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.