Christmas at the Castle – Part 3

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Old Testament studies from Jeremiah 11-20.

When we come now to Jeremiah 11–20 we discover a 10-chapter block of material in the book with very distinctive characteristics. Formally, the poetry that is typical of prophetic utterances and that dominates in chapters 1–10 is now intermingled with long prose sections telling stories. These prose sections cover events in Jeremiah’s life. In other words, the prophetic messages are themselves clustered around personal experiences in a way that you don’t find in most of the rest of the book.

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We uncover here a plot against Jeremiah’s life, a strange hide-and-uncover drama over a linen girdle, a drought, a command to Jeremiah that he remain unmarried, a visit to the workshop of a potter followed by some pottery smashing, imprisonment, and other events in his life. I haven’t covered all of them.

The unit of 10 chapters opens and closes with threats of personal injury to Jeremiah (Jeremiah 11:18 and Jeremiah 20:1–6), and interspersed through these chapters there are six personal laments, bitter, bitter prayers in which Jeremiah is asking, “What on earth are you doing, especially to me? This just isn’t fair.”

So what we find in the book of Jeremiah, especially in this section of Jeremiah, is a lot of disclosure about the prophet himself. In chapters 1–10 there is a lot about God and his message and here that continues, but there is now quite a lot about Jeremiah, too. Jeremiah feels crushed between the persistent rebellion of his own people and the unrelenting justice of God.

It’s as if he’s squished between two grindstones, on the one hand the persistent rebellion, the people won’t listen to the preaching, and on the other hand the unrelenting justice of God, and Jeremiah feels squeezed between the two. We get a flavor of the drama by simply reading chapter 11. Now I don’t have time to go through five chapters verse by verse, section by section. I won’t even read all of it, but I will read large chunks, and I want to begin by reading chapter 11 and draw your attention to a couple of little bits in it before we then look at chapter 12.

“This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ‘Listen to the terms of this covenant and tell them to the people of Judah and to those who live in Jerusalem. Tell them that this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: “Cursed is the man who does not obey the terms of this covenant—the terms I commanded your forefathers when I brought them out of Egypt, out of the iron-smelting furnace.”

I said, “Obey me and do everything I command you, and you will be my people, and I will be your God. Then I will fulfill the oath I swore to your forefathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey”—the land you possess today.’ I answered, ‘Amen, Lord.’ The Lord said to me, ‘Proclaim all these words in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem:

“Listen to the terms of this covenant and follow them. From the time I brought your forefathers up from Egypt until today, I warned them again and again, saying, ‘Obey me.’ But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubbornness of their evil hearts. So I brought on them all the curses of the covenant I had commanded them to follow but that they did not obey.” ’ ” That is probably referring to the great blessings and curses section of Deuteronomy. (“If you do this you will be blessed. If you do not do it you will be cursed.”)

Now the curses of the covenant are falling upon the heads of the people. “Then the Lord said to me, ‘There is a conspiracy among the people of Judah and those who live in Jerusalem. They have returned to the sins of their forefathers, who refused to listen to my words. They have followed other gods to serve them. Both the house of Israel and the house of Judah …’ ” That is, both the north and the south. “… have broken the covenant I made with their forefathers. Therefore this is what the Lord says:

‘I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them. The towns of Judah and the people of Jerusalem will go and cry out to the gods to whom they burn incense, but they will not help them at all when disaster strikes. You have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah …’ ”

The ancient Greeks had thousands of gods, contemporary Hinduism has millions of gods, and not infrequently in the ancient world there were particular deities connected with each individual location. In any case, what this does is dethrone the One God. “ ‘… the altars you have set up to burn incense to that shameful god Baal are as many as the streets of Jerusalem.

Do not pray for this people, nor offer any plea or petition for them, because I will not listen when they call to me in the name of their distress. What is my beloved doing in my temple as she works out her evil schemes with many? Can consecrated meat avert your punishment? When you engage in your wickedness, then you rejoice.’ ”

In other words, the people are still formally following the religion of the covenant. They’re still showing up at the temple feasts and the like, but their hearts aren’t in it. “What are they doing here?” God asks. “The Lord called you a thriving olive tree with fruit beautiful in form. But with the roar of a mighty storm he will set it on fire, and its branches will be broken. The Lord Almighty, who planted you, has decreed disaster for you, because the house of Israel and the house of Judah have done evil and provoked me to anger by burning incense to Baal.

Because the Lord revealed their plot to me …” That is, the plot about to be described. “… I knew it, for at that time he showed me what they were doing. I had been led like a gentle lamb to the slaughter; I did not realize that they had plotted against me, saying, ‘Let us destroy the tree and its fruit; let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name be remembered no more.’

But O Lord Almighty, you who judge righteously and test the heart and mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you I have committed my cause.” What plot is this? It turns out to be a plot of his own villagers … that is, the people from Anathoth, from which he came … to get rid of Jeremiah. He’s just too obnoxious.

“Therefore this is what the Lord says about the men of Anathoth who are seeking your life and saying, ‘Do not prophesy in the name of the Lord or you will die by our hands.’ ” You see, this stands over against what the people actually did like, described in chapter 5, verses 30–31, “A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land. The prophets prophesy lies. The priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way! But what will you do in the end?”

In other words, you must understand that Jeremiah was not the only preacher around. He was not the only apostle. There were lots of other siren voices preaching popular messages. We don’t even have the names of those people. They’ve all gone. In every generation the people of God are called upon to distinguish those who are preaching and teaching in a way that is faithful to God’s Word and God’s covenant and others that are not, but the shocking thing in chapter 5 is the prophets prophesy lies.

The priests themselves lead the people astray, and my people like it that way. They want to be duped. There’s a moral component, not simply an intellectual component, in discernment. And as for Jeremiah, he’s just a pain. Get rid of him. Jeremiah 11:22: “Therefore this is what the Lord Almighty says, ‘I will punish them. Their young men will die by the sword, their sons and daughters by famine. Not even a remnant will be left to them, because I will bring disaster on the men of Anathoth in the year of their punishment.’ ”

It’s important to relate this to our world, a time when much of the culture is heading away from God as opposed to times when there was reformation and revival going on and there are many people turning to God. This business of being a teacher or a preacher of God’s Word or simply bearing witness can be a lonely business. Sometimes it’s popular. Sometimes it’s fairly indifferent. Sometimes it’s very, very tough, and Jesus recognized that in his own day.

Do you recall the remarkable words in John, chapter 8? He says to the crowds, “Because I have told you the truth, you do not believe.” Isn’t that remarkable? That’s not a concessive. It’s not “Although I have told you the truth, you do not believe.” That would be bad enough, but this is a causal, not a concessive. “Because I have told you the truth, you do not believe.”

In other words, he lived in a time when it is the truth itself that is offensive. It is precisely because Jesus is telling the truth that he is not believed. When the culture is sliding in that way, do you see, what are your options, for goodness’ sake? If the truth itself is precisely what is going to be disbelieved, what do you do? Tell untruth?

Jeremiah lived in a time like that. Now in parts of the world, this isn’t what’s going on. In parts of the world the growth and rise of the gospel is spectacular. Then there is another set of dangers, of course. Then some people jump on board just because it seems popular. It seems like a good thing to do.

You get on board because it’s a nice, fast-moving movement, and then there is a danger of a new set of leaders who are merely adventurers, merely trying to get on something that is running smoothly, but in a time and place when the culture is moving against you, it’s precisely the truth that will be disbelieved.

In a time and an age, for example, when the dominant cultural voices are that there cannot possibly be just one way to God, then any voice that claims there is is automatically disbelieved. In fact, culturally this is one of the beliefs that Tim Keller calls a doubter belief or a defeater belief. It’s a defeater belief in that if you believe this notion that there is no one way to God, if you believe that, it defeats any belief that says there is only one way to God. It’s a defeater belief, but you must recognize how culturally isolated such defeater beliefs are.

In the Middle East, for example, very few people operate with this particular Western defeater belief. In the West the defeater belief is there is no one way to God. In the Middle East no one believes that defeater belief. There are lots of arguments about which way is the way to God, but there is no defeater belief that says there is no one way to God.

At certain points at certain times in culture, in other words, there is a coagulation of structures of thought, of assumptions, that are deeply embedded, ingrained in the culture, and if you’re called to bear witness at that time, you are going to be unpopular. That’s the way it is. Jesus knew it. Jeremiah knows it. So now we turn to the drama itself, and we’ll go more slowly through certain parts and more rapidly through other parts.

1. Jeremiah’s complaint and God’s response

Starting in chapter 12.

A) The complaint

Verses 1–4: “You are always righteous, Lord, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease? You have planted them, and they have taken root; they grow and bear fruit. You are always on their lips but far from their hearts.

Yet you know me, O Lord; you see me and test my thoughts about you. Drag them off like sheep to be butchered! Set them apart for the day of slaughter! How long will the land be parched and the grass in every field be withered? Because those who live in it are wicked, the animals and birds have perished. Moreover, the people are saying, “He will not see what happens to us.”

You see, here is a recognition; on the one hand, that God is sovereign, so if the wicked flourish in some sense God has sanctioned it (you can’t escape the bounds of God’s sovereignty), and there is a recognition at the same time that God is righteous. In fact, he begins that way, “You are righteous, O God.”

But then he looks around him, does Jeremiah, and says, “But you know, there’s some hard things to understand if those two propositions are true. I want to talk with you about your justice. If you’re so just, why are the wicked flourishing so nicely, thank you? Not only so, not only why do the wicked prosper, but why is there so much judgment on the land? How long will the countryside be suffering drought? How come you don’t come in with wrath and judge these people, carry them off like sheep to be butchered?”

And we have to face the fact; this is not the only place in the Bible where these questions are asked. Read Job. Read the prophecy of Habakkuk. Do you remember what Habakkuk’s problem is? He can say, “Yeah, I understand how you can use one nation to chasten another nation. I understand that.

What I don’t understand is how you can use a big, disgusting, evil nation, which on any standard basis at all is more wicked, more idolatrous than little Israel, to beat up on little Israel. Why should you be using a big, evil, ugly nation to chasten a little nation? That isn’t right. It’s not just.” That’s what the whole prophecy of Habakkuk is about, and at the end of the day the most of an answer that he gets is when he goes to the temple and is convinced of the glory and majesty of God and that God will bring justice at the end.

There are some things that Habakkuk is just not going to understand and some answers he’s going to have to wait to see. In the book of Job, likewise, Job comes within an inch of accusing God of injustice. Now he doesn’t quite go that far, and God does bless him for asking the right questions. The friends, the miserable comforters, are saying things like this, “Job, do you believe that God is just?”

“Well yes, of course.”

“And you’re suffering.”

“Yes.”

“So God is just and you’re suffering. What does that say about you?”

And of course, what they want him to say is, “Well I must deserve it, because God is just and I am suffering, so I must deserve it.” Job says, “Listen, I know that God is just, but I’ve got to tell you, what I’m suffering isn’t fair. I’m no more wicked than anybody else, and in fact if there is such a category as innocent suffering this isn’t fair, what I’m facing.”

“Job, do you hear what you’re saying? You’re calling in question the justice of God. How disgusting! Don’t you realize that God has forgotten more sins than you know of?” And Job says, “Listen, I know God is just. Though he slay me, yet will I trust him, and yet I have to say this is not fair. In fact, sometimes I wish I had a lawyer to stand between God and me so we could do some negotiation here.”

The tension builds up and builds up, until finally God speaks, and what does God say? Does he say, “All right, Job. Now I’ll give you the key to the whole thing”? No, no, no. What God says is, “Job have you ever designed a snowflake? Were you around when I designed the hippopotamus? Did you scatter Orion into the heavens?” And after several chapters of this, Job says, “Okay, I get the point. There are some things I don’t understand.”

And God says, “Stand up on your feet. I’m not finished yet.” And gives him three more chapters of questions, and at the end of it all, Job says not, “Ah, now I understand.” He says, “I repent.” Not, “I repent of all the sins that brought this judgment on my head.” This is because he is an innocent sufferer. God himself says so. Job did not do anything that merited all the sufferings that he underwent. He repents, rather, of the attitude that is going to question God when Job’s own horizons of understanding are so small.

But you know, contemporary critics, when they look at the book of Job, they love the book, because there are not a lot of answers in it. There are ambiguities. There are open-ended categories, and then they come to the last chapter, chapter 42, and they think, “What twit added this in?”

I mean, at the end Job is so justified that he’s given twice as many cows as he had before, twice as many sheep, twice as many animals, and the same number of children (I’m not sure that his wife would have wanted 20 more children. He only got 10 more children) to replace the 10 that he lost.

He lives happily ever after, and people say, “All of this book full of tension, ambiguity, uncertainty, and mystery (depends on your point of view), and suddenly some twit of an editor adds in chapter 42 at the end and makes it like a cowboys film of the 1950s. The guy in the white hat goes off and lives happily ever after and everything’s fine and hunky-dory. What kind of stupid idiot added that in?”

But of course, from a biblical perspective, chapter 42 is essential. Chapter 42 is to Job and to the Old Testament what the new heaven and the new earth are to the new covenant believer. At the end not only does God win, but justice is done and will be seen to be done. The Bible is a terribly realistic book. It acknowledges the inconsistencies and failures of God’s people, but it also insists that at the end God wins.

Two years ago, we could have the Oscar-winning film, Crash, depict before our eyes what happens when all of the expected categories of good and evil … four pairs of them are reversed, and suddenly the good becomes the bad and the bad becomes the good. It’s brilliantly done, but our culture likes to have the ambiguity as an end in itself.

The Bible recognizes the ambiguities. Jeremiah does and is desperately pained by them, but then God speaks, and the ambiguities are not praised as ends in themselves, they must be put within a still-bigger framework and the end will bring about the justice and glory of God, even if you do not see it yet. So we turn to …

B) God’s Response

Verses 5–17. There are three components.

First, “You haven’t seen anything yet.” It is found in verse 5: “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?” This is a lovely near-Eastern way of using imagery to make your point.

“You see, you run along a safe and open plain and you’re just competing against other people, now supposing you’re called upon to run a race against a racehorse. How are you going to fare now? You think you’ve seen problems of injustice so far. My dear Jeremiah, you haven’t seen anything yet. It’s going to get a lot worse. Yes, you’re jousting away in your little small corner, wait until you have to start jousting in the jungles of the Jordan River.” In those days there were jungles and wild animals all along the Jordan River, the thickets of the Jordan.

“You haven’t seen anything yet.” In other words, if you barely cope in a footrace in the open country, how will you fare in a race against horses, or in the jungle itself? If relatively small problems knock you over, what will you when you face big ones? In this answer, in other words, God is not explaining why the wicked prosper, he is saying that if Jeremiah has problems with what he has seen so far, he’d better face the fact that he hasn’t seen anything yet. It’s going to get a lot, lot worse.

Secondly, Jeremiah’s sense of being abandoned in verse 6 is a small reflection of God’s sense of being abandoned in verses 7–13. Verse 6: “Your brothers, your own family—even they have betrayed you.” That is, the people of Anathoth, his own small village. This is small-town stuff. “… they have raised a loud cry against you.”

Don’t trust them! Even when they speak well of you, don’t trust them. They’re so two-faced and inconsistent. They’re not operating on some principle of deep moral structure. As for God himself, well he’s the one who’s been abandoned, abandoned by his people. We saw last night … abandoned as a lover.

He’s made the almighty cuckold, the one who’s abandoned by his spouse, Israel. “I will forsake my house, abandon my inheritance; I will give the one I love into the hands of her enemies. My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest. She roars at me; therefore I hate her.” That’s what God says about his covenant people.

Sometimes evangelical clichÈs shape too much of our theology. “Oh, God hates the sin, but he loves the sinner.” Oh, rubbish. There’s a small element of truth in it. The small element of truth is that God invariably and always and implacably stands against sin. Meanwhile, even when he is said to hate his people he is also said to love them. We think of hate and love as necessarily antithetical, but they’re not always completely antithetical.

Hate in Scripture, like God’s wrath, is a function of God’s righteousness when defied. It’s a function of God’s holiness where there is sin. For him to remain morally indifferent would not make him superior, it would merely make him morally imperfect, but at the same time he’s still the God who looks at this fallen, broken, rebellious world and sends his own Son.

Fourteen times in the Psalms alone we read that God actually is said to hate sinners or hate liars or whatever, not just hate sins and lies. So also here. “She roars at me; therefore I hate her. Has not my inheritance become to me like a speckled bird of prey that other birds of prey surround and attack?

Go and gather all the wild beasts; bring them to devour. Many shepherds will ruin my vineyard and trample down my field […] the whole land will be laid waste because there is no one who cares.” The end of verse 13: “So bear the shame of your harvest …” That is, the harvest of wrath. “… because of the Lord’s fierce anger.”

Thirdly, wait and see. Verses 14–17. God isn’t finished yet. You’re judging too soon. You don’t have an eternity-eyes view. “This is what the Lord says: ‘As for all my wicked neighbors who seize the inheritance I gave my people Israel, I will uproot them …’ ” In other words, God may use the Babylonians, and he may use the Assyrians, but God is still going to hold them to account, too.

God is not just the God of Israel, he’s the Sovereign over all the nations, and he will hold to account the people that he himself has used to chasten his people. He holds them to account for their actions, too. “As for all my wicked neighbors who seize the inheritance I gave my people Israel, I will uproot them from their lands and I will uproot the house of Judah from among them. But after I uproot them, I will again have compassion and will bring each of them back to his own inheritance and his own country.

And if they learn well the ways of my people and swear by my name, saying, ‘As surely as the Lord lives …’ ” That is, God himself now becomes the one by whom they swear. “ ‘… even as they once taught my people to swear by Baal—then they will be established among my people. But if any nation does not listen, I will completely uproot and destroy it,’ declares the Lord.”

In other words, here once again there is a vision beyond Israel to all the nations of the world, where there will either be repentance and restoration and rejoicing, or there will finally be judgment. For it remains true in every nation that righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people, and every nation is going to need a Savior, or there is no hope. There is only threat and judgment. So there is Jeremiah’s initial complaint, one of his early laments, and God’s response. Chapter 13 we won’t go right through. I call this chapter …

2. Hope and Despair

 It includes a picture of the awful pride of those who have made it, as it were, and here God starts to use colorful acted-out parables. First, in verses 1–11 …

A) The linen girdle

The NIV has “the linen belt.” It’s not a belt. It’s a girdle. It’s a garment that was often finely decorated, worn by higher classes of people snug on the hips down to about the knees, and it was supposed to be attractive and so on. Jeremiah is told to buy one of these lovely girdles and wear it for awhile, and then he is told to go all the way off toward the Euphrates, about 700 miles (it would have taken him about 60 days), bury it, and then come home.

Then sometime later, a good deal later, he’s supposed to go back, find the place where he buried it, another 60 days, and he digs it up and it’s all rotten, moldy, bug-infested, dirty, and so on. Then he comes home. Talk about prophetic actions.

The point of all of this is that Israel was supposed to be, Judah was supposed to be, the covenant people of God were supposed to be, a kind of lovely girdle for Yahweh, something that he would wear that enhanced, as it were, his beauty. Instead they just become as useless and as moldy and as rotten as that girdle, swept away by the great river of Babylon, the mighty Euphrates. That’s the symbolism. Then …

B) The smashed wine jars

… probably not wineskins here (wineskins don’t smash very easily), but wine jars. The people might feel it’s great fun to get drunk, but God says, “You’re going to get drunk on much more until everything is just smashed entirely.” It’s probably drawing from a pretty common vision of drinking from the wine of God’s wrath.

You find this in chapter 25, verses 15–16, and you find it also in the book of Revelation, chapter 14, in which the people and entire nations are made to drink. They want to drink all right. They want to drink. They want to get drunk and get high and have their parties. They will drink on the wine of God’s wrath until finally they’re all smashed, and a horrible depiction of pride and arrogance in verses 15–27. Let me read these verses:

“Hear and pay attention, do not be arrogant, for the Lord has spoken. Give glory to the Lord your God before he brings the darkness, before your feet stumble on the darkening hills. You hope for light, but he will turn it to thick darkness and change it to deep gloom. But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride; my eyes will weep bitterly, overflowing with tears, because the Lord’s flock will be taken captive.” This is what Jeremiah says.

“Say to the king and to the queen mother, ‘Come down from your thrones, for your glorious crowns will fall from your heads.’ The cities in the Negev will be shut up, and there will be no one to open them. All Judah will be carried into exile, carried completely away. Those who are coming from the north. Where is the flock that was entrusted to you, the sheep of which you boasted? What will you say when the Lord sets over you those you cultivated as your special allies?”

That is, they tried to form allegiances with various regional superpowers, and in fact the very superpowers come in and rape the land, destroy it, consume them. “Will not pain grip you like that of a woman in labor? And if you ask yourself, ‘Why has this happened to me?’—it is because of your many sins that your skirts have been torn off and your body mistreated. Can an Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.”

They’re damned by their own fallen-ness. They’re damned by their own sustained life-commitment to evil. “ ‘I will scatter you like chaff driven by the desert wind. This is your lot, the portion I have decreed for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘because you have forgotten me and trusted in false gods.” And then finally …

3. God’s “no” to the prayers of his people

Chapters 14–15. Here I want you to see that there are two cycles of drought, prayer, and then God’s no; drought, prayer, and then God’s no, and finally Jeremiah’s prayers and God’s response. In cycle one, the drought in 14:2–6, Judah mourns, her cities languish, they wail for the land, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem. The nobles send their servants for water. They go to the cisterns but find no water. They return with their jars unfilled, dismayed and despairing.

They cover their heads. The ground is cracked because there is no rain in the land. The farmers are dismayed. They cover their heads. Even the doe in the field deserts her newborn fawn because there’s no grass. Wild donkeys stand in the barren heights and pant like jackals. Their eyesight fails for lack of pasture, and then the prayer, verses 7–9: “Although our sins testify against us, O Lord, do something for the sake of your name.” Doesn’t this sound pious?

“For our backsliding is great; we have sinned against you. O hope of Israel, its Savior in times of distress, why are you like a stranger in the land, like a traveler who stays only a night? Why are you like a man taken by surprise, like a warrior powerless to save? You are among us, O Lord, we bear your name; do not forsake us!”

And then God’s no, verses 10–16: “This is what the Lord says about this people: ‘They greatly love to wander; they do not restrain their feet. So the Lord does not accept them; he will now remember their wickedness and punish them for their sins.’ Then the Lord said to me …” Jeremiah speaking. “ ‘… Do not pray for the well-being of this people. Although they fast, I will not listen to their cry; though they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Instead, I will destroy them with the sword and famine and plague.’

But I said, ‘Ah, Sovereign Lord! The prophets …’ ” The false prophets. “ ‘They keep telling them, ‘You will not see the sword or suffer famine. Indeed, I will give you lasting peace in this place.’ ” All the false prophets have convinced the people. It’s as if Jeremiah is saying, “It’s not their fault, God. Give them rain.”

“Then the Lord said to me, ‘The prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I have not sent them or appointed them or spoken to them. They are prophesying to you false visions, divinations, idolatries, the delusions of their own minds.’ Therefore this is what the Lord says about the prophets who are prophesying in my name: ‘I did not send them, yet they are saying, ‘No sword or famine will touch their land.’

Those same prophets will perish by sword and famine. And the people they are prophesying to will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword. There will be no one to bury them or their wives, their sons or their daughters. I will pour out on them the calamity they deserve.’ ” Then the whole cycle is repeated.

Drought again (verses 17–18), prayer again (verses 19–22), almost desperate, and then God’s no in chapter 15, verses 1–9. “Then the Lord said to me: ‘Even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people. Send them away from my presence! Let them go! And if they ask you, ‘Where shall we go?’ tell them, ‘This is what the Lord says: Those destined for death, to death; those for the sword, to the sword; those for starvation, to starvation; those for captivity, to captivity.’ ”

Until eventually, Jeremiah offers his own prayers to God, in verses 10–21, and God responds. Now what shall I do with this passage? How shall we think about this together? It would be possible to read it very slowly and unpack each image and show its various biblical connections. It’s a useful study, yet there’s something to be gained by listening to the terror of it and saying, “Exactly how does that work out for us? What does this mean?” Let me suggest four things, and then we’re done.

A) Once again, repentance of the whole life is what God seeks.

God does not seek, nor is he interested in, merely formal religion, religion that goes through the motions, and then in times of real trouble, you know, now you’ve been identified as having cancer, or now you’ve lost your job, or now your relationship is breaking up, then you cry to God desperately, “God, don’t you love me? Is there something that you can do for me? God, won’t you fix this? God, to whom else shall we turn?”

God really isn’t interested in that kind of relationship. Repentance of the whole life is what God seeks. It’s a God-orientation in which, in principle, despite our many failures, inconsistencies, lies and all the rest; even so, for us, because of grace, God is God. Then …

B) A culture can go so far that eventually God is determined to bring it down.

A culture can go so far that eventually God is determined to bring it down. Now one has to be careful about the analogies one draws here, because the culture that God is particularly bringing down here is his own covenant community, and in the New Testament that’s not a nation, whether the UK or America or any other nation.

There it is, in fact, the church. Now it’s true that God will not destroy the whole church. Christ says, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Yet it is important to remember how even in the New Testament Christ himself, the exalted Christ in Revelation 2 and 3, warns that if a church does not repent, for example, he will remove its candlestick. That is, he will destroy it.

Of course, in very large measure that’s what happened in North Africa. The church in North Africa was wonderfully strong in many ways. It produced giants like Augustine, but by the time Muslims came along in the eighth century, in fact it was already so weak that the whole thing was just destroyed by a puff. God removed the candlestick.

It may be that a whole movement, a whole culture, whether conceived as a nation, since God is quite prepared here to make extrapolations even to the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and to the Egyptians, even in these cases it is righteousness that exalts a nation and sin is a reproach to any people. Even in the case of nations and cultures God may say, “All right. You’ve gone far enough. I draw a line. You can cry all you want, but your heart is not in it, and I have decreed judgment.”

Nowadays, when passages like this are read, thoughtful Christians begin to ask, “Is this where Europe is?” The short answer is I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, and I work for a non-profit organization. I don’t know. One has to observe, nevertheless, that of all the nations of Europe, including here, the UK and Ireland, of all the nations of Europe, only three find the gospel moving in it faster than the population growth: Moldova, the Ukraine, and Romania. That’s it.

Meanwhile, the sheer demographics of the situation mean that in many, many, many countries of Europe nowadays, Muslims are expanding much, much, much faster. No country of Europe has a birthrate that is replenishing its people. Everything is under 2.1, as low as 1.1 in several cases, none higher than 1.9, but on the whole the Muslim population is 3.5 in Europe, which means that if present trends continue, by 2050 several countries will be majority Muslim.

Now, as soon as you say, “If present trends continue,” already the one thing that you can be sure of in such statistics is that present trends won’t continue. One of my favorite statistics was given by the mayor of a small town in Arizona a few years ago. At that time that town in Arizona was the fastest-growing town in America, and he pointed out that if present trends continue, every single American by the year 2075 would be living in his town.

Of course, present trends don’t continue, do they? All of our extrapolations and our attempts to be prophetic, they’re all based on extrapolations of current trends and then some imagination, some clever imagination about what reactions might kick back. Yes, and we’re supposed to try to understand our times, but at the end of the day, we don’t have access to all of God’s purposes.

Nevertheless, I can go to some parts of the world and see remarkable power and growth beyond imagining, and other parts of the world the church is struggling. You look superficially at South Korea and Japan. In one country about a quarter of the population is Christian, I mean genuinely Christian, and in the other probably not more than 0.1 percent, just across a short body of water.

Now the most conservative estimates in China are that 90 million people are Christians, and they’re the most conservative estimates. Who knows but that God will raise a remarkable Christian culture out of that vast, vast people and population? And meanwhile in Europe, Europe that was a missions center that produced such wonderful theology, that in many ways was the light of so much, even while it was so guilty of so many other things, now rejoicing in cynicism and atheism, in a moral decay that is frightening.

To think of the shift in outlook between Kuyper in Holland about 1900, and a hundred years later, where Holland is morally today, shows that there has been a self-conscious choosing away from God, away from truth, away from righteousness, away from integrity. A culture can only go so far, and eventually God is determined to bring it down; and if some people cry out before him, what he wants to see is whether there is the determination for God truly to be God or merely wanting God, in fact, to be a kind of escape hatch.

All of that ought to teach us to number our days, to think and hope in terms of the new heaven and the new earth, to realize that our ultimate goal is not to make better U.K. citizens, or better Europeans, or better Americans, or better Chinese, our ultimate goal is for God to be God, for God to receive glory, for our ultimate citizenship to be in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness, for only this endures. Also …

C) Judging by the example of Jeremiah, Christians are not mere professionals.

Of course, we’re aware that John Piper has written a little book called Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, and there is a danger in saying something like that, of course, because there is a sense in which ministers of the gospel need to be very careful, get good training, be wise, be thorough, understand what leadership consists of, how to handle the text.… Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There is a sense in which we do need to be good workmen, rightly dividing the Word of Truth, competent, professional in that sense. The problem, of course, is that when you elevate professionalism to a certain kind of standard, then professionalism becomes more important than heart or than truth itself. There are many prophets in Jeremiah’s day, all by the people viewed as prophets, and there’s one Jeremiah, who not only is truly a prophet from God, but whose heart goes out to them.

You hear his cries, and you remember again the Lord Jesus, who denounces the sins of Jerusalem but then is found on the mountainside weeping over the city. Do you know what Europe needs? Christians, and not least Christian ministers of the gospel who weep over Europe, not just analyze the population statistics and talk fluently about demographics and even preach faithfully, but people who weep over the city. And finally …

D) It’s important to see that even in the midst of all of this judgment once again, nothing is simply inevitably determined by social parameters. Hope peeks through, anticipating gospel blessings.

Go back to chapter 12, verses 14–17. God’s answer to Jeremiah includes this section: “This is what the Lord says: ‘As for all my wicked neighbors who seize the inheritance I gave my people Israel, I will uproot them from their lands and I will uproot the house of Judah from among them. But after I uproot them …’ ”

Both Judah and the nations who crush them. “ ‘… I will have compassion and will bring each of them to his own inheritance and his own country. And if they learn well the ways of my people and swear by my name, saying, ‘As surely as the Lord lives’—even as they once taught my people to swear by Baal—then they will be established among my people. But if any nation does not listen, I will completely uproot and destroy it.”

That sort of hope peeking through shows up in all the Major Prophets. In fact, Isaiah has this wonderful vision of a time when eventually God will say to his people, “Israel, my third, Egypt, my third, and Babylon, my third.” It’s a way of saying that ultimately the people of God will not be made up simply of the inherited race of Abraham, but even the darkest opponents of ancient Israel will produce men and women who will be part of this covenant community.

It’s the anticipation of what appears in Revelation 5 and Revelation 7, men and women drawn from every race and language and people and nation, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, already an anticipation, despite the judgment, that God is still going to come through with triumphant winning at the end, like the book of Job, like these promises of hope, like the promise of the new covenant that we’ll discover in Jeremiah 31 tonight, like the gospel, which all of these things anticipate and under which we now live. Let us pray.

We confess with shame, Lord God, how often we do not take sin very seriously, whether our own or the sins of the cultures in which we inevitably participate. Lord God, have mercy upon us. And we confess, Lord God, that sometimes our repentance is merely mechanical because we want to secure blessings, but turn our hearts to you, Lord God, so that in truth you are our God, you are our delight, you are our pleasure, you are our Maker, you are our Redeemer.

Grant that when we confess Jesus as Lord, it will reflect the deepest heart-pangs of our existence. We thank you, Lord God, that even while you were threatening judgment in the past, you promised blessings still to come, and those blessings have come upon us in the glories and mercies of the gospel, so that we who were once alienated and far removed have been brought close by the blood of your own dear Son.

O Lord God, we who have experienced such additional revelation, such wonderful illumination, living this side of the cross and seeing afresh your heart of mercy and compassion, the great redemption planned from before the beginning of time and now secured in Christ; O Lord God, how much greater is our responsibility, for to whom much is given, from them also shall much be required!

So set our hearts, Lord God, to be bold in our age, to weep for the sins of the culture in which we are embedded, in which we participate, and to cry to you for mercy yet. In wrath remember mercy, we beseech you. Raise up a new generation of men and women who fear you more than other people, who love you supremely and therefore love other people.

Grant, Lord God, not only competence in understanding your most Holy Word and ability to handle it, but such compassion that we weep over the city. We do not see the end very clearly, Lord God. We do not see the intervening steps. We do not know whether you will descend upon us in wrath or mercy.

Make us, we pray, faithful where we are in small steps of obedience, thinking big thoughts of you, but trying to be faithful in our jobs, in our employment, in our Christian witness, in our prayer lives, in our resolve to teach your most Holy Word as we can where you place us … in small groups, in Bible studies, with peers, with another younger generation coming behind learning to be faithful.

Raise up from amongst us, too, a new generation of ministers of the gospel who will be professionally competent, rightly dividing the Word of Truth, but never mere professionals, but those who stand as God’s own spokesmen. We beg these mercies. In Jesus’ name, amen.