Jeremiah 1-5: Summary

 God, through the prophet Jeremiah, is making his last call to the only remaining Jewish state in the ancient world: Judah. 

 The northern kingdom, which was called Israel, disappeared from the annals of history in 721 BC, one of many conquests of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-609 BC). The people living in Israel were deported in order to prevent them from organizing a rebellion against Assyria. They are sometimes referred to as ‘the ten lost tribes,” but they were not all lost. Some continued to live in diaspora and practiced Judaism as well as they could in the lands where they settled. Some returned and inter-married with the people who had been imported into Israel, and some never left at all, and that community became Samaria. 

 The southern kingdom, which was called Judah, barely escaped from the conquering Assyrian armies, thanks to God’s protection and the prophetic word that came through Isaiah. However, years later now Jeremiah preaches that Judah has not learned the lessons of faithfulness and obedience. Like Israel before them, they have flirted with foreign gods, they have been attracted to foreign values, and they have succumbed to the ideology that security can be found by playing the political power game. There is no security in being a bully. 

 Jeremiah prophesied from about 627 BC (the seventeenth year of the reformer King Josiah’s reign) to about 570 BC (he died in southern Egypt in a community of Jewish exiles). That’s nearly 60 years of preaching, mostly to ears too dull to hear or too distracted to pay attention. During Jeremiah’s time, Judah was defeated and Jerusalem was destroyed. Most people were killed, but some were made captive and marched off to slavery in Babylon.  

 What was the thrust of his preaching? What was Judah doing wrong that God was so concerned about? What part of God’s mission did they fail to carry out?

 First, the Israelites broke their agreement with God. Lest God’s concerns seem self-centered or vain, let me assure you that God’s love is deeper and more mission-oriented than that. 

 Of course, God is disappointed with the collapse of their relationship. Notice that God laments, “I thought how I would set you among my children and give you a pleasant land, … and I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me.” God’s constant refrain is, “Return to me.” But in the end God concludes, though it pains him, “Shall I not punish them for these things?”

 The presenting problem is that the people constantly turn to foreign gods, just idols really, expecting to find security and prosperity. Is God just angry the way a jilted lover might be angry? 

 No, that perspective is wide of the mark. Here is the deeper problem. The priests of the gods that the people of Israel and Judah have worshipped, particularly Ba’al and Astarte, carry with them a theological system of values that is quite different from YHWH’s. That means that the people who stray off the path will not just be lost. The practice of worship actually warps their character. By worshipping Ba’al, they become like Ba’al. It is a truth that those who bow the knee to idols, or ideals, or ideology, absorb those worldviews and character traits. Worshippers submit to being transformed into little Ba’al-like beings. Like Ba’al, they become false and deceitful to the core. 

 The cult of Ba’al and Astarte taught these values: 

(1) The world is a zero-sum game. The more others get power, wealth, and sex, the less left over for me because there is only so much to be had. Therefore, it is only right and just that I get all I can while I can. That will involve developing a transactional relationship with the gods or leaders that be. So, I worship and honor these gods and their earthly leaders. In return, they are obligated to support my efforts to gain power, wealth, and self-satisfaction in this society. They tell me, ‘Come this way, I got your back’. 

(2) The end justifies the means. Any way that I can get more is justified since that is the only game in town leading to power and wealth. The winner takes it all…until the next back-stabber comes along. I am justified in acting like this because, after all, ‘it’s just business’, isn’t it? I can use a person, get in trouble, then blame other people for it, step on them, and climb higher on the ladder of success. People who desire the same ends of envy, greed, and revenge tend to emulate leaders who share their values. Their principles even sound reasonable, and they take ‘ethical’ stances like this: ‘The only responsibility that a CEO has is to maximize profits’. 

(3) ‘In the end, it is every man for himself’. A person can make alliances for certain purposes. However, in this game, winners can cut their ties and contract new agreements, even if they stab old allies in the back. It gives the saying, “I’ve got your back” a new meaning when the hand at your back holds a knife. What passes for loyalty lasts only as long as there is ‘something in it for me’. After all, everyone is only in it for themselves, aren’t they? ‘Those who cross me deserve what they get while I get what I deserve’.  

 Serving other gods or human leaders and pursuing other values warps people’s personalities. They are discipled to become grasping, greedy, and deceitful. If a whole nation does that, what does it look like? What if such a nation plays the world political game, and loses as all eventually do? Read Jeremiah or Revelation to see what happens to those who compete for power, wealth, and self-satisfaction and exclude worship of the one true God. 

 I ended last week asking you, Christ-ian, what idol, ideal, or ideology you are following. By your name, one would think you are following Jesus Christ. 

 By the name of the people of Israel, one would think they would be following God. After all, EL means ‘God’, and the first word means ‘to struggle’ or ‘to contend’. Thus IsraEL means “One who struggles with God’, The name was given to Jacob after he wrestled with an angel one night at Peniel (Genesis 32). 

 By the name of Judah, one would think those people would be following YHWH. The word ‘Judah’ is a call ‘to praise’ YHWH (Genesis 29: 35). But, Jeremiah says that Israel did not grasp God and Judah does not praise God. 

 Jeremiah tells us the sad story that the people named for God have not, in fact, been following God’s commands and have not adopted God’s character. The result? By 550 B.C. both nations had been defeated, destroyed, and scattered throughout other nations. By Jesus’ time, Judea and Galilee were only small territories within the Roman Empire; neither independent nor free.  

 What happened? They had the Abrahamic Covenant from God, if they could keep it. But they didn’t keep it. They presumed too much on the promise of a blessing as if they were a chosen nation who could do no wrong. There is no such thing as a nation that can do no wrong. In their ethnic pride they ignored the contingency of the second half of the covenant. Listen. 

 “Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed’. So Abram went, as the LORD had told him,...” (Genesis 12: 1-4). 

First up: Obedience. Faithful obedience. Notice Abram’s response. No questions, no doubts, no resistance: “So Abram went,” period.

Second, there is certainly a promise of a blessing for Abraham’s descendants, however, it is a conditional promise. The ‘great nation’ seems to refer to the Children of Israel who leave Egypt and travel to the Promised Land. However, consider this. Abram had many children by Hagar (the Ishmaelites) and other wives (the Midianites and other Arabic people), and Jacob had a son Esau who was the father of the Edomites. Further, the Bible refers to other groups who left Egypt with the Children of Israel and became part of that nation (Exodus 12: 28). For example, the Kenites were the clan of Moses’ wife Keturah who was not an Israelite, but they lived with Israel in the Promised Land. It was a mixed bag, for sure.  

 Third, and most important, God is not blessing the Children of Abraham just because he likes them better than others. In fact, here is the origin story that God gives Israel through the prophet Ezekiel: 

  “The word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, make known to Jerusalem her abominations and say: Thus says the Lord GOD to Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth were in the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite. As for your birth, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in cloths. No eye pitied you to do any of these things for you out of compassion for you, but you were thrown out in the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born. I passed by you and saw you flailing about in your blood. As you lay in your blood, I said to you, “Live! and grow up like a plant of the field” (Ezekiel 16: 1-7).

 Not very pleasant; nothing to be proud of. Why did God choose Israel? God blessed Abraham in order that he and his children (for all generations) would be a blessing to the other nations, especially those who would accept and return the blessing, in order that all the families of the earth would be blessed by God. 

 In other words, Israel and then Judah failed to grow up to be like God in his character and values; that is, people who showed love, practiced justice, and offered forgiveness to all people in all nations. That is what God is like. That is what God’s people should be like. Instead, Israel and later Judah wanted to have power, wealth, and satisfaction for themselves and they were eager to play political games that excluded others from God’s blessings.   

 That is why Christ had to come and set things straight. And, it is why we should follow the Son of God and not our own desires for power, wealth, and self-satisfaction. We should grow up to be like Christ. As Paul said: 

 “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-8).