Fear No Fear

(All scripture from Lexham English Bible, Copyright 2012 Logos Bible Software)

Jeremiah’s grief was so great, his tears weren’t enough to express it. He longed to be among godly people, but he was called to go to those who had rejected the Lord – and wouldn’t even hear the message he was bearing. They were treacherous. Liars. Saying one thing, and doing another. Claiming one thing, but acting in a contrary way. Jeremiah wanted to escape all of it. The Lord agreed with him. The Lord wished that His children would serve Him with the fervour in which they served evil. They did not trust one another. They did not trust Him. And everyone was walking with liars. They worked on deceiving one another. They had worked to teach themselves to speak lies. They wore themselves out committing iniquity. They lived lives of deceit and in that deceit, refused the Lord. How could He NOT judge them? How could He NOT give them the payment for lies that they were BEGGING for with their actions? These were actions worthy of avenging. Everything was deserving of destruction from the people to the animals to the vegetation because EVERYTHING was corrupted, infected like with a cancer. [This is hard for us to understand, but there is a spiritual component to EVERYTHING in creation. Under the Old Covenant there was no way to redeem someone from that kind of infection. You had to cut it out to save the whole while waiting for the atonement of Jesus. Thank the Lord for our better covenant in Jesus.]

The suffering of any of God’s children is always because they forsook Him. If they would seek Him and put Him first, they would be full of joy and peace regardless of the circumstances they found themselves in. Judah would go into captivity. They would get the harvest they were so actively sowing. It would be so bad that like Jeremiah’s grief, they would need help to bear it. Professional mourners would need to be hired from other nations to handle the burden of grief they would feel – a grief that came DIRECTLY from rejecting God, refusing to listen, refusing to obey, and relying on their own strength and their own thinking. The Lord even instructed the older women to teach the younger women HOW to mourn properly. They were going to need the knowledge.

They were facing total destruction. Loss of people, buildings, cities, land, livestock, animals, wives, daughters, sons, husbands, priests, the Temple, all of it. What was left? What did the Lord warn them of? That ONLY a relationship with HIM would be left. That’s the only thing that travels with us when we end our time here. Jesus made the same plea when He was ministering (Luke 12:15-21; Mark 8:36). The Lord was reminding them that heart intent was more important than anything, and a repentant attitude toward Him was the ONLY thing that could save the remnant He wanted to save. The time was coming when His children would be punished by those not His children (the Babylonians) for all that they were choosing. These punishers were uncircumcised in the flesh, but His children had chosen to be uncircumcised in their hearts.

“You must not learn the way of the nations, and you must not be dismayed by the signs of the heavens, for the nations are dismayed by them. For the statutes of the peoples are vanity, for it is a tree cut down from the forest, the work of the hands of a craftsman with the tool.” (Jeremiah 10:2-3)

The people were either in total refusal to admit anything was going on, or they were choosing to rely on their idols. Idols they made. Hunks of wood covered in gold and jewels are still hunks of wood. Idols don’t create anything. They cannot move. They cannot speak. They cannot eat. They do no evil and they do no good. It’s true stupidity to make something out of ordinary materials with your own hands and then declare it to be the god that made you. And the sad thing is, people tend to follow other people in this stupidity even when they know better. That’s what was happening here. They were making idols and declaring them to be the gods that would save them. They were looking at the stars, sun, and moon and saying we are safe because of this sign or that retrograde and so on. The Lord was calling them out as the foolish, blind, and dumb people they were choosing to be.

They had the choice between listening to and following the Creator of the Universe who had made everything there is, and demonstrated His supernatural ability to interact with Creation time and again; and idols they had made which were covered in sparkly bits.

You’d think it was a no brainer, but here the Lord was prophesying to them about their poor choices.

The Lord was warning them to pack their bags and be ready to be taken captive and taken far away (Babylon). Jeremiah, the Lord, and anyone who heard the news lamented. Grief-stricken and sobbing. This was a terrible judgment – but still less than they deserved – and the noise of the approaching army was getting louder.

It was when the people stopped letting themselves be corrected by God that all this trouble started. When they stopped inviting the Lord to keep them on the straight road, in the centre of His will. When they stopped believing that He was More Than Enough. Jeremiah begged the Lord to put this wrath toward sin on the Gentiles who did not know Him, rather than His children. [The Lord DID spare His children the worst of His wrath and Jesus willingly took it (3 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus took it so that we would never have to (John 12:31).]

Summary

Key Players: God, Jesus, Jeremiah

Key Verse(s): Jeremiah 9:1-2, 7-11, 23-26; 10:2-7, 12-16, 23-25