“The Lord said to Jeremiah, “Arise and go!” Before Jesus ascended to heaven, He said to His disciples in Matthew 28:19, “Go!” In Acts 9:6, on the road to Damascus, Jesus appeared to Paul and said to him, “Now get up and go.” We should do as these did... arise and go when Jesus calls us.
In Acts 10:3-22, the Lord gave to Roman Centurion Cornelius a vision of an angel. The angel told him a place (Joppa), a name (Peter) and an address (Simon the tanner’s house by the sea). Cornelius contacted Peter. Peter shared Christ with the people gathered in Cornelius’ home. They believed in Christ. Jesus filled them with His Spirit.
Jeremiah 18:3: “Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something at the wheel.”
In John 15:14, Jesus said to His disciples , “You are My friends if you do what I command you.”
In Acts 26:19, Paul told Agrippa, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.”
God’s Word yields great results when God speaks it to us in a personal way and we follow His instructions.
Isreal needed a revelation that being a descendant of Abraham did not automatically mean that they had God’s approval. As a potter has the prerogative to replace an unusable vessel with a useful one, God can choose receptive people over those who reject Him.
In Matthew 3:9, John told his Jewish listeners, “Do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.”
Jeremiah 18:5-6: “Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying: ‘O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?’ says the Lord. ‘Look, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel!’”
In Matthew 8:10-12, after a Roman centurion demonstrated faith in Jesus, Jesus turned to religious leaders and said, “…I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!” In Jeremiah’s day, God was looking for clay vessels that could hold faith in God. The people of Jerusalem were failing to do that.
Galatians 5:6 says, “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.” Jesus desires faith and love. Not a particular biological pedigree! Not antiquated rituals!
Parking yourself in a garage does not make you a car, and going to church does not make you a Christian. Having a parent or a grandparent who believes in Jesus, does not make you a Christian. Your salvation must be a work of God in you.
Jeremiah 18:7-8: “The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it.”
In Jonah 3:4, Jonah preached, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” In Jonah 3:5, “The people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them.” Jonah 3:10 says, “Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way, and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.”
In Matthew 12:41, Jesus used Nineveh’s testimony to prod the irreligious leaders of Jerusalem to repent. He said, “The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.”
Ezekiel 33:11: “As I live! declares the Lord God, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?”
In Joel 2:13, the Lord says, “Rend your heart and not your garments. Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and relenting of evil.”
Jeremiah 18:9-10: “And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it.”
In Genesis 6:5-6, the wickedness of the people was great. Every intent of the thoughts of their hearts were evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made them.
In 1 Samuel 15:10-11, the Lord regretted that He made Saul king because Saul turned back from following Him and did not carry out God’s commands.
The Lord compares nations and kingdoms to plants that can be uprooted or preserved by Him. The criteria for preservation is simple. Cooperation with the molding hands of the Potter!
Jeremiah 18:11: “Now therefore, speak to the men of Judah and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, thus says the Lord: behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now everyone from his evil way and make your ways and your doings good.”
The Potter decides when clay is useful when it is not.
As with Jonah, the Lord gave to Jeremiah an urgent message. His listeners must turn to the Lord and repent lest they suffer God’s wrath.
In the days of Noah, the Lord gave people 120 years to repent. Only Noah’s family listened to the Lord. They entered the ark and were saved. The ark was a type of Christ. Salvation is of Christ.
Isaiah 64:8 says, “We are the clay, and You are the potter. We are all the work of Your hand.” Let us submit ourselves to the Potter’s hands and let Him do His transforming work in us.
Jeremiah 18:12: “And they said, ‘That is hopeless! So, we will walk according to our own plans, and we will every one obey the dictates of his evil heart.’”
In Deuteronomy 29:14-23, the Lord warned us to beware of a heart that turns away from Him to serve other gods. He warned against touting, “I shall have peace, even though I follow the dictates of my heart.” In such a case, the Lord promised that every curse that is written in this book would settle on such a person. The Lord would blot out his name from under heaven. The whole land would burn with brimstone like unto Sodom and Gomorrah.
It is good to be mindful of what the Lord said to the last king of Babylon before his nation was conquered by Persia. In Daniel 5:23, the Lord said to the king, “The God who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways, you have not glorified.” Are we glorifying the Lord?
Jeremiah 18:13: “Therefore, thus says the Lord: ask now among the Gentiles, who has heard such things? The virgin of Israel has done a very horrible thing.”
Jonah 2:8 says, ““Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own Mercy.” Gentiles were loyal to their powerless idols. How could Israel forsake their faithful loving Father God?
Jeremiah 18:14: “Will a man leave the snow water of Lebanon, which comes from the rock of the field? Will the cold flowing waters be forsaken for strange waters?”
God offered them cool refreshing streams of pure doctrine, but they drank strange waters. They preferred streams polluted with false doctrine.
Jeremiah 18:15-16: “Because My people have forgotten Me, they have burned incense to worthless idols. And they have caused themselves to stumble in their ways, from the ancient paths, to walk in pathways and not on a highway, to make their land desolate and a perpetual hissing; everyone who passes by it will be astonished and shake his head.”
What did forgetting God do for them? It bound them to idols. It ruined their land. It caused them to stumble. It put them on crooked paths. It increased their shame.
What is a good reason for taking communion? According to 1 Corinthians 11:24, we take communion to remember what Christ did for our salvation. Our salvation cost Jesus the very blood that was in His veins. Let us never forget what the Lord has done for us!
Jeremiah 18:17 uses the imagery of winnowing wheat. In Matthew 3:12, John said of Jesus, “His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
During winnowing, moving air is used to separate heavier, desirable material (like wheat) from lighter, unwanted material (such as chaff). A common method involves tossing the threshed or dried crop into the air, allowing the wind to blow the lighter husks away, while the heavier grain falls back down to be collected. This process improves the purity of the harvested product.
The Lord neither glosses over nor turns a blind eye to the chaff amongst His wheat. He winnows the chaff out. Some dishonest sellers might try to mix chaff in with the wheat, but not the Lord. He will harvest only the wheat and drive away the chaff.
Jeremiah 18:18: “Then they said, ‘Come and let us devise plans against Jeremiah; for the Law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come and let us attack him with the tongue and let us not give heed to any of his words.’”
Before Jeremiah spoke there was “peace.” After Jeremiah spoke it was as though a nest full of hornets had been stirred up. Jeremiah’s truth-telling yielded persecution for him from priests, prophets and politicians.
David experienced persecution. In Psalm 118:12, he wrote, “They surrounded me like bees. They were quenched like a fire of thorns. For in the Name of the Lord, I will destroy them.”
In John 8:59, religious leaders took up stones to throw at Jesus, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the temple.”
St. Augustine wrote, “Jesus fled from stones, but woe to those from whose stony hearts God has fled!”
Jeremiah 18:19: “Give heed to me, O Lord, and listen to the voice of those who contend with me!”
Jeremiah’s words “GIVE HEED” contrast with the words of his enemies. They say, “let us NOT give HEED to any of his words.” Jeremiah wants God to HEED what they are saying and take righteous action upon them.
What are imprecatory Psalms? Imprecatory Psalms are cries for divine judgment (curses) upon enemies. They are pleas for God to vindicate His own righteous cause against sabotages.
Psalm 69 is an imprecatory Psalm. In verse 4, the Psalmist declares, “Those who hated Me without a cause are more than the hairs of My head...” In verse 24, he prays, “Pour out Your indignation upon them...” In John 15:25, Jesus applied Psalm 69:4 to Himself. Jesus convicted the religious leaders of their sins, and they hated Him for it.
Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 191, says, “Pray that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed, and that the Gospel be proclaimed throughout the world.”
Jeremiah 18:20: “Shall evil be repaid for good? For they have dug a pit for my life. Remember that I stood before You to speak good for them, to turn away Your wrath from them.”
Turning away God’s wrath on sinners is what Christ did. Romans 5:9 says, “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.” Since I am in Christ, God looks at me just-if-I’d never sinned. Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath against sin so that I would not have to drink it.
The cup of divine wrath is difficult to drink. Jesus asked the Father three times if the cup could be taken from Him, but each time, finished that prayer, by saying, “Not My will be done but Yours be done.” There was no other sinless human that could be a perfect sacrifice for our sin. So, Jesus drank it. Now, we can drink from His cup of salvation. (Matthew 26:27-44)
Jeremiah sought to turn God’s wrath from his fellow Jerusalemites by leading them back to God. When God asked him to find one man that did justice and spoke the truth, he could not find one. What he did find out was how evil they were.
Jeremiah 18:21: “Therefore, deliver up their children to the famine and pour out their blood by the force of the sword. Let their wives become widows and bereaved of their children. Let their men be put to death, their young men be slain by the sword in battle.”
Jeremiah discovered that God was right about his fellow Jerusalemites. They did horrible things to their children. They sacrificed them to idols in fiery rituals. There was no faithfulness in their marriages. They were conniving! So, he joined with God in desiring wrathful judgments on them.
Jeremiah 18:22: “Let a cry be heard from their houses, when You bring a troop suddenly upon them; for they have dug a pit to take me, and hidden snares for my feet.”
Jeremiah wanted to rescue them from harm. They dug a pit for him and prepared a trap for him.
The brothers of Joseph threw him into a pit. Daniel was thrown into a pit with lions. Jeremiah was thrown into a pit. In a sense, Jesus was thrown into a pit when His body was placed into a grave. All these were rescued from their pits by God’s power.
King David testified in Psalm 40:2 for the Lord saying, He brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps.”
Jeremiah 18:23: “Yet, Lord, You know all their counsel which is against me, to slay me. Provide no atonement for their iniquity, nor blot out their sin from Your sight; but let them be overthrown before You. Deal thus with them in the time of Your anger.”
Romans 2:5 echoes Jeremiah’s anger against enemies of truth. “Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.”
Jeremiah wanted these irreligious leaders overthrown. These were the kind of leaders who stir up mobs to destroy the best of a nation’s people.
The last thing a servant of God wants to do is to pray pain on people, but they were hindering the message that God wanted His people to hear.
Do you like happy conclusions? I do! I am sure Jeremiah wanted a cheerful conclusion to his efforts.
When it comes to imprecatory prayers, it is important to remember the context of these prayers. Jeremiah was trying to save his nation from being destroyed. The future of his nation was hanging in the balance.
Jesus asked His Father to forgive His murderers. In Luke 23:34, He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
We want evil to expire. Let us pray for that! But let us also pray, “Lord Jesus, please convert more persecutors into preachers.”
In Hebrews 8:10-11, the writer quotes Jeremiah 31:34, saying, “None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
Attached is a link to a power point version of this article which I have recorded on my YouTube channel:
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