Jeremiah 19:1-15
Our human history contains more reruns than reruns of television movies. Using the human mind and plan we have tried to blow up the faith and freedom that comes from our creator God. Today I want us to look at the landmine of our disobedience to God’s plan for his human family.
The prophet Jeremiah was born in the priest city of Anathoth and called to be a prophet around 627 BC when he was but twenty years of age. The international situation of that time involved a threefold battle for world supremacy among Assyria, Babylon and Egypt. Assyria was broken under the heel of Babylon and Babylon, in the battle of Carchemish in 605 BC, crushed Egypt too. Judah was caught between the upper and nether millestones in the struggle, only to fall under the hand of the Babylonian oppressor.
As you study the history of Judah you can see that they rejected God’s plan for them. Their disobedience to God was the land mine that blew up their God-given faith and freedom. God used the ministry of Jeremiah to call Judah to repent of their sin and wicked ways. This was a call to return to faith in the only true God.
The prophet Jeremiah predicts the fall of Judah and the seventy-year captivity. Jeremiah regards himself as the true spokesman of God against false prophets like Hananiah. In our human history the phony religious leaders lead the people into a life of disobedience of the God we meet in Jesus Christ. The phony prophets hated Jeremiah and pressured the king to silence the message of Jeremiah. The life of Jeremiah reminds me of what is taking place today in America. We have religious (so-called) leaders, teachers, ministers and bishops that do not want to live in obedience to God’s plan that we find in the scriptures for us. In their disobedience we see a crumbling nation that has no answer to the misery in their life.
We know we should learn from the past errors of following phony leaders but we see the same rerun, time after time. Jeremiah records his personal history in all of these political and religious intrigues of the day. He loses politically, but wins spiritually. He feels his sense of aloneness, agonizing over the sins of the people and the sure judgment to come. While he shrinks from his task, he is unable to remain silent. Jeremiah speaks in parables, warns of apostasy, and employs burning words of rebuke, contempt and doom. Beneath them lies the aching heart of the patriot, who senses that Israel’s security cannot be divorced from faith in God and a right covenantal relationship and obedience to God.
The call for any person who is a Christian is to be faithful to the teachings of the scriptures that are contained in the Old and New Testaments. We cannot be divorced from faith if we live and believe in God’s word. Jeremiah’s message for Israel tells the people the cost for their disobedience to God:
“For Israel has forsaken me and turned this valley into a place of wickedness. The people burn incense to foreign gods – idols never before acknowledged by this generation, by their ancestors or by the kings of Judah. And they have filled this place with the blood of innocent children. They have built pagan shrines to Baal and there they burn their sons as sacrifices to Baal. I have never commanded such a horrible deed. It never ever crossed my mind to command such a thing! So beware for the time is coming says the Lord, when this garbage dump will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom but the Valley of the Slaughter.”
Jeremiah used a jar to show what was going to happen to Israel because of their disobedience to the Lord Creator of life. As the people watched, Jeremiah smashed the jar. Then he says to them, “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says; ‘As this jar lies shattered, so I will shatter Judah and Jerusalem beyond all hope of repair. They will bury the bodies here in Topheth, the garbage dump, until there is no more room for them. This is what I will do to this place and its people.’ Says the Lord. ‘I will cause this city to become defiled like Topheth. Yes, all the houses in Jerusalem, including the palace of Judah’s kings, will become like Topheth – all the houses where you burned incense on the rooftops to your star gods and where liquid offerings were poured on your idols.’”
When we, as a nation, church or government, are disobedient to the God that created us to be his family, this judgment will fall on our evil and sin. He came to us in human form in Jesus Christ and died on the cross for us to have a way to be forgiven. In that forgiveness we are raised with Christ into a new life. The disobedience that wrecked Israel is wrecking our nation. This disobedience is rooted in much of our culture. It started when most of our churches no longer called sin ‘sin’ or evil ‘evil’ as described in God’s Word as sin and evil. This opened the door for evil and sin to invade all our human institutions. It opened the door for judges to say that it is okay to take the life of the unborn just because of a new god called ‘sexual freedom’. It opened the door for courts and churches to say marriage was okay between men and men and women and women. It opened the door to allow elected leaders to sell their vote on issues to those that would give them the most money. It has opened the door so our educational system at all levels can’t say, teach, or even admit they know the God of life. What a change. In America the church was the first educator and many churches served as the weekday school house.
The disobedience to God, our Lord and Savior, is the landmine that has blown up our nation. We are Jeremiah’s shattered jar. We have one hope. That hope is to kneel at the cross and meet and believe in the love and grace of Jesus.
