Jeremiah 14:17-15:9.  You will want to remember that this “book” of Jeremiah is a collection of messages, sermons, or talks, (whatever you want to call them) to the people of Judah over the course of his life. Of course when he collected them together and wrote them down he added to them in a way that would bring them together.  At least part of today’s reading is either a continuation of yesterday message or Jeremiah brought some similar messages together to help us see some of the how and why of what God does.

Yesterday’s reading started out with the mention of a drought and we talked about how sometimes God uses “natural” disasters to get peoples attention.  We also looked at why God would do such a thing; at how serious turning away from God can be; it can leave you on the outside for eternity.  In today’s reading drought is still part of the picture in verse 22 when the person talking is admitting to God that fake gods have no power to control the weather.

Today’s reading starts with God commanding Jeremiah to talk to the people.  Verses 17-22 are the message Jeremiah was to give the people.  Sometimes a message given by a prophet communicates the actual words of God but in this case it seem like the words express the feelings of Jeremiah.  As a prophet though it’s not so easy to separate Jeremiah’s feelings from God.  In Philippians 2:5 Paul told the believers in Philippi to have the same sort of unselfish attitude that Jesus had.  Prophets spent so much time hearing from and speaking for God that, at least some of the time, their attitudes and feelings reflected those of God.  So in verse 17 I think it is Jeremiah who was sad and feeling like crying.  Why?  Because of the destruction coming on the people of Judah.  Death either was or was going to be all around him.  Interestingly in verse 18 Jeremiah links the coming disaster with the activities of the prophets and priests in Judah.  Remember at the end of yesterday’s reading we saw that the people had been listening to false prophets.  We also know that idolatry (honoring false, manmade gods) was a problem through out much of Jeremiah’s lifetime, especially in the later years near the time of the Babylonian invasion.  The “land” that these priests and prophets were wandering into wasn’t a literal land, he is talking about them wandering away from God toward the false gods of the different countries around them.  They were “wandering” in the “land of idols and false worship”, you might say.

In verse 19 Jeremiah returns to his concern for the people.  In verses 19-22 Jeremiah seems to be speaking for the people to God.  His words must have expressed the feelings of some of the people but probably not most.  As we saw yesterday, many of the people felt this way toward God but they were not exclusive with God, they looked to idols too.  So the words of verse 22 cannot express the feelings of most of the people of Judah.  By the way “Zion” in verse 19 is the name of the mountain on which Jerusalem was built.  As the capital of Judah, Jerusalem would represent Judah, and Zion is sometimes used as another name for Jerusalem.  It’s like when people talk about “Washington” (D.C.) and mean the whole United States.  What we have here is a repetition, the two questions in verse 19 are parallel; the same idea said two ways.  That is very common in Hebrew literature.

So verses 17-22 are a continuation of the discussion between God and Jeremiah about false religious leaders in Judah that started earlier in chapter 14.  It seems like Jeremiah wants God to go a little easier on the people because they have been misled.  The sad thing is that the very arguments he is making about the lack of power of the idols shows that the people should have known that they were not following the real God.  Although Jeremiah doesn’t like what is coming he is still respectful toward God.  At the end of verse 22 he honors God as the one with real power and places his hope in God.

Unfortunately, in God’s wisdom, it was time to let the people see what it was like on the outside.  Moses and Samuel were both highly respected leaders from Israel’s past and both had prayed for the people at times when God was going to punish them and seen God back off.  Now we see that God is not going to “back off” it was time that Israel see what life without God would be like.    It’s kind of funny that it’s not God who leaves though, he tells Jeremiah to send the people away.  Maybe the point is that this is God’s world, God’s land, God’s city and if the people don’t want him as their God then they need to leave.  When the people ask where they are to go the answer is honest and real:  To Destruction.  The picture isn’t very pretty either, be hacked to death with swords or ripped apart by dogs, birds, or wild animals.  It’s an ugly picture but it is real.  Existence without God now and in eternity is ugly too.  With respect to eternity without God, Jesus told his followers that it was “outer darkness where there is weeping and grinding of the teeth” (Matthew 8:12).  He also tells his followers that the final place of those who reject God is an unquenchable fire where they are constantly consumed by worms.  Hell is an awful reality and God uses awful earthly realities to teach us that if he needs to.  Verse 4 explains another part of why God needed to bring this level of trouble into the lives of the people of Judah.  The Israelites were supposed to be an example to the nations around them; they were supposed to be a people that the nations could look to to learn the truth about the one true God.  By mixing other gods (idols) into their lives they destroyed the possibility for the nations around them to see who God is and what he can do.  So God made an example of them showing the nations around them what happens when you serve other so called gods.  Manasseh was the king of Judah about the time Jeremiah was born.  He was a very evil king who brought man false gods back into the lives of the people of Judah.  In verse 6 we learn that he was not alone in accepting these false gods.  In that verse God tells the people of Judah that they are going backwards.  If this was written later in Jeremiah’s life it might have been after Manasseh’s grandson,  Josiah, became king and stopped the idol worship in Jerusalem.  After Josiah’s death idol worship was resumed in Judah and Jerusalem; Spiritually the people were going backward.  This failure to honor God resulted in the suffering see in verses all of theses verses 2-9.

It may be just wishful thinking (like Jeremiah’s prayer for the people in Jeremiah 14:19-22) but is see just a small ray of light in verses 6-7.  First of all we see that God will “relent”, at least he had in the past.  God is not an all out rage machine.  God loves us and wants a relationship with us.  He works hard at not punishing us, as hard as becoming a man and dying on a cross for us.  But it is about love and love involves the free will of the individuals involved, he will not force us into a relationship, but he is serious about showing us the consequences of walking away from him.  Also in verse 7 God uses the example of a “winnowing fork”.  Wheat is like a giant piece of grass.  As it grows it gets a “head” on it that is full of seeds.  The seeds are the useful part of the plant that we use for food.  After the wheat has grown up it is cut and left in the fields to dry out for a while.  Eventually (in those days anyway) it is brought to a large “floor” where it is stepped on to get the seeds to fall out of the little “leaf” shell they are in.  The seeds are what is wanted but they are mixed in with pieces of leaves and stems on the floor.  The leafs and stems are called “chaff”.  A “winnowing fork” was a tool used to pick up the mess on the floor and throw it into the air.  The seeds, being heavier and smaller, would fall through the “fork” back to the floor as the chaff would blow away in the wind.  At the end only the useful seeds would be left.  I guess I like it that God uses a winnowing fork and not a shovel.  It tells me that there is hope that some will not be “blown away”.  Finally in verse 7 God mentions ‘repentance”, that word means to “turn back” or “return”.  The fact that repentance is an issue means that repentance is an option; there is hope that some can turn back to God.  That is encouraging.

I don’t really like the destruction part but that is reality, God has standards and there are consequences for abandoning Him.  The consequences are fair though, if you want out God will let you out, but outside is a bad, bad place.  So before he lets someone go forever God wants us to get a taste of “life on the outside”.  So I’m glad for the bad stuff in that sense, but it’s still awful.  What I do like is that there seems to be a lot of hope, even in the middle of all the destruction.  We still see the idea of God allowing us to return and the fact that the trouble (at least for now) can stop if we do.  It’s just encouraging to see that God doesn’t want to just destroy but that he wants us with him.  That is very encouraging.

God thank you for forgiving me.  Thank you for giving me an opportunity to come to you.  Before I turned to you I lived an evil selfish life, but you made me anyway.  Then you brought people and situations into my life to show me my lost-ness and how to return to you, amazing love God, amazing.  Thank you for loving me, let me be a channel of your love to others.  Let me be a true messenger of you to those around me.  Thank you for your love and patience.