Finishing Week 1

I spoke with someone yesterday at church and she was having trouble with the site. If you have tried to post and it did not work...email me www.gailfaith04@yahoo.com to let me know. I am thinking of reformatting what is going on here but need the help of some friends in order to do that.

In the meantime I want to start looking at Jeremiah more closely so let's finish with the history part. In the morning I listen to a few of the chapters being read. I use www.biblegateway.com for listening and also to do word searches. It is a wonderful resource. It is also an easy way to take different versions and compare how a verse or passage has been translated. Anyway, listening to the history in Chronicles and Kings over and over has been interesting. Some of the main points that seem to have been popping out to me are:

The Israelites are very fickle....they seem to follow whatever or whoever is popular at the time. If the king is good then there is religious reform and they are back to following the law. If the king is evil, then they are right along side of him doing whatever atrocities seem to come to mind. They definately prefer the prophets that bring them good news and shun or even kill those that bring word from God that they are going to be punished. They measure how good their lives are by how prosperous they are at the time. They rush to make alliances with all kinds of kingdoms before they even consider repenting and turning back to God. They are so human and such a perfect mirror of our own world that I marvel that humanity seems so unable to see the truth and walk in the ways of the Lord. God's love and patience in the Old Testament is sooooo amazing that it makes me shake my head in wonder. If God were truly the old bearded guy sitting on the clouds just waiting to smite humans the Jews would not have survived the first couple of kings....actually they would have been long gone even before the kingdom had been set up.

We see in Jeremiah a young man that is williing to follow God in the midst of these fickle people. He knew from the beginning that they would not listen to him. He uses the excuse of his youth and inexperience, but the truth is they would not listen because he was going to tell them things that they did not want to hear. How frustrating it must have been for him. He started his prophesying while Josiah was king, so at least for a while he would have been listened to. This king made all kinds of reforms and it would have been popular to listen to Jeremiah at that time. But we see that as soon as Josiah is dead the people are back to the old ways and Jeremiah's message would have been as dead to them as their reforming king. If God had not promised Jeremiah protection from the beginning of his call I am confident that he would have died shortly after Josiah.

In chapter 1 we see that the Lord gave Jeremiah a specific ministry that is characterized by this description....
9 Then the LORD put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and the LORD said to me: “ Behold, I have put My words in your mouth.
10 See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms,
To root out and to pull down,
To destroy and to throw down,
To build and to plant.”

What a ministry to have been given! Can you imagine the strength of character he would have to have for his entire life to stand up against the prevailing attitudes and life styles of everyone living at this time. Later on we will see the people telling him they would rather he lied to them because they preferred to hear the lies rather than the truth.