Jeremiah 14:1-16.  In yesterday’s reading we saw God using a foreign nation to deal with the unfaithfulness of the people of Judah.  It was going to be a serious event.  We also was that God is interested in change, God doesn’t want to discipline the people but if he lets them keep going away from him that is where they will spend eternity; not a good thing at all.  The fact that God sends prophets to warn and uses words like “listen” and asks questions like “how long…” tells me that God is giving the people extra chances.

In today’s reading we see another way God would get the attention of the people, through “natural” disasters.  It is true that God created a system in our world and that often the system just runs (See Ecclesiastes 1:6-7).  But that system is designed and runs by rules that God put into place.  The rules that it is currently running under also involve the fact that God “tweaked” the system back when Adam and Eve first disobeyed.  In it’s current form the system doesn’t run perfectly and that is a reminder to all of us that we God exists and that there are consequences for disobeying him and not showing him respect (sin).  We see this in the original story when God tells Adam that from now on he is going to have to fight the weeds in order to get his garden to grow (Genesis 3:17-18).  This reminder seems to have worked to some extent because in most of ancient times mankind has associated both the good and the bad in life with the actins of gods.  Unfortunately throughout most of that time they substituted manmade gods for the one true God, Yahweh, and pretty much missed the point and even making things worse.  In addition to using this tweaked system as a way to remind us that he exists and that we have offended him, God sometimes overrides the rule causing flooding (Genesis 7:4) or drought or other problems to get someone’s immediate attention.  We must remember though that God is using all of this to get us to move back toward him.  We also must remember that we need to work hard to overcome the consequences of this broken system.  We need to study the system and work hard to deal with weeds and disease and drought and flooding and whatever else has fallen apart.  We cannot just say, “Oh that storm was the will of god, too bad for those poor suffering people”.  We need to show God’s love for them by helping those in need and we need to understand and find ways to keep them out of need in the future (A wise man builds his house on a good foundation where the wind and rain and floods cannot hurt it (Matthew 7:24-27)).

So the people of Jeremiah’s day were experiencing a drought.  Whether it was just a part of the tweaked system of a specific action directly from God we don’t know.  What we do know is that the drought was serious.  Cisterns are sort of like storage tanks.  They were “pools” that often had “lids” on them where water would be captured and stored in the rainy season for use in the dry season.  Some of these pools were also fed by springs to collect the water from them in the same way.  In our story we see that the cisterns are dry, imagine turning on your water this morning and having nothing come out of the pipes, then you find out that there is no water in any of the pipes in your city, and no bottled water in the stores either.; very bad.  It seems like part of the problem was that there had been no rain.  The dirt was dry and cracking apart.  The situation was so bad that the deer (who would usually never do this) were abandoning their babies; Bambi was being left alone.  Even the wild donkeys who were used to living in the desert were panting like a dog longing for a little water and food.  Pretty bad when even the desert is becoming more wasted.

The response is that the people were “put to shame”, “humiliated”, and “covering their heads”.  Another way the word “shame” is translated in the Bible is “confounded”, the people had no answer; no solution, that is very humbling.  I don’t really have a good answer about what it means to cover your head.  Sometimes the idea of having your head covered is about protection and other times it is related to this idea of humility and shame.  Other times it is related to recognizing authority above you and sometimes it is associated with mourning and sadness.  I suppose most of those ideas could be at play here.  We have been told that the people were humiliated and in shame, they certainly should have been sad, too.  With no solution to their problem their only hope was for someone bigger that them who cared to be out there; someone who had authority over the physical universe; someone who might protect them.

In verse 7 it seems like the people were actually recognizing that they had offended God and needed his help.  They even seem to have the right motives; they don’t want Yahweh’s  (LORD) good name defamed.  But verses 8-9 show their real attitude both toward God and about him.  First of all they see God as a Savior, good right?  But they see him only as a savior “in times of distress”.  That’s a bad way to see God, it assumes that there are times when we are not in need and we can exist without God help; it ignores that we really are all in need physically and spiritually all the time.  Second they also accuse God of not really caring; they say he like a guy just spending the night and moving on in the morning.  I think that the fact that Jeremiah was consistently warning the people of Judah for something like 40 years shows that God was not just “passing through”.  In fact the time of Jeremiah is one of the greatest concentrations of prophetic activity that we have record of; Jeremiah overlaps with Nahum, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Ezekiel, and Daniel.  Sounds like God was pretty involved to me.  The accusations get even worse in verse 9 when they say it’s like God is “astonished”; incapable of dealing with the situation.  They are either saying God can’t or God doesn’t care enough to help them.  At the end of verse 9 the do seem to recognize that God could help them, but they still have a pretty bad attitude toward him.

In verses 10-12 we learn what God thinks of their prayer.  Even if some of it is true they are following God half way.   God told them in the beginning of their existence as a nation that they were to have no other gods, but according to verse 10 (and history) they loved to wander.  Because of their repeated cheating on him God decided the time had come (“now”) to deal with their disobedience, disrespect, and rebellion.  God asked Jeremiah again not to pray for them and told Jeremiah that he was not gong to accept their offerings anymore.  In manmade religions the offerings were supposed to act like bribes to the gods; you would pay them off to stop disaster and to get favors.  In the relationship between the Israelites and the true God, Yahweh, the offerings were designed to be reminders; they were to help the Israelites (and by example the rest of us) remember the bad situation they (and us) are in with respect to our relationship with God.  The Israelites had started offering offerings to other (false) gods and had let their attitude about the offerings in the Law of Moses change; they thought they were paying off Yahweh too.

This is the third time God has told Jeremiah not to pray for the people (Jeremiah 7:16; 11:14) and Jeremiah clearly doesn’t like the idea.  Jeremiah makes sure that God know that the people are being misled by other “prophets’.  It’s like he is saying, “Wait a minute, these other guys have been tricking them, telling them that trouble is not coming!”  In verse 14 God tells Jeremiah that these other guys are a n of liars and that he did not send them.  Interestingly the very things that they said would not happen to the people of Judah God would cause to happen to them; they would die by the sword and famine.  In verse 16 though we find that the people also would suffer the same fate; they too would die by the sword and famine.  Not just the men either (who were basically in charge in that society) but their wives and children would die too.  Don’t make the mistake of accusing God of being unfair though, these people, all of them, would suffer because of their own actions.  Each of them individually had made the choice to cheat on God and each of them individually would suffer because of it.  This doesn’t mean that “innocent” (or should we say less guilty) people don’t suffer when others disobey God, because they do.  In this case though we see that most of the people are generally guilty of turning to false Gods and that God is going to bring trouble because of it.  Ultimately Jeremiah suffers along with the rest but he clearly doesn’t die in any of the invasions.  We have seen that God is very patient but that he does have standards and that there are consequences for breaking his rules.  The fact that he is so involved in trying to get us to turn back to him should give us comfort that he will do all that he can to bring us the best life (and eternity) possible.  And when all is said and done we are all guilty and deserve to be banished, it is only because of God’s mercy that there is nay way back at all.

We cannot blame others for our disobedience.  We are each responsible to see and hear God.  We each have to decide whether to live for God or for something else.  God works very hard at helping us see the truth about Him and about eternity.  God is slow to anger but he eventually will deal with disobedience and rebellion on our part.  We have an opportunity to be forgiven.  Jesus paid the price we owed for our sin.  Jesus was separated fro God the Father for some period of time in our place.  As the infinite God-man his sacrifice was big enough for all of us, but only those who turn to him will be called children of God (John 1:12).  Stop listening to the false prophets and your own selfish heart and turn to God today.  Give him your life and your eternity before he decides “now” is the time to deal more directly with you and your society.

God help me be a voice of truth about you to those around me.  Thank you for your mercy.  Help me help others see the bad situation we are in.  Help me show them the way to be right with you now and forever.  Thank you for Jesus.  Thank you that one day you will give us a fixed forever world to live in.  I hope there will still be tomatoes in that world because I’d love to see what they do in a perfect environment with not floods or drought, just the right amount of everything.  I look forward to seeing your loving provision at it’s fullest, the way you always wanted it to be.  Give me patience and endurance in the mean time to deal with the weeds.  Help them always remind me of my failure and your desire for me to return to you.  Thank you for the reminders.  Thank you for your love.