Jeremiah on Listening to the Word of the Lord

Toward the end of Jeremiah (chapters 41-44) after the Babylonians had conquered Jerusalem, the Babylonians had set in place a governor over the region—Gedaliah.  Well, there were some forces that didn’t like this foreign appointed governor so they killed Gedaliah.  The folks that did this were soon brought to judgment by the people left in Jerusalem but they then faced a difficult future.  Once the Babylonians heard that Gedaliah had been murdered they could come back and even do more destruction on them.  So they thought of leaving and traveling to Egypt for protection.  The people approach Jeremiah and ask him to seek the Lord’s will.  Jeremiah tells them he will ask the Lord but they must listen to it.  The people respond:

Then they said to Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act in accordance with the whole message with which the Lord your God will send to you to us.  Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we will listen to the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you, so that it may go well with us when we listen to the voice of the Lord our God.”  --Jeremiah 42.5-6

Doesn’t that sound great—“whatever God says, even if we don’t like it, we will obey!”  Jeremiah goes and asks God what to do and he says not to go to Egypt but to stay in Jerusalem.  He promises that it will be okay for them from the Babylonians.  And how do the people respond?  Do they humbly listen and submit?  Not hardly.  Here is there reply:

“You are telling a lie!  The Lord our God has not sent you to say, ‘You are not to enter Egypt to reside there’; but Baruch the son of Neriah is inciting you against us to give us over into the hand of the Chaldeans, so they will put us to death or exile us to Babylon.”  --Jeremiah 43.2-3

So the people go down to Egypt in defiance of the Lord’s word through Jeremiah.  They even force Jeremiah to go with them.  In Egypt the Lord continues to warn his people through his prophet Jeremiah.  He rebukes their idolatry for the people were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven.  Will the people now listen to the Lord?  Here is how they respond to Jeremiah’s message:

“As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you!  But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths, by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven…”   --Jeremiah 44.16-17

This is an amazing display of rebellion.  This was God’s people who supposed to “live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8.3) but now they are arrogantly stating that they will “carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths.” 

Before we are too hard on these people we should examine our own hearts and lives.  Do we do the same thing as they did?  Do we say, “I just want to hear what God wants.”  And then when we are shown the word of God and it challenges our desires do we run away in defiance?  The choice before us is this: Will we live by the word of God or will we live by our words?  These things were written for our instruction (1 Corinthians 10.11).  May we heed the message and listen to the word of God.  He knows best.

Jeremiah 23: False Prophets and the Word of God

* A recent devotional I wrote for our church's bulletin.

 

The prophet Jeremiah was given the difficult task of speaking God’s word of judgment in a challenging time.  God had revealed to Judah through Jeremiah that judgment was coming from Babylon.  There were other voices from those seen to be “prophets” that continually contradicted Jeremiah’s message.  These false prophets spoke a message of peace and comfort—“everything will be alright; no need to worry about judgment.”  The living God gives his perspective on these false prophets in Jeremiah 23.  Here a few selections:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you.  They are leading you into futility; they speak a vision of their own imagination, not from the mouth of the Lord.  (v. 16)

²⁵I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy falsely in My name, saying, “I had a dream, I had a dream!”  ²⁶How long?  Is there anything in the hearts of the prophets who prophesy falsehood, even these prophets of the deception of their own heart, ²⁷who intend to make My people forget My name by their dreams which they relate to one another, just as their fathers forgot My name because of Baal?

“Behold, I am against those who have prophesied false dreams,” declares the Lord, “and related them and led My people astray by their falsehoods and reckless boasting; yet I did not send them or command them, nor do they furnish this people the slightest benefit,” declares the Lord.  (v. 32)

These false prophets are characterized by speaking of that which is self-generated—their dreams and their own imagination.  They are not listening to the Word of the living God but merely parroting what the culture around them wants to hear.  This is no small thing they have done.  By refusing to listen to God and declare his Word they lead the people of God into error and sin.  The people of Judah during this time needed a strong message of repentance; they needed to turn from false gods and turn to the living God in obedience.  The false prophets actually harmed God’s people.  God’s indictment is upon them:

²¹I did not send these prophets, but they ran.  I did not speak to them, but they prophesied.  ²²But if they had stood in My council, then they would have announced My words to My people, and would have turned them back from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds.

The lessons for God’s people and God’s ministers are plain.  We need to long for and listen to the Word of God.  There will always be other voices—other “Christian” voices—that are simply echoing the rebellion of a fallen culture.  These voices are not listening to or speaking the Word of God.  And such false voices do not challenge the idols of our time and culture.  We need to be a people committed to the Word of God.  We need the word that comes from outside of ourselves—outside of our imaginations and dreams.  We need a word spoken from God. 

For us in the New Covenant we find this sure word in the Scriptures.  The Bible is our authoritative guide to the word of God.  If we would know the mind of God and the will of God we must pay attention to the Word of God—the Scriptures.  Jeremiah speaks to the power of God’s Word with this language:

“Is not My word like fire?” declares the Lord, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock?  (23.29)

Let us ever love, study, and obey this strong Word of God.  Let its message challenge you, rebuke you, comfort you, and guide you.  If we are going to stand strong for God in this challenging time we will need to live by this strong Word of God.

God's Actions Rooted in History: Some Comments by Francis Schaeffer

We began a series of studies through the book of Isaiah last night.  Isaiah 1.1 begins the book as follows:

"The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz concerning Judah and Jerusalem, which he saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah."

I then came across these words by Francis Schaeffer--he was writing about the prophet Jeremiah but they fit just as well for Isaiah.

“The Bible puts its religious teaching in a historic setting.  It is quite the opposite of the new theology and existential thought, quite the opposite of the twentieth century’s reduction of religion to the ‘spiritual’ and the subjective.  Scripture relates the true religion to space-time history which may be expressed in normal literary form.  And that is important, because our generation takes the word religion and everything religious and turns it into something psychological or sociological.

"The Bible also has another emphasis.  Not all that occurs in space-time history is explainable on the basis of natural cause and effect--for example, economic, military, and psychological.  Most modern men explain all of history this way, but the Bible does not.  The Bible says that there is a true significant space-time history which God has made.  Of course, history must be understood to be partially a product of the economic forces, of the flow of cultural thought, of military power, and so forth.  If we had sufficient time to look at Jeremiah in detail, we would see various forces present: the great countries (Egypt on one side, Babylon on the other), tremendous external and internal forces.  Still, history is not to be explained only on this basis.  A holy and a loving God really exists, and He works into the significant history which exists.  He works in history on the basis of His character; and when His people and their culture turn away from Him, He works in history in judgment ”[1]

---

     [1] Francis A. Schaeffer, Death in the City [1969] in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview—vol. 4 (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1982), 213-214.

Francis Schaeffer on Cultural Death

Our day is not totally unique.  Time after time Christian cultures have thrown themselves away.  Take, for example, the church of the Apostle Thomas in India.  It began to whittle away at the truth.  So the church largely died.  There are two ways to bring about such death: one is to compromise the truth, and the other to have a dead orthodoxy.  Both can equally grind down and destroy the message of a church in a generation, especially if the generation is hard.  Do we realize that in China at about the year A.D. 800 there were Christian churches in almost every great city?  Do we realize that there were hundreds of Christians in the Arabian peninsula just before Mohammed in A.D. 550?  Why was it that Mohammedanism was able to rush over that country?  Because of military force?  Not only that.  When Mohammed came forward and looked at the Christians he said, "There's nothing here."  And he was largely right.  Mohammedanism started, and it swept that portion of the world.  The same thing was true with the church in North Africa, and the primitive church in Armenia, in Georgia, in Gaul.  In each of these places there was a Christian church and a growing Christian culture, but the church collapsed.  The pattern is clear: defection and then destruction.

And we as Christians today, what are we saying?  We are saying that we want reformation and we want revival, but still we are not preaching into this generation, stating the negative things that are necessary.  If there is to be a constructive revolution in the orthodox, evangelical church, then like Jeremiah we must speak of the judgment of individual men great and small, of the church, the state, and the culture, for many of them have known the truth of God and have turned away from Him and His propositional revelation.  God exists, He is holy, and we must know that there will be judgment.  And like Jeremiah, we must keep on so speaking regardless of the cost to ourselves.

Francis Schaeffer Death in the City (1969) in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview volume 4, pp. 255-256.

Jeremiah: Prophetic Interpreter of His Times

Jeremiah was called to speak to his own time.  His words were collected and compiled so that they might speak to the generations to come in the exile and after the exile.  Jeremiah's words provide the revelatory lens by which Judah is to interpret her experience.  There was a very real danger that the exiled Judeans would come to false conclusions regarding their exile in Babylon.  The common way of reasoning was that when one nation conquered another this was a sign that in the warfare of the gods the conquered nation's god(s) had been defeated.  Jeremiah's prophetic ministry was to provide a proper interpretative framework through which to view the exile.  Yahweh was not weak and therefore able to be defeated by the Babylonian gods.  Rather, Judah had been wicked in idolatry and the exile was Yahweh's just judgment.  John N. Oswalt nicely captures this dynamic of proper interpretative reasoning:

It is often said, "The winners write history."  But that is exactly what Yahweh would not allow to happen.  He told them what their history meant, and it was usually quite different from what the rich and powerful would like to have said about it and themselves.  In the end, the idea that the God of these little Canaanite principalities called Israel and Judah was in fact using the mightiest powers of the world to discipline and refine his people was the last thing that anyone would have expected to emerge from Israel's experience.  For in the end, Israel's history is tragedy compounded by tragedy.

Here is what the Israelites could have thought:

* We were really arrogant to think that ours was the only God; now we know better.

* We were much too exclusive in our thinking, believing that there is only one way to express one's faith; now we know better.

* Our spare and limited expressions of faith could be enriched by the rich religious pageantry and imagery of our captors.

* Our reliance on a book religion--verbal communications from God about the way we conduct our lives--needs to be replaced with the much more satisfying ritual participation in the great cosmic dance.

But what was the actual meaning of that experience as testified through the prophets?  It was the very opposite of the reasonable conclusions above.  The exile was intended to teach the Judeans that Babylon's gods were not gods at all; Judah's problem was that they had not been monotheistic enough.

* The exile was intended to teach the Judeans that covenantal obedience is indeed the only way to express faith; Judah's problem was that they had not been exclusivist enough.

* The exile was intended to teach the Judeans that ritual is only symbolic of genuine changes in personal relations between the worshipper and God; Judah's problem was that they had been too much infected with ritualistic understandings inherent in the worldview of continuity.  

* The exile was intended to teach the Judeans that it is by means of the Word of God that we will be delivered from entrapment in the cosmic plunge; Judah's problem was that they were already too much entrapped in attempts to control the cosmos for their own benefit.  (The Bible Among the Myths, pp. 135-136)

So Jeremiah was tasked with calling for repentance and yet realizing, with increasing clarity, that Judah would not repent and therefore go into exile.  Jeremiah's words were, thus, preparatory for coming exile.  Judah needed to enter the exile with the proper interpretative framework so as to respond rightly. R. E. O. White aptly comments:

Yet if Judah went into exile blaming the past, or the fathers, or fate, or foreigners, or God, then the experience would teach her nothing and would only breed bitterness and further rebelliousness.  But if she went forth in true sorrow, feeling her guilt before God, and in her suffering found the way to penitence, then the outcome could yet be healing, cleansing, and the renewal of her covenant with God.  A generation or two immersed in the heathenism she had so longed lusted after might well cure her of it forever.  If her humiliation was rightly interpreted as God's cleansing judgment, Judah might yet return with God's law written upon her heart.  (The Indomitable Prophet: A Biographical Commentary on Jeremiah, p. 23)

The Church today needs the prophetic perspective and message of Jeremiah.  As we continue to feel the reverberations of the demise of Christendom and the abandonment of the vestiges of a Christian consensus there will be all sorts of temptations to compromise fidelity to the Word of God.  Proper interpretation of our times must flow from God's perspective as grounded in his Word.  This has happened before.  When the Roman empire was being overtaken by barbarians there was a kind of "current events" wisdom that said this was due to the forsaking of the old gods.  Christianity was faulted.  Augustine's The City of God provided another interpretation rooted in the Christian tradition to explain why the cultural crisis had come.  The generations to come might call for the need for another Augustine to arise and, in a Jeremiah-like fashion, interpret the times in a way faithful to God's revelation.

Jeremiah on the Mayan Calendar

Hear the word which the Lord speaks to you, O house of Israel.

Thus says the Lord, 

“Do not learn the way of the nations, 

And do not be terrified by the signs of the heavens 

Although the nations are terrified by them; 

For the customs of the peoples are delusion; 

Because it is wood cut from the forest, 

The work of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool. 

“They decorate it with silver and with gold; 

They fasten it with nails and with hammers 

So that it will not totter. 

“Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they, 

And they cannot speak; 

They must be carried, 

Because they cannot walk! 

Do not fear them, 

For they can do no harm, 

Nor can they do any good.” 

There is none like You, O Lord; 

You are great, and great is Your name in might. 

Who would not fear You, O King of the nations? 

Indeed it is Your due! 

For among all the wise men of the nations 

And in all their kingdoms, 

There is none like You. 

But they are altogether stupid and foolish 

In their discipline of delusion—their idol is wood! 

Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish, 

And gold from Uphaz, 

The work of a craftsman and of the hands of a goldsmith; 

Violet and purple are their clothing; 

They are all the work of skilled men. 

But the Lord is the true God; 

He is the living God and the everlasting King.

At His wrath the earth quakes, 

And the nations cannot endure His indignation.

Thus you shall say to them, “The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.” 

It is He who made the earth by His power, 

Who established the world by His wisdom; 

And by His understanding He has stretched out the heavens. 

When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, 

And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth; He makes lightning for the rain, 

And brings out the wind from His storehouses.

Every man is stupid, devoid of knowledge; 

Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols; 

For his molten images are deceitful, 

And there is no breath in them. 

They are worthless, a work of mockery; 

In the time of their punishment they will perish. 

The portion of Jacob is not like these; 

For the Maker of all is He, 

And Israel is the tribe of His inheritance; 

The Lord of hosts is His name. 

Jeremiah 10.1-16