February 20, Jeremiah 19
Then you shall break the flask in the sight of the men who go with you, and shall say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel that it can never be mended. Men shall bury in Topheth because there will be no place else to bury.” - Jeremiah 19:10-11
Once when I was young and my brother was even younger, we were playing ball in the house one day. Mom was away and I was in charge. My mother had a white glass covered dish on a shelf in the dining room. The cover was shaped like a sitting hen and the dish itself was shaped like a nest. As best I can recall, that glass hen suddenly flew up off her nest and struck a passing fast ball that my brother failed to catch. The poor hen shattered when it flew into our
ball. We collected as many pieces of her as we could find, and tried to put her back together. We couldn’t find any glue, so we used tape that claimed to be both magic and transparent to stick the biggest chunks of glass back together. Maybe Mom wouldn’t notice. I recommended that we go outside to play and proceeded to coach my little brother in the fine art of denial.
When Mom came home, she came out in the yard and asked my brother if he knew anything about what had happened to her hen. He testified that he did not know anything about it, just like I told him to do. So Big Brother got in Big Trouble for playing ball in the house and teaching his sweet little brother to lie. Like Humpty-Dumpty, the broken hen could not be put together again.
When Jeremiah went to the potter’s house in Chapter 18, the clay was still soft on the potter’s wheel. His skilled hands could reshape the forming vessel as he pleased at that stage of its existence. But after the clay was fired and hardened, reshaping the vessel was no longer an option. It could be shattered beyond repair, but it could not be restored.
God told Jeremiah to go to the potter and buy an earthenware flask. Then he told him to take some leaders of the people and the priests with him to one of the gates going out of the city. He instructed the prophet to break the flask and tell the people that God was about to do that to his apostate ungodly nation.
That shattered flask represented a sad and accurate picture of what was left of Israel in the days of Jeremiah. Once soft and malleable, they were now hardened in their rebellion against God and their devotion to Baal. Moses told their ancestors that they would be cursed for forsaking God and be so desperately hungry that they would resort to cannibalism. Jeremiah quoted Moses to his hardhearted audience to warn them of what was going to happen. He broke the flask and said that God was going to do that to them, and the damage would be irreparable.
These people had slaughtered their own children and burned them as offerings to the Baal named Molech. They had so forsaken God and so followed after Baal that there was no turning back. They were doomed. The nation would be shattered and would not be reassembled.
The people and their leaders hated Jeremiah even more after he said this. They persecuted the prophet for doing nothing except delivering the message God gave him to give to them.
I do not want to become so calloused and hardened to God’s word that I would reject the message and attack a messenger who told me God’s truth. One of the most important “one another” commands for us is to encourage each other daily, lest any of us be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Let’s remember Jeremiah’s shattered flask and resolve to never allow that prophecy of doom to describe and apply to us.
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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