February 17, Jeremiah 16
"For I have taken away my peace from this people, my steadfast love and mercy, declares the LORD." - Jeremiah 16:5
Think with me about some event or circumstance in our lifetimes that disrupted the normalcy of everyday life. Maybe you remember the time when a blizzard or a tornado knocked out power for a week at your house. Your first thought might have been about a pandemic that completely disrupted our routines and killed many thousands of people, including your loved ones. It's been many years since a war was fought on American soil. But warfare with its many casualties and widespread destruction would be another example of a cataclysmic event that destroys the ordinary. Such events affect not only individuals, but entire societies.
God warned Jeremiah that such a life-altering time was coming soon for the people of Judah. He told Jeremiah not to marry a wife or have children, because the coming widespread death would take them away. God used the prophet's life to illustrate what was going to happen in the nation. He did the same kind of dramatic illustration with Hosea’s troubled marriage to Gomer, and with Isaiah's sons he named before they were born.
God showed Jeremiah the fast-approaching disaster that would shatter the patterns and rhythms of normal life. There would be no funerals, because there were more dead people than they could bury. There would be no festivals or celebrations. God told him that he would silence all the mirth and gladness, before his eyes and in this place. Brutal invaders were
coming to destroy their nation. They would kill their families, take their property and lead survivors away into captivity.
When the people asked why such a thing was going to happen, Jeremiah answered that they had forsaken God, turned to other gods (that were really only lifeless idols) and failed to obey God's laws. Just as Israel drove out the idolatrous Canaanites, so the Babylonians were coming to punish Israel for their idolatry and ungodly living.
In the opening verses of Jeremiah, God commissioned Jeremiah to "pluck up and tear down, to destroy and overthrow." But the next line of that commission was, "to build up and plant." So once again, God tempered the devastating news of impending destruction with the assurance that the nation would survive and return to their land and worship God. This later return would be told alongside the story of the Exodus from Egypt. But before that happened, they had to be thrown out of their land like a rock hurled by a slingshot. The Babylonians would be like fishermen and hunters killing and capturing their prey, emptying the land of all the people. The nation’s disobedience, idolatry and immorality brought about their death and captivity.
Chapter 16 contains another important fact about that promised restoration. Not only exiled Jews would return to God. Jeremiah foresaw as Isaiah did that pagans would turn away from their idols to serve the true God. When Paul and others would take the gospel to the Gentiles, many of them would come with reconciled Jews to worship God alone.
But before any of that glorious restoration and Gentile inclusion took place, what was left of the nation of Israel had to learn that God meant exactly what he said. He meant the promises of blessings, and had kept those promises. He meant the threat of curses that would come if they turned away from him. They would learn in one final tragic lesson that God is God indeed, and that he keeps every promise.
Do you and I know what these people had to learn in the hardest of ways? If we know these things about God are true, do our lives reflect that we know and believe the truth about God? I want the blessings, not the curses, don't you?
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—February 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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