Fallen

The Chaldeans burned the king's house and the house of the people, and broke down the walls of Jerusalem.

Jeremiah 39:8

In this stark, short sentence is the curse of God fulfilled upon the sins of His people. All that Jeremiah had warned would happen to Judah if they continued in their willful rejection of God did indeed come to pass. The fires burned through the palace, the temple, and the districts of Jerusalem for days on end, reducing the city to uninhabitable rubble. The Chaldean army systematically tore down the city walls and fortifications, making it clear they did not want to occupy the city. They were razing it in order to carry away captives as trophies to Babylon.

And in this pain and tragic loss the Jews were led away to Babylon. All was ruined. All their lives were changed. The familiar was gone. The final consequence of their rejection of God had come. They were torn from all that was familiar and ripped away from any roots. And now they would have only one bit of their original identity as they were marched off as captives: they were they people whose God is Yahweh.

For the next 70 years as exiles in Babylon, they would recommit to their God and reform their faith around family and synagogues. They would long for Zion and pray to their Lord again. They would weep over their loss and long for restoration. They would find faith and hope in God again in the midst of their cruel exile. And God would restore them in His time, a humbled and trusting people again.

God does the heavy lifting.

I will restore the fortunes of Judah and the fortunes of Israel, and rebuild them as they were at first. I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me.

Jeremiah 33:7-8

Three times in these two verses God promises to do the hard work of salvation for His people. They need only believe, accept, and recommit. When it comes down to it, we may repent and we may commit to change, but it is God Who does the real work of transformation in us. He promises His covenant people in this passage that He will restore both Judah and Israel to nation status again. He promises to rebuild their cites and nations after years of destruction, desolation, and exile. Those are physical promises, visible to the world.

God also promises to do the hardest spiritual work in His people. He promises to cleanse them from the guilt of their sin against Him. They would no longer bear the legal guilt of trespasses against God. The Lord, as judge, would waive their guilt and replace it with a verdict of “not guilty”. This is unilaterally God’s work of pardon. They WERE guilty. He would choose to declare them free of that guilt. They did not earn it or in any way prove themselves to be guiltless. God does this cleansing (and it happens now through the blood of Jesus, applied to each sinner who repents and trusts Jesus).

God will forgive all their sin. He will choose to forgive them, which means they were indeed in the wrong, guilty, and deserving of God’s judgment. But forgiveness means that God chooses to no longer hold their guilt against them. God is holy, just, judging sin.... yet He is also merciful and gracious, forgiving when dealing with sin and providing the means through the cross of Christ for all sin to be atoned forever. God does the hard work. He does the heavy lifting when it comes to removing sin’s guilt and offering forgiveness. We are called to accept this by faith and to follow.

New Days / New Ways

And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

Jeremiah 31:34

Knowing God

is freeing.

It frees from ignorance.

It frees to love.

It frees from the bondage of sin.

And when one knows God

that knowledge is shared

to free others.

Loving God

Who loves us

helps us love others;

helps us love Him;

helps us love His commands.

And when we love God

His love is shared

as we love others.

Thank God

He forgives us.

And we forgive

as we are forgiven

so others may forgive.

And when God forgives our sins

that forgiveness is shared,

forgiving others.

a miserable reproach

I will pursue them with sword, famine, and pestilence, and will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, a terror, a hissing, and a reproach among all the nations where I have driven them, because they did not pay attention to my words, declares the Lord, that I persistently sent to you by my servants the prophets, but you would not listen, declares the Lord.

Jeremiah 29:18-19

This is NOT the passage in Jeremiah 29 that gets bumper stickered and motivational postered! But in context, it is the point of the prophet! The Jews were destined to be a reproach among the Babylonians, and among all the nations they once envied. The choice made in Judah to forsake God, disregard the covenant, and turn against the messages from God’s prophets led to this curse pronounced by God Himself upon His own loved people. They would become the most hated and reviled of peoples.

In Babylon, the Jews became a ridicule among their captors... a nation that had fallen so far to become the butt of jokes. Driven from their land, their history, and the temple of their God, the Jews would be forced to consider their plight as a reproach and to begin to worship God intimately, personally, familiarly again. And new humility would slowly emerge. A new respect for the Word of God, for His covenant and His prophets would eventually return to God’s people over seven decades of humiliating exile.

Rejecting God leads to reproach. And it is heart-breaking to read thes words and to know just how true they are. Historically they were true for Judah. God led His people into pain-filled suffering because they did not pay attention to His words. And disregard of God in this way is always ruinous, even today! And so this example motivates me to be serious with what God says and asks of me. The misery of disobedience and the reproach that comes from rejection of God are NEVER worth it!

Repentance can’t be about me.

Though our iniquities testify against us,

act, O Lord, for your name's sake;

for our backslidings are many;

we have sinned against you.

Jeremiah 14:7

Repentance isn’t about me. Repentance is all about what I realize about God and the enormity of my sin against Him. In this confessional from the prophet Jeremiah, the way in which Judah needed to repent is put into prophetic words. And the spotlight shines brightly on God and His glory. Our sins testify against us, showing us how short we fall from the holiness of God. Our deliberate rejection of God is behind every sin. And the One we answer to, against whom we bear the guilt of our sins, is God.

But the prayer of confession here calls God to act... to grant hope and be our Savior (Jeremiah 14:8). And the reason He does this is not for our sake. It is for His name’s sake. God saves us... Jesus saves us... for His glory and not for our own. If we have been spared His eternal judgment and granted eternal life and the righteousness of Christ applied to us, it is only because He is most glorified in being merciful to sinners and gracious to repentant sinners like us because of Christ and for His own glory!

O Lord,

My iniquities are many and testify against me. They cascade down my life and at this stage I will limp with the scars of them in some way or another until I am in heaven with You. My sin falls short of Your glory and pulls me from You. Against You have I sinned... intentionally and often without even giving it a second thought. I am a glory thief. Yet, in Jesus You have acted to save me for Your name’s sake. I pull the attention off me! I confess my sin and fall on my knees before my only Savior! Act in grace, O my God and Savior for Your glory! Be glorious in Your grace to sinners!

Amen

“...and when I think that God His Son not sparing

Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in

That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing

He bled and died, to take away my sin...

Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee...

How great Thou art... How great Thou art...”

stupid shepherds

For the shepherds are stupid

and do not inquire of the Lord;

therefore they have not prospered,

and all their flock is scattered.

Jeremiah 10:21

This indictment against the leaders of Judah shows a clear consequence when spiritual leadership goes awry. The priests, Levites, and royal officials in Jerusalem were all tolerant of idolatry and disrespectful of God’s covenant. They led the nation in idolatry and neglected seeking the Lord. They relied on their own wits to lead. God calls that strategy “stupid”.

The result of this selfish, immature, rebellious, stupid leadership was that Jerusalem faltered. The nation did not prosper under such leaders. They may have enjoyed high approval ratings. The idolatry might have seemed cool as they now “fit in” with the nations around them. And personal fortunes might have been made at the price of economic hardship on the poor and needy. But all of that came at the cost of the spiritual soul of the nation. And when that eroded, Judah was ripe for invasion as God’s consequence for disobedience. That is exactly what happened. The stupid shepherds were taken over. Their flock scattered and was decimated in the siege.

How much better it is to seek the Lord and to inquire of Him! Leadership demands that leaders themselves are followers of a higher standard than just their own thoughts. And the ultimate standard for leadership is non other than the Great Shepherd - Jesus! Looking to Him, asking of Him to provide wisdom, looking to His Word for truth and to the Holy Spirit for enablement can save shepherds from being stupid.

individual freedom and God’s loving correction

I have paid attention and listened,

but they have not spoken rightly;

no man relents of his evil,

saying, ‘What have I done?’

Everyone turns to his own course,

like a horse plunging headlong into battle.

Jeremiah 8:6

Before God’s judgment fell upon Judah, He really did look for repentance from His people. But what He saw from the place to the temple, among the king’s court and with the priests & Levites in the temple courts, was unrepentant selfish evil. When God confronted His people through the preaching of Jeremiah, no one responded back with any awareness of their sin or a willingness to repent. Instead, the opposite was the state of the nation.

When a society emphasizes individual freedom (which is generally a good thing in principle) but also simultaneously refuses to believe God or accept His wisdom, individuals will make choices so tainted by selfishness and sin that they will corrupt the entire society. The sum of the bad individual choices will add up to a lot of corruption. What God saw in Judah was this moral chaos of individual freedom run amuck without any divine direction. The people refused to live by God’s design (Jeremiah 8:8-9), making them by God’s estimation worse off than animals in the natural world that follow divine instincts and patterns.

And so I must guard my own heart. I love that God has given me freedom. But I also know I am very imperfect and will make sinful and harmful choices left solely to my own insights. When I do, I pray I will have the courage and faith to always repent with the realization: “What have I done?” I trust God’s Word and the Holy Spirit to direct my life in the best possible course, away from a destiny of headlong destruction, and into the joy of my Lord!