Originally published by Word Books, Waco, Texas

DEATH OF A NATION

Ray C. Stedman

Contents

Introduction

1. Called for a Crisis

2. The Way Back

3. Love's Last Resort

4. Faith at the Breaking Point

5. To Whom Shall We Go?

6. The Potter and the Clay

7. A Burning in the Bones

8. Why the Land Mourns

9. Who Knows?

10. The Secret of Strength

11. Is Anything Too Hard for God?

12. What Does God Require?

13. Back to Egypt

14. Now Hear This!

Introduction

The tragedy of Judah, as it unfolds in the pages of the Book of Jeremiah, is the tragedy of nations today. This Book of Jeremiah, though written thousands of years ago, is still as relevant, up-to-date and pertinent to our day as it was when first written. The tragedy is that when people forsake God they lose the sense of their own worth. Without exception, when someone turns from God he also loses himself. When the people of Judah turned from the living fountain of God they became like animals, Jeremiah said. They began to act brutishly, and thus to hate themselves. This is always the consequence of a heart which rejects or turns from the living God. When you lose God, you no longer can love yourself. And if you cannot love yourself, you cannot love your neighbor. That reflects the wisdom of the great commandment Jesus gave us: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If you have no sense of who you are as a person, then you will not look at anyone else as a person, either. So the tragedy of this nation was that it had begun to lose its sense of God, and thus had begun to lose its sense of self.

The Book of Jeremiah is set in a time of crisis and moral decline of the nation. It reveals what is behind the death of a nation. In many ways, we are facing the parallel of Judah's experience in our day. In 1976 our nation celebrates its two-hundredth birthday. Many feel that as we celebrate our Bicentennial we also may be witnesses to the beginning of the end of the United States of America. I hope it is not true. But the forces which are destroying our nation are the same forces which destroyed the nation to which Jeremiah witnessed. We can learn a great deal about what is going on in our nation by studying this great prophecy of Jeremiah. We can learn here how to behave in a time of national and personal crisis. What should a believer do when things are falling apart around him in his home, his community, his nation, and the world in which he lives? The answers are here. And from this prophecy we will also learn what is the word of hope in an hour of despair and darkness, and how God plants the seeds of new life in the midst of death and destruction.

1. Called for a Crisis

In this series of studies on the Book of Jeremiah, I do not intend to examine every verse, but rather to capture the thought and message of this great prophecy and bring it before your minds and hearts. There is much to learn from Jeremiah. I have come to love this book greatly and I think you will, too.

Perhaps you are not familiar with the book. Jeremiah is not the greatest of the prophets. Isaiah, I think, would be awarded that distinction. Nor is Jeremiah the most difficult of the prophets to understand. Ezekiel would probably qualify there. But of all the prophets, surely Jeremiah is the most heroic. This young man began his ministry in the days of Josiah the king of Judah, and for forty-two years he preached in Judah, trying to awaken the nation to what was about to happen to it. He tried to get them to turn around, to save them from the judgment of God. But in all those forty-two years he never once saw any sign of encouragement. His preaching in no way deterred the headlong rush of this nation toward its own destruction. Never did he see any sign that what he was saying had any impact at all upon these people.

And yet, he was faithful to his task. Through much personal sorrow, struggle, heartache, difficulty and danger, he performed what God had sent him to do. And in so doing, he left a tremendous record of the greatness of God, of his power over nations and his control of history, and of the hope which arises out of darkness.

In the opening chapter we have a full-length portrait of the prophet, and of the times in which he lived. The first three verses set the prophecy in its historical background:

The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month (Jeremiah 1:1-3).

That is a bare-bones description of the circumstances and the times in which Jeremiah ministered. It does not give us much of the flavor of those days, but these were troubled times in the nation. Israel, the Northern Kingdom, had already been carried into captivity by Assyria a hundred years earlier. Now Judah, the Southern Kingdom, was rushing blindly along a course which was certain to lead it to the same judgment. It was during the reign of Josiah, the last good and godly king of Judah, that Jeremiah began his ministry.

The prophecy of Jeremiah is a collection of his messages, interspersed with historical narrative which provides background. It does not proceed chronologically, but jumps from here to there in place and back and forth in time. The moral progress through the book, however, is very orderly, and it is that which we will follow. It began in the days of Josiah, and ended in the days of his son, Zedekiah, the last king of Judah, with the exile of Judah under the Babylonians.

Jeremiah is introduced to us as the son of a priest. He was what we might call a "P.K.," a preacher's kid, growing up in the town of Anathoth where only priests lived. His father's name was Hilkiah, which is a very common name, but some scholars think that Jeremiah's father may have been the same Hilkiah who was high priest in the days of Josiah.

The Book of 2 Kings tells us that this Hilkiah was rummaging around in the rooms of the temple one day, looking over some old records and money boxes which had been stored there for years, and down underneath a lot of dusty ledgers he found a scroll. He brought it out, cleaned it off, and began to read it. To his amazement he discovered that it was a copy of the Law of Moses! The nation had fallen so far that the Law had actually been lost and forgotten. Hilkiah was stunned by what he read. He sent the scroll to Josiah the king, who was also astonished, and frightened that the wrath of God would be poured out on them because they had not kept the Law. He made a covenant before the Lord to keep his commandments, and took away all the idol abominations, beginning what was to be the last national reform this nation experienced before its exile.

Witness to Disaster

Whether or not this Hilkiah was Jeremiah's father, Jeremiah began his ministry under Josiah the king, in the Jays when Josiah was trying desperately to set the kingdom right. But although Josiah moved with great authority and power to tear down the idols and restore the worship of Jehovah, the reform was merely transitory. As soon as the king died, everything deteriorated once more. After Josiah died, Jehoahaz, Josiah's son, after ruling for three months, was captured by Egypt and carried away into exile. Jeremiah watched Assyria's might, in the north, being crushed by the power of Babylon. Then Egypt was humbled by Babylon at the Battle of Carchemish in 605 B.C., one of the strategic battles of all time. Jeremiah saw the total domination of the world by Babylon, under King Nebuchadnezzar. At last he saw the invasion of his own beloved land of Judah by the Babylonian armies, the surrounding of Jerusalem, the siege of the city, and its downfall. He saw the people of Judah carried away into Babylonian captivity, and he was left in a desolated land, a land utterly ravaged by war. Then, betrayed by politicians, he was taken as a captive to Egypt where he died unknown, unhonored, and unsung. Tradition tells us he was stoned to death by the very Jews whom he trusted as brothers.

Here was a man, then, who knew nothing of the outward encouragement of success. He was never to see his prophecies of healing and health for the land fulfilled. And yet, despite all this, he was absolutely faithful to the call of God. The heroism and courage of this man have become a source of great encouragement to my own heart.

In the next few verses is found the call of Jeremiah by God. It is a remarkable account of how God prepared and sent this young man into a ministry. God does the calling, does the preparing, and provides the power. It is all of God. Notice the preparation of God:

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying,
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:4-5).

Isn't it remarkable that when God began to talk to this young man, the first thing he did was to sit down and share with him the Four Spiritual Laws?--at least the first one: "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." Isn't that what he is saying? "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." This is the preparation of God, and it had begun long before Jeremiah was even conceived. In other words, God said, "I started getting you ready, and the world ready for you, long before you were born. I worked through your father and your mother, your grandfathers and grandmothers, your great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers. For generations I have been preparing you." What a wonderful revelation to this young man!

Before You Were Born

When men face a crisis, they always start looking for a program, some method with which to attack the crisis. But when God sets out to solve a crisis, he almost always starts with a baby. The babies God sends into the world, who look so innocent and so helpless--and so useless at their birth--have enormous potential. There is nothing very impressive in appearance about a baby, but that is God's way of changing the world. Hidden in the heart of a baby are the most amazing possibilities. That is what God said to Jeremiah: "I've been working before you were born to prepare you to be a prophet, working through your father and your mother, and those who were before them."

History tells us that the mother of Sir Walter Scott loved poetry and art, so it's not surprising that her son became a poet. The mother of Lord Byron was hot-tempered, proud, and violent. The mother of Napoleon Bonaparte was ambitious for herself and her children. The mother of John and Charles Wesley was a godly and devout woman, with great executive ability--and, having nineteen children, she needed it! God prepares for a child long before that child is born.

God prepares for every child in this way; the kind of preparation spoken of in this passage doesn't apply only to Jeremiah the prophet. I often hear people say of some noted person, "When God made him, he broke the mold." That is true. When God made Abraham Lincoln he broke the mold. There has never been another like him. But what we often fail to see is that this is true of every single one of us; there is nothing unusual about it. God never made another one like you, and he never will. God never made anyone else who can fill the place you can fill and do the things you can do. This is the wonder of the way God forms human life--that of the billions who have lived on this earth there are no duplicates. Each one is unique, prepared of God for the time in which he is to live. To strengthen Jeremiah, God said to him, "I have prepared you for this very hour," just as he has prepared you and me for this time, for this world, for this hour of human history.

Each of us, therefore, is both the goal toward which God has been working and, at the same time, the preparation of others yet to come, for we have a part in their work as well. Not long ago, I heard the story of the death of a young pastor. When he was dying of cancer, his father and uncle, both of whom are pastors, came to see him. After visiting with them both a short while, the young man asked his uncle, "Would you mind if I talk to my dad alone?" When the father came out, he and his brother went to get some coffee, and the father said, "I want to tell you what David did while we were alone. He called me over to his bed and said, 'Can I put my arms around you?' I stooped over as best I could and let him put his arms around me. 'And now, dad, would you put your arms around me?' I could hardly keep control of my emotions, but I put my arms around him. Then, with his arms around me, he said, 'Dad, I just want you to know that the greatest gift God ever gave me, outside of salvation itself, was the gift of a father and mother who love God and taught me to love him, too.'"

That is what God is saying to Jeremiah. "What a gift you have! How I have prepared you for this moment, through the generations which lie behind you, that you might live and speak and act in this time in history."

Shrinking Prophet

But beyond the preparation of God, there is also the provision of God:

Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth." But the Lord said to me,

"Do not say, 'I am only a youth' ";
for to all to whom I send you you shall go,
and whatever I command you you shall speak.
Be not afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you,
says the Lord" (Jeremiah 1:6-8).

Jeremiah's response is to shrink from the call of God. Many a young man had done that before him--Moses, Gideon, Isaiah, and other mighty men of God. When God first laid hold of them and set them to a task, they shrank from it. Jeremiah pleads youth and inexperience, and says he has no ability to speak, just as Moses did. So if you ever feel fearful and inadequate when God calls you to a task, just remember that you are in the prophetic succession! God's men often start out that way.

As far as we can tell, Jeremiah was about thirty years old when God called him. That is when young men began their ministry in Judah. By the standards of modern youth, that would be considered over the hill, beyond the time a man is capable of starting anything. But that is when God often starts. Jesus was thirty years old when he began his ministry. Yet Jeremiah is acutely aware of his inadequacy and his inexperience, which, I think, indicates the sensitivity of this young man. Throughout the whole prophecy you find him very responsive and sensitive to what is happening to him. He is called to stand before kings, to thunder denunciations and judgments, to feel the sharp lash of their recrimination against him, to endure their anger and their power, and to suffer with his people as he sees them rushing headlong to their own self-destruction. We know he feels this keenly and sharply for the Book of Lamentations is made up of the cries of his heart as he senses all that is happening to him.

But God answers Jeremiah in the same way he has answered every other young man who felt this way: "Go, for I am with you. Don't worry about your voice, your looks, your personality, your ability--I will be with you. I will be your voice. I'll speak through you, give you the words. I'll give you the power to stand. I'll give you the courage. I'll be your wisdom. I'll he whatever you need. Whatever demand is made upon you, I'll be there to meet it."

Do you recognize that this, essentially, is the New Covenant that Jesus makes with all of us? This is what he promises each one of us--that he will be with US in this same way. The promise which encouraged Jeremiah is the same promise which is handed to us in the gospel. Whatever we are, whatever demand is made upon us, God says, "Do not be afraid. Do not shrink back. Do not say, 'I can't do that.' Remember that I will be with you, and I will make you able to do it."

And so, the third division of this call is the promise of the power of God:

Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth;
and the Lord said to me,
"Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant" (Jeremiah 1:9-10).

As with Isaiah, God touched Jeremiah's mouth. Isaiah started his ministry when God touched his mouth with the coals from the altar and gave him power in speaking. Jeremiah's words, then, become the key to his power, the living, burning, shattering, building, mighty power of the word of God. In this power, Jeremiah was set over nations and kingdoms. This was not mere poetry. The messages of this book were actually addressed to all the great nations of the world of that day--to Egypt, to Assyria, even to Babylon in its towering might and strength. Jeremiah was given a word for all these nations. I like to think of this scene, because I think it is repeated in every generation. Here are the nations of the world, with their obvious display of power and pomp and circumstance, with statesmen and leaders who are well-known household names, marching up and down, threatening one another, rattling their sabers, acting so proud and self-assertive. But God picks out an obscure young man, a youth thirty years of age whom no one has ever heard of, from a tiny little town in a small, obscure country, and says to him, "I have set you over all the nations and kingdoms of the earth. Your word, because it is my word, will have more power than all the power of the nations."

That is a remarkable description of our heritage as believers in Jesus Christ. James says that the prayer of a righteous man releases great power. And when you and I pray about the affairs of life, we can affect the fate of nations, as the word of Jeremiah altered the destiny of the nations of his day, even though we are obscure and no one knows who we are. This has happened before in the course of history.

Destruction with Purpose

So Jeremiah was set in the midst of death and destruction, but God said he would plant a hope and a healing. His word was to "pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow"--and that is always the work of God. In a nation there are many things which have to be torn down--things men trust in--just as in an individual's heart and life there are things which need to be destroyed. I talked with a young man not long ago who said to me, "I don't understand what's wrong with my marriage. I'm doing everything I know to do, but our relationship isn't right. I can't put my finger on what is wrong." I said to him, "I'm sure there is something wrong, and God will show it to you. There are things you're doing in your marriage which you're not aware of, things you need to see. But right now you are blinded to them. You think things are right, and yet they're not, and it puzzles you. All this indicates is that there are still things God needs to tear down--points of pride, or times of discourtesy, perhaps, that you don't recognize; habits and reactions of worry and anxiety and anger and frustration that you've fallen into or given way to, and you don't even know about them." We all have areas like these in our lives. And the work of God is to open our eyes to these things, to destroy them and root them out. . . and then, always, to build and to plant. God never destroys for the purpose of destroying; he destroys in order to build up again. This was God's word to Jeremiah.

The closing section of this chapter depicts the ministry of this young man in the land. It falls into three major divisions, beginning with verse 11. First there are certain symbols of what would be accomplished through Jeremiah's ministry:

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, "Jeremiah, what do you see?" And I said, "I see a rod of almond [i.e., a branch of the almond tree]." Then the Lord said to me, "You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it."

There is a little play on words here, in the Hebrew. The Jews called the almond tree "the watcher" (shaqed) because it was the first tree to blossom in the spring. They saw it as watching for the return of the sun and the warming of the earth, and therefore the first to herald the coming of springtime. And God said to Jeremiah, "You have seen well, for that is what I am doing; I am watching (shaqed) over my word to perform it." This is a picture of health and healing. Throughout this prophecy there are wonderful passages which deal with the way God was planning to heal this land. For example, Jeremiah was sent to buy a piece of property while the city was being taken by the enemy. In the midst of all this destruction he was to buy this property, get the title deed, and have it sealed and witnessed, as a testimony to the fact that God intended to restore the land, and that property would still be of value. This is what God does also in our lives.

There is another symbol: the boiling pot.

The word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, "What do you see?" And I said, "I see a boiling pot, facing away from the north." Then the Lord said to me, "Out of the north evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land. For, lo, I am calling all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north, says the Lord; and they shall come and everyone shall set his throne at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, against all its walls round about, and against all the cities of Judah" (Jeremiah 1:13-15).

The prophet saw a pot boiling, with smoke and steam rising up, streaming in the north wind toward the south. God said, "Jeremiah, that is a picture of what I'm going to do. I'm going to bring a boiling pot--a confederation of nations down from the north against this city of Jerusalem [as he is going to do once more in our day, perhaps very soon], and the city will be taken, its people driven into exile, and my judgment will fall upon this land." This was the picture of judgment. And it was to come from the north. Although Egypt was the greatest power on earth at this time, Egypt is ignored here, and God seizes upon Babylon as the source from which judgment would come.

Signs of Decay

Then, second, he announces the cause of that judgment, verse 16: "And I will utter my judgments against them, for all their wickedness in forsaking me; they have burned incense to other gods, and worshiped the works of their own hands." The reason a nation dies is that it forsakes its God, as evidenced by two things: First, the nation burns incense before other gods; that is, it exalts ideas and philosophies which represent the various controlling passions and imaginations of men. Second, its people worship the works of their own hands; they exalt man, pointing to man as the solution to his own problems--in other words, the rise of humanism. These are the signs of decay in a nation. This is what was happening in Israel. In the very first prophecy of Jeremiah to Judah, chapter 2, verse 13, he says,

". . . for my people have committed two evils;
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns, that can hold no water."

Here is a valley with a stream running through it, a beautiful mountain stream with clear, cool, clean water. The people have been drinking from that water, but then they forsake it. And up on the barren, rocky hillsides, they hew out cisterns to catch the water as it runs off down the mountainside with its dirt and its leaves and its collection of bugs and dead mice. The cisterns leak. They do not hold the water. So, at great expense, the people are constantly building cisterns which break in the drought and let the water run out so that they are left with nothing to drink, while the stream of living water runs fresh in the valley below.

What a picture that is! A lot of people do that, do they not? They turn from God who is able to bring the freshness and vitality of joy and peace and love into a life, and start seeking satisfaction in all kinds of dead human philosophy, in failing friendships, in momentary pleasures. These are the broken cisterns that can hold no water. This is when a nation, a home, an individual, begins to die.

But in the final section of this first chapter, God gives Jeremiah this promise:

"But you, gird up your loins; arise, and say to them everything I command you. Do not be dismayed by them, lest I dismay you before them. And I, behold, I make you this day a fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze walls, against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you" (Jeremiah 1:17-19).

When I was a boy in high school, sixteen years old, I was arrested because it was alleged (wrongly, it was proved) that I had been hunting out of season. I still remember how fearsome it was to receive that warrant for my arrest, to open it up 'and read these words: "The People of the State of Montana versus Ray C. Stedman." I thought, "What unfair odds! The whole population of the state of Montana against me!" That is what this prophet Jeremiah had to face. All the people of the land, and its kings and priests, would be against him. But God said, "Don't you worry, you shall stand. I'll make you a stone, an iron, and a bronze against them. Nothing will shake you." And the amazing thing is that though this young man was thrown into prison, put in a dungeon where he was mired in the mud, put on a bread-and-water diet, though he was ostracized and isolated, set aside, rejected and insulted, and finally exiled into Egypt, never once when God asked him to speak did he ever fail to say exactly what God told him to say. What remarkable courage this young man exhibited!

Through all of it Jeremiah learned four things: He learned the sovereignty of God, his control over the nations of earth. He learned the ruthlessness of God, whose judgments would be unmerciful against his people who persisted in turning away from him. He learned the faithfulness of God always to fulfill his word, no matter what was said. And finally he learned the tenderness of God, to suffer with the heart of God. He lost hope for a while and cried out, "O that I had never been born!" He felt the awful hurt of his people, and wept over them. But through it all he realized that what he was feeling was the suffering of the heart of God over people who turn him aside, and the tenderness of God that draws them back at last, despite all their wandering. That is the prophecy of Jeremiah. I hope you will enjoy it as we go through it together, and learn much for the hour of our own national peril.

2. The Way Back

The first message of Jeremiah to the nation of Judah covers several chapters, but I want to pick out certain passages which highlight for us what God has to say to someone who has begun to drift away from him. Have you ever had that problem? I have. I find there are times in my life when, without even realizing it, I have begun to lose some of the fervor, joy, and peace which mark the presence of God flowing through my life.

The tragic thing about that condition, as exemplified in the nation of Judah, is that when it happens nobody knows what is wrong. Judah really blamed God for all the problems they were having, just as most of us do. They said it was God's fault; he did not deliver them when he ought to, and did not keep them from their enemies as he promised. They were charging him with gross misconduct and with inability to keep his promises.

So God has something to say to this nation, and what he says gathers around four words that Jeremiah uses: remember, realize, return, and beware. I hope you will take these four words as an instruction to your own heart about how to get back to God. Use them when you sense somehow that you have begun to drift, or that you have lost some of the flavor and the joy of your Christian experience. The first word is found in chapter 2:

The word of the Lord came to me, saying,
"Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem,
Thus says the Lord, I remember the devotion of your youth,
your love as a bride,
how you followed me in the wilderness,
in a land not sown.
Israel was holy to the Lord,
the first fruits of his harvest.
All who ate of it became guilty;
evil came upon them, says the Lord" (Jeremiah 2:1-3).

The first word is remember. That is a look back, a call to remember what life was like when you first began a love relationship. God says, "I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me." In marital counseling I have often dealt with couples who have been married twenty-five or thirty years, but who are having difficulties. They are tense, angry, upset, and sometimes they will not even speak to one another. One man was so angry with his wife that he got up, spit in her face, and walked out the door! How do you begin the healing process with couples in such a state?

Long ago I learned the best way is simply to say, "You know, before we start, I need to get acquainted with you a bit. Tell me something about yourselves. How did you meet, and where?" You can feel the atmosphere soften, and their hearts begin to expand a bit, as they think back to the days when they were not angry or upset, and as they remember what it meant to be in love. Half the battle is won when you can get couples thinking back to what it was like when they first knew each other.

Do you remember those days in your relationship with the Lord--the wonder of love, and the joy of it? What the prophet is bringing out here is that at such a time, the loved one is the chief priority in life. No other relationship is more important than yours with him, or hers with you. He is preeminent in your affection. Therefore, the first thing God says to a heart which has begun to drift is, "Remember, remember what is was like when you were secure in my affections, separate unto me?"

A young man who was with me on a trip recently told me that he had listened to someone speak on the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2:4. When the speaker got to what the Lord Jesus said to the angel of the church in Ephesus--"I have this against you, that you have left your first love"--this young man said something gripped his heart. It was as though scales dropped from his eyes. And he suddenly realized that he had come to love Bible study about Jesus more than he loved Jesus himself. He saw that he had to return to that "first love," and that Bible study, engaging and exciting as it is, is not what holds the heart. It is Jesus himself. And that is what God says--"Remember, Judah, those days in the wilderness when you walked as a bride with her husband, how you were safe, and satisfied, and exclusively mine."

Know and See

The second word which God uses to try to arrest this people is found in chapter 2, verse 19:

"Your wickedness will chasten you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God; the fear of me is not in you, says the Lord God of hosts."

"Know and see." That is a word for the present, is it not? "Look around," God says. "Realize where you are and what has happened to you. What are you like, right now? Remember the past, and realize the present. What has happened to you in your life?" This is his way of arresting Judah's attention, of helping them to see how needy they were and how much they needed him. So he says, "Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God." Several passages are gathered around this word, on which I won't expound in detail, but I do want to point out two vivid illustrations which God holds up to us. God, the master illustrator, uses wonderful visual aids to help us understand truth, and he holds up before Israel two pictures which will help them to see themselves, and will help us to see ourselves as well. The first, which I have mentioned already, is in chapter 2, verse 13:

". . . for my people have committed two evils;
they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns, that can hold no water."

God says that is what Judah has been doing, and he details it for them in verse 4:

Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord:

"What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?" (Jeremiah 2:4-5).

That is the folly of somebody who forsakes the Lord. Remember how many times in the Scriptures believers are depicted as a river of living water, refreshing, rushing, bringing cleansing and healing and fruit. Jesus spoke of the rivers of healing water that flow from our life when the Spirit of God is ruling. And you know those times, don't you? You have already experienced that inner sense of gladness, of joy, that God is present. Why would anyone forsake that, and try to be satisfied with a lot of cheap things? It would be like forsaking the sunshine and huddling in a cave somewhere, trying to be satisfied with the light of a candle. Or worse, perhaps, it would be like giving up eating and trying to satisfy yourself by drooling over all the food ads in the magazines. That is what God says it is like when you turn from the living God, who alone can satisfy the heart.

Spiritual Harlotry

The other picture I want to mention is even more graphic:

"For long ago you broke your yoke
and burst your bonds;
and you said, 'I will not serve.'
Yea, upon every high hill and under every green tree
you bowed down as a harlot.
Yet I planted you a choice vine,
wholly of pure seed.
How then have you turned degenerate (Jeremiah 2:20-21).

When you forsake the living God, it is not very long before deterioration and degeneracy set in, and you become available to any and every drive and force around you. God calls that harlotry--spiritual harlotry. He asks a searching question in verses 23 and 24:

"How can you say, 'I am not defiled,
I have not gone after the Baals'?
Look at your way in the valley;
know what you have done--
a restive young camel interlacing her tracks,
a wild ass used to the wilderness,
in her heat sniffing the wind!
Who can restrain her lust?
None who seek her need weary themselves;
in her month they will find her" (Jeremiah 2:23-24).

Do you see the picture? If you have ever worked among horses you know what he is talking about. Here is a mare in heat, lusting. A little later on in chapter 5 he speaks of lusty stallions who keep neighing after their neighbors' wives. God uses these vivid figures to awaken people to where they are. There is a wonderful frankness about the Scriptures which sometimes rebukes the Victorian prudishness to which we have fallen heir. God intended us to learn from the animal kingdom. He gave animals a dif. ferent kind of sexuality than he gave us, in order that we might learn from them. In observing them, we have a vivid picture of how we look when we start lusting after everything that comes along, making ourselves available for any kick, any thrill, any drive, other than God himself.

This picture must have meant a great deal to the people of Judah. They understood how an animal looks in heat, how eager it is to be satisfied. I remember a scene from my high school days, when I was working on a ranch in Montana. One day a group of people came out from town to go horseback riding. Among them were some schoolteachers, and one was my English teacher, who was something of an old maid. I remember that she was given a stallion to ride, and when we were saddling up, the stallion got tremendously excited about a nearby mare. To this day I can vividly recall the bright crimson of her face as she sat on that horse, while everybody else tried to pretend nothing was happening! But God uses this figure to say to us, "That is what you're like. That is you, lusting after everything that comes by, living for kicks, wanting to be satisfied by everything from continuous, nonstop television, or endless golf, to the fleshpots of the city, to heroin, to hate and violence." That is what happens when the heart begins to drift from God into degeneracy.

The First Step Back

The third word for us, in tracing the way back to God, is repeated several times in Jeremiah's prophecy. For example:

And the Lord said to me, "Faithless Israel has shown herself less guilty than false Judah. Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say,

'Return, faithless Israel, says the Lord.
I will not look on you in anger,
for I am merciful, says the Lord;
I will not be angry forever'" (Jeremiah 3:11-12).

The word is return. He says it again in verse 22: "Return, O faithless sons, I will heal your faithlessness." And in chapter 4: "If you return, O Israel, says the Lord, to me you should return" (vs. 1). If you are going down a road, and find that you are on the wrong road, the only logical thing to do is to turn around and go back to where you lost your way. That is what we find so hard to do, because of the first step we must take, which is clearly described in chapter 3, verse 13:

"Only acknowledge your guilt,
that you rebelled against the Lord your God
and scattered your favors among strangers under every green tree, and that you have not obeyed my voice, says the Lord."

That is the tough part, is it not? "Only acknowledge your guilt." God sees the heart, and we cannot fool him. We can justify ourselves, and excuse ourselves to those around us, but we cannot fool the living God who is waiting to refresh us and heal us, waiting until we have acknowledged our guilt. I am concerned when Christians sometimes treat the beautiful promises of forgiveness in the New Testament as though they were automatic. They seem to have the idea that God is so ready to forgive that the minute you do something wrong he instantly forgives you, and it does not matter whether you acknowledge your guilt or not. But that is not biblical. I do not think it is right to use 1 John 1:9--"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness"--as if forgiveness simply happens automatically whenever you do anything wrong. God does not want us to confess and acknowledge our guilt for his sake; it is for our sake that we are to do it, so that we might see what was wrong and learn from it. So God says that the way to return is to acknowledge our guilt.

Stuart Briscoe told me once of an incident in his church. A young boy had come. to Christ through some of the people in the church who had reached out to him while he was on drugs. They were so loving and gracious to him as they led him to Christ that he was eager to come to church. He did come, and later asked to be a member of the church. On the morning he was to be accepted into membership, he asked if he could say a few words to the congregation. Stuart Briscoe agreed, so the young man stood up and said, "I just want to tell you something about myself. I was on drugs; I was all fouled up; I was a mess. I hated myself. Then some people from this church met me, and they loved me as I've never been loved before. They told me about Jesus, and I found Jesus. I was so eager to come to this church, because these people were from here. I came here because I wanted to see a church that could put out people like that.

"But I was so disappointed! You didn't like my long hair, and I could feel it in your glances. I could sense your hostility when you pointedly ignored me. I could see that some of you were downright angry because I was present among you. It made me very resentful. I got bitter and angry at you because you were like that. I just want to tell you that God has dealt with my heart, and I realize that it is wrong for me to be bitter and angry at you. Now, your hostility toward me--that is your own problem before God. You will have to settle that. But I just want to say that I was wrong in being angry with you. God has forgiven me, and I ask you to forgive me, and to receive me into membership here." That is a good example of what God is after, the acknowledgment of guilt.

God goes on to say, in verse 15, "'And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.'" Do you see how he is reaching after these people? "Return," he says. "Come back. It is not too late. I will restore you, I will feed you, I will open your eyes. You will not have to walk in ignorance and darkness again. I will heal your faithlessness."

What About the End?

But there is one more word here, and because Jeremiah found it necessary to add it, so must we. The word is beware. In chapter 5, verse 29, God says,

"Shall I not punish them for these things? says the Lord,
and shall I not avenge myself on a nation such as this?" An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so, [and then comes this word of warning] but what will you do when the end comes? (Jeremiah 5:29-31).

Jesus said that life is like building a house. You can build it two ways: you can build on the rock; as do those who hear his words, and love and obey him; or you can build it on the sand, that is, based on any system of thought or philosophy other than Jesus. You can erect a beautiful house on either place, one that looks attractive to others.

But a testing time is coming. And when the winds come and the waves beat against the house, the house which is built on the rock will stand, while the house which is built on the sand will fall, no matter how useful or apparently comfortable it has been.

The question God is asking you and me now is this: What about the end? Perhaps you have been going to church for years, but you have never really come to Christ. Or perhaps you have come to Christ, but you have drifted away. God says that he has made a way back, but there is only one way: acknowledge your guilt. God will heal your faithlessness. But if you do not, there is nothing else but to go on to worse conditions, until there comes an end. I do not know what the end would be for you. I do not know where you are. I do know this: my heart says to me, "I want to come back to the God who loves me, the God who can heal me, the God who opens the fountains of living water to refresh my heart and spirit, and I want to walk with him."

3. Love's Last Resort

Jeremiah's second message in his ministry to Judah was delivered about five years after the first, in the eighteenth year of king Josiah. The message has a different content than the first, as we will see in a moment, but the really startling thing about this passage is the effect it has upon the prophet himself.

I have discovered that the most baffling times in my experience as a Christian have been when God begins to act completely contrary to the way I expect. When God seems difficult to handle, then things really toughen up in the Christian experience! There are times when God apparently ignores his promises, even changes his character, and does not act the way I assume he should.

We all like to put God in a box, to program him. And we do it quite honestly. We have studied the Scriptures his own revelation. We have picked out certain promises he has given. We say that he is bound to act by these, and so we expect him to act on those terms. But to our utter dismay and chagrin he ignores our program and acts entirely differently.

Stop Praying

Of course the problem is that we have picked just a part of what he has to say. None of us is big enough to see God in balance. And this was Jeremiah's problem in this message, for God told this young man to do two astonishing things. The first is given to us in verse 16 of chapter 7. God says to the prophet, "As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I do not hear you." Imagine that! God commanded the prophet to cease praying for the people of Judah, and not to ask God for their deliverance any longer. He was not to cry out to God for them, to fast, pray, nor in any other way to intercede on behalf of these people. God says, "Don't pray." Most of us think of prayer as something to do when everything else fails. And surely the last thing God would ever command is that we stop praying!

If you are given to picking out favorite texts from Scripture, as so many are, and saying, "This is the way God is going to act," you are going to have trouble with verses like this. There is a passage in 1 Samuel in which Samuel is sent by God to tell the nation Israel that they have turned from him and rejected him as king. Israel has demanded a king like all the other nations around, and Samuel says that God will accede to their request and give them a king, but that they will not like it. Then Samuel says these words: "Moreover as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you. . ." (l Sam. 12:23). Many times we quote that as the teaching of the Bible about prayer. But then what do you do with a verse like this, where God says to Jeremiah, "As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I do not hear you"?

As if that were not bad enough, in verse 27 God says to the prophet, "So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you."

In other words, "Stop praying, Jeremiah, but keep on preaching." Now, that is hard to do! Perhaps you don't think of yourselves as preachers, but anyone who speaks the Word of God to another person is, in a sense, preaching to them. What God is saying to Jeremiah is, "Don't pray, but I want you to keep preaching. And I tell you this: they will not listen to you at all. They won't pay any attention to you. They are just going to go right on their way. But I want you still to stand up and say what you have to say to them." That is one of the roughest assignments ever given to anybody by God. I find there are times when people will not listen to my preaching, and it is a great comfort to me to go home and pray for them when that happens! But Jeremiah could not even do that. There are times when if God said to me, "Stop praying," I would utterly fall apart. Prayer has been a refuge and a strength to me.

I do not think we understand what this is all about unless we look at the historical setting, so let's go back to the beginning of chapter 7:

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: "Stand in the gate of the Lord's house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will let you dwell in this place.

Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.'

"For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the alien [the stranger], the fatherless or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers for ever" (Jeremiah 7:1-7).

In order to understand what had happened at this time, turn to 2 Chronicles, chapters 34 and 35, to get the historical background of this moment in Judah. Young king Josiah, in his attempt to turn this nation back to God, had just given orders to clean up the temple. The temple had been turned into a warehouse, a storage place, and had begun to accumulate a lot of junk. as do our attics and garages today.

It was during this clean-up operation that the high priest Hilkiah unearthed the old scroll of the Law, probably of Moses' Book of Deuteronomy. In it they read about the Passover, and discovered that no one in that nation had celebrated the Passover since the days of Hezekiah, a hundred years earlier. So orders were given for a great celebration of the Passover. Scripture tells us that never before had there been a Passover in Israel like this one. This king went all out! He ordered sacrifices according to the Levitical commandments, and had the priests prepare themselves to conduct the ceremony.

Den of Robbers

The great day arrived when the sacrifices were to be offered in the temple. The companies of singers and chanters were prepared, and the great procession, headed by the king himself, was on its way to the temple to worship there and to obey the command of God to perform the Passover supper. The priests were swinging their incense pots, chanting as they went, and the choir was singing a hymn which included these words: "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." People were heaving a sigh of relief and thinking, "Now God is satisfied. Now he will save us. Now the nations around will not take us over, because at last we are settling our religious accounts with God." And on the way, as they were chanting this chorus, suddenly to everyone's astonishment a young man climbed up to a prominent place on the steps of the temple and yelled out, "HOLD IT!" And everybody stopped. He began to speak:

"Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: 'This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord'" (Jeremiah 7:2-4).

The gist of his message was, "Whom do you think you're kidding? Do you really think God is like this, that all he is interested in is religious games and rituals? Do you really think that if you merely get all this religion going, God will be fooled and will spare this land? Don't you know that God knows what is going on?" And he went on to describe their actions:

"Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely [commit perjury], burn incense to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, 'We are delivered!'--only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?" (Jeremiah 7:8-11).

That sounds very much like what happened some centuries later when another young man stood up in the temple and, fashioning a whip of cords, began to drive the moneychangers out of the temple, saying, "You have turned my Father's house into a den of robbers." But here, Jeremiah has dramatically interrupted the proceedings, he delivers the message which God has for this people. They were counting on two things: the fact that the temple was now clean, and the discovery of the Law:

"How can you say, 'We are wise,
and the law of the Lord is with us'?
But, behold, the false pen of the scribes
has made it into a lie.
The wise men shall be put to shame,
they shall be dismayed and taken;
lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord,
and what wisdom is in them?" (Jeremiah 8:8-9).

Here is a people who were trusting in performance, in outward ritual, and they did not realize that God knows the heart, and that he knew what was going on. Therefore the only thing left to this people was that they be judged. When people get so blind that they cannot see what they are doing, and they really think that God cannot see any further than the outward appearance of their lives, the only thing that will open their eyes is judgment. So the prophet said these words to them:

"Go now to my place that was in Shiloh [in the Northern kingdom, Israel], where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel. [They had been led into captivity.] And now, because you have done all these things, says the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house which is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim" (Jeremiah 7:12-15).

It was at this point that Jeremiah was told not to pray for this people any longer, for God had decided to visit them with judgment.

Where Is the Healer?

Now, do you think that what God is really saying is, "Look, I've had it! I can't stand this any longer. I'm going to get rid of these people. I'm going to smash them and destroy them. I'm through with them!"? If you do, you have missed what this is all about. But that is evidently what Jeremiah understood God to mean, and as a result he was deeply grieved. He did not understand what God was doing. Chapter 8 gives us the prophet's personal reaction:

My grief is beyond healing,
my heart is sick within me.
Hark, the cry of the daughter of my people
from the length and breadth of the land:
"Is the Lord not in Zion?
Is her King not in her?" (Jeremiah 8:18-19).

He was looking forward to what was coming-visualizing it, feeling heartsick and anguished, in agony over what was about to happen, especially to the women and the beautiful girls of Judah. It is interesting that in chapter 16 God told this prophet, "I don't want you ever to get married. I don't want you to have a wife and children." go Jeremiah remained unmarried, and he was greatly concerned that these beautiful maidens of Judah would suffer this way. He is crying out on their behalf. And God answers, in verse 19: "Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images, and with their foreign idols?" But Jeremiah continues his quesrioning:

"The harvest is past, the summer is ended,
and we are not saved."
[This is the cry of the people.]
For the wound of the daughter of my people
is my heart wounded, I mourn,
and dismay has taken hold on me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored? (Jeremiah 8:20-22).

Do you see what he is saying? Jeremiah feels so intensely what is going to happen that he cries out, "God, where are you? Where is the healer? Where is the one who can restore this people? Where is the balm in Gilead, the physician who can make a sick person well?" Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever suffered over some loved one, and cried out, "God, where is the Great Physician?" So Jeremiah cries out, "Why don't you heal this people?" He simply doesn't understand what God is doing.

In order to get all this together, we need to look back to chapter 7 and see the list of actions God says he takes when a nation or an individual begins to turn away from him. Verse 13: "And now, because you have done all these things, says the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen. . ." The first thing God does when you begin to drift is to warn you what the consequences are going to be. He is faithful to tell you that if you "sow to the flesh you will of the flesh reap corruption." There is no way to escape it. Even forgive. ness for it does not remove that. If you sow to the flesh, you will of the flesh reap corruption. Sin will leave its scars even though the wound is healed. God warns that there is going to be hurt in your life, hurt in your heart, hurt for the loved ones around you. There is no way to escape it. But then he says, ". . . and when I called you, you did not answer. . ." The call of God is a picture of love seeking a response, reminding you of who he is, and how much he loves you, trying in various ways to awaken a response of love and gratitude, to call you back. He is like the father in the story of the prodigal son, watching the horizon for that son to return, longing for him to come back. This is the picture of God, patiently looking after men and women, boys and girls, being faithful to them, longing to have them back, calling them again and again. This may go on for years in the case of an individual. And all this time he asks us to pray for those like this, to hold them up, to reach out to them by the power of prayer.

The Last Loving Act

But when that does not work, he has one step left in the program: judgment. You see, judgment is not God's way of saying, "I'm through with you." It is not a mark of the abandonment of God; it is the last loving act of God to bring you back. It is the last resort of love. C. S. Lewis put it very beautifully when he said, "God whispers to us in our pleasures; he speaks to us in our work; he shouts at us in our pain." Every one of us knows that there have been times when we would not listen to God, would not pay any attention to what his Word was saying until one day God put us flat on our backs or allowed us to be hurt badly. Then we began to listen. This is what Jeremiah had to learn. He did not understand that this nation had reached the place where the only thing that would heal it, the only chance it had left, was the judgment of God--the hurt and the pain of invasion, and the loss of its national status. God's love insisted that that happen.

Now you can see why he commanded that prayer cease, but that preaching continue. If you read through the Scriptures you see that prayer delays judgment, but preaching hastens it. And what this nation needed to restore it and heal it was judgment. So God said, "Don't delay it; don't hold me back. This is what will do the work. Radical surgery is all that is left, so stop praying." You can see that prayer holds off judgment in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham held off the hand of God, steadily reducing the minimum number of righteous men by which that region could be saved, and almost saved the area from the destruction of God. But preaching hastens judgment, because the Word is true. And when truth is revealed to us, and God calls things what they really are, as he does here--adultery, stealing, murder, perjury--instead of accepting the polite names the people themselves were using, and yet they would heed, then judgment is hastened. Jesus said of the Pharisees, "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin" (John 15:22). Thus preaching hastens judgment.

It was at this point that Jeremiah broke down and wept before God. I do not think you can read these passages expressing the anguish of the prophet's heart without hearing an echo of the sobs of God. For God was still working through this man, and weeping over this people himself, as expressed in the sobs of Jeremiah. In the midst of Jeremiah's despair, God, in tenderness and beautiful concern, speaks to the prophet and says something to help him:

Thus says the Lord: "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practice steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the Lord" (Jeremiah 9:23-24).

What a revelation of the greatness of God! Far beyond the greatness of men, a God of wisdom and knowledge is at work. And the prophet's heart was directed to think of that. Man's wisdom is not enough. "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. . ." Why not? Well, because man's wisdom is always partial wisdom. It never sees the whole story, never is wide enough to take in all the factors involved. It is tunnel vision, narrow and limited. And that is why we are always thinking we have arrived at solutions to problems only to find in a few years that the "solution" has only made the problem worse. Pollution is a case in point, is it not? And so is warfare, and all the other great problems that confront us today. Man's wisdom is not enough. T. S. Eliot put it so beautifully when he said,

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to GOD

[Then he asks the question which hangs over this whole generation.]

Where is the Life we have lost in living?'

From "The Rock" in T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland and Other Poems (New York: Harvest Book, Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1934).

Where is the life we have lost in living? No, you cannot trust in the wisdom of man, can you?

Nor can you trust in the might of man: ". . . let not the mighty man glory in his might. . ." Why not? Look at a man with great power and authority, such as a dictator, with a great force at his command. Why does he not have the right to glory? Because his force is directed only at material things. It has no power to oppose an idea or a moral value. That is what we learned in those last few bitter years in Viet Nam, is it not? We thought, at the end of World War II, that in the atom bomb we had the most powerful force history had ever known, and we could be the leading nation in all the world. Who could oppose us? But atom bombs are no good against ideas. They can only obliterate people, and when they are all through smashing and destroying, the ideas remain.

No, ". . . let not the mighty man glory in his might, and let not the rich man glory in his riches. . ." Why not? Because riches can buy only a very limited number of things. Jesus spoke of the deceitfulness of riches. Riches give man a feeling of power that he does not really have. They give him a feeling of being loved when he really is not, and of being respected when he is not respected at all. Riches cannot buy love and joy and peace and harmony.

Cause for Glory

Then what should you glory in? "Ah, glory in this, Jeremiah, that you know me, and you have available to you the wisdom of God. True wisdom is the wisdom of God, and you can correct your own faulty, frail human wisdom with my wisdom. You have the might of God at your disposal, greater than anything the world knows about, a mighty moral force which is irresistible. And you have riches beyond all comparison, the simple riches of love and peace and joy and grace and mercy and truth, which no money can buy. Glory in this, Jeremiah." And so, as the prophet comes to the end of this discourse you find him reflecting on what God has taught him: "I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps" (Jeremiah 10: 23). Have you found that out? What a fantastic lesson that is! The way of man is not in himself. It is not in man to direct his steps. You do not have what it takes to live life by yourself. When I was in Minneapolis recently in the midst of a blizzard, I remembered how, thirty-five years ago, I had come through that city for the first time --a young man twenty-one years of age, riding a bus on my way to Chicago and a job I had obtained through correspondence. I had never been to Chicago, having just come out of the plains of Montana, a country boy on the way to the big city. I was inwardly scared to death, uncertain, not knowing where to go or how to react to people, but trying to bluff it through. All the feeling of that time came flooding back, and I remembered that all through the years since then I have felt the hand of God at the critical moments in my life--guiding me, correcting me, rebuking me, setting me straight, changing me, gradually leading me on, opening doors here, closing doors there. I bowed my head in my hotel room and gave thanks that "the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps," but God will direct them. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths" (Proverbs 3:5-6).

But this prophet was a young man, and he learned the hard way. Look at what he says in 10:24:

Correct me, O Lord
[Not if I'm wrong, Lord, you set me straight],
but in just measure; not in thy anger, lest thou bring me to nothing.

"Now, I'm going to say something, Lord, and it may not be right; but don't get mad, because you're bigger than I am, and what you can do to me is more than I want to see happen! Lord, listen, I know you have to judge, but Lord,

Pour out thy wrath upon the nations that know thee not,
and upon the peoples that call not on thy name;
for they have devoured Jacob;
they have devoured him and consumed him,
and have laid waste his habitation (Jeremiah 10:24-25).

"Yes, Lord, I know you have to judge the world. But would you mind letting it be those people over there, and not us?" And that is where the message ends. Well, God has some more to teach Jeremiah! But he has opened his eyes to some great truth in this passage, truth which abides today: "I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps" (Jeremiah 10:23). "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me . . ." (Jeremiah 9:23-24).

4. Faith at the Breaking Point

I want to begin this part of our study in the prophecy of Jeremiah by quoting an advertisement that touches upon the preparation needed by God's man in God's age:

Wanted: A minister for a growing church--a real challenge for the right man. Opportunity to become better acquainted with people. Applicant must offer experience as shop worker, office manager, educator (all levels, including college), artist, salesman, diplomat, writer, theologian, politician, Boy Scout leader, children's worker, minor league athlete, psychologist, vocational counselor, psychiatrist, funeral director, wedding consultant, master of ceremonies, circus clown, missionary, and social worker. Helpful but not essential: experience as a butcher, baker, cowboy, and Western Union messenger. Must know all about the problems of birth, marriage, and death; must also be conversant with latest theories and practices in areas like pediatrics, economics, and nuclear science. Right man will hold firm views on every topic, but is careful not to upset people who disagree. Must be forthright but flexible. Returns criticism and backbiting with Christian love and forgiveness. Should have outgoing, friendly disposition at all times. Should be a captivating speaker and intent listener. Will pretend he enjoys hearing women talk. Directly responsible for views and conduct to all church members and visitors; not confined to direction or support from anyone person. Salary not commensurate with experience or need. No overtime pay. All replies kept confidential. Anyone applying will undergo full investigation to determine his sanity.

Although that may be what is demanded in the ministry today, we ought to set that against the biblical truth which is rapidly coming back into focus--that all of us are in the ministry. All God's people are ministers, wherever they are. According to the gifts God has given you, you are a minister, and in the ministry. Perhaps the central lesson of this book is what happened to Jeremiah as God prepared him to minister in a day of decay. He was called to a strange and difficult ministry. God gradually had to prepare him and toughen him increasingly for the assignments he was to be given in this nation. Jeremiah struggled with his commission. He wept over it, pleaded with God for this people. And the more he wept and pleaded, the harder God seemed to grow, and the more adamant and determined to judge.

In the passage we will examine now, thirteen years have passed in Jeremiah's life since his last message. King Josiah, the last godly king in Judah, had made a valiant effort to try to reform the nation, to overcome its idol worship and to restore the worship of Jehovah. Outwardly the people had gone along with him, but inwardly there was still deep-seated rebellion and revolt. At last, as recounted in 2 Chronicles 35, Josiah met his death when, disobeying the word of God, he went out to do battle with the king of Egypt, Neco, who was on his way to the battle of Carchemish. There on the plain of Megiddo, where the last battle of all the ages will be fought (the battle of Armageddon), king Josiah met his death. He was mourned in Israel, and Jeremiah the prophet made a lamentation for him which is recorded in the Book of Lamentations.

So Jeremiah was plunged into an even more difficult time than he had ever known before. The young son of Josiah, Jehoahaz, came to the throne. But he was a very weak king and within three months had been deposed by the king of Egypt, and his brother, Jehoiakim, was placed on the throne. This was a troubled time in the nation. Around it the great powers of earth, the superpowers of that day, were vying and contending with one another for supremacy in the affairs of the world. Egypt was on its way down, Assyria was melting away, the might of Babylon was looming on the horizon. It was a world of unrest and great turmoil. Judah was caught in the jaws of a nutcracker, situated between the great empires of that day.

Treacherous Friends

In chapter 11 God sends young Jeremiah back to the nation with another word of warning and denunciation. It is very similar to other messages which Jeremiah had to deliver repeatedly to these people--a warning that God would not allow them to get away with their unbelief, their revolt, their violence, and their worship of other gods, and that he was determined to judge them. For the third time now in Jeremiah's ministry, God tells him not to pray for this nation: "Therefore do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer on their behalf, for I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their trouble" (Jeremiah 11:14). God had laid a vocal quarantine on Jeremiah, and said, "I do not want you to pray, for prayer delays judgment." What we are going to see now is God's toughening of this young man in preparation for what was coming. Jeremiah was already distressed by God's failure to listen to him, but what was worse, this account tells us, was what he found awaiting him on his return home. In his hometown of Anathoth he learned that his own neighbors and friends had plotted to take his life. He tells us about it, beginning in verse 18:

The Lord made h known to me and I knew;
then thou didst show me their evil deeds.
But I was like a gentle Iamb
led to the slaughter.

He suddenly realizes how naive and blind he had been to trust these neighbors and friends. Now they had plotted against his life.

I did not know it was against me
they devised schemes, saying,
"Let us destroy the tree with its fruit,
let us cut him off from the land of the living,
that his name be remembered no more" (Jeremiah 11:19).

Jeremiah was dismayed that his friends would refuse to support him and would betray him in this way. He comes to the Lord and cries out,

But, O Lord of hosts, who judgest righteously,
who triest the heart and the mind,
let me see thy vengeance upon them,
for to thee have I committed my cause (Jeremiah 11:20).

He did the right thing. He brought his problem to the Lord. Some of us do not bother to do that when a trial comes upon us; we run to somebody else. But Jeremiah brought it to the Lord. Still, he was a thoroughgoing evangelical, for he also had a complete plan of how God ought to solve it! He wanted God to wreak vengeance upon those who were threatening him, and he expected God to do it. But the Lord told him,

Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the men of Anathoth, who seek your life, and say, "Do not prophesy in the name of the Lord, or you will die by our hand"--therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: "Behold, I will punish them; the young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine; and none of them shall be left. For I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth, the year of their punishment" (Jeremiah 11:21-23).

God says to Jeremiah, "You're right; I will punish these men, but I will do it in my time. They are going to have a part in the judgment which is coming upon Judah. They shall suffer in the famine and in the attack coming from Babylon, but it will be when I say." That is one of the difficult things about dealing with God, is it not? He has his own time schedule. We want him to act now. We say, "Lord, look at the opportunity you've got! It's all set up. And if you'd just do this now, everything would work out." But God ignores us, and says, "I'll do it in my own time." That was one of the hard things Jeremiah had to learn, as it is with everyone of us. God does not move on our time schedule, much as we would like him to. In chapter 12 Jeremiah goes on to present his case before the Lord: "Righteous art thou, O Lord, when I complain to thee. . ." (vs. 1). "I know that what you are doing is right, Lord. I know that you cannot do wrong." This, --by the way, is a great lesson to learn, for we are sometimes tempted to say, "God is not right; he's wrong!" Jeremiah began the right way. And yet there were great, vexing questions which came into his troubled heart, and he shares them: "Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?" (Jeremiah 12:1), and: "How long will the land mourn, and the grass of every field wither?" (Jeremiah 12:4). I'm sure you recognize these as the standard questions men ask when things begin to go wrong in an individual life, or in the life of a community, or a nation. One time when I was in Fort Worth teaching a Bible class to a group of Young Life youth, I noticed that they seemed rather serious, far more so than usual. I asked what was wrong, and found out that a very well-known and well-liked high school girl in that city had disappeared mysteriously a few days before, and no one knew where she was. All her high school friends were praying for her. She was a Christian, and they were sure that God would protect her.

Harder Times Coming

Just an hour before the class met that night, word had come over the radio that her body had been found. She had been sexually abused and killed. These young people were stunned, and they were asking this same question: "Why? If there's a God of love and power, why couldn't he have done something about it? If he is a God of power, he could act. If he is a God of love, he would want to act. Why does he sit there and let things like this happen?" That is one of the great questions thrown at our faith again and again in this day and age. This is what Jeremiah was crying out to God about. And God's response is very interesting:

"If you have raced with men on foot,
and they have wearied you,
how will you compete with horses?
And if in a safe land you fall down,
how will you do in the jungle of the Jordan?" (Jeremiah 12:5).

In other words, "Jeremiah, what are you going to do when it gets worse? If this kind of thing throws you, if your faith is challenged and you are upset and you cry out to me and ask these questions, what are you going to do when it gets very much worse? Then where are you going to turn? If you become tired while running with the men on foot, what are you going to do when you have to run against horses? And if in running through the open prairie you fall down, what are you going to do when you have to struggle through a hot, sweaty jungle, whose thick growth impedes your progress at every step?" These are searching questions, are they not?

We are hearing more and more chilling reports about such things as the rise of the occult, and the way demonism and Satanism are moving into every level of life in our country today. Famines are already beginning in various parts of the world, just as the "prophets of gloom and doom," as they were called a few years ago, had predicted. A great famine is raging across the central part of Africa, as the Sahara Desert, for no reason known to man, steadily moves southward at the rate of eleven miles a year. Thousands of people are starving to death in the Sudan right now. Jesus said that as we near the end, there will come earthquakes and famines and wars, with nation rising up against nation, and frightening things in the sea--the roaring of the waves--will make men afraid. And he called all this "the beginnings of sorrow," merely the beginnings. "Now, if faith grows cold and faint and weak in the midst of the pressures of today," God's question to Jeremiah, and to us, is, "what are you going to do when it gets worse? How will you compete with horses, when you give in against men on foot?"

Evidently Jeremiah expected God to make things right before they got worse. I think most of us are due for a shock in our Christian lives when we discover that God doesn't always work out our problems on easy terms. That is where Jeremiah is right now. God does not say, "Don't worry, Jeremiah, I'll work out your problems. I'll take care of everything. You won't have any more strain. Go right back to work." He says, "Jeremiah, it's going to get worse, a lot worse; what are you going to do then?" Then he begins to detail some of the things that are in store for him. In fact, he begins with one of the first things Jeremiah was to find when he got home. "If you were disturbed by the fact that your friends and neighbors had betrayed you and were plotting against your life," God says, "listen to this!"

"For even your brothers and the house of your father,
even they have dealt treacherously with you;
they are in full cry after you;
believe them not,
though they speak fair words to you" (vs. 6).

"Jeremiah, your own family is part of the plot." What do you think that must have done to Jeremiah? Furthermore, God went on to point out that judgment was absolutely inevitable for this nation. Nothing Jeremiah could do would stop it. In verses 7 and 8, God says,

"I have forsaken my house,
I have abandoned my heritage;
I have given the beloved of my soul
into the hands of her enemies.
My heritage has become to me like a lion in the forest,
she has lifted up her voice against me; therefore I hate her."
Now, that is God speaking! "I hate her!"

What does it do to your theology when the God of love says, "I hate her--the beloved of my soul, I hate her." What kind of confusing contrast is this? I know you have to look at this in light of what theologians call the "anthropomorphisms" of Scripture, that is, God speaking in terms of man, as though he were a man. For it is true that the inherent nature of God is love, and he can never be anything but a God of love. And yet, love can be so offended and rejected that it acts as though it hates. That is what Jeremiah was facing here. God goes on to describe what he is going to do in the land, and how he wiII deliver it to judgment. But then there is a word of hope, a ray of light in verses 14 and 15:

Thus says the Lord concerning all my evil neighbors who touch the heritage which I have given my people Israel to inherit: "Behold, I will pluck them up from their land, and I will pluck up the house of Judah from among them. And after I have plucked them up, I will again have compassion on them, and I will bring them again each to his heritage and each to his land."

The final message of God is not one of hate; it is always one of love and compassion. But in between we have to face the fact that God sometimes does strange things that we cannot understand at the time. This is one of the most challenging issues of the Christian faith. One of the great tests of our faith is when we reach that day when we can no longer understand what God is doing, when it does not seem to be in line with his promises at all. And we have to stand amazed like Paul and say, "Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out!" (Rom. 11:33-34).

Wear, but Don't Wash!

Well, God is not through with Jeremiah, and in the next chapter we find another one of those amazing visual aids which God employs to teach this young prophet a great and marvelous truth. In chapter 13 Jeremiah is given a sign, and we have to call it "the sign of the dirty shorts"! For, believe it or not, he says,

Thus said the Lord to me, "Go and buy a linen waistcloth, and put it on your loins [that is, nothing more nor less than a pair of linen shorts], and do not dip it in water" (Jeremiah 13:1).

Most men nowadays, when they buy underwear, look for the wash-and-wear variety--at least I do. But here God says, "Wear it, but don't wash it." He expected Jeremiah to buy a new pair of linen shorts, to put them on, but not to wash them. What in the world would God be teaching by this? If you skip ahead to verse 11 for a moment, you will see what he is after:

"For as the waistcloth clings to the loins of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory, but they would not listen."

In other words, God chose them, designed them, for intimacy. A pair of shorts is the most intimate garment a man can wear, and God uses this wonderful figure to instruct us that this is what he had designed his people for--to be as intimate to him as a pair of shorts would be to a man. I remember the advertisement of an underwear company a number of years ago--you do not see it very often any more. It said, "Next to yourself, you'll love BVDs." That is what God is saying here; next to himself, closest to himself, in the most intimate relationship possible, he wants his people--in order that they might be a people, a name, a praise, a glory unto him, a people for his name. He is teaching Jeremiah what his people meant to him, and what he had designed for them, and the glory which was possible to them in the intimacy of a relationship with God.

But now Jeremiah was sent to do something with these shorts:

So I bought a waistcloth according to the word of the Lord, and put it on my loins. [We do not know how long he wore it, but it evidently got quite dirty, since he was forbidden to wash it.] And the word of the Lord came to me a second time. "Take the waistcloth which you have bought, which is upon your loins, and arise, go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock" (Jeremiah 13:2-4).

Good for Nothing

The Euphrates River was about two hundred miles away, on the border of Babylon, the nation which would come to bring judgment upon this people. Jeremiah had to journey two hundred miles to the Euphrates River wearing his dirty shorts, hide them in the cleft of a rock, leave them there, and retrace the two hundred miles to Judah. Then he tells us, in verses 6 and 7:

And after many days the Lord said to me, "Arise, go to the Euphrates, and take from there the waistcloth which I commanded you to hide there." Then I went to the Euphrates, and dug, and I took the waistcloth from the place where I had hidden it. And behold, the waistcloth was spoiled; it was good for nothing.

You can imagine the shape it was in. It was already dirty when Jeremiah had hidden it there. Exposed to the elements--the rain, the wind, the sun--the cloth would rot and shred. Finally, when Jeremiah carne back and dug it out of the cleft of the rock, it was dirty, rotten, shredding, hardly able to hold together, worthless. Standing there with those worthless shorts in his hand, he tells us,

Then the word of the Lord came to me: "Thus says the Lord: Even so will I spoil the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own heart and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this waistcloth, which is good for nothing" (vss. 8-10).

Jeremiah was taught how a life begins to rot when it turns away from God. It cannot be sustained in its strength, for God is the source of all strength in humanity. Man cannot be man apart from God. Any individual, or any nation, that refuses to live on this basis, will find his life beginning to rot and to shred, and to lose its power. He will be as this waistcloth--good for nothing.

The rest of the chapter goes on to show how moved and stirred Jeremiah is by this, as he pleads with the people:

Hear and give ear: be not proud,
for the Lord has spoken.
Give glory to the Lord your God
before he brings darkness,
before your feet stumble on the twilight mountains,
and while you look for light he turns it into gloom
and makes it deep darkness.
But if you will not listen,
my soul will weep in secret for your pride;
my eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears,
because the Lord's flock has been taken captive (Jeremiah 13:15-17).

Do you see the effect upon Jeremiah of his own ministry? Then, to make it worse, God sends a severe drought upon the land. In verse 1 of chapter 14, we read, "The word of the Lord which came to Jeremiah concerning the drought. . ." He goes on to describe the land, how the cisterns have no water, the ground is dismayed, there is no rain on the land, the crops are dried up, and wild asses stand and pant, because there is no water in all of the land. This is part of the judging hand of God. Once again this arouses questions in Jeremiah's heart. He says, "Though our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for thy name's sake. . ." Do you see what he is saying? "I understand that you have to judge this people because of their wickedness, Lord, but what about you? You're the healer, you're the God who can restore wicked people. For your name's sake, do this."

". . . for our backslidings are many,
we have sinned against thee.
O thou hope of Israel,
its savior in time of trouble,
why shouldst thou be like a stranger in the land,
like a wayfarer who turns aside to tarry for a night?
Why shouldst thou be like a man confused,
like a mighty man who cannot save?
Yet thou, O Lord, art in the midst of us,
and we are called by thy name; leave us not" (Jeremiah 14:7-9).

Have you ever come to that place? Many a man of God, in the record of the Scriptures, has turned away the judging hand of God by pleading the glory of God himself. Moses did, Samuel did, and others had stood before God and said, "Regardless of what we're like, God, remember what you're like. Surely, for your own name's sake you won't let this thing happen, lest your name be defiled among the nations." And this is Jeremiah's cry. He is reaching out to God on the highest level of prayer possible, and he closes the chapter with an eloquent plea to God. Consider these words:

Hast thou utterly rejected Judah?
Dost thy soul loathe Zion?
Why hast thou smitten us
so that there is no healing for us?
We looked for peace,
but no good came: for a time of healing,
but behold, terror.
We acknowledge our wickedness, O Lord,
and the iniquity of our fathers,
for we have sinned against thee
Do not spurn us, for thy name's sake:
do not dishonor thy glorious throne:
remember and do not break thy covenant with us.
Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain?
Or can the heavens give showers?
Art thou not he, O Lord our God?
We set our hope on thee,
for thou doest all these things (Jeremiah 14:19-22).

That is great praying, is it not? But look at God's answer:

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." (Jeremiah 15:1-2).

God does not budge an inch. Now, what are you going to do with a God like that? When God gets that immovable, it is a great threat to faith. But God is not yet through with Jeremiah. Though he seems to be adamant and harsh and unyielding, and goes on to repeat his threats to the nation, he has something more to say.

Have You Lied to Me, God?

Chapter 15 closes with Jeremiah finally praying for himself. He has been forbidden to pray for the people, and so he cries out for himself:

O Lord, thou knowest:
remember me and visit me,
and take vengeance for me on my persecutors.
In thy forbearance take me not away;
know that for thy sake I bear reproach (Jeremiah 15:15).

Then he thinks back to Josiah's day, when the word of God was found in the temple, and he says,

Thy words were found, and I ate them,
and thy words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by thy name,
O Lord, God of hosts (vs. 16).

But he is wretched, hurt, and despairing, and he cries out in verse 18,

Why is my pain unceasing,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
Wilt thou be to me like a deceitful brook,
like waters that fail?

Those are the words of a man who is about to lose his faith entirely. He says that God just seems to pay no attention, to give no heed, to turn a deaf ear. "I cry out to him, and I'm on the very verge of wondering if God himself is a liar, and that he will prove false in the end." Have you been to that stage yet? That is a great test of faith. One of these days, if you have not yet done so, you may be standing where Jeremiah stood. But now notice how tenderly and gently God deals with him:

Therefore thus says the Lord:
"If you return, I will restore you,
and you shall stand before me.
If you utter what is precious,
and not what is worthless,
you shall be as my mouth.
They shall turn to you,
but you shall not turn to them.
And I shall make you to this people
a fortified wall of bronze;
they will fight against you,
but they shall not prevail over you,
for I am with you to save you and deliver you,
says the Lord.
I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked,
and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless" (vss. 19-21).

God answers his own questions here. He had asked Jeremiah, "What will you do, if you've been wearied by running with the men on foot, when you contend with horses? And if in a safe land you fall down, what will you do in the jungle of the Jordan?" Now his answer is, "Jeremiah, even in those hours when everything else seems to be collapsing, and nothing seems to be dependable, if in that hour you will rest on me, you will find that I will strengthen you and see you through. I am the only adequate source of strength in any time of trouble. Any other source will fail you." The arm of flesh will fail. But as we sing in the old hymn,

When through the deep waters I call you to go,
the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow. . .
When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie,
my grace all sufficient shall be your supply. . . .

"I'll never, never leave you," is God's promise to Jeremiah, and to us in this day, as well. God pours on the pressure sometimes, as you see with Jeremiah--not to destroy us, but to toughen us, to make us ready for what is coming. Surely this is just such an hour in America today. Trials such as this nation has never faced lie before us--shortages, famines, burdens--problems we have never known lie ahead of us. And surely nothing is adequate to meet them but the strength of a living God.

5. To Whom Shall We Go?

In these studies in the Book of Jeremiah we have been watching the death of a nation. The kingdom of Judah has been slowly falling apart under the infection of evil which had spread across the face of this land, from the king down to the common people. It has been heading toward the inevitable climax of the judgment of God--the invasion of the nation and the overthrow of the kingdom. This did not come about suddenly. Jeremiah's ministry lasted for over forty years, and God's patience waited throughout that time for any last-ditch repentance. But the nation persisted in its evil, and eventually the judgment came as the prophet had predicted. Meanwhile, we have been watching God toughening his prophet, preparing him for the increasing deterioration of this nation. Things were getting worse and worse, despite the warnings and the preaching of this faithful man of God.

The passage we come to now, chapters 16 and 17, is in many ways the heart of this prophecy. These two messages, along with those in the two chapters which follow, were delivered toward the close of the reign of Jehoiachim. Jehoiachim was another of the sons of Josiah, and succeeded his brother Jehoahaz to the throne. He reigned for eleven years, and it was during this period that Jeremiah uttered these prophecies.

The section opens with another announcement of God's determination to judge this wicked nation. It sets the stage for the remarkable words which God taught Jeremiah in chapter 17. The first note of his message is one of stringent limitation laid upon the prophet himself. That is, God forbade him to do three specific things. First, he forbade him to get married, as the opening words tell us: "The word of the Lord came to me: 'You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place'" (Jeremiah 16:1). It was not easy for Jeremiah to be a prophet of God. He did not understand what God was doing. Prophets before him had seen the word of God hit with such intensity and power that people were shaken and turned back to the Lord. But Jeremiah only saw the word fall on seemingly deaf ears, and he was hurt by this, and shaken to the core. He rebelled and turned aside, and even tried to stop preaching for a while (we will see more of that later), but he could not stop.

To Spare Him Sorrow

And now, already a lonely, suffering man, Jeremiah receives this additional restriction from God: he is never to know the joys of a home or children, nor the comfort and companionship of a wife. Now God was not trying to be hard on Jeremiah. In fact, if you read on just a verse or two, you find that it was God's love which prompted him to do this to Jeremiah. His desire was to spare this prophet greater sorrow.

"For thus says the Lord concerning the sons and daughters who are born in this place, and concerning the mothers who bore them and the fathers who begot them in this land: They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried; tbey shall be as dung on the surface of the ground. They shall perish by the sword and by famine, and their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth" (Jeremiah 16:3-4).

It was to spare Jeremiah this additional grief that God forbade him to be married. This reminds us of that word of Paul's in 1 Corinthians 7, where he says, "Now concerning the unmarried. . . in view of the impending distress it is well for a person to remain as he is." So God is saying to Jeremiah, "This is a time when the normal aspects of life need to be laid aside. The nation is hastening to its judgment--the hour is approaching, crisis is coming--and for that reason do not encumber yourself with unnecessary burdens."

Then God laid two other restrictions on the prophet. Verse 5:

"For thus says the Lord: Do not enter the house of mourning, or go to lament, or bemoan them; for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the Lord, my steadfast love and mercy."

And in verses 8 and 9:

"You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and drink. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will make to cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride."

That is, "There is no time left for the social amenities, no time for partying or playing games, or even for some of the usual aspects of life, for time is ripening for judgment, and the end is near." Then, to make it worse, God told Jeremiah, "When you go to this people and announce these words, they will greet them with unbelief, with surprised bewilderment. They will be absolutely appalled at what you say."

"And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, 'Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?' . . ." (vs. 10).

Doctors say that cancer, in its terminal stage, often has a strange way of suddenly seeming to disappear. Many people have been fooled by this. I have known a number of Christians wbo thought God healed them when they encountered this strange phenomenon. But it only marked tbe certainty of the end. And here is a nation which is unaware of its evil. It has reached such a degree of sickness that it is no longer aware there is anything wrong at all. And when that happens, it is a sign that the end of the nation is near.

". . . then you shall say to them: 'Because your fathers have forsaken me, says the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law. . .'" (vs. 11).

"You are acting the way you do because you were taught this way. The previous generation had forsaken me," he said. Now, God does not blame them for that. He simply recognizes that this was the case. They had learned wrong ways and wrong attitudes from their parents. But '. . . you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, everyone of you follows his stubborn evil will, refusing to listen to me . . .''' (vs. 12). The responsibility they bore for their own judgment was a refusal to heed what God had said about the evils of their fathers, and a refusal to turn from their own evil and come back to God.

In the midst of the darkness God gives a gleam of hope, promising to restore these people after their exile, and to bring them back to their own land "which I gave to their fathers." But in the meantime, the nation is to be subjected to the ministry of other nations, which will come like hunters and fishers into the land, robbing it of all its wealth and treasures.

In verses 19 and 20 we have Jeremiah's amazing response. What would you say if God told you to deliver such a message today? This is what Jeremiah said:

O Lord, my strength and my stronghold,
my refuge in the day of trouble,
to thee shall the nations come
from the ends of the earth and say:
"Our fathers have inherited nought but lies,
worthless things in which there is no profit.
Can man make for himself gods?
Such are no gods!"

That is what the nations, Jeremiah says, are going to say to God at last. They are going to come to him and confess the emptiness of all the things they trusted in. Jeremiah lifts up his eyes and looks down the course of the ages and sees the end of history. And he says, "Lord, what you're doing now is hard for me to bear; nevertheless, I have a stronghold in you, a place of refuge, and I know it's going to work! One day the nations are going to see the result of their incredible folly." And he is praising God for this. God's response is, "Therefore, behold, I will make them know, this once I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord" (vs. 21). That is, only by the utter collapse of all that men trust in will they ever have their eyes opened to what God has been saying to them. This is why God moves the way he does with individuals--to bring them to the end of themselves, to let them get into trouble and fall apart, and bankrupt themselves in every degree. It is then that both individuals and nations have their eyes opened. Then they see who God is--see his power and his might and his love.

Infectious Evil

So God says that judgment is going to come upon this nation, and they will experience his power--for two reasons. (There should not be a chapter break at this point, for we move right on.) The first reason is that their evil is deeply entrenched:

"The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron: with a point of diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart, and on the horns of their altars. . ." (Jeremiah 17:l).

Judah's sin is so deeply ingrained in the nation that nothing short of judgment can break it loose. We are facing something similar in our day. We have already seen our nation become deeply entangled with evil. It pervades our government, it runs through our political system and our school system; it invades our homes and recreational life. It is written on the heart with a pen of iron. But, more than that, in Judah's case it was also infectious evil: ". . . their children remember their altars and their Asherim, beside every green tree, and on the high hills, on the mountains in the open country." The next generation was being infected by this, and it could only get worse. Therefore the hand of God must move in judgment. He closes the section by saying,

"Your wealth and all your treasures I will give for spoil as the price of your sin throughout all your territory. You shall loosen your hand from your heritage which I gave to you, and I will make you serve your enemies in a land which you do not know, for in my anger a fire is kindled which shall burn for ever" (Jeremiah 17:3-4).

At this point God begins to teach Jeremiah the greatest lessons any man can ever know, the secrets of life. That is why I call the rest of chapter 17 the heart of this whole prophecy. For now God begins to open this young man's eyes to what lies behind the movements of God in history. If you want to understand this day in which we live, and what is happening in this strange, tumultuous, turbulent hour, or the movement of God in the past, you must understand what God now teaches Jeremiah. The first lesson is to show him the two ways by which men can live. And there are only two ways--never both, but one or the other--at any given moment. The first is set forth in verses 5 and 6:

Thus says the Lord:
"Cursed is the man who trusts in man
and makes flesh his arm,
whose heart turns away from the Lord."

Here is a man who trusts in man, who says that man is the ultimate solution to his own problems, and that man is capable of working out all the difficulties of his life and can save himself. God says, "Cursed is that man"; in other words, everything he does will ultimately be brought to nothing. That is what a curse does--it removes the profit, the worth, the value of anything. Look at the symbol God chooses for such a man:

"He is like a shrub in the desert,
and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land."

Walk in the desert and look at the plants there. Notice how wizened and stunted they are. They have great potential, as you can find out by removing them and giving them enough water; then they will grow tremendously. But in the desert they are limited, shrunken, and shriveled. That is a life which trusts in man, either in himself or anybody else.

Planted by Water

In contrast, there is another way man can choose to live: "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord." That is, God himself sustains this man's trust as well as sustaining the man. He keeps his trust alive.

"He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit" (Jeremiah 17:8).

In my home state of Montana, in the summer months, we would often have long periods of drought when no rain fell. The land would bake and dry and crack. All the shrubbery would dry up and turn brown and sere. It was a dreary time. But there was one tree down by the stream which always stayed green, no matter how dry the country around became. It was near a hidden, underground spring. No matter what happened elsewhere, that tree remained green and fresh. God says, "The man who has learned to trust in me is like that." He is a man who can take it when things get tough. When everyone else is giving up, he remains inwardly strong, strengthened by a hidden reservoir of strength. This is the secret of a life that trusts in God, and this figure is used frequently in Scripture.

Fatal Heart Disease

In the next two verses you have the heart of the problem and God's solution: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt. . ." In those two lines you have the explanation of all the misery and heartache and injustice and evil of life. The heart, the natural life into which we were born, has two things wrong with it. First, it is desperately corrupt. This means it never can function as it originally was designed to do. It can never fulfill all your expectations. It will never achieve your ideals nor bring you to the place where you can be what you would like to be. It is corrupt. It is infected with a fatal virus. And it cannot be changed. There is nothing you can do about it, ultimately; it is useless and wasted. Therefore there is only one thing it is good for--to be put to death. And that is exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ did with it when he died some centuries later. He took the fatal nature, human nature, and put it to death, because that was all it was good for.

I know that many people have trouble at this point. This is the verse, among others like it in the Scriptures, which divides humanity right down the center. You either believe this verse, and live the rest of your life on these terms, understanding this fact, or you deny it and say, "It is not true; man is basically good." You have to be on one side or the other. Your whole system of philosophy, education, legislation, and everything else, will be determined by which one of those views you take. This is the Great Divide of mankind.

One of the greatest confirmations of the truth of this verse is the Constitution of the United States of America. Our founding fathers were certainly aware of this great fact--that man, by nature, is desperately corrupt--so that they never trusted a single man, even the best, with ultimate power. They set up checks and balances by which the power of any man in office, even the most admired of men, would be scrutinized and examined by others. They did not trust anybody, and rightfully so! I have often quoted these words from Winston Churchill, an astute observer of life:

Certain it is that, while men are gathering knowledge and power with ever-increasing speed, their virtues and their wisdom have not shown any notable improvement as the centuries have rolled. Under sufficient stress-starvation, terror, warlike passion, or even cold intellectual frenzy--the modern man we know so well will do the most terrible deeds, and his modern woman will back him up.

Churchill understood this verse: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt." No system of philosophy, of psychology, of education, will ever serve to eliminate the wrongful, evil failing of the human heart. It cannot be done. We have to face life on those terms.

As if it were not bad enough that we have this poisoned well within us, there is also another quality about the heart of man: it is deceitful above all things. It is corrupt but it never looks corrupt. It has an amazing power to disguise itself and look good and hopeful and fair--admirable, even. That is what is so deceitful about it. This explains why, all through the centuries, men continually keep trying to improve human nature. It always looks as if success is only a few steps away, and then man will be perfect. But the approaches men employ are equivalent to trying to improve a poisoned well by painting the pump!

Have you ever felt this way about yourself? "I really am only a few steps short of perfection. I know there are a few little things that I do (and they're always little things, not very significant), just a few minor aberrations, and if I could just correct those, I would be a splendid person to live with!" Do you feel that way? Then you are suffering from the deceitfulness of the heart. It can look good--it has that ability to do so--but it is unable to help itself. It is deceitful above all things.

The heart is crafty, and often hypocritical. Every once in a while we know this about ourselves, don't we? We know that we have a frightening ability to hide a hateful heart under flattering words, or that we can speak softly and lovingly to someone whom we utterly despise. We know we can do it; we do it all the time. We can use a sweet tone, and act and sound as if we are perfectly at ease, when inwardly we are seething with revolt and rebellion. That is the heart. It has that ability. It can appear fair. It can make the most impressive vows to do better. It can promise reform, and suffer hardship. Paul says that you can bestow all your goods to feed the poor, without love. You can give your body to be burned, without love, and to do so is worth nothing. No matter how sincere, all these efforts are like a house built upon the sand, doomed to disaster.

The only book in the world that tells you about the heart is the Bible--and those which are based upon it. You will never find that information in any other source. Secular studies of humanity won't lead you to this revelation. This is God himself, opening up a truth which divides the world, and which men must know if they are going to face life the way it really is. No wonder Jeremiah's response is one line: ". . . who can understand it?" "Lord, if this is true, how do you expect me to run my own life? How do you expect me to solve my problems? I can't even recognize that I have problems! How do you expect me to know what to do? How can you lay upon me any responsibility, if this is true?" Look at God's solution, verse 10:

"I the Lord search the mind
and try the heart,
to give to every man according to his ways,
according to the fruit of his doings."

You say you want to know what is in your heart? Then look at what comes out in your life. God is at work to make us act the way we actually are. In chapter 6 of the Book of Galatians, Paul gives us the equivalent of this:

". . . for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh [the heart which is evil] will from the flesh reap corruption [because that heart is desperately corrupt]; but he who sows to the Spirit [the new Spirit from God, given to him in Jesus Christ] will from the Spirit reap eternal life [because that God is a living God]" (vs. 7).

Somewhere Else to Go

The well will produce water according to its nature; the tree will produce fruit according to its nature. The Lord Jesus himself taught us that. Jeremiah's answer to this is beautiful:

Like the partridge that gathers a brood which she did not hatch,
so is he who gets riches but not by right;
in the midst of his days they will leave him,
and at his end he will be a fool (Jeremiah 17:11).

He is saying that it is useless to count on natural wisdom or natural goodness to enrich your life. If all this is true, then to count on a heart which is desperately corrupt and deceitful above all things, is an absolutely stupid and foolish thing to do! And if you build your life--gain your wealth and value and riches--on that basis, in the midst of your life they will abandon you and leave you desolate. But on the other hand, "A glorious throne set on high from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary" (vs. 12). There is where a man finds the answer to his life, the solution to his problems, the understanding of his own nature, and the supply of his need for a sanctuary, a place to go. One of the reasons men fight the idea that we are born with an evil nature is that they do not know where else to go. To say they have to abandon the only nature they know seems to them to be tantamount to saying, "You have to commit some kind of moral suicide; you have to give your self up." People resist that idea, but that, amazingly, is exactly what the gospel says. The good news is that God has found a way by which you can die without dying! Isn't that interesting? You can let that old man go, painful and hurtful as it might seem at the time, because you have somewhere else to go--and that place is God himself, the life of God, available in Jesus Christ. "A glorious throne set on high from the beginning"--authority and life--"is the place of our sanctuary." There is where we hide.

The gospel is in the Old Testament as well as in the New, and these old prophets understood this just as much as we do. Here is Jeremiah's lesson. He stands and prays, and his prayer is beautiful: "Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved. . ." (vs. 14). "No one else can do it. Only the One who sits on a glorious throne set on high from the beginning can heal me." The prophet stands before him and says, "Lord, here I am with this heart which was given to m