Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 10-12.

At the beginning of today’s passage Jeremiah tells God’s people not to learn the ways of the nations.  He describes how they make objects which they then worship.  These images cannot speak, they cannot walk.  They must be carried everywhere.  They were made by men out of materials they found on the earth.  So, they could not have made heaven and earth.  Yet, people turn to them for guidance and salvation, instead of turning to God, who DID make  heaven and earth.  Those who turn to something other than God and His commands is senseless.  All of this Jeremiah tells us at the beginning of today’s passage.  Then at the end of today’s passage, He tells of God’s promise to those who have chosen to be enemies of God’s people.  God promises that He will uproot those who taught His people to worship idols and led them into sin, but after a time He will have compassion on them.  Anyone who takes the time to learn the ways which God teaches and chooses to swear by His name will be welcomed among God’s people.  So, we should not learn the ways of the nations.  Rather, we should practice the ways of God so that the nations might learn those ways and join us in serving God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 7-9.

Jeremiah’s prophecy in today’s passage is directed at those who claim to worship and serve God while worshiping and serving idols.  God tells Jeremiah not to pray for such people because they fail to understand that it is not God they are offending with their actions, but rather they are harming themselves (and perhaps God was telling Jeremiah not to pray for them until they came to understand that).  We should keep this in mind while we consider our actions.  We do that which seems righteous to us, but do we worship other gods at the same time?  If we do, the appearance of righteousness we cultivate so carefully will do us no good.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 4-6.

I think it is important to remember that Jeremiah began prophesying while Josiah was king.  Josiah was one of the most faithful kings which Judah had, yet I believe Jeremiah made the prophesy we read today while Josiah still reigned.  He tells the people of Judah to put aside the detestable idols which they worshiped.  He called on them to only invoke the Lord in a just, truthful, and righteous way.  He tells us to break up our unplowed ground and circumcise our hearts.  When he tells us that last, he is referring to cutting away something unnecessary from the most vulnerable part of us so that it will no longer interfere with our service to God.  Jeremiah goes on to tell the people of Judah that if they do not do this a terrible time is coming, a time of disaster and destruction.  He speaks of the dishonesty of the people.  God tells Jeremiah to search Jerusalem for an honest person.  If he can find just one, God promised to forgive the people of their sins.  Jeremiah went to the common people and found them unwilling to repent of their sins.  So, he went to the leaders of the land and found that they too had rebelled against God and refused to deal honestly.  I do not think that Jeremiah meant for us to take the idea that there was not even one honest person in Jerusalem literally.  Rather, we are to understand that it only takes a few honest and faithful people among many to transform society.  Later in the passage Jeremiah tells us that God’s people did not seek justice, did not promote the case of the fatherless, nor defend the just cause of the poor.  Today, I look at our society and see terrible things coming because of the sins of our nation (and when I look around the world, I see the same thing in most of the nations of the world), but God is looking for just a few people to stand up for justice and honesty.  Will we who are called by His name answer His call?  Let us allow Him to use us to transform our society.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 1-3.

Today I begin reading the Book of Jeremiah for this year.  I love some of what we learn about God and His call for us from His call to Jeremiah.  First God tells Jeremiah:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew^[a] you,
    before you were born I set you apart;”
From this we learn that God formed Jeremiah in the womb, and that He formed each and every one of us the same way.  But there is more to it than that.  Even before He formed our bodies God knew us.  However, I want you to take note of that little superscript “a” there by the word “knew”.  That indicates that there was a translators’ note associated with it.  The translators’ note says that the word “knew” could also be translated as “chose”.  So, even before we began to be formed in our mother’s womb, God knew us and chose us for His purpose in this world.  We have been set apart to serve God.  God goes on to tell Jeremiah that He has put His words in Jeremiah’s mouth.  If we allow Him, He will do the same with us.  As a final part of God’s calling of Jeremiah, He tells him get himself ready to stand up and tell the people what God will command him to say.  God made Jeremiah an iron pillar to stand up against the movers and shakers of his time, and against the people themselves.  Jeremiah did not need to be afraid even though both the powerful people and the mob of common people would fight against him, because God would be with him.  In the same way God is calling on us today to stand up and say the words which He puts in our mouths.  We need not be afraid because God will be with us and He will rescue us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 51-52.

At the height of Babylon’s power, Jeremiah prophesied that it would fall and be completely destroyed, never to rise to power again.   Jeremiah told the world that for all of Babylon’s power it could not escape the Lord’s judgement against it.  There were those who would believe that the fall of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the temple there, meant that the gods of Babylon were more powerful than God.  God gave Jeremiah the prophecy about the fall of Babylon before the fall of Jerusalem in order to provide evidence for those who worshiped Him that Babylon’s gods were not more powerful than He was.   We live in a time when people believe that God is no longer relevant, but this is not true.  The God who told us of Babylon’s fall before it reached the height of its power continues to work in the world today.  History follows the course which He has laid out for it.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 49-50.

I mentioned yesterday that it is unclear when Jeremiah made the prophecies against the nations surrounding Judah.  These are relevant today because today’s passage contains more “undated” prophecies (that is, we do not know when during Jeremiah’s career he made these prophecies).  In today’s passage these other nations all thought that they had not suffered the fate of Israel because their gods were able to protect them.  Yet God gave Jeremiah a prophecy predicting that they would suffer the fate which they thought their gods had protected them from.  Even Babylon, through whom God brought punishment upon Jerusalem for its people’s sins, would face God’s judgement.  At the same time, God would provide relief to His people.  In the same way today, God will bring judgement upon the nations which oppose His will, while rescuing those who faithfully repent of their sins and turn their faces towards Him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 45-48.

There are two parts to today’s passage.  The first, and shorter, portion, is Jeremiah’s prophecy to his assistant and scribe, Baruch.  Baruch apparently had ambitions to do great things, as he came from the aristocracy of Judah.  Jeremiah gave him a prophecy from God telling him that such things were not a possibility in his time on this earth, but that God would ensure that he escaped with his life from the various situations in which he found himself (this was apparently a reference to the persecution Baruch and Jeremiah faced, the fall of Jerusalem, and the murder of the Babylonian governor).

The rest of the passage consists of various prophecies against Judah’s neighbors.  When I have thought about it, I have always thought of these prophecies as being made after Jeremiah was taken to Egypt.  As I read today, I realized that these were probably prophecies made earlier in Jeremiah’s career.  For example, it strikes me that the prophecy regarding Egypt was likely made before the Battle of Carchemish.  I realized that the reference made to the Battle of Carchemish here was an editorial comment by the scribe (probably Baruch) telling us that this prophecy started to be fulfilled with Pharaoh’s loss at Carchemish.  Secular biblical scholars often point to Jeremiah’s prophecies concerning Nebuchadnezzar invading Egypt and state that they were not fulfilled.  Interestingly, I discovered over the last few days that Nebuchadnezzar, despite being the longest reigning king of Babylon is also the least documented of Babylonian kings.  This lack of Babylonian documentation about Nebuchadnezzar’s reign means that all we know about his military exploits is that the Babylonian Empire at the end of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign was no larger than during the reign of his father.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 42-44.

After the murder of the man the Babylonians appointed as governor over Judah, the Jews remaining in Judah came to Jeremiah seeking to know God’s will for them.  In particular, they wanted Jeremiah to ask God where they should go and what they should do.  They swore that they would act in full accordance with whatever Jeremiah told them was God’s will for them.  When Jeremiah brings God’s answer to them it is clear that both God and Jeremiah knew how they would respond…which was by refusing to abide by the answer they received.  Every time I read this I come away with the impression that those who came to Jeremiah had already made up their minds as to what they were going to do before they spoke with him.  Which leads me to wonder why they came to Jeremiah in the first place.

We don’t have any basis to determine why they came to Jeremiah when they had already decided on a course of action.  What we do know is what they did after rejecting what God told them through Jeremiah.  First they accused Jeremiah of lying when he said that God had told them to stay in Judah.  Then, once they were in Egypt, instead of listening to Jeremiah’s messages from God, they resumed making sacrifices and offerings to idols.  So, the people consulted Jeremiah to learn what God’s commands for them were.  But, when he did not tell them what they wanted to hear, they rejected not only Jeremiah, but God as well.  We must be careful when we ask for God’s guidance to listen and obey what He tells us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Jeremiah 36-38.

The first thing I thought about when I read today’s passage was that everything in this book up to this point would have been first written down when Jeremiah dictated the scroll to Baruch.  My second thought was that most of this book was derived from the second scroll which Jeremiah dictated to Baruch.  The next part I want to comment on gives us an insight into the political divide in Jerusalem.  When Baruch read Jeremiah’s scroll at the temple, Micaiah heard everything he read and went to the “all the officials” and told them what he had heard.  The officials sent for Baruch and had him read the scroll for them.  When they heard what Jeremiah had dictated to Baruch, they were frightened.  They were frightened because they feared the Lord.   They knew the king would react badly, but they knew that they had to tell him what Baruch had read to the people.  So, they told Baruch that he and Jeremiah should go somewhere to hide and tell no one where they were going.  Then they went to tell the king about what Baruch had read in the temple.

Which brings us to the other political faction, the king and his attendants (note this king was King Jehoiakim).  Unlike the officials, the king and his attendants were completely unmoved by the words of Jeremiah’s prophecies.  Perhaps unmoved is the wrong word, Jehoiakim burned the scroll upon which Baruch had recorded Jeremiah’s prophecies, almost as if by doing so he could erase them.  Then the king sent someone to arrest Jeremiah and Baruch, but they were unable to locate them.  Later in this passage we see the same divide after Zedekiah became king.  In fact, we see the same divide today.  Those who read Scripture and fear the Lord from those who dismiss the Scripture and try to make it not exist.  The former seek to protect those who speak God’s word while the latter seek to persecute them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.