Jeremiah 10:17-25.  It is very discouraging when ‘life’ takes me a way from writing these posts even for just a day, and it’s been something like a month.  As I’ve said in the past that doesn’t mean that I’m not spending time with God it’s just that I’m not getting to spend this time with God.  I went back and reread “yesterday’s” post and it was very encouraging (except for the typos).  I am glad God loves me and is clear about how to have a good relationship with him.  But we also talked about consequences for our rebellious actions.

In today’s reading Jeremiah starts out right away with consequences.  The people of Judah had been rebellious for a long time, sometimes “in God’s face” rebellious, worshipping false gods, and sometimes secretly rebellious, pretending to love God but not really putting their heart into the relationship.  Jeremiah was a prophet (a messenger for God) during the reign of Josiah, among others.  Although Josiah got rid of the idols his father and grand-father had set up in Judah and also made the people start honoring God again, the people were not serious about it, and that is part of the problem Jeremiah is confronting.  God is going to bring an invader to remove the people of Judah from the land, the Babylonians.  As we will see later in Jeremiah this captivity will not last forever, that is kind of hinted at in verse 18.  After telling the people that he (God) is going to throw them out of the land and cause them distress we see that God has a purpose, so that they (the people of Judah) can be found.  That phrase, “may be found”, can mean “be recognized” or “be secured”.  I wonder if one of those meanings is more appropriate here.  It is clear from the Bible that God uses trouble to get our attention when we are ignoring him and violating our relationship with him.  It is also clear that God has more than just punishment in mind here when he is going to expel the people of Judah from the land.  He doesn’t want them cast our forever he want then back with him, safe and secure.  As we saw in the last post though he will not force himself on us, we have to return to him willingly.  But that doesn’t mean that he won’t try to get our attention; help us see the unsafe position we are in without him.

In verses 19-21 Jeremiah compares himself to a nomad.  In ancient times some people lived in towns or cities and others lived in tents moving their flocks and herds from place to place, these traveling ranchers are often called nomads.  In verse 19 Jeremiah compares the coming punishment to a sickness and an injury.  Some translations says it is “incurable” and others say it is ‘”grievous”.  I think that “incurable” is an overstatement because back in verse 18 God already told us his purpose was to help the people of Judah.  Grievous means “serious” and any wound can become serious fast if it is not treated, like when you are living in tents on the move, or in the days before antibiotics.  I’m sure they had ways to deal with wounds but I’m also sure that they were more serious in those days than now.  Using the language of nomadic life Jeremiah describes what the cause of the serious situation was.  Remember God said he was going to “throw the people out of where they were living.  Here Jeremiah says his tent is all broken down and he has no sons to help him set it up again.  I do a physical job, building houses.  I worked alone for many years and my sons (and daughters) would come and help out.  Now my boys are all grown up and not available to help very much, it makes it much harder.  In the days of Jeremiah most sons would take over the business from dad, the nomad would expect his sons to stick around and help with the tents and the flocks, but Jeremiah tell us he has no one to follow in his footsteps.  Verse 21 applies this word picture that Jeremiah has painted to the spiritual life of Judah and Jerusalem; he tells us what he is really talking about, but he still uses the picture of the nomadic life.  The shepherds have all become stupid.  The word shepherd has several different ways it is translated, 75 times it is translated “feed” and 63 times it is translated “shepherd”.  Way back in the beginning of the history of the nation of Israel God had Moses gather them together and lead them out of Egypt.  When the group came to the border of the promised land they sent spies in to check out the situation.  The spies came back and gave a good report about the land but also told the Israelites that the inhabitants were strong and fierce.  As a result the people refused to obey God and take over the land.  Two of the spies, however, encouraged the people to enter and take the land; Joshua and Caleb.  As punishment for the disobedience the Israelites spent 40 years wandering around the desert until all of that particular generation died.  In Numbers 27 Moses, Caleb, and Joshua are the only ones left from their generation and they are again at the border.  Moses had been rebellious too, once.  And he too was barred from entering the land.  From their generation only Caleb and Joshua were allowed to enter.  Just before he died God had Moses go up to the top of a mountain to get a glimpse of what he was going to miss.  While there Moses used the same idea as Jeremiah uses in today’s reading, Moses asks God to put a man over the group of Israelites to lead them so they will not be like “sheep without a shepherd”.  Joshua wound up being that guy (Numbers 27:12-18).  In today’s reading Jeremiah tells us that the leaders of Israel, the shepherds, had become stupid.  The word translated stupid can mean burned up, eaten up, and wasted.  When something is burned up or eaten up it is useless, wasted.  These guys had become that way because they had not looked for God.  The result is they have not prospered and their flock has been scattered.  The idea behind the word translated prosper is wisdom.  Their lives do not show the signs of a life lived wisely.  For a shepherd it would be a disaster to lose your flock and hear the spiritual and political leaders of Israel were about to lose the people of Israel to foreign captivity. Jeremiah uses the past tense because of the certainty of what is coming.

When I was young there were two wars going on, the Vietnam war and the “Cold War”.  The Vietnam war was fought with bombs and bullets while the “Cold War” was fought more with ideas.  Both were fought for the same reason though.  Influenced by the Bible the founders of our nation started this country with a dedication to personal freedom and responsibility.  Each of us has a life to live and we are each personally responsible to God for how we live it.  About 100 years after the founding of our nation another view of life bean to raise it’s head in Europe, Socialism.  The men and women who promoted that idea saw each person as a small working part of a larger machine, the state (and hopefully the world one day).  Each person would do their part, big or small, in the machine which was the State and in return the State would feed, cloth, and protect them.  Their lives were not their own, as a part of the State, the State would tell them who, what, where, and when for their lives.  “Why” was only for the State to know.  Two large nations embraced that ideology, Russia (which eventually became the Soviet Union by conquering several smaller states) and China.  The idea of each person doing what they can and being cared for equally sounds good, in fact it sounds almost like what we hear in the New Testament when we are told to “do good to all men” (Galatians 6:10).  But it is really the opposite.  In the New Testament we see that the early believers in Jesus took their own possessions and sold them to help others (Acts 2).  In Acts 5 we see a story that makes it very clear that personal property is under the control of the owner (v. 4).  Of course God wants us to use the things he has given us to care for our families and to help others in need but we are the ones who need to decide, God wants us to be generous and giving, like he is.  In socialism people do not own anything, the State claims ownership of everything down to our very consciences and lives.  In socialism (and communism) the state takes, in Christianity believes give.  The two are actually opposites.  The United States was based on biblical principles; God’s wisdom, while the original thinkers behind socialism (many of whom were well acquainted with biblical truth) became “stupid” to put it Jeremiah’s way.  After 70+ years of trying socialism and communism failed in the Soviet Union and even China is flirting with restoring at lest some freedom to it’s citizens.  Unfortunately now it is our leaders and citizens who have become stupid and are promoting socialistic ideas;  our government is taking more and more control of our personal lives taking control of everything from drinks (some cities are banning the sale of sodas over a certain size or taxing all “sugary drinks”) to doctors (the whole “Obamacare” thing).  The result in ancient Judah was captivity in a foreign land, the results in the Soviet Union was captivity in their own land.  If we reject God’s wisdom of personally freedom and responsibility with accountability to him we can probably expect captivity of some form for ourselves too.

In verse 22 Jeremiah hears trouble coming from the north.  That is the direction that invaders from the east would take.  They almost always circled up north and came down the costal plain and that is the path that the Babylonians took when they conquered Jerusalem.  God’s punishment was sure and came to pass just as Jeremiah predicted.

In verse 23-25 we have a prayer by Jeremiah.  In verse 23 he admits that we don’t know how to run our own lives.  When we abandon God’s wisdom and follow our own ideas life gets messed up and God is not honored.  In verse 24 Jeremiah asks God to correct him.  Here he is probably speaking as a good shepherd; as a good leader of the Jewish people (even though they would not listen to him).  In other words he is standing up as an example; playing the role of a typical Jewish person of his day.  Jeremiah asks God to correct him with “justice” not in “anger”.  When we think of justice we think of rules and laws.  When someone breaks them there are certain defined penalties.  Of course when it comes to God there are laws too, and certain defined penalties.  That is why God was bringing the Babylonians to conquer the Israelites (See Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 27-29).  But Jeremiah is looking beyond that shallow idea of justice to a deeper idea that includes the nature, discretion, and purposes of God.  That can be seen in meaning of the word translated “correct” which can also mean teach or reform.  Jeremiah realizes that God loves the Jewish people and wants a relationship with them and is asking God to fix that relationship.

At the end of his prayer Jeremiah asks for God to use his wrath too, but on a different people, the people who do not know God and who do not call out to him.  I wonder if Jeremiah wasn’t a little out of line with this last point.  Remember that this is his prayer; his words.  That doesn’t mean that it isn’t God’s word too, we just have to be careful to understand what God is saying through Jeremiah’s prayer.  We do know that God was using the whole history of the Israelite people to teach the world about our broken relationship with God and our need for help (See “The Old Testament Connection”).  We also know that in the end that God’s kingdom will be populated with people from “every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).  So just as God’s justice could be applied in a way to correct the people of Judah, his justice can correct the rest of us too.  I don’t know if Jeremiah saw the coming invaders as people who could turn to God or not but God sees us al that way.  God does know who will and won’t turn to him and has used his “wrath” in history to destroy people, even whole groups of people (in the flood he only left six people total on the face of the earth).  I’m glad it’s God who is making that decision and not Jeremiah or me.  According to John 3:16 God loved the people of the world so much that he gave his son, Jesus, who gave up his life in our place.  That’s the guy I want deciding who ultimately has to get destroyed and I am thankful for all the “punishement” he gives to show me the right way to go.

God I thank you for loving the whole world, each of us individually.  I thank you that we are not part of some machine in which we are all just parts.  If that were the case you would junk the whole thing (See Genesis 6-9, 18:16-19:29).  But instead you made a way for each of us individually to have a fixed relationship with you.  Thank you for Jesus.  Thank you for teaching me about him.  Thank you for giving me an opportunity to respond to your love.  Thank you for the freedom and the responsibility.  Thank you for letting me love you and helping me love you.  Teach me each day more about yourself and help me love you more each day because of who you are.  Help me help others find you too.  Let my loving deed show you to my lost and needy world.

Jeremiah 10:1-16.  Yesterday we saw that God is not just in the destroying and punishing business but that he wants us to change.  God exercises lovingkindness (faithfulness to his loving promises), justice (fairness) and righteousness (living the right way; God’s way) on the earth.  Because he loves us and wants us to return to him God warns us.  But as we saw he will apply the consequences of our disrespect and rebellion eventually, but not until he does all he can to get our attention and give us an opportunity to return to him.  There is a plan and he is patiently working through it.

Today’s reading is more of that same kind of warning. Years ago an author named John Milton wrote a book called Paradise Lost.  That is an appropriate way to describe the first half of the story we find in the Bible; mankind (in the persons of Adam and Eve) lived in a harmonious relationship with God in the creation he created for us.   If I could sum up the whole Bible I would say it’s the story of Paradise lost and regained.  It tells us of our broken relationship with God and how that problem is fixed.  The Paradise (living together with God in a happy or harmonious relationship) lost in Genesis is restored in the Revelation (for more see “The Old Testament Connection”).

Since the problem is about a relationship that we willingly violated the solution also involves our wills.  There were absolute consequences for our disobedience, disrespect, and rebellion.  It’s like God was saying if you love me you will …  Adam decided to do the thing God had told him would offend him; he chose to break the relationship by disregarding God’s standards.  The warning God gave to Adam was that that type of action (called sin in the Bible, a term that means “to miss the mark” or bulls eye) would cause a permanent break in the relationship.  The idea of death is the idea of separation, physical death is the separation of our bodies and our spirit or soul.  That was part of the consequence of Adam “sinning”.  But the more important consequence was the “spiritual” death he (and we) experience because of sin; the separation of our soul or spirit from God.  Because God is pure he cannot just look the other way and forget about the price of our sin; he is faithful to all that he decides.  His solution was not to ignore the consequence but to pa the price himself.  That is why Jesus left the honor he had in Heaven as God, and became a man; the infinite God-man.  As the infinite God–man he was uniquely qualified to pay the infinite price for our sins.  That is what he did when he died on the cross and God the father turned his back God the Son, Jesus (Matthew 27:47).

Back to the will.  Jesus provided the solution to our separation from God but it is up to us to accept the solution, remember it’s about a relationship, a love relationship, and God is not going to force us to love him, if he did it would cease to be love and would become slavery. So we must choose.  In order to choose we need to understand about God and his standards and our broken relationship, that is what a lot of the Bible is about.  It also shows us through various events that Jesus is not just a way back to God but the only way.

In today’s reading it is very clear that mankind spends a lot of time trying to find other ways to fix our broken relationship with God.  It seems very clear that mankind is aware of God.  We spend a lot of time inventing gods because we know deep inside of us that there must be a supreme being that is in control.  After we invent these “gods” we then spend a lot of time trying to make them happy.  This of course implies that we know something is wrong and that it in some way relates to our actions.  In verse 1 God is talking to the “house of Israel”, probably a reference to Judah but the words apply to all mankind (Israel’s job in the big plan was to be an example to the world).  You might want to notice that in verse one that the word LORD is in all capitals, in sore translations the translators wond use the personal name of God that he gave to Moses in the book of Exodus, Yahweh, it’s  sign of respect that so they use all Capitals for LORD when they come to God’s personal name, Yahweh.  That is the case in verse 1, so God is being very clear with us about who he is in this reading.   In verse 2 God tells them (and us) not to go “the way of the nations”.  In verses 3-5 we are told what that way is; making up gods, useless fake gods.  That is what I was talking about above.  In verse 2 God also tells us that the nations were afraid of what they saw going on in the universe around them, they were aware there is some sort of problem with their existence and they were also aware that it relates to God (though their solution involves god not God).

In verses 6-10 Jeremiah gets very clear about this distinction between god(s) and God (Yahweh the one true God).  In verses 6-7 Jeremiah tells God that he realizes that he is active and capable.  He also hints at the fact that all people should recognize his power and existence (see Romans 1:19-20).  Jeremiah is very clear that this message is for more than the kingdom of Judah, notice he mentions the “nations” and all their “kingdoms”, the word for “nations” is almost always used for people other than Israelites.  Jeremiah not only contrasts the power of God with the powerless fake gods (verses 4-5) he also pokes fun at the men who create the fake gods, they think they are so wise but really they are stupid and foolish.  The word for stupid can be translated burned up or wasted, their minds are empty and useless in how they think about God.  I like the word for foolish, in Hebrew is is Cawsal or kacal, sounds like the sound a crow makes to me, maybe it sounded that way to the Israelite people too, a descriptive sound that fit the empty noise of the worlds foolish worship of sticks and stones.  In verse 8 we see that the world works hard at making up gods and honoring them (it is a “discipline”, a word that involves teaching and learning, work in other words.  And in verses 9-10 we also see that the world spends a lot of money on their made up gods.

In verses 11-15 Jeremiah contrasts the real work of the real God.  Not only did God create the universe (v. 12) but he set up the rules it runs by (v. 12) and he is personally involve in the ongoing activity in it (v. 13).  In verses 14-15 Jeremiah repeats the idea that the makers of the false gods (idols) are stupid and the idols are powerless. Can God make things any clearer for us?  Well yes, in verse 16 all the ideas about God are summed up.  He is the personal God of Jacob (another name for Israel, see “What’s in a Name?”) a reference to the Israelite or Jewish people.  He is the creator God and his personal name is Yahweh.  That’s pretty clear.

I like it that God is so clear.  He communicates with us about who he is, what he has done, what he expects, what will happen when we defect from him, how to get back with him, it’s all there.  And it’s not just in the Bible either, God uses his creation along with our ability to reason to inform us of his existence.  He also uses our conscience.  God is very clear and yet we make up our own gods, how stupid.  But God loves us and wants a relationship with us anyway, so much so that he became a man and dies to deal with the forever consequences of our defection.  The question is how will we respond?  Will we make up our own gods to fill the empty place in our hearts or will we accept his love and forgiveness and take the one true path, Jesus?  The choice belongs to each of us.  Don’t be stupid and foolish, choose wisely.

God thank you for loving me in spite of my disobedience.  Thank you for taking the punishment for my disobedience and rebellion.  Thank you for making a way back to you.  Thank you for making that path clear.  Thank you for helping me see it.  Let me be a wise servant of yours and help others see the path and follow it.  Thank you for giving me a choice.  Thank you.