Day 205: An Obvious Difference

Jeremiah 51:15-19

“He has made the earth by his power.
He has established the world by his wisdom.
By his understanding he has stretched out the heavens.
When he utters his voice,
there is a roar of waters in the heavens,
and he causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth.
He makes lightning for the rain,
and brings the wind out of his treasuries.

“Every man has become stupid and without knowledge.
Every goldsmith is disappointed by his image,
for his molten images are falsehood,
and there is no breath in them.
They are vanity,
a work of delusion.
In the time of their visitation, they will perish.
The portion of Jacob is not like these,
for he formed all things,
including the tribe of his inheritance.
Yahweh of Armies is his name.

It doesn’t matter what kind of man-made god is being worshiped in a culture. They all miserably fail when compared to the God of Israel. Had Babylon been paying attention to these people that they had been given permission to take captive, they might have discovered an amazing treasure. Their country could have been great for a long time to come.

This passage reminds us that the God of Israel is both alive and all powerful. He is the one that made all of the stars and it is by His wisdom and power that we have weather. He is the one who made the universe and the rules by which the weather operates. All that we have to do is to look around outside and see that these processes are dynamic. They keep going and going. They remind us that our God is also alive and that His word continues to maintain these dynamic processes.

When you compare that to the Babylonian gods, it’s pretty pathetic. First of all, these gods wouldn’t even be there had their goldsmiths not produced them. The way that this passage is worded makes me think that God is reminding us of the fact that these goldsmiths aren’t even satisfied with their own work. They know that they aren’t alive. They are just silent objects intended to trick the mind into thinking that they are something. These days, computers make very powerful images that appear to be alive. We even have things that modern technologists call “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning.” We all know that the intelligence is artificial, though. Its operation has been determined by imperfect software and data developers. Think about that a little. They are called “developers.” What they do is still developing and that’s because these developers and engineers are not perfect. They have to change their “intelligence” as they discover the wrong things they did before. God made the universe once in six days and stopped. He’s not a “developer,” He’s the Creator. That’s real intelligence. I’m told that complexity in a single cell of our body rivals the complexity of the city of New York. We may get all excited over our silly artificial intelligence, but God’s intelligence is what we should be excited about. Without Him, our computers wouldn’t exist. He is the only one that deserves to be praised and any nation that refuses to accept that will eventually end up like Babylon.

Day 200: The Peril of Trusting in Man’s Greatness

Jeremiah 50:29-34

“Call together the archers against Babylon,
all those who bend the bow.
Encamp against her all around.
Let none of it escape.
Pay her back according to her work.
According to all that she has done, do to her;
for she has been proud against Yahweh,
against the Holy One of Israel.
Therefore her young men will fall in her streets.
All her men of war will be brought to silence in that day,” says Yahweh.
“Behold, I am against you, you proud one,” says the Lord, Yahweh of Armies;
“for your day has come,
the time that I will visit you.
The proud one will stumble and fall,
and no one will raise him up.
I will kindle a fire in his cities,
and it will devour all who are around him.”
Yahweh of Armies says: “The children of Israel and the children of Judah are oppressed together.
All who took them captive hold them fast.
They refuse to let them go.
Their Redeemer is strong.
Yahweh of Armies is his name.
He will thoroughly plead their cause,
that he may give rest to the earth,
and disquiet the inhabitants of Babylon.

One of the dangerous things about investing in the stock market is that people tend to gravitate toward buying stock in large, well situated companies. The logic is that the large companies are more stable and less likely to fail. When we consider these companies in the light of God’s word, a major risk is exposed.

Here it says that Babylon, which was the world power at the time, was to be forced by God to be attacked and to fall. The reason is clearly given here as well. Babylon became “proud against Yahweh, against the Holy One of Israel.” One of the problems with becoming large and well situated, is that you may begin to think that you don’t need God. The Bible and history demonstrate that this is a very common problem. If this is so, then large, well situated institutions of man are actually more dangerous than small ones to invest in. That’s not to say that small ones aren’t proud too though! If companies can easily become proud, what is there to invest in?

The point is that God is the only safe bet. If we become proud and start to depend on our own portfolios, we became a target for God’s judgment. You don’t need any money in the stock market to become proud. You can be proud of your own good works. Perhaps you think that you are doing so many good things in church that all you need to do is to depend on them. It is true that God rewards everyone for the work that is done for Him, but if you begin to rely on your own power to do those good works, you are about to fall. Our good works are only possible as we rely on God’s power. Pride against God must be exposed and corrected so that we will learn that it is only by God’s power that good results. The great civilization of Babylon was easily torn down by God, even though it didn’t seem very likely from man’s perspective. On the other hand, if we trust in God’s power, we will stay strong no matter how big we are.

Day 128: The Curer of the Incurable

Jeremiah 30:12-17

For Yahweh says,
“Your hurt is incurable.
Your wound is grievous.
There is no one to plead your cause,
that you may be bound up.
You have no healing medicines.
All your lovers have forgotten you.
They don’t seek you.
For I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy,
with the chastisement of a cruel one,
for the greatness of your iniquity,
because your sins were increased.
Why do you cry over your injury?
Your pain is incurable.
For the greatness of your iniquity,
because your sins have increased,
I have done these things to you.
Therefore all those who devour you will be devoured.
All your adversaries, everyone of them, will go into captivity.
Those who plunder you will be plunder.
I will make all who prey on you become prey.
For I will restore health to you,
and I will heal you of your wounds,” says Yahweh;
“because they have called you an outcast,
saying, ‘It is Zion, whom no man seeks after.’ ”

This is one of those passages that would be confusing to a person who feels the need to prove the Bible without considering it as a worldview. Here God says that Israel’s “pain is incurable” and then He immediately tells them that He “will restore health” to them. Isn’t God being inconsistent? How can He say that something is incurable and then say that He will cure it? I think that doubts like this can only arise when we fail to assume God’s word to be true. When you doubt God’s word and then attempt to judge it, it leads to confusion like this.

When we assume God’s word to be true, we first assume that God isn’t being inconsistent and that we are making a mistake in our understanding of what He’s saying. How can something be incurable and still be cured by God? I think that the most natural and consistent interpretation is that God intended to cure what they could not cure on their own. From this perspective, it’s pretty clear that God was going to make sure that they fully understood that they were unable to do anything good for themselves. They were going suffer and have no ability to fix it without His involvement.

I can’t think of any more incurable thing than to die, can you? God is even able to cure that according to the Bible. It’s important for us to treat the Bible as it claims to be. It claims to be the words of God which define truth. That’s the nature of a worldview. It’s the set of beliefs we assume without evidence and we all have those. If you think you don’t, that very thought is an example one.

So here we read that things were to get so bad for Israel that it would take a miracle for God to bring them back together as a nation and that’s what God intended to do. He also intended to punish the great nations that brought them down which would also would have probably have seemed impossible. God is supernatural and cannot be stopped by the natural world that He created. No matter what seems possible to us, God’s word will always come true.

Day 91: Jeremiah’s Source of Strength

Jeremiah 20:7-9

Yahweh, you have persuaded me, and I was persuaded.
You are stronger than I, and have prevailed.
I have become a laughingstock all day.
Everyone mocks me.
For as often as I speak, I cry out;
I cry, “Violence and destruction!”
because Yahweh’s word has been made a reproach to me,
and a derision, all day.
If I say, I will not make mention of him,
or speak any more in his name,
then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary with holding it in.
I can’t.

Isn’t it great to read about the strength that Jeremiah had to spend a night locked in stocks only to rebuke the one who put him there as soon as he was let loose? If that’s all I knew, I would be tempted to think that Jeremiah was doing just fine, but right after that incident, we have these words recorded. It’s as if we are listening to Jeremiah’s personal conversation with God.

Jeremiah explains that everyone is mocking him and he feels it. God clearly persuaded him to speak, but everyone is laughing at him. Jeremiah isn’t feeling very strong. What this tells me, is that the strength we see in Jeremiah, is coming from God and that’s something we all need to remember when we read of the great acts of men in the Bible. God is the real hero because it is only by His power that these men were able to do what they did. That same thing is true with every Christian today. We can do great things, but we will have to trust in God’s power to do those things.

This is one of my favorite passages in the Bible because it does a great job of explaining the feeling I have when I know that I’m supposed to say something unpopular. Jeremiah appears to have actually tried to be agreeable and not talk about what God was telling him. He describes the experience as if he were trying to hold fire in his body. He got tired trying to hold it in! When referring to his attempt to hold God’s word inside himself, he simply says: “I can’t”. It reminds me of Martin Luther’s famous words when he was told to recant. He also said: “Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.” At 86 years old, right before he was killed for not worshiping Roman gods, Polycarp who was one of the apostle John’s young disciples, was quoted as saying: “How can I blaspheme my King and my Savior?” It is a pattern of those who cannot stop the truth, to crush the messenger, but it’s also good to see that the messenger’s power comes from God and results in the spreading of God’s word. God will always say what He wants to say and those try to stop it will only make it worse for themselves.