Three weeks ago I mentioned that one of the themes I saw emerging in my study of Jeremiah was the abject failure of leadership. This last couple of weeks I have been working through the first six chapters paragraph by paragraph. My suspicions are being validated but in absurd ways.
In chapter 2 God, through Jeremiah, reminds Judah what He had done for them. Nothing much really. He liberated them from 400 years of slavery to Egypt, parting the Red Sea and killing all of Pharaoh's troops to the bargain. He gave them the law through Moses. He led them to the Promised Land, at which point they balked and had to run 40 years' worth of laps around the wilderness until He brought them back to the exact same GPS location for a do over. This time they went in. On the way in He parted the Jordan so that, like the Red Sea they walked across on dry land. He fit the battle of Jericho, and the walls came a tumblin’ down. He drove out the inhabitants before them when they engaged.
But they forgot all of that. Did not seem all that important to them.
So they stopped listening to Him. In order to get their attention at this point God began to discipline them to get them to come back to Him. So they are in trouble. Trouble that is self-inflicted because they have chosen to disobey and ignore the God who miraculously saved them and provided their land.
So how do they respond to the discipline? Here is where it just gets absurd. They found a tree, cut it down, took part of it and carved a "god" and asked it to save them. Then they found a rock lying around doing nothing and figured it would be a great idea to carve it into another "god" and ask that one to save them as well. I mean two professionally carved gods are better than one.
That wasn’t working so well. So rather than return to the God who had proven Himself powerful and true to His Word, they found allies who worshipped god's that God had humiliated and made alliances with them to get them out of this mess they had created.
All they had to do was come to God and confess their disobedience and repent. What they did was a whole lot more work and epically, absurdly futile.
I am just so glad that we do not do that here in the church age. When we foul things up we immediately go to God in repentance. I am glad that we never try to figure things ourselves like the stupid (its OK God calls them stupid) members of the tribe of Judah. No, we are much more spiritually astute. After all we have the Holy Spirit and we have Judah as an example.
But they forgot all of that. Did not seem all that important to them.
So they stopped listening to Him. In order to get their attention at this point God began to discipline them to get them to come back to Him. So they are in trouble. Trouble that is self-inflicted because they have chosen to disobey and ignore the God who miraculously saved them and provided their land.
So how do they respond to the discipline? Here is where it just gets absurd. They found a tree, cut it down, took part of it and carved a "god" and asked it to save them. Then they found a rock lying around doing nothing and figured it would be a great idea to carve it into another "god" and ask that one to save them as well. I mean two professionally carved gods are better than one.
That wasn’t working so well. So rather than return to the God who had proven Himself powerful and true to His Word, they found allies who worshipped god's that God had humiliated and made alliances with them to get them out of this mess they had created.
All they had to do was come to God and confess their disobedience and repent. What they did was a whole lot more work and epically, absurdly futile.
I am just so glad that we do not do that here in the church age. When we foul things up we immediately go to God in repentance. I am glad that we never try to figure things ourselves like the stupid (its OK God calls them stupid) members of the tribe of Judah. No, we are much more spiritually astute. After all we have the Holy Spirit and we have Judah as an example.
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