Old Testament - Jeremiah 18 & 20 - October 12, 2022

 10/12/2022 – Jeremiah 18 & 20

Chapter 18: In this chapter, the Lord uses the art of making pottery to teach Jeremiah that the Israelites can repent and avoid destruction. In v 2 the Lord tells Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house, and He will speak to Jeremiah there. Jeremiah followed the Lord’s directions. When he got to the potter’s house, the potter was working with clay on his potter’s wheel where he created a vessel. But as the potter examined that vessel, he saw that it was not a very good vessel. So he took up the soft clay and worked with it to make a very good vessel. 

That’s when the Lord spoke to Jeremiah: “O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? Said the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.” (v 6)  In v 8, the Lord explained his thoughts more clearly: “If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I well repent [relent regarding the punishment] of the evil that I thought to do unto them.” BUT “If it do evil in my sight, that is not obey my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” (v 9) The Lord has now given Israel the chance to let Him reshape them into a good nation that will be much more useful in this world.

Elder Hugh Pinnock: “The Lord explained to Jeremiah that when we make mistakes, as ancient Israel was making, we can take what we have marred and begin again. The potter did not give up and throw the clay away, just because he had made a mistake. And we are not to feel hopeless and reject ourselves. Yes, our task is to overcome our problems, take what we have and are, and start again.”  He went on to tell us that it is just the same for us today, we can always “begin again as a renewed person.”

Unfortunately, the Israelites had gotten comfortable in following the ways of the idol worshipers, and their reply to Jeremiah, and the Lord, was “we will walk after our own devices”. (v 12) The Lord’s reply was “Because my people hath forgotten me, they have burned incense to vanity [idols], and they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast up.: (v15)

V 18 gives us the Israelites’ response: “Then they said: Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, not counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.”

In v 23 we see that even Jeremiah had given up, as he saw the Israelites fall further and further from the Lord: “Yet, Lord, thou knowest all their counsel against me to slay me: forgive not their iniquity, neither blot out their sin from thy sight, but let them be overthrown before thee; deal thus with them in the time of thine anger.”

Chapter 20: The Israelites continued to pursue their wrong path.  Pushur, who is “chief governor in the house of the Lord” and who heard Jerimiah’s prophesies of what would now become of the Israelite nation, “smote Jeremiah…and put him in the stocks” (v 2). While in the stocks, Jeremiah spoke out, telling them of the terrible consequences that awaited them all. (v’s 4-6). 

This is a hard and terrible time for Jeremiah, but he continues to follow the Lord’s directions, and this is what Jeremiah says: “But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail….” (v 11) That is the kind of faith I want to maintain as our world comes further and further into the last days just before the second coming of Christ.