Jeremiah

Chapter 18:12-18 (ESV) - “But they say, ‘That is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’

“Therefore thus says the LORD:
Ask among the nations,
    Who has heard the like of this?
The virgin Israel
    has done a very horrible thing.
Does the snow of Lebanon leave
    the crags of Sirion?
Do the mountain waters run dry,
    the cold flowing streams?
But my people have forgotten me;
    they make offerings to false gods;
they made them stumble in their ways,
    in the ancient roads,
and to walk into side roads,
    not the highway,
making their land a horror,
    a thing to be hissed at forever.
Everyone who passes by it is horrified
    and shakes his head.
Like the east wind I will scatter them
    before the enemy.
I will show them my back, not my face,
    in the day of their calamity.”

Then they said, “Come, let us make plots against Jeremiah, for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, let us strike him with the tongue, and let us not pay attention to any of his words.”

Question to consider: What attributes of the LORD make Him wholly different from the gods of the nations?

If you haven’t yet read yesterday’s passage and study, today’s study might need a spoiler alert. Jeremiah gave the people the message that the LORD was the potter and Judah was the clay, and that He would mold them by way of the Babylonians so that they would repent of their idolatry and return to Him. Just as the LORD had once used Israel as a sword to cut out sin from the land, He would now use Babylon as a sword against Judah to do the same. Like it or not, God would end up with a remnant of Israel who turned to Him in faith.

The response from the people was to tell Jeremiah that his message was in vain. It was meaningless to them because they were going to do what made them happy. Something tells me that Jeremiah was the one who tacked “and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart” on to the end of their statement in recounting it to the LORD.

The statement from the LORD was almost one of shock, “Who has heard the like of this?” None of the other nations received a word from their gods, and yet they showed more respect to empty idols than Judah showed to the God of heaven and earth who created all things.

Why would they forget about the LORD when He has faithfully met their needs? It’s precisely because the LORD provided such an abundance that they thought they could make it in the world on their own. It’s precisely because the LORD demonstrated patience and mercy toward them that they thought they could get away with their continued idolatry.

The gods of the nations showed no such mercy, and they did not provide for their people because they did not exist. Their gods couldn’t defend themselves so the nations defended their gods. Thus Judah felt the need to appease the gods of the nations in order to keep peace with them.

Think about how people act toward Christ today in the world. We are taught that judgment belongs to God, and our commission is to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us so that they may see our good works, repent of their sins and turn to Christ for salvation. Muslims commit acts of murder to defend their god, and they show no such patience or mercy. The world assumes that it can get by with persecuting and ridiculing Christ and His church because they do not retaliate in kind, but they are too afraid to say anything against Muhammad or Islam.

Because the LORD gave opportunity after opportunity for Judah to repent, they ignored the pleas of Jeremiah and were offended by the notion that they were just clay to be molded by God. So they ignored him, ridiculed him, and plotted against him.

Prayer

Dear heavenly Father, please open the eyes and ears of those we encounter who do not know You. May they heed the warning that Christ will come to judge the living and the dead and turn to Him. When people revile Christ and say all kinds of evil things against us who belong to Him, help us to rejoice that we bear His name. Amen.