DAY 301

CLINGING

Jeremiah 12 13 & 14 and 2 Timothy 1

In chapter 12:1-4 we read Jeremiah’s plea and he asks the question many have asked, “Why do the wicked perish?” God’s answer is amazing, “If you can’t run with men, do you think you can keep up with me?” What is even more remarkable is God’s further response… “I have forsaken MY house. I have abandoned MY inheritance…” The “MY” is God. It is as if God is saying, “Your tragedy is minor in comparison to mine.” For all that God is allowing to happen, even orchestrating, to the people of Judah, He is saying it is a worse for Him, then for them. Consider all He has poured into His people, the centuries and centuries of love…it has all been rejected and he must destroy it.

Chapter 13 gives five variations on this dark theme: a ruined loincloth (vv.1-11), wine jars (vv.12-14), fading light (vv.15-17), a royal dirge (18-19) and disgrace for Jerusalem (vv.20-27) – the five variations in the same theme. (and it continues into chapter 14)

The result…Jeremiah prays.

It is hard for Jeremiah. He can see the future coming…he can see the Exile looming on the horizon. It is like he is a meteorologist watching the tornado coming, telling people to get inside, telling them to repent and turn back to God…and they won’t listen.

Here is another way to describe the reality of Jeremiah’s situation. The nation is so bad that God is going to punish it – God said he will and He has told Jeremiah

Think about a nation in modern time. Is there one that has been so bad that they must be punished, defeated, so they can start over? You might be thinking of a few.

This is the REALITY OF THE SITUATION that Jeremiah is living within.

So often, when people read Jeremiah, they see God as mean-spirited, but the point is that the Nation is so evil that is must be defeated so it can start over afresh…and we, in our own day and age have such examples…and I have already highlighted the cost to God.

And while that is the reality Jeremiah finds himself in, he is a man torn, torn between his concern for his people, and his serving God. Jeremiah is clinging both to his people and to God…we will read in the coming chapters how they will tear Jeremiah from themselves, just as they have torn God away.

He has a message for them…it is a message from God. Yet if you were to read Jeremiah cover-to-cover, then you would read times when Jeremiah is proclaiming this message and their need for repentance to his people…and times you will read of him begging God to spare them.

As with many chapters of this book, and the Scriptures, the deeper you look the more remarkable things you find.

What I am left with today is not the destruction; it is rather to ponder the “impact on God.” God feels, He loves, He hurts, He gets angry…and He never gives up on us…regardless of the cost to Him. He says that he made us to “cling to him” (13:11). The intimacy God has with us is something to ponder…and in many ways it pulls my mind to the Servant of God on the Cross—Jesus Christ. There is a verse from a song “Rock of Ages” and it says, “Naked to thy Cross I cling…” In the end, the walk of someone following Jesus is to understand the length that God has gone to deal with all we are reading about (and more).