Today’s reading: Jeremiah 18; Matthew 23
The end of Jeremiah 18 gives us a good sense of just how far gone, spiritually speaking, the people of Israel were in Jeremiah’s day.
It was striking to me, this morning, to read Jeremiah call on the Lord to give the people over to all kinds of vivid destruction. We have already read the Lord declare these things against His people in this book, but here Jeremiah actually calls for it, and that stood out to me. What’s even more jarring though is if you read the sentence before he starts in on that, where he says, “Remember how I stood before you to speak good for them, to turn away your wrath from them.” So Jeremiah basically says, “Remember how I prayed that you would hold back from wrath from them? Yeah, forget that. Bring your wrath against them in full!” And what precipitated the change? They tried to murder Jeremiah for speaking for the Lord…
I was thinking back to what we have read in this book already and, if I remember right, we have already passed at least two or three places where God said, “Do not pray for my people…” I have read past that somewhat generically, but reading this, I think those were God telling Jeremiah to not bother continuing to pray for the people because they were too far gone to be spared, but Jeremiah continuing to intercede on their behalf. What that means is that Jeremiah has been, in one sense, defying the Lord to continually pray for his people’s good, despite their rebellion against God, and their response to Jeremiah’s intercession on their behalf is attempted murder. So Jeremiah, in righteous anger, calls on the Lord to forget his prayers for Israel and bring all the things that He has told Jeremiah He would bring down upon Israel.
As jarring as it is to read Jeremiah calling for those judgements, I think it points to just how far gone Israel was spiritually to drive him to that point.
No comments:
Post a Comment