It sure didn’t take God long to test Jeremiah’s faith. Yesterday we saw how God told Jeremiah to stop feeling sorry for himself. In today’s reading, God gives Jeremiah a series of extremely difficult and trying commands:
Do not get married and do not have children here in this land. (16:2)
Moreover I, the LORD, tell you: “Do not go into a house where they are having a funeral meal. Do not go there to mourn and express your sorrow for them. For I have stopped showing them my good favor, my love, and my compassion. I, the LORD, so affirm it!” (16:5)
Do not go to a house where people are feasting and sit down to eat and drink with them either. (16:8)
We are relational beings so these commands go against all of our instincts. In a few sentences, God has forbidden Jeremiah to marry, have children, comfort those who are mourning, and celebrate with those who are rejoicing. I am so extremely introverted that I can happily go days without talking to anyone outside of my immediate family, and even I would have trouble living that kind of life. I imagine it would be hard for Jeremiah to see his friends and relatives getting married and starting families and knowing he could never experience it himself. I would also probably be painful for him not to be able to comfort them when they lost a loved one and celebrate with them at the momentous events in one’s life. This would also probably make Jeremiah even less popular among the people than he already was. They already disliked him for his doom and gloom prophesies. Now they would probably think he imagined himself too good and/or too godly to mourn and rejoice with his countrymen. To obey these commands basically meant severing all social relationships that Jeremiah may have had (or at least any that he had left).
When I read these verses, I remembered Jesus’ words in Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” In chapter 15, Jeremiah was depressed because the people hated him, and in chapter 16, God is showing him that he should be more concerned with his relationship with God. Our relationship with God is to take precedence over all of our earthly relationships.
A second point that struck me from today’s reading is found in verse 13:
So I will throw you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have ever known. There you must worship other gods day and night, for I will show you no mercy. (16:13)
God’s punishment was to allow Israel to do that which they desired to do. After centuries of warning Israel against the dangers of worshipping foreign gods, and being ignored, God gives them what they want. They will not only be able to worship other gods, they will be forced too worship them in lands that worship those gods. And this is not a unique punishment:
Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves. (Romans 1:24)
It is incredibly frightening to think about, but apparently there comes a point where God just allows people to follow the sinful desires of their heart, and this is the worst punishment there is. We may not like when God disciplines us as Christians, but the reason he does so is to keep us from reaching this point. It is like a shepherd guiding his sheep on a narrow path surrounded by deathly obstacles. We are the sheep and we constantly try to run off the path towards the obstacles, but God as the shepherd chastises us and keeps us on the path. As Christians we hopefully stray less and less as we mature and therefore need to be discipline less and less. This passage seems to show, however, that there are some sheep that are so persistent in straying that the shepherd eventually allows them to run towards the obstacles that will lead to their destruction. In light of this, may we be thankful for the discipline of a loving father that keeps us on the straight and narrow path, and may we feel genuine concern for those sheep who are dangerously close to being allowed to stray.