I’m not sure how anyone could read what God is threatening to do and not make some immediate changes. I don’t think it applies to me, and I am looking over my life to make sure I’m not drifting….that’s how scary this is.
In fact, I think the only way that you could hear what God said through Jeremiah and not be moved to change is if you didn’t believe God existed. Or maybe if you didn’t think God interacted with people through prophets. Either way, you have to have drifted pretty far if this prophecy doesn’t move you. And, it didn’t move the people of Judah. Then again, your heart would have to be pretty hard to set up an idol in the temple of God. I see here that they did that also.
I mentally made a quick list of the sort of things that God values from 7:5-6. We should rid ourselves of evil deeds, but don’t forget evil thinking as well. I wonder how many sermons are preached on justice? I can think of several sermons I have preached on “don’t murder” or “don’t take advantage of others”…but I’m not sure I have preached on “treat others with justice”. It’s usually “treat others with love” or “treat others fairly, or as you would want to be treated”. Justice says that there are some actions that deserve punishment, or some form of discipline. Sometimes when we talk about “loving others” that part gets lost.
There are people today who believe that they are Christians because they own a Bible. Some believe they are Christians because they have been to church. The people of Jeremiah’s day believed they were safe because the temple was in their town…they must have thought that God needed the temple for some reason. They couldn’t conceive of God allowing the temple to be overrun because their minds were trained to think like pagans, like idol worshippers. The idols would never be active outside of their temple…so why would God? And even then…they had moved idols into the temple itself…there’s no way they could believe that God would be okay with that. They simply must have not cared.
Reading this passage and listening to God vent his frustration with the people reminds me of a time when I was still in the military. I was leading a group on a night march, and we became lost. I think everyone knew it but me. I was so convinced that the place we needed to be was “just up ahead a little bit” that I didn’t consider that we had been walking for hours longer than we should have. Looking back, I ignored at least two attempts from friends to help me reorient myself, but I rejected them both. My problem was pride. I was as sure that I knew what I was doing, just as I was sure no one else knew anything. As we marched back to camp I was anything but proud. Pride will cause us to go “common sense blind”. I suppose that greed, lust and anger will do the same thing. Perhaps the people of Judah were blinded by these things, it certainly sounds like it.
So, how do we avoid becoming like them? The only way to break the hold something has over you is to surrender it. First, pray and ask God to take the unhealthy desire away from you. Then, give up the item or attitude outright. If you are greedy, give some things away. If you are an overeater skip meals. If pride is your issue, then find reasons to compliment or thank others for what they have done. Conduct a fast where you give up speaking about yourself. Avoid interrupting to express your point of view. Listen more and speak less. Share what you have with others. Offer to work as a volunteer, or well below the going wage, to help someone else out. This type of activity will break the hold of pride, selfishness and greed.
All the way down at the end of today’s reading…in 9:25 it says that “someday” God will punish everyone who is circumcised in body but not Spirit. My mind immediately went to John 4 where Jesus says that the Father desires people who will worship in spirit and in truth. Here’s the really cool insight that I just had: that’s what God has always wanted! He’s saying the same thing here in Jeremiah, hundreds of years before the New Testament that He said when He walked the earth in person.
Perhaps you thought the Old Testament portrayed a different God, one who preferred strict rules and “lorded” his presence over His subjects, as contrasted in the New Testament by a loving, forgiving and kind God who wants to relate with His people. Here’s the news: They are one and the same. I hear and see Jesus crying out to His people in the words of Jeremiah. I hear the same passion, the same angst, the same love as I did when Christ was led out of Jerusalem carrying a cross.
What is wrong with us, to mistreat God the way we do? I honestly feel terrible that anyone would be rejected as violently and as often as God has been….and by His own creation! Why God puts up with us at all is one of the greatest mysteries of the age.
“Lord, the more I read, the more I feel I need to ask for forgiveness for any role in this that I play. My own pride could keep me from admitting that I too have ignored what you wanted me to do. Please forgive my shortcomings and restore me to your path, and to your family”.
Faithfully,
PR