Caught with Our Hands in the Cookie Jar

We all know what it means to be "caught with our hand in the cookie jar." It means that we were doing something we knew was forbidden...we just thought we could get away with it. That's the situation God addresses in Jeremiah 3. The sister kingdoms of Israel and Judah have both been guilty of putting their hands into the "cookie jar" of idolatry.

As I read this chapter, it strikes me that God's wrath was NOT primarily stirred up because of the idolatry...but because of the DENIAL of the idolatry. Consider the following pronouncements from God:

You say..."I haven't worshiped the images of Baal!" But how can you say that? Go and look in any valley in the land! Face the awful sins you have done. (2:23)

Israel is like a thief who feels shame only when he gets caught. They, their kings, officials, priests, and prophets--all are alike in this. (2:26)

Your clothing is stained with the blood of the innocent and the poor, though you didn't catch them breaking into your houses! And yet you say, "I have done nothing wrong. Surely God isn't angry with me!" But now I will punish you severely because you claim you have not sinned. (2:34-35)

Then the LORD said to me, "Even faithless Israel is less guilty than treacherous Judah! Therefore, go and give this message to Israel. This is what the LORD says: 'O Israel My faithless people, come home to Me again, for I am merciful. I will not be angry with you forever. Only acknowledge your guilt. Admit that you have rebelled against the LORD your God...Confess that you have refused to listen to My voice. I, the LORD, have spoken.'" (3:11-13)

Reading from the vantage point of hundreds of thousands of years after Jeremiah, I must ask myself: Has anything really changed? Don't we, as the modern day people of God, all too often deny our own Sin? Aren't our pulpits all too often filled with bold and prophetic denouncements of the sins of non-believers (and other believers) while a deafening silence regarding our own communal sins continues to hinder our prayers and our witness to a dying world?

Currently, American society is still the most religious of the industrialized nations. However, recent surveys have shown that non-belief in modern America is on the rise. The saddest part of this, in my opinion, is that I don't believe this is an inevitable trend. While materialism surely plays a part in this trend, no less does fickle and shallow Christianity. I would suggest to you that the numbers of unbelievers are growing not because our claims are so fantastic...but because our lives are, all too often, so un-credible.

It is my prayer that God is refining His people during this time...that the chaff is being burned away, and that He is forcing both individual Christians and churches to face who we truly are. I know that there are those who are (and always have been) true to the LORD. (Even in Jeremiah's day, at least there was Jeremiah.) But I also know that far too many of us have sold out our ethics and our faith for...what? popularity? money? corporate and/or political advancement? Even as this has happened, we have continued (just as people of Jeremiah's day) to surround ourselves with the external trappings of faith, in the vain attempt to keep up the delusion of our own sanctity. We build buildings. We start programs. We pack venues with thousands of people. We turn up the music. We turn down the lights. We market our faith. We insist upon only hearing "positive messages" and we will brook no prophet in our midst who might challenge our self-absorption. Despite our most strenuous efforts, however, deep in our spirits we know things are not as well as we would like to claim. When will we return to our LORD? When will we "acknowledge our guilt and return to our LORD"? He remains merciful to this day. His greatest desire is that we will come home to Him again.

I ask all of you who read this to pray for me, that I will return home to my Father; And if you too find yourself in the midst of pigs, what say you return with me?

-- justin

Undo by Rush of Fools

Glass Ceilings and Cracked Cisterns

The oracle in Jeremiah chapter two is quite long. As such, there’s a lot to be gained from meditating upon it. I hope that you will have opportunity to do so this week. What I’d like to address in the devotional is what I see as the core of chapter two: abandoning God.

Sadly, we’re all too familiar with the suffering of abandoned children. We know the empty look in their eyes…and the even emptier feeling in their hearts. There is little that is more torturous than feeling oneself unloved and unappreciated. Jeremiah reveals to us that it is just this sort of pain that God Himself suffers when His people abandon Him to place their trust in other “gods” (i.e., other things)

According to Jeremiah, the people had committed two fundamental evils: They have abandoned Me—the Fountain of Living Water; And they have dug for themselves cracked cisterns that can hold no water at all! (2:13) In the midst of the current economic crisis, I fear that many Christians are discovering that they too have placed their trust in cracked cisterns.

Too often, we allow our faith to degenerate into a product to be marketed, rather than a radical counter-cultural call to be lived out. We expect to be popular…not holy. Eventually, however, the cracked cisterns that we have relied upon to keep us afloat drain out, and we find ourselves at the bottom of a deep pit.

It is my prayer that all of us who find ourselves at the bottom of a cracked cistern now, will respond to this time of privation and testing by restoring our worship of the one true Fountain. So that future generations will not look back on us some day an apply Jeremiah’s pithy and pitiable assessment: They worshiped worthless idols, only to become worthless themselves. (2:4)

-- justin

Memory Verse

Picture of an empty cistern

Additional Thought/Discussion Questions

1. What does 2:8 suggest about the role of leadership (both political and religious) in the abandonment of God? Is it even possible for a large group to abandon God without the willing compliance of the group leadership?

2. How does God’s self-identification as the “Fountain of Living Water” (2:13) relate to Jesus’ promise to the woman at the well to give her “living water” (John 4:10; see also John 7:36-38)

3. God’s anguished cry to the people of Jeremiah’s day included these words: …I was the One Who planted you, choosing a vine of the purest stock—the very best. How did you grow into this corrupt wild vine? (2:21) Have you ever made a good start of something in your life, only to see it fall apart…a marriage…a job…a child? What steps do you plan to take in the future to prevent the cycle from repeating?

It's Someone Named "God" on Line One...

The first chapter of Jeremiah includes what’s known, in biblical studies, as a “call narrative.” Basically, this is the story of how a prophet becomes a prophet. Classic literary criticism teaches that the call narrative was intended to legitimize the prophet in the eyes of his audience.

While I think call stories probably functioned in this capacity on some level, I don’t believe it was their primary purpose. There were tons of false prophets running around in Jeremiah’s day (we’ll see him have to contend with them repeatedly) and they, no doubt, produced their own “call stories” to impress the people. Ultimately, there was no way for the average Israelite to verify whose call stories were true and whose were made up.

Consequently, rather than being for the audience, I believe that the call experience was primarily for the prophet himself. It was an event he could look back on and draw strength from, during times of rejection and persecution. This would have been important as Jesus Himself said that rejection and persecution were almost universal experiences among God’s prophets. (Matt. 5:12; 23:29-37; Lk. 6:22-23; 11:47-49; 13:33-34)

That being the case, God used Jeremiah’s call to anchor the prophet—from the very beginning—in the truth that, though he will minister to the people, he does not work for them. Ultimately, Jeremiah is God’s servant; And therefore can be no one else’s. This idea may not have been as obvious as we might think. Jeremiah’s world was full of prophets-for-hire who say whatever you wanted to hear…for the right price. Not surprisingly, most of their “prophecies” ran something like this:

Thus sayeth the LORD: Thou art awesome. Everything thou doest is great. Thou has nothing for which thou needest to repent nor make recompense. Thy only problem is that thou hast not enough money and power. Thou needest more…nay, thou deservest more. I, the LORD, hath spoken.

As always happens when the Word of God ceases to be a Truth to be taught and becomes instead a commodity to be marketed, the people of Jeremiah’s day began to “prophet-hop” in the same way that some church-hop today. As his career unfolded, Jeremiah would be ridiculed, imprisoned, put in stocks, and left for dead. The temptation to take the easy way out and simply give the people what they wanted must have been tremendous. I suspect that during those dark days of his ministry, Jeremiah recalled the words God initially spoke to him:

“…You must go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you. And don’t be afraid of the people, for I will be with you and will protect you… I have put My words in your mouth! Today I appoint you to stand up against nations and kingdoms. Some you must uproot and tear down, destroy and overthrow. Others you must build up and plant…Get up and prepare for action. Go out and tell them everything I tell you to say. Do not be afraid of them, or I will make you look foolish in front of them. For see, today I have made you strong like a fortified city that cannot be captured, like an iron pillar or a bronze wall. You will stand against the whole land—the kings, officials, priests, and people…They will fight you, but they will fail, for I am with you, and I will take care of you. I, the LORD, have spoken!” (Jer. 1:7-10, 17-19)

-- Justin

Memory Verse

The Calling of Jeremiah coloring page

Almond Branches & Boiling Pots coloring page

Before I Formed You in the Womb

Additional Thought/Discussion Questions from Chapter One

1. God told Jeremiah, “Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as My prophet to the nations.” (1:5) Parents, what if you knew God had a similarly important destiny in mind for your child/children? If this knowledge would motivate you to do anything differently, why aren’t you doing it differently right now?

2. Are you hesitant to speak up for God? Jeremiah said he was “too young,” (1:6)what excuses have you used not to speak God’s words? What do you think is a good excuse for not standing up for the truth?

3. God said Jeremiah was being called to “destroy and overthrow…build up and plant” kingdoms.(1:10) How incredible is this!? Do you normally think of individuals with no real money or power at their disposal as being capable of such world-transforming work? What does this tell you about your own ability to change the world?

4. Why do you think it was important for people in Jeremiah’s day to know that God was “watching” (1:12)? Do you believe that He’s still “watching” today?

A New Chapter...A New Book

Hello again, my friends. After a hiatus of over a month, I have once again returned to the world of blog ministry. However, as I am no longer employed in full-time ministry, there will be a few changes in format and subject matter.

First, I have decided to drop the study that I had going on Matthew. Instead, I will begin posting devotional thoughts from one of the neglected Old Testament books: Jeremiah.

Second, owing to my job situation, I will be posting weekly rather than daily.

Third, since I intend to post by the week, and Jeremiah is a book conveniently divided into 52 chapters, our new reading plan will be (surprise, surprise) to read a chapter a week.

Fourth, for my edification, as well as yours, I will encourage us all to commit a couple of passages from Jeremiah to memory. This is a practice I encouraged when I was a minister, and I found it to be very rewarding. It’s not easy for modern American, of course. It takes time and commitment…but then, most things do that are actually worthwhile. Our first memory verse will be Jeremiah 7:1-11. You can find the NLT translation of this passage here.

Now that we have the “housekeeping” stuff out of the way, let’s move on to a brief overview of this Jeremiah guy and the times he lived in.

Jeremiah ministered during the tumultuous years surrounding the decline of Assyria and the rise of the Babylonian empire. [The kingdom of] Judah passed…through cycles of independence and subjection first to Egypt and then to Babylon. [Jeremiah’s] ministry is set primarily against the background of…the last four rulers of Judah. The nation’s independence was at an end, and Jeremiah would witness the final destruction of [Jerusalem] and the Temple.

I’ve chosen to reflect upon Jeremiah for two basic reasons. First, though the macho side of me would like to deny it, I find myself struggling with feelings of rejection, failure, and shame. Jeremiah seems to have battled many of the same dark emotions, and it’s my prayer that his example will give me insight into how to fight my own battles.

Second, the chaotic society in which Jeremiah lived seems to bear an increasingly-disturbing resemblance to the dystopia in which we currently find ourselves. It is my prayer that reflecting on how Jeremiah lived as God’s servant in the midst of a world falling down around him, will help each of us better understand what it means to be citizen’s of God’s eternal Kingdom living in the midst of the temporary kingdoms of this world.

As always, I welcome your thoughts, questions, ideas, etc. I am always enriched and encouraged by the insights you bring. May God be with you and bless you.

-- Justin