Jeremiah 7:16-34.  Wow!  If yesterday was a break today Jeremiah gets right back at it with some very heavy words for God.  That’s not to say that yesterday’s reading wasn’t serious too, it’s just that but the first part of this chapter was an appeal by God to come back.  In today’s reading all we see is the down side of disobedience and disrespect toward God.

Right off the bat we see a pretty negative statement, God tells Jeremiah not to pray for the people, he is not going to listen.  God’s reason?  He tells Jeremiah to look around him; in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem honoring false gods has become a family pastime.  The kids gather the wood, the dad builds the fire and mom make treats to offer to the fake god.  Jeremiah mentions one popular “god” that they were worshipping, the “
Queen of Heaven”.  Scholars aren’t sure which false god this was but some think it may have been the Babylonian goddess “Ishtar” or “Astarte”.  It doesn’t really matter though, she was not Yahweh and there fore was a false god (or goddess).

Then God asks if they aren’t provoking him or acting in spite.  The word here can also mean “to make sorry”.  It is not God who will be sorry though, it is the people; they should be ashamed of their actions.  Why?

Fist of all we see that God is going to deal with their continual disrespect for him, remember that this is not just about God’s reputation but it is also about mankind’s eternity.  The Israelite people were supposed to be helping the world understand who the one true God is, but instead they were following after all the false gods they could find.  So punishment was necessary so that the world could see that Yahweh is not without standards or power.  In verse 21 God tells them to keep up their offerings to false gods, but no one but they themselves is going to be eating the offerings.  The false gods have no power to act in any way and God certainly isn’t interested in some other god’s leftovers.  Verse 23 seems to contain a quote form Exodus 15:26.  That verse is part of a story about the Jewish people complaining to Moses that they were going to die because they could not find fresh water in the desert.  God provided fresh water by changing water at an oasis from bitter to “sweet” or fresh.  The situation was used by God to see if they would trust him or not, when they didn’t seem to want to trust him he showed they he would care for them and them spoke the words that Jeremiah quoted.  All of this happened before God gave Moses the Law (all the rules about how they were to honor Yahweh).  The point of Jeremiah is that first and above all else God wanted the Israelite people to honor him with their lives and have a relationship with him.  Instead thought he came to focus on offerings and religion and eventually even dropped God from the picture altogether and replaced him with gods like the “Queen of Heaven”.  Verse 24 tells us that the first group who came out of Egypt didn’t honor God with their lives.

Verse 25 tells us that God didn’t leave it at just that one conversation; he repeatedly warned the people through his servants the prophets.  From the time they left Egypt 800 years earlier up until the days of Jeremiah.  In fact the people of Jeremiah’s time had become even more disobedient and rebellious than their ancestors.

In verse 27 God tells Jeremiah that he is going to remind the people of their rebellion but that they are not going to listen to him. How would you like a job like that, “You are going to feed some poor homeless people and they are going to beat you up.”  It’s sort of like that, prophets were often not appreciated; they were rejected, beaten, and even killed (tradition tells us that Isaiah was killed by being sawn in half (see Hebrews 11:37)).  Because of their rejection of his message and the resulting rejection of the people by God,  Jeremiah was going to shave his head and go up to a high place and sing a sad song.  Shaving the head was a sign of great sadness.  Verses 30-34 give a more detailed picture of what God is going to do and why.  The people of Jeremiah’s day were going to and had in the recent past made many places of false worship.  They had even gone so far as to use their children as human sacrifices; an idea which was horrifying even to God.  If God were a man he would not even imagine such evil actions.

The word Topheth in in verse 31 is borrowed from a language related to Hebrew, Aramaic.  It means “fireplace” and the people had build an altar with a fireplace attached; this was the place where they burned their children.  It was in a valley belonging to a guy who was the son of Hinnom, in Hebrew the phrase is Ben (son of) Hinnom.  Later in the history of Israel it would be called Gehenna (the valley of Hinnnom).  It would be used as a place for burning trash and was also associated with eternal punishment.  In Jeremiah’s time though it would become a “valley of Slaughter”.  It would be the place where the Babylonian invaders would kill many Israelite people; so many that they could not all be buried.  Bids of prey would come and feast on the unburied bodies and would be so bold that they cold not be scared away.  Verse 34 seems like an understatement, “In the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem there would be no happy voices, not even newly weds would be happy.”  Really?  I wonder why, such a gnarley mess in the valley outside the capital would affect most people.  And on top of that, if they realized that they had brought it on themselves they should be doubly unhappy.

We shouldn’t see the warning as just for the Israelites of Jeremiah’s day though.  What the events described point out is that pure and demands faithfulness from his people.  Remember that the Jewish people were supposed to be an example to the nations around them, and they were, an example of unfaithfulness.  The whole thing was very serious because all their false religion could have made people think that they could make up their own gods and own ways  of honoring them and be OK.  They might miss the truth that there is one true God, Yahweh, with standards of right and wrong.  The result of missing that point is an eternity without God, very serious stuff.  In the book of 1 Corinthians some believer sin that city were living in ways that dishonored God too.  They would gather together to celebrate what Jesus had done for them on the cross.  Their celebration involved a meal but during the meal they would only look out for themselves, each feeding their own people.  Some people in the group were going hungry.  Paul told them that the table they were eating at surely didn’t belong to Jesus and that they were making a joke out of being Christ followers (Christians).  As a result God actually caused some of them to die prematurely; he took them out because of their bad example.  Those people sill went to heaven but because their lives were distraction people from truly honoring God they were removed from the game.  Pretty serious, as in the time of Jeremiah, so in the time of Paul, and in our time too.  We need to be careful to honor God with our lives.  And remember the words of Jeremiah 7:5-6 that part of honoring God is treating others fairly and caring for the needy.  Similar problems similar consequences, be warned.

God help me honor you in the way you want.  It’s not about religion but a relationship.  My relationship with you should influence me to live in a way that would please you; that involves being fair and caring for others.  God help me pleas you each day.