Devotional on Jeremiah 11

Jeremiah 10:23 is his strong conviction that the Lord is in control of people’s lives. Literally translated the verse reads: “for not to a human is his way, not to a man to walk, to prepare his step”. God in control. So it is also in Jeremiah 11 that one has to very careful see who or Who is talking, Jeremiah or God. God spoke to Jeremiah and gave him a revelation asking that people should listen to the mosaic covenant “the words of this covenant” (verse 2). Jewish Commentators of the Middle Ages rightly understood this to be the covenant of the Torah. The words of the covenant of the Torah was then to be replicated to the people of Judah and those staying in and around Jerusalem (verse 2). A citation of the word of the Lord is then given by Jeremiah: “Cursed be the man who will not hearken to the words of this covenant” (verse 3). Rabbi Redak of the Middle Ages thought that if the Mosaic Torah was read like on Sinai then people will be afraid and perhaps repent. He is not far off in his interpretation since that is what verse 4 says, that the time zone of these commandments was after they left Egypt in 1450 BCE at the Exodus. Jeremiah uses a metaphor that Egypt was like a furnace of iron. Iron stoves can get very hot. I grew up with an iron stove and also my mother did. Those stoves could bake the best bread that you can imagine. The heat cannot escape and so Israel had no chance to escape from the problems of Egypt unless the Lord “took” them out. He told them to listen to Him, follow His commandments and He will be their God. The purpose is that the Lord wants to be faithful to His own promises. He promised to Abraham that He will give them “land flowing with milk and honey according to this day” (verse 5). The attachment of the phrase “according to this day” is citing a necessary part of the legitimacy of a contract that a time element, place, Who speaks and who listens and content should be present. This phrase completes all these elements by saying it was a legal contract that day He spoke to the ancestors like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. None of them got the land as Hebrews 11 is saying, but the Lord stick to the fulfillment of His incomplete business. When Jeremiah heard the legal citing of the Lord he responded like a jury saying, “Amen, O Lord” (verse 5). The citation is repeated in verse 6 and Jeremiah is asked to proclaim in the cities of Judah and streets of Jerusalem. Jeremiah’s message will be listen and do. Every morning the Lord asked the Israelites between 1450-1448 BCE to do His words but they did not listen (verse 7). Does this mean that we are forced to do what God says? A wrong question. If you are in a relationship with God you want to do it. It is not a case of been hyped-up into emotional and psychological propaganda and now you just want to do regardless. Any religion that has just 1% or 10% of this ingredient, is wrong. God’s worship or no worship is totally free. If you claim to follow Him but do not do, then He will do what the covenant expects Him to do. To be accommodational to other systems than what the Bible spelled out to be, is to follow other Gods and by permission or omission of rejection, actually participating in worshipping them (verse 10). The remnant broke the covenant by playing God games. The curses in the covenant was also spelled out during the setting up of a relationship with God (verse 11). God cannot go back on His word when they keep breaking His commandments. The “evil” that will come upon them they will be unable to escape. They shall cry to God but no help and to their idols and no help either (verse 12). They had as many idols as cities (verse 13). They made altars for the shameful thing and altars to burn incense for Baal. In our own day we will arrive at this position, says Ellen White “when Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with Spiritualism, when under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its constitution as a Protestant and Republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan, and that the end is near” (Ellen White 5 Testimonies 451). Accommodationist theological approaches around and in Adventism will be the signal. Jeremiah is asked not to pray for these people “and you, do not pray for this people, neither shall you lift up cry nor prayer, for I do not hearken at the time they call out to Me because of their misfortune” (verse 14). That Jeremiah had the remnant of spiritual Israel in mind here is his reference to the hymn of the vineyard in Isaiah 5 here in verse 15: “What is My beloved? She did many of the evil designs in My house”. The same nouns are used as in Isaiah 5 and the same style of a court-case in the Investigative Judgment. A list is given of what they did:  many purpose designs in the house of the Lord. It was the place where they had their meetings to sort out their purpose and devices for their activities and plans. A churchboard meeting or business meeting. It is maybe not a good idea to have a business meeting in the house of the Lord. The offerings pertained and assigned to the work of the Lord they took for other purposes “and the holy flesh they remove from over you” (meaning from the House of the Lord) and “for your evil then you rejoice”. The remnant was given a good name by the Lord and view as “a leafy olive–tree, beautiful with good fruit.” In Psalm 1 the righteous is a tree by the living waters that bears fruit in its season (Psalm 1:3). In the Wisdom literature of Amenmope the Ger Maa or wise man is like a large leafy tree planted not in the courtyard of the gods but in “shining ground” or m-thnt (line 104). His foliage or fruit is sweet, his shadow is pleasant and at its ends it is carried to the park of the god. He doubles his yield of fruit in the summer (line 104). It sounds as if the Israelite is hoping for a certain quality of water but the Egyptian is hoping for a certain quality of ground. In Hosea 14:6 the Lord says He shall be as dew to Israel. In verse 7 He says that “his beauty shall spread and his beauty shall be as an olive tree and a smell to him like the Lebanon”. The tree in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream grew bigger (Daniel 4:7-13). The Lord is the one who with a great noise has kindled a fire upon it and burnt it and have broken its branches (verse 16). Jeremiah saw that the Lord who planted the remnant then spoke evil about the remnant, about the house of spiritual Israel and spiritual Judah. The evil they did was “to burn sacrifices to Baal” (verse 17). Due to ecumenism the remnant of God started to play games across the religious divide with those not belonging to the Lord and in biblical language this is adulteration. Then the Lord let Jeremiah knew and Jeremiah said to the writer of the Book of Jeremiah: “and I knew”. Jeremiah spoke to God saying: “You showed me their deeds”. This verse 18 is a  complicated syntax of stringing together Jeremiah’s conversation to his scribe followed by Jeremiah’s direct speech to God. Jeremiah is busy narrating and then breaks out speaking to God. Jeremiah in his discourse uses this style: he gives his autographical description and then cites the direct words of his enemies in verse 19. Jeremiah says that he was like a lamb brought to be slaughtered and they said: “Let us destroy him”. Their plan was to destroy his food, killing him “cut him off from the land of the living”. Jeremiah then witness of His God that is a just Judge and Who is searching the kidneys and the heart (verse 20). Jeremiah asked God to see “Your vengeance against them” (verse 20). The key is that Jeremiah has revealed his cause to God. Then the Lord answered Jeremiah in verse 21 about those men that sought the life of Jeremiah in Anathoth: “concerning the men of Anathoth who is seeking your life by saying: ‘[Jeremiah] you shall not prophecy in the name of the Lord and you shall not die by our hand.” They were telling Jeremiah not to preach in the name of the Lord and not to prophecy. The Lord is very strict against anyone who touches the anointed of the Lord. If a group of deacons or elders scream to a pastor in a churchboard meeting or any other meeting, this action will not go unpunished. The pastor is not above the law of God but keeping God’s law and following it very carefully, if members do not and get out of control in their attitudes and behavior, they are in for some very unpleasant surprises in their life down the line. God said here to Jeremiah that those men that wanted to seek his life and was screaming: that he should not prophecy in the name of the Lord and that he shall not die by their hand. So the Lord spelled out their punishment to Jeremiah. “Behold, I will visit retribution upon them”. The young men shall die by the sword and their sons and daughters shall die through hunger (verse 22). They shall have no remnant for the Lord will bring misfortune upon them “in the year of their remembrance” (verse 23). We have witnessed what happened when people are rude and out of order against the anointed of the Lord, a retired senior pastor, and not for any other reason than that he was doing his work. They were Sabbathbreakers, gossipers, working on the Sabbath, really out of control. When they couldn’t get their wish to get him out they screamed in a meeting. They church went from 40 members to 10. One elder got Parkinsons. The head-deacon’s children struggle to get a work after highschool. The deacon who screamed in the meeting has repented after considering his actions and deeply regretted what he did. But the Lord has to punish for the action since it is too severe in the eyes of God and more is at stake than just a relationship between himself and God. His sister and husband who is a medical doctor went bankrupt over more than $900 000 debt that their partner left them.

Dear God

Help each one of us to appreciate the anointed workers of You who spent their lives for You in preaching and serving the flock. Forgive our shortcomings and those days when we openly did stupid things against Your will sometimes not even realizing that it was wrong. In Jesus name, Amen.