Jeremiah 19:1-15.\u00a0 This section is connected to the one before it by the use of the potter but the reader is left hanging in the first few verses.\u00a0 In verse 1 Jeremiah is sent to the potter to buy a piece of pottery.\u00a0 But then he is told to get some of the religious leaders and take them out to the valley of Ben-hinnom.\u00a0 In Jeremiah 7:31 this valley is mentioned as a place where earlier kings had performed human sacrifices.\u00a0 Josiah, who was king when Jeremiah began bringing messages from God to the people, desecrated the alter used for such sacrifices and forbid the practice (2 Kings 23:10).\u00a0 Later the practice would be started up again by a later king Jehoiakim.\u00a0 In New Testament times the Greek form (Greek is the language the New Testament was originally written in) of the name Ben-Hinnom, Gehenna, became a synonym for Hell.\u00a0 We are also told that the valley is by the \u201cpotsherd\u201d gate.\u00a0 The word \u201cpotsherd\u201d in Hebrew comes from a word that is used for \u201csun\u201d and \u201citching\u201d.\u00a0 The word \u201cpotsherd\u201d \u00a0means to scrape and probably refers to a piece of broken pottery or tile used to \u201cscratch where it itches\u201d.\u00a0 So Jeremiah leads the leaders out the gate past all the broken pottery to the valley.<\/p>\n
In verses 3-9 Jeremiah delivers a message from God to the leaders.\u00a0 IN verse 3 he tells them that the LORD of hosts (the personal name of the one true God, Yahweh, combined with the idea that he controls the armies of angles in heaven, the \u201chosts\u201d) is going to send calamity on the city.\u00a0 The word for calamity has a lot of meanings including something displeasing or hurtful.\u00a0 Basically Jeremiah is telling them that God is sending some pain their way and that they are not going to like it.\u00a0 All the people who see it will be horrified (the idea behind tingling ears).\u00a0 In verses 4-5 Jeremiah tells them it is because of what had gone on in the valley; worship of false gods including sacrificing of their children in fires.\u00a0 God never commanded such practices in fact it was the furthest thing from what he might have commanded them to do.\u00a0 According to verse 6 the valley will not be called Ben-hinnom any longer nor the place of fireplaces (Topheth) but will become famous as a place of slaughter.\u00a0 In verse 7 we learn that the death will be the result of war (the sword).\u00a0 The military plans of the leaders will fail and so many people will die that there will not be enough people to bury them quickly.\u00a0 As a result the vultures will come eat the bodies, an idea that would have been very troubling to the Jewish people since they felt it was a curse not to be buried right away.\u00a0 Different translations translate the word for what will happen to the plans of the leaders differently, \u201cruin\u201d or \u201cmake void\u201d.\u00a0 The word is related to the word for jar and means to be \u201cempty\u201d.\u00a0 I wonder if they kept looking at the jar in his hands wondering what he was going to do with it.\u00a0 In verses 8-9 the message gets worse, not only will the valley be a place of military defeat so bad that the vultures will have a great feast, the city will be surrounded and tings will get so bad inside that the people will resort to cannibalism; eating the bodies of their children and each other.\u00a0 According to verse 9 not only will people around them have tingling ears they will actually begin to make fun of the people of Jerusalem; hissing at the city, a way of showing great disrespect.<\/p>\n
In verse 10 Jeremiah finally makes use of the jar he bought earlier.\u00a0 He destroys it.\u00a0 After completely smashing the jar Jeremiah informs the people that in the same way God will smash and completely destroy Jerusalem.\u00a0 We know this happened less than 40 years later (perhaps only a few, depending on just exactly when Jeremiah gave this message) in 586 BC when Jerusalem was besieged the final time by Nebuchadnezzar.\u00a0 In this example Jeremiah tells them Jerusalem will be like the jar, irreparable.\u00a0\u00a0 We know that Jerusalem was rebuilt later and re-inhabited by the Jewish people.\u00a0 This is not a contradiction though for a couple of reasons.\u00a0 First if you look in verse 11 you will see that the people are also mentioned.\u00a0 Although places are certainly a part of God\u2019s plan it is the people who are important to him.\u00a0 These particular people are the ones who would suffer the immediate consequences of their actions, they would fall and become forever separated from God.\u00a0 They were unacceptable to God and the reason is clear, they had been continually unfaithful to him.\u00a0 It has been clear from our study of Jeremiah so far, that God allows people to come back to him, but they must do just that, come back, be faithful, and turn away from the false gods they had been following.\u00a0 At this point in time and for these people though they were unacceptable to God, they were like Topheth, the place where they had sacrificed their children to false gods.\u00a0\u00a0 With respect to the city and the territory it\u2019s uselessness seems to depend on the people living there.\u00a0 In the law certain objects could become unclean and then be restored through certain rituals of dedication, but only after a time cleansing.\u00a0 These rituals also often involved a waiting period.\u00a0 On the other hand sometimes objects would become unclean, unacceptable, and would be destroyed, remaining that way forever.\u00a0 In certain respects the valley of Ben-Hinnom was like that.<\/p>\n
Remember that Jeremiah had taken leaders of the people to the valley to give them the message we have just looked at.\u00a0 And certainly those leaders don\u2019t seem to be interested in changing.\u00a0 Jeremiah then returned to the city to a courtyard in the Temple and gave a very short message to the people of Jerusalem in general.\u00a0 He warned them that God was going to destroy the city and surrounding towns.\u00a0 I like the last part of today\u2019s reading, the trouble was coming because the people would not turn their heads (they stiffened their necks) as God was calling out to them.\u00a0 I like this because it shows me that there is always a chance with God.\u00a0 What we need to do is turn to him when he is calling.\u00a0 The situation is never hopeless as long as we have breath.\u00a0 Not too many years before one of the kings, Hezekiah, had a death sentence pronounced against him by God.\u00a0 When Hezekiah turned back to God and begged for mercy God allowed him to live another 15 years (2 Kings 20:1-6).\u00a0 God is pure and he will deal with the dirt and evil of our disobedience and rebellion (sin).\u00a0 In the end we will closely live with him in a pure and perfect world.\u00a0 But God is also merciful and loving and he will forgive if we turn to him and allow him to do what only he can, clean up our lives for now and eternity.<\/p>\n
God thank you for your love. Thank you for your patience.\u00a0 Thank you for your mercy.\u00a0 Thank you for holding back and allowing us time to turn around.\u00a0 Thank you that Jesus dealt with my sins, past, present, and future.\u00a0 Thank you that he made me a \u201cclean\u201d place where your Spirit can live and help me.\u00a0 Let me listen well and live more for you each day.\u00a0 Make the unclean \u201cTopheth\u201d that my life is, clean for you each day.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jeremiah 19:1-15.\u00a0 This section is connected to the one before it by the use of the potter but the reader is left hanging in the first few verses.\u00a0 In verse 1 Jeremiah is sent to the potter to buy a piece of pottery.\u00a0 But then he is told to get some of the religious leaders […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1710,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1709\/revisions\/1710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}