DAY 312

RUNNING AWAY

Jeremiah 43, 44 & 45 and Hebrews 5

You might remember yesterday that the people who had been following Geladiah, and who after he was killed chased his assassin out of town, then began to fear that the Babylonians would come and attack them. So they asked Jeremiah to pray to the Lord God for them. Jeremiah did and the Lord God said to stay in Jerusalem.

There reaction? “You are a liar!” They ask for God’s direction, they receive it, but then they refuse to follow—they in fact run away. When they get to their destination in Egypt Jeremiah performs a dramatic act where he buries some large stones and prophesizes that on that exact spot Egypt will fall to Babylon. We know from a fragment of a Babylonian text this indeed happened in 568/567 and the Pharaoh was replaced, just as was done in Jerusalem—the Pharaoh was subservient to the King of Babylon.

In chapter 44 Jeremiah again challenges the people for their idolatry. It looks like they have been there for months, even years, because the cities listed are somewhat far apart which would suggest the people settled. They seem to have all come together for some reason, and they are untied against Jeremiah. Jeremiah has challenged them because they are not following the Lord God, but have gone over to other ways. Their reaction? “All the men…” basically rejected Jeremiah. Jeremiah is telling them that most of them will not go back to Jerusalem—unlike the Jewish people in Babylon who were captives…these people were deserters.

It might be easy to criticize these people, but their successors are legion since this time in Egypt. The “fallen mind”—the mind not submissive to God—always views God as the adversary. God is someone to run away from. He is blamed for our past and distrusted for our future. Today people “blame Christianity, not the lack of it, for many of society’s ills ascribing our frustrations and tensions to biblical restraints and moral absolutes; seeking freedom, as Jeremiah’s critics did, not in God, but from God.” (The Bible Speaks Today: The Message of Jeremiah Derek Kidner, p. 133).

Remarkably the problem with Christianity and Christians is that we are too little like Jesus, and you would think most people who have heard his message would understand that point, but they don’t. I am pondering the distance, the distance of going off to Egypt to get away from God so they can do what they want. But can you really get away from a loving parent? People certainly try, but the loving parent is always thinking of the distant child. The loving parent is ready to receive the repentant child…this is always true when the loving parent is God.

We run away. We run away from obeying. We run away from submitting. We run away from God. He never runs away from us: May we stop—turn—and run home.