The Book of Jeremiah
Jan 26
Jeremiah – A Time Line
Here is a brief time line showing the highlights of Jeremiah’s ministry. The years below are before Christ (B.C.), so the numbers go down as time passes.
- 640 – Josiah becomes king of Judah at age 8
- 627 – Jeremiah begins his ministry
- 626 – Babylonians (east of Judah) gain independence from Assyria (north of Judah)
- 622 – Josiah begins the temple reformation
- 612 – Babylon destroys Nineveh (Assyria’s capital)
- 610 – Babylon finishes off Assyria at Haran
- 609 – Josiah dies trying to stop Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo; Jehoahaz becomes king
- 609/608 – Jehoiakim becomes king
- 605 – Nebuchadnezzar becomes emperor of Babylon; Judah becomes his vassal
- 602 – Jehoiakim rebels against Babylon
- 598/597 – Babylon captures Jerusalem the first time
- 597 – Jehoiachin becomes king; deported to Babylon after less then 4 months
- 587/586 – Destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon; Zedekiah deported to Babylon; approximate end of Jeremiah’s ministry (627-587 = 40 years)
- 582 – More Jews taken to Babylon
Jeremiah and Josiah
Rembrandt's Jeremiah
You might remember that Josiah is known for his attempts at a reformation within the church in ancient Judah. You might not remember that almost a third of Jeremiah’s ministry coincided with Josiah’s efforts.
We often hear of prophets beginning their ministries at age 30. We’re not told how old Jeremiah was, but I think he was probably younger than that because he complained that he was too young to do what God asked him to. Maybe he was in his early 20s or so? If that’s true, he would have been virtually the same age as King Josiah.
You can see from the time line above that Josiah started his reformation just 5 years into Jeremiah’s ministry. I wonder how much of an influence Jeremiah had on Josiah. The timing would lead us to think he did have an effect.
Josiah’s efforts at reform seem to have had mostly a superficial effect on the people though. If the changes had gone deeper into the people’s hearts, it hardly seems that Jeremiah’s messages would have been needed over the next ~40 years.
What Happened?
Jeremiah 2:5 – This is what the LORD says: “What fault did your fathers find in me, that they strayed so far from me?”
Can anyone find fault with God? Sure they can. That is, some people think they can. Haven’t you ever heard anyone finding fault with God? Ever heard anyone ask God, “Why?” Ever heard anyone complain that God isn’t fair? You may even have heard stronger questions than those.
In the verse above, God is turning the question on his people. “What happened?” he asks. “Where’d you go? Why? What did I do wrong?”
The true answer to those questions is that God, of course, did nothing wrong. People just thought they knew better and didn’t want to admit that they were wrong. Do you like to admit when you’re wrong? I sure don’t. Admitting I’m wrong makes me look bad. It might make other people think less of me (whether or not that’s something I even care about). I want other people to like me, to think well of me. Letting them know I screwed up isn’t going to help that cause.
But that’s really all a digression, isn’t it? What other people think when I’ve done something wrong, isn’t what matters. What I do about my mistakes is what counts. I have little problem admitting to myself that I messed up. It’s admitting it to God – the only Person who really counts – that can be rough. But it’s also absolutely necessary.
That’s where many, many people in Judah went wrong over and over again. They didn’t want to ‘fess up to God, so many even went so far as to turn to idols of wood and stone that they made themselves or hired someone to make for them. Anyone here ever made an idol? Anyone here ever resisted repenting of something you did wrong? Same difference.
Can you think of something right now that you probably should confess? Just do it. Yeah, right now. You’ve got time. You know it’s the right thing to do.
Maybe you’re still reading because you couldn’t think of anything at the moment that you needed to ask forgiveness for or maybe you’re just going to do it later or maybe you did take a break between this paragraph and the previous one. In any case, know that God pardons you for whatever you mess up, not because you ask him to, but because Jesus took the punishment for you.
What happened there? Law followed by Gospel. We’re not going to see a lot of Gospel in Jeremiah. There will be enough, yes, but much of the book is going to be God (through Jeremiah) yelling at his kids.
Now that we have a general idea of what the Book of Jeremiah is going to be about, let’s back up a little and see what we can see about Jeremiah himself.
I already mentioned that he started his ministry as a young man – probably younger than the norm. Otherwise, why mention it? He was a PK – a priest’s kid. His dad’s name was Hilkiah. He grew up in a little berg called Anathoth a couple miles northeast of Jerusalem. (That’s closer than most of us live to Rose Glen.) You might say he lived in the ‘burbs. Even walking (not riding an animal), it probably only took about an hour or so to get to the big city.
This is apparently the first thing God said to Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 1:4 – The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
I wonder how long Jeremiah just sat or stood there before answering. Can you put yourself in his sandals? It’s tough. God may have been visiting him in a vision, but let’s imagine he came in human form.
So this guy comes up to you and says, “I know you.” You raise an eyebrow, having never seen him before. “Yeah, I knew you before you were born.” The only options I see here are to laugh scoffingly at this fruitcake or to drop your jaw down around your knees as it slowly dawns on you who this guy must be.
Again, not that this couldn’t have been a vision, but Jeremiah then saw God’s hand touch his mouth.
Jeremiah 1:9 – Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “Now, I have put my words in your mouth.”
How cool is that? By this time, Jeremiah (Did anyone ever call him “Jerry”?) understood who this was, so he didn’t flinch when the guy reached out to touch his face.
What’s the whole point here?
God had a purpose for Jeremiah’s life – to tell entire nations to shape up or be shipped out and to build those up who were willing to be built.
Do you and I have such a lofty purpose? Arguably, yes. It may never be written down in a book for generations yet unborn, but that’s beside the point.
Did God know you before you were born? Yes. Did he have a plan all laid out for your life? Yes. Has he told you what that plan was? Probably, if you think about it. Has he visited you visibly in person? Don’t be too quick to answer that one negatively. Did God put his words in your mouth? He’s promised to, yes.
So what’s next? Let’s just ponder that one for a while, shall we?
Jeremiah 11:1-8 – This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Listen to the terms of this covenant and tell them to the people of Judah and to those who live in Jerusalem. Tell them this is what the LORD, the God of Israel says: ‘Cursed is the man who does not obey the terms of this covenant – the terms I commanded your forefathers when I brought them out of Egypt, out of the iron-smelting furnace.’ I said, ‘Obey me and do everything I command you, and you will be my people, and I will be your God. Then I will fulfill the oath I swore to your forefathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey’ – the land you possess today.”
I answered, “Amen, LORD.”
The LORD said to me, “Proclaim all these words in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem: ‘Listen to the terms of this covenant and follow them. From the time I brought your forefathers up from Egypt until today, I warned them again and again, saying, “Obey me.” But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubbornness of their evil hearts. So I brought on them all the curses of the covenant I had commanded them to follow but that they did not keep.’”
It’s God’s Game
I like to play board games. A game of any kind is nothing if it doesn’t have rules. No rules, no game. You have to play the game by the rules or the game doesn’t work as intended. If you would break the rules – either intentionally or accidentally – you’d have a different game with different results. Played properly, games are fun.
God created the universe and applied a set of rules to it. In addition to the physical, chemical, biological, etc. rules, he personally gave human a special set of behavioral rules. If humans play by the rules of God’s “game”, everything is hunky dorie. Because human didn’t and now can’t always follow the rules, they have problems. It’s still the same game though, so we need to try to play by the rules. God still wants us to, even though we all know we can’t. So why should we try?
God didn’t make any rules that he himself couldn’t keep. So Jesus came and played the game both as God and as human. He didn’t break any rules. Just when it looked like he was about to lose the game, he made an awesome, crushing comeback and won. He beat Satan (at what he probably thought was his own game) when he rose from death on Easter morning.
Because God decided to count Jesus’ victory as one for the human race for all time – very generous and merciful of him – we in turn want to continue to play by the rules of his game as a small way of showing our gratitude for not ending up with zero victory points in the end.
In Jeremiah’s day, many who didn’t want to play God’s game made up their own rules which often included wooden or stone or metal idols.
You know, I have a hard time believing that all of those people actually worshipped those idols. Think about it. How stupid do you really have to be to believe that what you just finished whittling or that knick-knack that Eliphelet down at Huzziah’s Idol Emporium just sold you (when it finally arrived after being on back order for 6 weeks) can actually influence your life for good or bad? Other than setting you back a few shekels, it obviously can’t.
I have a feeling that many of those idols were just status symbols and symbols of greater evils in the owners’ hearts, minds, and actions. Not that this would have made the idols themselves okay, but I wonder if it didn’t often go something like this.
“Micaiah, did you see that new mid-sized, bronze Baal that Jochebed and Ananias brought home yesterday? When are we going to get something better than this puny piece of rotting cedar?”
“What for? We hardly ever use the thing anymore.”
“That’s beside the point, but I bet we would if we had one of those shiny new silver-plated models I saw chained to a table just outside the Emporium the other day. Micaiah, are you listening?”
“Yes, dear. I’ll check it out tomorrow.”
It was so amazing to see how one generation in the Old Testament would seemingly follow and trust God — the One who led them out of Egypt and sustained them for all those years in the desert and even fought battles for the Israelites — and then the next generation would fall absolutely into disgrace. And as you mentioned, Gary, they would fall to all sorts of idolatry. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised when we look at our own lives and see the type of idolatry we can fall into, like the love of money, or regularly putting in too many hours at work, or skipping out on church because we think we can go one week without it. We try to play games with God, in a sense, but try to set our own rules. Thanks be to God for his mercy and grace and to Jesus for earning my forgiveness through his selflessness.
Thunder
Jeremiah 14:1-2 – This is the word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought: “Judah mourns, her cities languish; they wail for the land, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem.”
God often used “natural phenomena” when communicating with his people. He used droughts (as mentioned above), famines, plagues, earthquakes, thunderstorms, (possibly) volcanoes, and more.
I’m not sure if we can say that he still uses these means today because we don’t have the equivalent of the Bible for modern times to prove it, but there’s nothing to say that he can’t use them either. In fact, my personal opinion is that he still does use these means from time to time, but we either choose to dismiss the events as purely “natural” or never even think about them as more than “natural” occurrences.
Droughts and famines are probably the easiest to see as warning messages from God. Maybe earthquakes too. Again, not that they always are, but if you live in an area where one or more of these have happened, it might be something worth thinking about.
I wonder how many times something as common as thunder is God speaking to someone. Consider this account of “thunder”.
John 14:28-29 – Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
Maybe I should listen more closely the next time I’m in a thunderstorm.
Jeremiah 16:5 – For this is what the LORD says: “Do not enter a house where there is a funeral meal; do not go to mourn or show sympathy, because I have withdrawn my blessing, my love and my pity from this people,” declares the LORD.
Wow! There aren’t many passages in the Bible scarier than this one. Do you realize what God is saying here? It’s often said that war is hell, but I fear that’s often said by people who don’t understand what hell really is. This passage describes a situation that is about as close as you can get to a true hell on earth. Hell is the separation of God from man. See how close God comes here? No blessing. No love. No pity. There’s not much other than life (on earth) itself left. And if that’s all that’s left, what good is it?
So why doesn’t God take away life too? Where there’s life, there’s hope. Maybe not for most of those people in Jeremiah’s day, but for many others today, there’s still a chance, as long as they’re breathing, that the Spirit can work faith in Jesus as their Savior in their hearts.
Jeremiah 28:1-4 – In the fifth month of that same year, the fourth year, early in the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, the prophet Hananiah son of Azzur, who was from Gibeon, said to me in the house of the LORD in the presence of the priests and all the people: “This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon. Within two years I will bring back to this place all the articles of the LORD’s house that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon removed from here and took to Babylon. I will also bring back to this place Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim king of Judah and all the other exiles from Judah who went to Babylon,’ declares the LORD, ‘for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.’”
How do you know which guy (or gal) is the false prophet(ess)?
You know when their prophecies don’t come true, right?
Right.
But how do you know before then?
Both Jeremiah and Hananiah claimed to have news from God. One message sounded like something a good, loving God might tell his people. The other sounded pretty bad. At the time both messages were spoken, which one would you likely have believed?
Now, it’s true that one was more likely to happen that the other – especially factoring in the attitude and behavior of the people – but that doesn’t make it more acceptable to believe. In fact, it’s pretty easy to deny that your own behavior has anything to do with what’s being foretold. It’s really easy to accept and promote the prophecy that has a happy ending.
Moral of the story? Be careful out there and be clean in here.