Is God Relentless - Part II

Before I get back to Jeremiah's troubles, a couple preliminary comments. First, I mentioned in my previous intro that I am no longer obsessing over the calendar, or keeping a rigid timetable, in my daily Bible reading. Ironically, in the last four weeks since I made that decision, I have missed maybe two days. Funny how that works. Second, a point of clarification. In my synopsis of the book of Jeremiah, I stated that "God's chosen nation Israel is in serious rebellion ". This is almost correct. Actually, this is after the split into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, and Jeremiah is dealing specifically with the southern kingdom of Judah.

Now that we've cleared that up, on with the story. When we left off in Jeremiah 18, God was mercifully providing a back door to Judah to escape his wrath by repenting of their evil deeds:

"Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, 'This is what the LORD says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.' " - Jer. 18:11

So did they take it? We don't have to wait long to find out - next verse:

"But they will reply, 'It's no use. We will continue with our own plans; each of us will follow the stubbornness of his evil heart.' " - Jer. 18:12

So God sends Jeremiah into the temple courts:

"14 Jeremiah then returned from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy, and stood in the court of the LORD's temple and said to all the people, 15 "This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: 'Listen! I am going to bring on this city and the villages around it every disaster I pronounced against them, because they were stiff-necked and would not listen to my words.' " - Jer. 19:14,15

And how do they respond to Jeremiah's temple court speech? Here we meet an interesting character named Passhur:

"1 When the priest Pashhur son of Immer, the chief officer in the temple of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, 2 he had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put in the stocks at the Upper Gate of Benjamin at the LORD's temple. " - Jer. 20:1-2

Here, during Jeremiah's travails, brought about by his obedience to the command of God, I come across a passage of Scripture that I have loved for many years, even before I was familiar with the context:

"But if I say, "I will not mention him
or speak any more in his name,"
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot."
- Jer. 20:9

Does that describe you? Is the Word of God a burning fire shut up in your bones, so that you are weary of holding it in, and indeed you cannot? I long to be like Jeremiah in that way, but I confess I am not there yet. On with the story.

Jeremiah is indeed weary of proclaiming death and destruction by this time, even to the point of despairing of ever having been born (Jer. 20:14). Then the people of Judah finally come to him with desperate pleas instead of angry blows:

"1This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, when King Zedekiah sent to him Pashhur the son of Malchiah and Zephaniah the priest, the son of Maaseiah, saying, 2"Inquire of the LORD for us, for Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon is making war against us. Perhaps the LORD will deal with us according to all his wonderful deeds and will make him withdraw from us." - Jer. 21:1,2

Now if this was the same Pashhur that had just put Jeremiah in the stocks in the last chapter, (as I thought at first), we might be allowed at least a small chuckle, but a closer reading shows that this is two different Pashhurs, the first, the son of Immer, and this one, the son of Zephaniah. Even so, same Pashhur or not, they are both of the same group that has rejected God's entreaties up until now, but now that they are being attacked by Babylon, precisely as Jeremiah warned that they would (Jer. 20:4-6), they want the LORD to "deal with us according to all his wonderful deeds and will make him withdraw from us."

In other words, they want all gain and no pain in their dealings with God. And how does God respond? I pick out only the most startling verse:

"I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm in anger and fury and great wrath." - Jer. 21:5

God himself will fight against his own! This does not bode well for the nation of Judah, and they are indeed carried off in exile to Babylon in 586 B.C. Does he leave them there? I encourage you to read "the rest of the story" (apologies to Paul Harvey), yourself.

But now it is time to ask "so what?" So God is dealing with a belligerent and stubborn people 2600 years ago, so what? What is that to me? Well, maybe people have not changed much in 2600 years. God is still asking you (and me) to "turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions." (Jer. 18:11).

At this point I have two choices. I can choose to respond as Judah did (collectively speaking), and say, "It's no use. We will continue with our own plans; each of us will follow the stubbornness of his evil heart." (Jer. 18:12), or I can choose to obey. But so often my response is precisely the former - "It's no use", which is to say, it is out of my control, there is nothing I can do about it. But that is a lie from the devil himself. I really do have a choice. And so do you.

Is God Relentless?

Going way back to my So Many Pedestrians post, I mentioned my Bible reading plan, which consisted of a daily dose of one chapter of Psalms, three OT, one Gospel, one NT, resulting in various repetitions through each section in a year. There was only one problem with this plan. That is, if you miss a day, double it, if you miss two days, triple it, and before I know it, I'm trying to read 20 chapters in a day with the only goal of catching up to my schedule, and not of meditating on God's word. Easy solution. I am no longer obsessed with catching up. If I miss a day, so be it. I take Paul's advice, "forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead", and just pick it up again on the same schedule the next day, praying for the discipline to do so.

Also, since I am no longer racing against the calendar (and inevitably losing), I have allowed myself the freedom to cut back to one chapter of OT per day. As a result, now at the pace of only four chapters total per day, it allows me to slow down and think about what I am reading, and even, (a recent development), to take notes on what I am reading, to write down verses that either excite me (!) or that I don't understand (?) or that outright instruct me to do something.

Now I know that there are some of you out there who would say to me that even four chapters a day is way too much to take in at one time. Perhaps your method is to read a verse, or even a word, and meditate on it all day. God bless you for that. And guess what, with my new found freedom, I can do the same if the situation arises. If something grabs me, say for example a certain Psalm, and I want to go off and study it, I can. I will get on to the other stuff at a later time. All very free flowing, but with a dose of discipline as well. It is not my intention or desire to use this freedom to neglect the reading of the Bible entirely.

In short, I am less interested in getting through the Bible and more interested in the Bible getting through me.

As a practical example of what I am talking about, I came to this decision to stop obsessing with the calendar right about the time I was finishing with Isaiah and starting into Jeremiah. So I read through Isaiah (66 chapters) in about 5 days, when I was in catch-up mode. How much do you think I got out of Isaiah in 5 days? Not much. I love Isaiah, and look forward to spending more time in it next time around.

By contrast, I have spent about three weeks on the first 20 chapters of Jeremiah, and it has been an eye-opener. And that is, finally, the topic of this blog. All the preceding was the longest introduction in blog history. Congratulations if you are still with me.

From what I have read so far, Jeremiah is, if nothing else, a profound study in the sovereignty of God vs. the free will of man. God's chosen nation Israel is in serious rebellion at this time, and Jeremiah is the lucky guy who has been chosen to go and tell them so. What really jumps out at me is God's seemingly intractable anger. He is literally relentless, as I suggested in my title. Some of the verses I wrote down in my notebook:

"Then you shall say to them, 'Thus says the LORD: Behold, I will fill with drunkenness all the inhabitants of this land: the kings who sit on David's throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And I will dash them one against another, fathers and sons together, declares the LORD. I will not pity or spare or have compassion, that I should not destroy them.'" - Jer. 13:13-14

"The LORD said to me: "Do not pray for the welfare of this people. Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence." - Jer. 14:11-12

Did you catch that? God is saying to Jeremiah, "Do not pray for the welfare of this people"!

"Then the LORD said to me, "Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people. Send them out of my sight, and let them go! And when they ask you, 'Where shall we go?' you shall say to them, 'Thus says the LORD:

"'Those who are for pestilence, to pestilence,
and those who are for the sword, to the sword;
those who are for famine, to famine,
and those who are for captivity, to captivity.'

I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the LORD: the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. And I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem." - Jer. 15:1-4

Now, since I don't have twenty more chapters to read before midnight, I can take time to go back and see what in the world Manasseh did in Jerusalem to cause all this trouble. A small sampling:

"Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hephzibah. And he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. And he built altars in the house of the LORD, of which the LORD had said, "In Jerusalem will I put my name." And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the LORD. And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with wizards. He did much evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger." - 2 Kings 21:1-6

OK, I guess He may have a point this time. But from what I know of God, and what I read in the rest of the OT history books, which is basically a history of Israel rebelling, God punishing, Israel repenting, God relenting, ad infinitum, I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for him to relent. Surely at some point he must relent. Then I read this:

"You have rejected me, declares the LORD;
you keep going backward,
so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you--
I am weary of relenting. "
- Jer. 15:6

He has had it! He is weary of relenting! The God of Israel who has relented and relented and relented in the past, is weary of relenting! Surely this cannot be the end! This can't be all there is to it! Somebody do something! (See, I get so much more into it when I am not skimming). Then finally, to my great relief, I read this:

"Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: 'Thus says the LORD, behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.'" - Jer. 18:6-10

This is probably the single best explanation of God's sovereignty in relation to man's free will that I have come across in a long time, and it is in God's own word. Imagine that. First note the phrase "If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom...". This shows God's sovereignty. At any time, he can declare. Declare what? Note the two parallel statements. In the first, to pluck up and break down and destroy. And in the second, to build and plant.

Now it is man's turn. For the nation declared to be plucked up, broken down and destroyed, if it turns from its evil, and for the nation declared to be built up and planted, if it does evil in God's sight and does not listen to His voice. And what are the consequences of these choices?

God relents! In the first case, God will relent of the disaster that he intended to do to it. But in the second case, God will relent of the good that he intended to do to it! Have you ever thought of God as relenting of the good he intended to do?

Now let's replace "nation or kingdom" with "church or fellowship". Imagine if at any time God declares concerning a church or fellowship that he will build and plant it. Then imagine if by its choices, doing evil in his sight, not listening to His voice, that God relents from the good that he intended to do to it! Something to think about. Something I have thought about a lot.

But back to Israel. After having their backs against the wall, after God saying he is "weary of relenting", he is now giving them a way out - "Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds." Do they take it? Well, since I am already well beyond the average 21st century adult attention span, I have decided to break this into at least two parts. So stay tuned....