December 14, 2016
Jeremiah 19
Many time critters have elevated themselves
to a level of being like God, and they foolishly believe they have an
understanding of His ways and thoughts, mistakenly believing they can explain
His ideas and actions. If you are in that camp do me a favor and leave me
ignorant and depending on the Holy Spirit to guide me to the light. I
cannot fathom the calling on Jeremiah’s life, nor do I have any understanding
of Jeremiah 1:4-6. “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 have appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Then I said, "Alas, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak because I
am a youth."
Only one man who has ever lived has any
understanding of the ways and thoughts of God, in that He, Jesus is God, and He
created everyone else, and we are controlled by time, God is outside of time.
So as we look at this nineteenth chapter, it
is good to keep in mind that Jeremiah is not running for the most popular prophet,
his goal is to do as told, God refers to that as obedience. As we begin
the chapter, Jeremiah is being instructed by God to go and buy a potter’s clay
jar, and it is going to be symbolic of what is going to take place in
Judah. His instructions are to take the clay pot along with some elders
and go to the Valley of Hinnom that is near the entrance of the Potsherd
Gate. I read that this gate is south of Jerusalem’s wall and was the gate
where broken pottery and other trash were taken to the city dump. Verses 3-6 give us the message and the effect
it had on the leaders and people who heard it. “You shall say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord,
O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:
Behold, I am bringing such disaster upon this place that the ears of everyone
who hears of it will tingle. Because the people have forsaken me and have
profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they
nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known; and because they have
filled this place with the blood of innocents, and have built the high places
of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did
not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind— therefore, behold, days
are coming, declares the Lord,
when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of
Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.”
These foolish people are offering the lives
of their children as burnt offerings to Baal or Molech. Not much
different than our time of killing the innocent baby in the mother’s womb out
of convenience, it is still a form of worship, the worship of self.
He tells us that the eating of human flesh
happened just as Jeremiah foretold, it occurred in the siege of Samaria in 587
B.C. and 70 A.D. when Jerusalem fell to the Romans. Now in verses 10-11,
we have Jeremiah breaking the clay jar and proclaiming that God was going to do
the same thing to these people and this city.
As I wrote this paper the thought came into
my mind, God’s spokesperson may not have the message we want to hear, but that
does not change the message.
From the Back Porch,
Bob Rice
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