Jeremiah 5:1-13.  In this section God challenges someone to search in the streets of Jerusalem and see if there is one person who acts properly toward others (does justice) and looks for truth.  The word for “truth” also deals with being faithful or consistent, so I think the idea is look for the truth in order to honor God with their lives; learning what God expects and then living in a way that is consistent with that truth.  If one such person can be found them God will back off on the punishment he is sending toward Jerusalem.  Verse two tells us that he is looking for a person who really loves him though and not just some one who is pretending.  According to God the people of Jerusalem were taking a very serious oath, basically swearing on a “stack of Holy Bibles” about their actions but they were lying.

In verse 3 Jeremiah takes up the challenge and begins to check out Jerusalem.  The first people he encounters didn’t respond well to the trouble God had brought into their lives.  God brought pain but they didn’t react to it, he brought emptiness but they didn’t learn from it.  Instead they became very stubborn and refused to turn back to God.  Who was this group?  According to verse 4 they were the “poor”, people who had not had an opportunity to learn how to honor God.  In some ways this might have been true, remember that Jeremiah started to represent God in 627 BC, a year before Josiah, the king, started making religious reforms and five years before the scroll of the Law was found in the temple.  So it is possible that the people in the streets weren’t that familiar with God’s expectations.  On the other hand Paul teaches us we all have a conscience that points us toward God and helps us know right from wrong even when we don’t have God’s rules right in front of us (Romans 1:18-2:15).

Next Jeremiah went to the rich and powerful.  According to Jeremiah these people did indeed have the Law of God, so this may have been after the discovery of the scroll.  Josiah did resume celebrating the Passover and did show all the people the scroll but they may have not known all it’s contents.  But Josiah and the rest of the leaders did have access to scroll.  The response to God that Jeremiah finds in the rich and powerful is rebellion.  The leaders are like an ox who has broken it’s yoke.  A yoke is the thing a farmer puts around an ox’ neck to attach a plow or cart to so the ox can pull it.  It represents control by the master.  The rich and powerful of Jerusalem had rejected God as their master.

In both cases the people were rejection the presence of the one true God, Yahweh, in their lives.  If they wouldn’t turn and go God’s way, if they wanted to be their own bosses God would teach them.  Verse 6 tells us that they will be destroyed.  God uses three different predatory animals to describe the destruction that is coming a lion, a wolf, and a leopard.  All are ferocious hunters.  Judah will go where they do not want to go and will be mastered.  The lion, wolf, and leopard probably are not literal; they are probably being used to describe the Babylonian invasion that is coming.

In verses 7-13 we find God supporting his decision to allow trouble in the lives of the people of Judah.  In verses 7-9 we see that God had cared very well for the people of Israel and yet they had honored false gods instead.  Not only did they give credit to false gods, after their stomachs were full they went out and did things that their true God disapproved of.  The reference to the prostitutes house may actually be a reference to the places of worship of the false gods.  In ancient times temples were built to so called gods and often there were prostitutes who lived in them and brought money into them.  God’s response is, “How could I not deal with such a disrespectful and rebellious people.”  But notice that in verse 10 that the destruction is not complete, only the part tht does not belong to God is destroyed.

In verses 11-13 we see more of the attitude of the people of Judah.  They either are denying God’s existence all together (“He is not”) or denying that God would ever do anything to them for their faithlessness (“Not him”).  In the end it’s all the same, the people feel immune to God if he exists at all.  Ironically by mentioning the “house of Israel” as well as the “house of Judah” Jeremiah is reminding the people of what happened to the other half of the nation a century before, they were destroyed for their disobedience and disrespect for God too.  Unfortunately Jeremiah’s warnings were falling on deaf ears, the people were claiming that the prophets were full of hot air and not really speaking for God (god?).

I’m sure there might have been some confusion among the people of Judah.  The place had been a real mixture of religion for at least 50 years.  Manasseh shared rule of the kingdom with Hezekiah his father from 697-686 BC.  His wicked influence certainly could have been felt shortly after Hezekiah’s death and maybe before.  His two sons continued in his footsteps and not until Josiah did religious reform come, but even that was not right away (remember Josiah was 8 when he became king and did not personally turn to God until he was sixteen (632 BC, see “Intro to Jeremiah”).  There was false worship and false gods everywhere in the kingdom.  There were also false prophets everywhere.  Not only were there the priests and other representatives of the false gods , those who claimed that they served Yahweh didn’t speak the truth either.  But there were also true prophets.  In their immediate time there was Nahum, Zephaniah, and Jeremiah.  And there had been other in the recent past.  And then there is the conscience and the testimony of the creation as Paul taught.  So really the people of Jeremiah’s day were without excuse.  People talk about our world today as being a “post Christian” era.  That means we are after or beyond the influence of Christianity in our world.  In some ways I think that is true, our nation and much of western civilization was heavily influenced if not purposely founded on the ideas found in the Old and New Testament.  But that “Christian tradition” has been worn away over the years, and other ideas and philosophies have shared the stage of our lives with it.  Christianity has become only a part of how we live our lives, as Americans (in the little United States sense and the bigger two continent sense as well) and as Europeans.  But Christianity is the true story of the true God (Yahweh) making peace with a disobedient and rebellious world.  Since it represents the truth about life I think the influence is always there, if we take the time to listen to it.  Clearly the people of Judah in and around 640 BC were not listening and many of us are not listening either.  And that is too bad because the reality is that sin (disobedience and rebellion against the true God) does have consequences.  There are here and now consequences as god tries to get our attention and encourage us to turn back to him and there are forever consequences related to whether we turn back to God or not.  There can be an eternity with God and all the goodness that brings or an eternity without him that will be clearly miserable.  You can ignore God but reality will catch up to you some day.  I hope you instead choose to accept God’s offer of peace and give your life to Jesus today and forever.

God thank you that you do not destroy completely.  Thank you that there is hope.  Help me not deny you in my life.  Help the people around me see you in their world.  Let me be a part of that revelation.   Let them all come to be one of your “branches” and enjoy the nourishment that comes from being connected into you.  Again thank you for your willingness to forgive.