doing drugs or other destructive  things, they get very mad (or should).

The people of Israel in Jeremiah’s day were not just looking to fake manmade gods for help in life.  As they faced invasion they also looked to other nations for help.  One place they often looked for help was Egypt.  That is very ironic that they would look for help from the very nation that had made them slaves way back in the days before Moses.  In verses 6-7 the people are warned that if they put their trust in men that they will be like a bush in the desert.  They will not have a full good life.  Their land will be like a stony field full of salt (which makes the soil unsuitable for growing plants).  In contrast if they want their lives to be full and productive they need to trust in Yahweh (LORD).  The idea is repeated twice and that emphasizes how important it is to trust in Yahweh and not false gods or others.

In verses 9-11 we see why we should not trust in our feelings and desires when it comes to life.  Our hearts are deceitful.  That word comes from a root that means to “follow at the heels” or “grab by the heel”.  Both of these remind me of one of my dogs.  Some dogs like to follow us very closely, in fact there is a saying for when someone is following us too closely, “Don’t dog me!”  One of my dogs might be part Australian Heeler.  I saw a video of one of these dogs with some cows.  The dog would come up close behind the cow and bite it in the “heel” to get it moving.  The cows hated it but moved.  In the first case the dog really doesn’t give direction and in the other case it make us move.  Our hearts are both of these, they don’t really know which way we should go but they push us in some direction or another anyway.   The word can also mean crooked and that is what happens when a dog dogs you; you jump all over the place and don’t follow a very good path.  The reason our hear is deceitful is because it is incurably sick, an incurable disease is one that leads to death or a lifetime of misery, our hearts lead us to both.  This totally contradicts what people in our world want us to think; they insist that people are basically good, according to Jeremiah and God this is not true.

Although our ways are crooked God’s are not.  Although we don’t really understand what we are doing or why God does and he is fair.  Years ago ai heard of schools that gave you credit on spelling tests for words that you spelled incorrectly but in a way that was phonetically correct.  We might let someone off for their good intentions (or creative spelling) but God looks at the reality of our actions and works in our lives accordingly; with God there is no deception (see James 1:17).

Although the evidence is out there for God some people ignore it, they think they can do what they want and get away with it.  Jeremiah uses a saying from his days about a type of bird (it probably was a sand grouse not a partridge) that hatches eggs for other birds.  As the babies grow up they realize the “mom” isn’t one of them and they leave her.  We think we can get rewards without following the rules, and sometimes we do, but in the end we usually wind up broke and laughed at.  Verses 12-13 really sum up the thoughts; the original one true God (here represented by his throne) is the place we need to look for help, not false gods, not other, not even our own schemes.  On the other hand those who reject God will see only shame, god will keep track of those who have rejected him.  God is the source of real life, in a desert climate like Israel water is very much a symbol of life, and here God is compared to spring (living) water.  Make no mistake either this is not one of the fake gods this is none other than Yahweh, the one true God.

In John 4 Jesus has a conversation at a well dug by Jacob.  Jacob and Israel are the same guy (see “What’s in a Name?”).  This is the guy that all the tribes of Israel are named after and the one who the nation is named after, one of the big names in Israel.  Jesus asks the woman (a mixed descendant of one of the tribe of the Northern Kingdom) for water she is astonished that a Jew would talk to her.  Also she is surprised that a man would talk to a woman.  Jesus uses her hesitation to inform her that if she knew who he really was she would have asked him for a drink and he would have given her “living water” (spring water not just well water).  She is very surprised since this well was a heroic feat by one of the heroes of their past, Jacob.  “Are you greater than Jacob”, she wants to know.  Jesus then informs her that the “water” he has to offer will give her eternal life (an everlasting relationship of some sort).  She wants the water but still doesn’t get the full picture.  Jesus then shows here that he is the promised one from the Old Testament.  She eventually starts to understand who Jesus is and is on the path to eternity with God (John 4:36-39).  In the story the woman was distracted by the actions of others and by here own ideas and desires (she wanted water that would quench her then and there thirst while Jesus wanted to deal with her real spiritual need).  It’s the same distractions we saw n today’s reading in Jeremiah.  We need to look out for false gods, the ideas of other, and or own desires and trust God for how to live now and for eternity.

God thank you for being involved.  Thank you for keeping my sins in front of me.  Help me not ignore what you are saying to me.  Help me listen to you and not others.  Help me listen to you and not my own desires.  Thank you for your help and your patience.  Let my life honor you and help others honor you too.

Jeremiah 16:14-21.  In yesterday’s reading we saw that bad times were coming; God was going to remove his peace, lovingkindness and mercy.  We also saw a hint that the situation was not permanent.  Today’s reading starts out with that idea.  The people of Israel had been in trouble before; thay had lived in Egypt as slaves.  In one of the greatest moments in their history as a people God had a guy named Moses lead them out of Egypt toward a land promised to their ancestors.  Several years a go there was a movie “Like Mike”.  It was about a young boy in foster care that loved basketball.  He was small though and would get pushed around by the other kids. He wished he could play basketball like Michael Jordan.  He found an old pair of basketball shoes that worked “magic” in his life and he wound up playing in the NBA, as a kid.  The shoes helped him play “like Mike”.  The Jews had a saying too; when they were in trouble would put their trust in God and say “as the LORD (Yahweh) lives who brought us up out of the land of Egypt”…  The idea was that God would be faithful to them (show them lovingkindness) and bail them out of trouble.  The coming invasion and all the trouble with it were going to be a new “low” point in the history of the people of Israel, and their exile to Babylon was going to create the opportunity for a new saying, “As the LORD lives who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the countries where he banished them”.

There are a couple of things that are interesting so far.  First, both of these quotes use the personal name of the one true God.  When God told Moses to lead the Israelite tribes out of Egypt Moses wanted to know what to tell them when his authority to lead was questioned.  God told him, “Tell them ‘I Am’ sent you.” (Exodus 3:14).  The Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew.  It was written without vowels and all of the letters were crammed together; no spaces.  “I AM” in Hebrew is written with four consonants “YHWH” (well actually there alphabet is different but in our alphabet it would be those four letters).  Jewish people have a lot of respect for the personal name of God and would never pronounce it so no one really knows how it sounds.  That makes it difficult to express in our language.  Early translators thought it might sound like “Jehovah” and that is a common way those four consonants are expressed today in English.  More modern translators think it sounded more like “Yahweh” and some people use that now.  What the Jewish people did do when they wanted to talk specifically about “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” (or when they read a verse out loud with that name in it) was substitute the word “Lord” (or once in a while “God” if the word “lord” was already there).  Some English translations followed the same pattern in printed form but used all capital letters so we would know about the substitution (LORD or occasionally GOD).  So in verses 14-15 we see the personal name of God (Yahweh) used.  It is Yahweh who took care of his people in the past and Yahweh who will take care of them in the future; God is a personal involved God.

The second thing that is interesting to me is the description of the second situation.  We are told that the new saying was gong to talk about bringing the Israelites back from the land of the north and all the countries where he had banished them to.”  The coming invasion was going to be by Babylon, technically east of Judah.  But the invasion route would be from the north.  I don’t know a lot about Hebrew and the commentators (Bible experts) I read didn’t have anything to say about this but I know that Hebrew is a “loose” or “fuzzy” enough language that this could be referring to the Babylonians.  That makes sense from the context too; Jeremiah is talking about the Babylonian invasion in much of this part of the book.  But there is more to this picture than just the Babylonian captivity.  Jeremiah (or God rather) is also saying that they will be gathered from “all of the nations where I have banished them”.  God did restore the people to the land after the Babylonian captivity but they lived under the control of various other nations.  At the time of Jesus they were living under the control of the Roman Empire.  IN 70 AD the Jewish people, who had been rebelling against the Romans, were invaded by the Roman army.  The Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem was burned to the ground.  Basically that was the end of a unified Jewish people.  Miraculously the people were able to maintain their identity down through he centuries.  Many came to live in Russia, and northern and eastern Europe.  In the late 1800 various conditions led to the persecution of these Jewish people in those regions.  Some migrated to the United States but many remained.  The persecution reached it’s high (or low) point under the reign of Adolph Hitler.  Shortly after the end of World War II and the defeat of Hitler the United Nations resolved to let the Jewish people have their old homeland back (By the way in the years around 1900 some Jewish people had started moving back there anyway, buying land from the nomadic people living in the area.  That movement was called the Zionist Movement; Zion being one name for the hill on which Jerusalem had existed.)  In 1949 the modern nation of Israel was founded and Jews from the north (Russia (?) and all the nations where they had been “banished” began to return to Israel).

We see here something that is common in Old Testament prophecy, multiple fulfillments.  One rule in Israel for a prophet was that if they said God told them something and then it didn’t happen they were to be executed as a false prophet.  From the Biblical record it seems more likely that the Israelites would kill a true prophet rather that a false one (Hebrews 11 for example), but that was still the rule.  In order for the people to believe a prophet at least some of their predictions would have to be fulfilled in their life time.  Some of the predictions about the distant future (the coming of the Messiah or chosen one, promises about a forever king and kingdom) would have a close fulfillment (time wise) to prove their accuracy and a second (or sometimes even a third) fulfillment in the distant future.  In Isaiah we saw an example of this with the promise about the virgin birth of the Messiah or coming promised leader.  That prediction was fulfilled in Isaiah’s day and ultimately was fulfilled with the birth of Jesus (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23).

Verses 16-18 are a mixed bag for me.  Verse 16 is cool because we see God “hunting down” the banished people of Israel.  But this hunt is not to kill but to bring home.  God says he is going to send fishermen to find them.  It is interesting that Jesus told his earliest followers that they should follow him and he would make them “fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19).  I wonder if they thought about this verse when Jesus said that.  Verse 17 is cool, or at least starts out that way.  God is looking after the Jews (and us too really), but  God sees the disobedience and rebellion (sin) that we do too.  Because God is pure he must deal with sin and in this case the people of Judah (in Jeremiahs time) were going to get two punishments, one for the actual wrong they were doing (worshipping false gods) and the second one for their bad example to those around them.  When the nations around them looked at “God’s land” they wouldn’t see a clear picture of God because the Jewish people had littered the land (pollution was a bid deal then too, but this is spiritual pollution) and all the world could see was a field full of false gods.

In verses 19-20 we have a prayer by Jeremiah (actually it is a lament or song of sorrow).  Jeremiah first identifies that God is good and strong; God is his strength and is like a fort when things get tough in Jeremiah’s life.  Jeremiah then tells God that he “gets it”; some day the people of the world (the nations) will come to God and tell him that they weren’t getting a good picture of him from the Jewish people; what they could learn about god from the Jewish people was useless because it wasn’t really about the one true God.  Jeremiah asks, “Can a man make gods for himself?”  His answer is, Yes, sort of.”  We can make things to honor or live for but hey really aren’t God because they have no power.  In verse 21 we have God’s reply to Jeremiah’s sad song.  God is going to make sure we all understand.  God is going to show his power and strength and then the whole world will know that Yahweh (LORD) is the one true God.

I like how involved God is in our lives but there is a down side, he sees and is involved when we screw up.  There is a double problem with our rebellion, disobedience, and disrespect.  First bad is bad and bad needs to be dealt with; sin has consequences.  But if we claim to know God (or even those who’s claims involve god, like Buddhists, Muslims, or a whole list of others) but we are really living for god then those around us get an unclear picture.  Years ago after I put my faith in Jesus I decided to tell my dad all about it.  For a couple of reasons I wasn’t really that credible to my dad but I tried, even giving him a book about God for Christmas (that didn’t help my credibility either).  One time when I offered God as a solution to a particular problem he was having he told me, “I have already tried that.”  He had been raise a Roman Catholic and had been “burned” by a representative of the church.  What my dad had tried was a religion not a relationship with the one true God, but it had turned him off to God altogether.  I think he died an unbeliever.  Sad how our bad representation of our relationship with God can affect those around us, giving them an excuse not to believe.  Our example is a very serious thing.  God sees it and will deal with us.  The up side is that God is loving and forgiving.  He is willing to forgive and is there to help us succeed, but we need to be willing to.  I don’t know if this current version of the nation of Israel is the one God is going to finally reform but it certainly contains people who have been hunted down and restored to the land, I hope they do return their hearts to God and allow him to make them the example they were meant to be (Genesis 12:2-3).  God hunted me down too, I hope I can give a good picture to those around me so they can see the power of God and honor Yahweh for who he is.

God thank you for being involved.  Thank you for seeing my sin too.  I know my sin make the reality of you unclear, help me get rid of it.  Let me be responsive to you so I don’t have to have times of punishment.  Let me live consistently in your presence.  Make me a “blessing” to the families around me (The word “blessing” means “cause to kneel”.  The idea is that people see my actions and “kneel” down in respect and honor of God).  I want to help people see you and know you clearly.  I want people to see your love and purity and their need to get right with you.  I want to help people learn of Jesus, the solution to the spiritual pollution that is on our lives.  Let my actions be clear and honor you.