Jeremiah 18:1-23. In verses 1-17 God continues to warn the people of Judah about the trouble he is going to send their way. God uses a familiar example to help the people understand what he is doing, why, and how they might avoid the trouble; it is the example of a potter making an object out of clay on a pottery wheel.
The wheel was a sort of table that the potter could spin around in a circle with a lump of clay on it. The potter would then use his hands to form cylindrical object like a cup, vase, or bowl. Sometimes as the potter was forming the spinning object it would get messed up and he would push it down and form something else. The clay belonged to the potter and it was up to him what he did with it. God uses this example to inform the people of Judah that he has the same sort of right over them. The Jewish people had been chosen by God for a special mission; he wanted them to be an example to the nations around them of what He would do for the people. In order for the world to understand God through the Jewish people they needed to live only for him and honor him with their lives. If they obeyed God then he would take care of them and the world would learn about God’s care, but if they disobeyed him then he would have to punish them so the world would see that God is pure and has certain standards. As we saw in an earlier post God made it very clear to the Israelites that there were rewards for obedience and there would be punishment for disobedience.
Notice though in verse 7 that God’s actions sometimes depend on our actions. He might decide to destroy a nation but then the people turn to him and he holds back the destruction. This happened to the city/nation of Ninevah in the book of Jonah. It also happened in the personal life of one of the last kings of Judah, Hezekiah, who God was going to destroy. Hezekiah had been proud before God but change and cried to God for help and forgiveness, God decided not to kill him at that time but promised and added 15 years to his life (2 Kings 20:1-6; 2 Chronicles 32). The opposite situation is also mentioned in verses 9-10 where God plans to make a nations secure and prosperous but then they do evil and he decides to punish them instead.
In verse 12 Jeremiah then applies the principle to the people of Judah, they are like the second example, people God planned to make secure and cared for but who rebel against God. While God hopes that the people will “repent” (change the way they are going) the people decide that they are going to follow their “stubborn evil hearts”. In verses 13-17 we see that this type of treatment of God is unheard of, the nations show much more respect to their lame useless fake gods that Israel is showing to the true God who has done much for them (like saving them from 185,000 invading troops in the days of Hezekiah about 70 years earlier). Although the people of Judah were going to miss out on the good they could have enjoyed God’s purposes would still be fulfilled; they would be an example to the nations of what happens when you show disrespect to the one true God (Jeremiah 18:16).
In verse 12 the people rejected God and in verse 18, after telling them that their actions were unbelievable, the people turned their anger and rejection toward Jeremiah. In very religious sounding language they tell each other that Jeremiah must be a false prophet because there is no way all the other prophets and priests can be wrong. They aren’t even honest in what they say they are going to do to him, they say they are just going to “tell him off” (“strike him with our tongues”) and ignore him but Jeremiah tells us that they have dug a pit to capture him and imprison him in (vv. 20, 22). Clearly they intended to do more than just ignore him (later in the book we will see that they actually do throw him in a hole in the ground and keep him there for quite a while).
In verse 20 Jeremiah asks if good (the warnings he had been giving the people) should be repaid with evil. Jeremiah then asks God to let their children starve to death, kill the people with the sword, and let the women become childless widows. It sounds like Jeremiah is asking God to get revenge on them for the way they want to treat him. But notice that Jeremiah asks God to “deal with them in the time of [His] anger” (v. 23) not according to Jeremiah’s hurt and anger. Also notice that Jeremiah had been talking to the people so that God’s ‘wrath” would be turned away (by them turning back to God see verse 7). Rather than looking for personal revenge Jeremiah may be saying to God, “I give up, they really are that bad, go ahead and do what you planned to do to them, bring on the famine and the sword.” Notice in verse 21 that Jeremiah is talking about the men being struck down and dying and that the young men dying “in battle”. In an earlier post I mentioned that sometimes God holds back punishment because one of his people is looking for revenge. God is going to follow through on the invasion in Jeremiah’s lifetime and so I think that this is more about Jeremiah asking God to follow through than it is about his own personal feelings.
If I am right then the lesson we can learn is that we need to leave the revenge up to God. And look at how God responds to evil, he will punish it, but he gives opportunity to come back to him. God is perfect and pure and he is willing to forgive, we are not so perfect and pure so we should be even more willing to let go when people treat us wrongly. We see that Jeremiah had feelings though and that he was hurt by others. We see that he wanted justice, he had done right and didn’t deserve the treatment he was getting. But he was willing to leave the justice up to God. More importantly he seems to want the people punished because of how they have treated God. He wants the punishment by God in God’s timing.
In 2 Thessalonians 1:4-10 Paul lays it out to the believers in Thessalonica (a city in ancient Greece). He admits that they are suffering for being believers but that it is a sign of their true trust in Jesus. He then tells them that God will judge the people who have treated them badly and that it will be right for God to punish them because they have treated the believers so badly. Paul also tells them that those people won’t be punished until Jesus returns to rule on the earth. It seems unfair but Paul told another group of believers on one occasion that Heaven won’t be available for those who stay locked into their sinful lives; those who have blown God off and lived the way they wanted to live. He then reminded them they some of them had been like that (1 Corinthians 6:11). Paul himself had gone around arresting and killing believers before he turned his life over to Jesus. Peter gives us the answer in 2 Peter 3:9 when he tells some of the early believers that God is holding back, for now, so more people can turn to him. God’s timing is the best timing and we need to let him deal with the timing for punishing evil. In the mean time we need to be faithful in helping the world know about God’s love, our evil, and the possibility of either forgiveness or judgment. We also need to remember that it may cost us here and now but it will be great in eternity for us.
God thank you for waiting long enough for me to turn back to you. Don’t let me be selfish and want you to deal with sin and trouble right now. Let me be patient like you, let me have your heart toward a lost and dying world. Let me endure the small amount of pain living for you brings as I help those around me find eternal peace with you. Give me strength, give me the words, give me the life to back up the message. Thank you for loving me and the world. I know you will do the right things at the right times. You are the one true God; awesome!