Jeremiah 13:12-14

“Therefore you shall speak to them this word: ‘Yahweh, the God of Israel says, “Every container should be filled with wine.” ’ They will tell you, ‘Do we not certainly know that every container should be filled with wine?’ Then tell them, ‘Yahweh says, “Behold, I will fill all the inhabitants of this land, even the kings who sit on David’s throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunkenness. I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together,” says Yahweh: “I will not pity, spare, or have compassion, that I should not destroy them.” ’ ”

Here again, we witness God’s simple yet powerful teaching techniques. Here, He has His prophet tell the people to fill up all of their containers with wine. It appears that in a mocking way, the people respond by saying that they already knew that. I am told, that what Jeremiah said was actually a well known saying. Everybody knew it all ready. It was like saying: “Everything will fulfill it’s purpose.” It may have come to mean something like: “What you plan for, will happen.” Boy, does that sound familiar today. The problem is that the Bible doesn’t teach that exactly.

Then, Jeremiah shocks them again with God’s message. He tells them that just as they fill up all their jars with wine, God is going to make them all drunk with His wrath! What God actually teaches us is that we reap what we sow. If we sow to our selfishness, we reap God’s wrath. If we sow to God, we reap righteousness and peace. It’s pretty obvious that Jeremiah wasn’t getting any more popular with the people. Not only did he ruin their prosperity ideas, he told them that every single one of them including their physical and spiritual leaders were going to suffer by the hand of God.

God calls us all to boldly speak God’s word. Now we may not be preachers like Jeremiah, but we “boldly speak” by how we live too. The choices we make and the answers we have for those who question us, speak out to them as well. I find that they often don’t like it very much. One major difference we have today is that there are those who will hear our message and accept Jesus as their Savior too, but Jeremiah wasn’t getting a good response from His people.