“Thank You Lord Jesus for bringing Your Word!”
The Lord led Jeremiah down from his preaching post at the temple area to where the common laborer does his work. This is where God would refuel him with more words for the people.
The Lord furnishes the time, place and means for His Word to go forth.
In the New Testament era, the Lord gave a Roman Centurion named Cornelius a vision of an angel speaking to him by his name (Cornelius) and telling him a place (Joppa), a man’s surname (Peter) and an address (Simon the tanner’s house by the sea). Cornelius sent two servants and a devout soldier to Joppa and they found Peter. God had also given Peter a vision and a message to explain what was about to happen and that he should go with the three men. (Acts 10:3-22)
The ministry of God’s Word is most effective when people are hearing from God in a personal way and following His instructions.
“Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something at the wheel. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so, he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make. 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!’” Jeremiah 18:5-6
Jeremiah arrived just in time to see a potter shaping clay with his hands on a wheel. The potter was a master craftsman. He transformed clay into ornate objects. But wait a moment! It did not meet his expectations! So, he smashed it. As Jeremiah watched the potter smash the clay into a lump to be remolded, the Lord spoke to him.
One of the truths that God needed Israel to hear was that being a descendant of Abraham did not yield His approval of them. If a potter has prerogative to throw away a marred vessel and make a better one, the Creator, can certainly do so as well. God chose Israel, and blessed Israel, to be His representatives, His light, to the world. They were marred beyond use in that regard.
In Matthew 3:9, John the Baptist 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.”
In Matthew 8:10-12, after a Roman centurion expressed great faith in Jesus, Jesus turned to the to the religious leaders of the Jews and said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel! And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Everyone needs a personal relationship with the Lamb to be recorded in His Book of Life.
In Galatians 5:6, the Apostle Paul wrote, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.” Jesus is looking for faith in Him and love for Him. Not for biological pedigree (racism) and not for rituals that are no longer necessary (circumcision)! The purpose of the Law is to lead us to Messiah, not to be Messiah.
It is not enough to be a Christian in name only. Songwriter Keith Green said, “Parking yourself in a garage does not make you a car, and neither does going to church automatically to make you a Christian.” Having a parent or a grandparent who believes in Jesus, does not cover your need to have a personal relationship with Jesus yourself. Each person must be born of the Spirit. Each person must be the work of God (saved and filled by Him) to be an acceptable vessel to God.
“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. 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.” Jeremiah 18:7-10
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!
According to Jonah 3:4, Nineveh was a very wicked pagan city, but when Jonah preached, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.’” Jonah 3:5 says, “the people of Nineveh believed God, proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least of them. And 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.”
“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.’” Jeremiah 18:11
As He with Jonah, the Lord gives Jeremiah a message of urgency, of urgency to return to the Lord and change their ways lest they suffer His wrath.
In the days of Noah, the Lord gave the people 120 years of advance notice about the flood. But only Noah, his wife, his three sons, and his sons’ three wives entered the ark and were saved. The ark was a type of Christ. We need to be in Christ to be saved from the wrath to come.
God’s Word via Jeremiah to the people of Jerusalem was that He could do to His people what the potter did to the clay. He could give them a fresh start. He did not want them to be unacceptable. The problem was that they would not yield themselves to God.
“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.” Jeremiah 18:12
In His covenant with Israel during the days of Moses the Lord warned them to beware of a heart that turns away from Him to serve other gods. He specifically 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, and the Lord would blot out his name from under heaven. The whole land would burn with brimstone like unto Sodom and Gomorrah. (Deuteronomy 29:14-23)
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?
“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. 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?” Jeremiah 18:13-14
God offered them cool refreshing streams of mountain water, but they preferred strange waters. Israel abandoned high quality waters for lower quality waters because they had become happy to talk about other gods and ashamed to talk about Him.
“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.” Jeremiah 18:15-16
“Because My people have forgotten Me.”
They serve worthless idols
They stumble
Walk on paths not highways
Increase their shame
“I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy; I will show them the back and not the face in the day of their calamity.” Jeremiah 18:17
This is the imagery of being winnowed. In Matthew 3:10, John the Baptist 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 will neither gloss over nor turn a blind eye to the fact the people of Jerusalem are chaff. They preferred false gods to Him. 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.
“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.’” Jeremiah 18:18
Jeremiah’s fellow priests, wisemen and prophets looked at the same Book of the Law as Jeremiah did, that is, if they were looking at God’s Law, but they saw things completely differently than he did. It is likely, that they were scamming God’s people so they could live comfortably. His truth-telling had the potential to ruin their criminal enterprise.
The chief priests and scribes also devised a plan against Jesus in His day to destroy Him. They said of Jesus in Matthew 12:24, “This fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons.” As irreligious leaders attacked Jesus, so they attacked Jeremiah, saying, “Come and let us attack him with the tongue and let us not give heed to any of his words.”
St. Augustine wrote, “Jesus fled from stones, but woe to those from whose stony hearts God has fled!”
“Give heed to me, O Lord, and listen to the voice of those who contend with me!” Jeremiah 18:19
Jeremiah’s prayer to God, “Give heed” contrasts with what his enemies plan to do against him. They say, “let us not give heed to any of his words.” Jeremiah wants God to listen to what they are saying and take righteous action upon them.
What are imprecatory Psalms?
Imprecatory means to call down a curse. Imprecatory Psalms are cries for divine judgment upon enemies. They are pleas for God to vindicate His own righteous cause against sabotages.
Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 191, says, “Pray that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed, the Gospel promulgated throughout the world.”
When King Hezekiah’s nation was surrounded by an enemy army, he prayed an imprecatory prayer to the Lord, saying, “Incline Your ear, O Lord, and hear; open Your eyes, O Lord, and see; and listen to the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God.” The Lord answered his prayer. “And it came to pass on a certain night that the angel of the Lord went out and killed in the camp of the Assyrians 185,000; and when people arose early in the morning, there were the corpses—all dead.” (2 Kings 19:16, 35)
“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.” Jeremiah 18:20
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 26:27-28, 39-44)
Jeremiah sought to turn God’s wrath from his fellow Jerusalemites by leading them back to the one true God. His words were passionate. He was bold to stand in the public square amidst mockers and speak the truth. At first, he asked God to have mercy on the people because he believed the leaders were to blame for their errors, but when God asked him to find one man that did justice and spoke the truth, he could not find even one. (Jeremiah 5:1) It was almost as though he took a straw poll, thinking, “Surely, I can find a certain percentage of Jerusalemites who do justice and speak the truth.” But he found none, no not one. What’s more, he found out just how evil they were.
“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 18:21
Jeremiah found out that God was right about his fellow Jerusalemites. They did horrible things to their children. They sacrificed them to idols by destroying them in fiery rituals. There was no faithfulness in their marriages. They were murderers. They were thieves. Conniving! So, he joined with God in desiring wrathful judgments on them.
“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 18:22
He was trying to save them. They were trying to capture and kill him.
Revelation 6:9-10 has an imprecatory prayer in it. “Those who had been slain for the Word of God and for the testimony which they held... cried with a loud voice, saying ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’”
“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.” Jeremiah 18:23
Psalm 37:32 says, “The wicked spies upon the righteous and seeks to kill him.” These were the kind of irreligious leaders that Jeremiah was dealing with. He did not want God to regard any of their sacrifices or religious practices. “Let them be overthrown!” These were the kind of leaders who stir up mobs to destroy the best of a nation’s leaders. Leaders who are Christlike!
The last thing a man or woman of God wants to do is to hurt people, but when people treat God’s servants as the people of Jerusalem treated Jeremiah, it is difficult not to feel this way about them. Thankfully, God saved Jeremiah from them. They fell. Jeremiah stood.
When it comes to imprecatory prayers, it is important to remember the context of these prayers. King David, King Hezekiah and Jeremiah were trying to save their nations from being destroyed. The entire population of their nation was hanging in the balance.
When it comes to personal abuse, both Jesus and Stephen chose the route of forgiveness and prayer for their enemies. In Luke 23:34, Jesus prayed for His crucifiers, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” In Acts 7:60, Stephen prayed for those who were in the process of stoning him to death, saying, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” In Matthew 6:15, in the context of teaching His disciples how to pray, Jesus said, “If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Jesus set the example for us by forgiving those who flogged Him, spit on Him, insulted Him and pierced His hands and feet with spikes. Forgiving enemies is vital to our well-being. We do not want to be bound with bitterness.
The Lord helped Jeremiah to forgive what others did to him. The Lord helped him to press on to do what was best for his nation. In the latter portion of his book, the Lord gave Jeremiah a promise a new day. 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.” This is all Jeremiah ever wanted... that people would know the Lord.
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