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Devotional thoughts (Monday through Thursday mornings) from the pastor of Exeter Presbyterian Church in Exeter, NH // Sunday Worship 10:30am // 73 Winter Street

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Jeremiah 15

If you wanted someone to plead your case before God, to whom would you turn? From an Old Testament perspective, you could not do much better than Moses and Samuel. Moses was the Mediator of the Sinai Covenant. On many occasions he was brought to plead before God for the life of God’s people. The Lord suggested at one point that Moses should get out of the way and God would destroy the people in the wilderness and start all over again with Moses as the beginning of a new people, but Moses interceded on behalf of the people. Samuel warned the people about the dangers of turning away from God as King, and was distraught as the people insisted that they would have a king like the other nations. God comforted him by saying that the people had not rejected Samuel, they had rejected Him.

Of course it was God who raised these men up to be intercessors and prophets as a reflection of His own stable abiding love for His people, but these two men were highly favored by God and were examples of unusual integrity. Yet here in dealing with Jeremiah at this late stage in the Lord’s dealings with Judah, God indicates that He would not listen to even Moses or Samuel if they asked Him to turn His heart again toward Judah and rescue them from the coming disaster. His message is simple: “Send them out of my sight.”

These are devastating words. They have nowhere to go. But they will go to disease, to warfare, to hunger, and to slavery. The wild animals will be appointed to tear them apart, and the name of one king is cited as the reason; Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah. Hezekiah was a great king of Judah during the time when the Assyrians had conquered the northern kingdom and were threatening the destruction of Jerusalem. God heard the petition of the king and the prophet Isaiah, and He gave Judah a reprieve from exile until the days of Jeremiah. Hezekiah’s son Manasseh, who reigned for fifty-five years in Jerusalem, did great evil in the eyes of the Lord. He went about reversing the good spiritual faithfulness of His father, rebuilding places of idolatrous worship that his father had destroyed. Even though he repented at the end of his life, and even though the Lord heard His prayer, and even though his grandson Josiah was one of the greatest kings in the history of Judah, the mind of the Lord was settled upon the exile of his people.

It is not as if God has been a weak Father. He has disciplined His people over and over again. How often and how severely can a man discipline his son before he finally reaches the point where no more discipline seems possible? God has sent Judah times of great affliction, but they will not listen any longer, and the day has finally come for their removal to another land. Perhaps there they will learn the lessons that they seemed so unwilling to learn while in their Father’s house.

Jeremiah seems to have reached a point of despair in this hard ministry. Speaking as if to his mother, he wonders why he was ever born. He is considered a man a strife and contention by everyone, and for what reason? This is a day of trouble for God’s people, and it will not be easy for the prophet of God. He cries out to God for help as one who is all alone, like a weakened Samson in the midst of an unfaithful tribe of Dan, his pain is unceasing. He knows that all of this has come upon him because he is the one who has brought the word of God to the people. He loved the word of God in his heart, yet now he feels like one with an incurable wound, and He wonders where the Lord has gone.

God hears the cry of His prophet and calls him to a renewed faithfulness. He promises to make him like a wall of bronze to his enemies, provided that he will not try to be a man-pleaser in the midst of an utterly unfaithful people. This is a great promise for the man who has settled it in his heart that he will do what the Lord has called him to do no matter what the cost may be in the loss of face he must endure from those all around him.

When Jesus came as our great prophet, priest, and king, he endured disrespect at every turn. He was hated without a cause. He was completely faithful in speaking the message of His Father, and it cost Him everything in terms of the applause of men. Think of His conversation with His small group of disciples at the end of John 6. He had just given a shocking message to a larger crowd telling them that unless they ate His flesh and drank His blood they could have no part in Him. What did it all mean? It was the word He had to deliver, but it was too much for almost everyone. Most of His disciples left Him at this point.

The twelve did not, at least not yet. They knew that He had the words of life, though even one of them was a betrayer. The rest would abandon Him later at the time of the cross. The shepherd would be struck and the sheep would be scattered. Yet the prophet of God, who was the Lamb of God, would be faithful even to death on the cross, and our sins would be atoned for. Then this righteous Redeemer would rise from the dead.

It is this great Son of God who now intercedes for us before the same holy God who said He would not listen to even Moses and Samuel if they pleaded for the sinful nation in the day of Jeremiah. But we have One who is better than Moses and Samuel pleading for us on high, and Our Father always hears His voice and grants His holy request. Behold the man! In Him there is great hope.

posted by Pastor Magee @ 7:00 AM

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