The problems of a prophet who was sent to a problem people...

At the church where I serve we are in the middle of a sermon series entitled when God speaks. During this series we are spending our time together looking at these letters that we often have a tendency to skip over, which are referred to as the prophets. We are going to discover who these letters that we have a tendency to skip over were written to and by. We are going to discover what these letters that we have a tendency to skip over reveal about who we are and about the nature of God and God’s activity in history. And as we go through this series, our hope and prayer is that God would move by the power of the Holy Spirit in our heads, hearts and hands so that we understand and embrace the timeless and timely truths that these letters that we often skip over have for our lives.

This week I would like for us to look at a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible called the book of Lamentations. The books of Jeremiah and Lamentations were both written by the prophet Jeremiah and are the next letters that were written by a prophet chronologically, which is not necessarily the order that they are found in the Bible, where they are organized by size. Jeremiah was a Prophet during the reigns of the final five kings of the Southern Kingdom of Judea before Judea was conquered by the Babylonian Empire. Jeremiah served as a messenger from the Lord and delivered the Lord’s message to the Jewish people from 627-586 B.C. These letters were written during the times described in two sections of two other letters in the Old Testament of the Bible, called the book of 2 Kings, in 2 Kings 22-25 and the book of 2 Chronicles, in 2 Chronicles 34-36.

During the forty years the Jeremiah served as the Lord’s messenger, several significant events from history took place that would forever shape the Jewish people. First, in 612 B.C., the Babylonian Empire invaded the Assyrian Empire in fulfillment of the Lord’s promise as proclaimed by the prophet Nahum, which we looked at a few weeks ago. Then, in 609 B.C. King Josiah, who had led the Jewish people to return to the Lord by removing much of the worship of false gods from the Southern Kingdom, was killed on the battlefield as he attempted to resist the Egyptian forces who were on their way to try to help Assyria against the Babylonian army. During the time of King Josiah’s rule, the Lord had used Jeremiah to expose the selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people and to call the Jewish people to return to the Lord.

While we do not have the time to cover all of the book of Jeremiah, we see the message of the prophet summarized in the second chapter of Jeremiah. So let’s look at this section of the book of Jeremiah together, beginning in Jeremiah 2:1-3:

Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, ² "Go and proclaim in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, 'Thus says the LORD, "I remember concerning you the devotion of your youth, The love of your betrothals, Your following after Me in the wilderness, Through a land not sown. ³ "Israel was holy to the LORD, The first of His harvest. All who ate of it became guilty; Evil came upon them," declares the LORD.'"

Here we see the Lord, through the prophet Jeremiah, point the Jewish people back in their history as a people to their time after being delivered from slavery at the hands of the nation of Egypt. In another letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible, called the book of Exodus, we read of an event from history where the Lord delivered the Jewish people from slavery at the hands of the nation of Egypt and brought them into the land that He had promised them. The Lord used the imagery of a marriage to paint the picture of the covenant relationship that He had entered into with the Jewish people.

The Lord then painted another world picture, this time of the first fruits of the harvest, to reveal the reality that the Jewish people had been chosen by the Lord as the first nation to worship Him. The Jewish people were chosen to be set apart as dedicated to the Lord and to be the vehicle that the Lord would use to reveal Himself to the world.  The Lord also proclaimed that, as a result of the covenant relationship that He had entered into with the Jewish people, anyone who went against the Jewish people would experience His right and just response for attempting to commit evil against His chosen people. However, while the Lord remained faithful to the Jewish people, the same could not be said of the Jewish people, as we see Jeremiah reveal in verses 4-13:

 Hear the word of the LORD, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. ⁵ Thus says the LORD, "What injustice did your fathers find in Me, That they went far from Me And walked after emptiness and became empty? ⁶ "They did not say, 'Where is the LORD Who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, Who led us through the wilderness, Through a land of deserts and of pits, Through a land of drought and of deep darkness, Through a land that no one crossed And where no man dwelt?' ⁷ "I brought you into the fruitful land To eat its fruit and its good things. But you came and defiled My land, And My inheritance you made an abomination. ⁸ "The priests did not say, 'Where is the LORD?' And those who handle the law did not know Me; The rulers also transgressed against Me, And the prophets prophesied by Baal And walked after things that did not profit. ⁹ "Therefore I will yet contend with you," declares the LORD, "And with your sons' sons I will contend. ¹⁰ "For cross to the coastlands of Kittim and see, And send to Kedar and observe closely And see if there has been such a thing as this! ¹¹ "Has a nation changed gods When they were not gods? But My people have changed their glory For that which does not profit. ¹² "Be appalled, O heavens, at this, And shudder, be very desolate," declares the LORD. ¹³ "For My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters, To hew for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns That can hold no water.

Here we see the Lord, through Jeremiah, call out the Jewish people for their unfaithfulness to the Him. The Lord proclaimed the reality that, instead of pursuing the Lord, the Jewish people pursued what was meaningless and empty.  While the Lord had brought the Jewish people into a productive land that would provide for their needs, the Jewish people polluted the land with their selfishness and rebellion. Whether it was the people, the priests, the rulers, or the prophets, all the Jewish people pursued false gods instead of pursuing the Lord.

The Lord then proclaimed to the nations that surrounded the Jewish people who worshiped false gods a stunning statement about the faithlessness of the Jewish people: "Has a nation changed gods When they were not gods?” With this proclamation, the Lord was revealing the reality that the nations around the Jewish people who worshiped false gods were more faithful to their false gods than the Jewish people were to the Lord. After all, those nations did not change gods, while the Jewish people had turned from the Lord to worship and pursue false gods.

The Lord then painted another word picture to hammer home the selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people: They have forsaken Me, The fountain of living waters, To hew for themselves cisterns, Broken cisterns That can hold no water.” The Lord painted this word picture to reveal the reality that the Jewish people who had abandoned the Lord, who like a fountain or spring of flowing water was faithful and reliable, to instead pursue the cisterns of false gods, which were unreliable and often would break. And just a few verses later, we see Jeremiah reveal what would lay in store for the Jewish people and for Jeremiah. We see this in Jeremiah 2:26-30:

"As the thief is shamed when he is discovered, So the house of Israel is shamed; They, their kings, their princes And their priests and their prophets, ²⁷ Who say to a tree, 'You are my father,' And to a stone, 'You gave me birth.' For they have turned their back to Me, And not their face; But in the time of their trouble they will say, 'Arise and save us.' ²⁸ "But where are your gods Which you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you In the time of your trouble; For according to the number of your cities Are your gods, O Judah. ²⁹ "Why do you contend with Me? You have all transgressed against Me," declares the LORD. ³⁰ "In vain I have struck your sons; They accepted no chastening. Your sword has devoured your prophets Like a destroying lion.

Here we see Jeremiah expose the duplicity of the Jewish people in their selfishness and rebellion against the Lord. You see, while the Jewish people worshiped false gods, the Jewish people began to discover that while they had pursued as many false gods as they had cities, these false gods were unable to help them in their times of trouble.  Yet, in spite of pursing false gods instead of the Lord, the Jewish people felt that they could accuse the Lord for failing to come through for them in their times of trouble. The Jewish people did not respond to the Lord’s punishment for their rebellion by returning to the Lord. Instead the Jewish people accused the Lord and murdered the messengers of the Lord.

And as a messenger of the Lord, the Jewish people responded to Jeremiah by treating Jeremiah horribly. During the 40 years that Jeremiah served as a messenger of the Lord, the Jewish people responded to Jeremiah by beating him, placing him in stocks, and on one occasion, throwing him in an empty cistern to starve to death. During the 40 years that Jeremiah served as a messenger of the Lord, no one from the Jewish people turned to the Lord. Instead, the Jewish people pursued false gods instead of the Lord and punished Jeremiah and the other prophets of his time for proclaiming the message of the Lord.

In 605 B.C., the Lord responded to the selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people by using the Babylonian Empire as His instrument to exercise His right and just response to their rebellion. The Babylonian Empire besieged Jerusalem and made the Jewish people a vassal state under King Jehoiakim. As part of that process, the Babylonian Empire deported many of the Jewish people’s best and brightest men, including Daniel, to be indoctrinated in the culture and religious practices of the Babylonians to further strengthen their rule. Then, in 597 B.C., after the Jewish people rebelled against the Empire, the city was besieged again, with even more Jewish people deported.

Finally, in 586 B.C., as Jeremiah sat in a Jewish prison, and after another rebellion by the Jewish people against the Empire, the Babylonian Empire would conquer Jerusalem and the Jewish people would be taken away into exile. The Babylonian Empire would raze the city of Jerusalem and the Temple of the Lord to the ground and remove most of the Jewish people, through death or deportation, to Babylon. And it is in this context that the prophet Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations.

Tomorrow we will begin to look at this letter…