Straight to the Heart of Jeremiah and Ezekiel

60 Bite-Sized Insights

Phil Moore

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780857219817
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblischer Kommentar

Jeremiah and Ezekiel are among the most neglected treasures of the Bible.

They knew that what they said would be unpopular - both then and now - but they also knew that it was God's Word and the only remedy for the problems that were facing the people of God. As a result, Christians today can still discover what God says to a Church in trouble. The truth isn't always popular, but Jeremiah and Ezekiel show us that it's glorious.

God inspired the Bible for a reason. He wants you read it and let it change your life. If you are willing to take this challenge seriously, then you will love Phil Moore's devotional commentaries. Their bite-sized chapters are punchy and relevant, yet crammed with fascinating scholarship. Welcome to a new way of reading the Bible. Welcome to the Straight to the Heart series.

Jeremiah 1–25:

Radical Surgery is Needed

You Go First (Jeremiah 1:1–19)

“Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them.”

(Jeremiah 1:17)

One of the best lines in the movie Shrek comes when the evil Lord Farquaad sends his soldiers off on a near-impossible mission. He informs them grandly but callously that some of them may have to die – but that it’s a sacrifice that he is willing to make!¹

The opening verses of the book of Jeremiah reassure us that the prophet is nothing like Lord Farquaad. He does not merely inform other people that radical surgery is needed. He is the very first to lie down gladly on the Lord’s operating table.

Jeremiah is introduced to us as “one of the priests at Anathoth”, a town three miles to the northeast of Jerusalem that was synonymous with sin and corruption. Not only was the town named after the Canaanite war goddess Anath, but it was also home to a family of priests that had been spiritually sidelined for the sins of its ancestors. The family had been cursed because Eli tolerated wickedness within among his sons, and the family had been exiled to Anathoth as a result of Abiathar’s treachery towards King Solomon.² Jeremiah had therefore grown up in a family that tried to keep its nose clean in the hope of being reprieved, so when the Lord called him to pronounce a dire diagnosis over the disobedient nation of Judah, he was asking him to surrender all hope of ever being restored to the ranks of the respectable.³ Preaching such a message would make the prophet so unpopular that even the disgraced priests of Anathoth would seek to murder him in 11:21–23. Nobody likes to be given bad news, so the Lord warns Jeremiah upfront that serving as his prophet will cost him everything. In order to preach that only radical surgery can save the nation of Judah, Jeremiah must be the first to submit to God’s surgeon’s scalpel.

These opening verses inform us that Jeremiah preached his unpopular message for over forty years. He started in 627 BC, in the thirteenth year of King Josiah. He carried on throughout the reigns of the last four kings of Judah, then continued to prophesy even after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC.⁴ Jeremiah expresses his frustration over this in 25:3, while still only halfway through his marathon of ministry. He would suffer physically when the kings of Judah tortured him and threw him into prison. He would suffer emotionally when the Lord forbade him from marrying, even though all the other priests in his family had married.⁵ He would suffer spiritually when his insights made him weep for his unrepentant nation. Unlike Lord Farquaad, Jeremiah completely practises what he preaches. Not for nothing is he known as The Weeping Prophet. The Lord calls Jeremiah to embrace this cost and to lead the way in surrendering to his surgeon’s scalpel. He encourages him that his life is brimfull of destiny. Before he was conceived in his mother’s womb, the Lord had already chosen him to serve as his prophet to the nations (verse 5).⁶ This is very good news. It reminds us that our salvation and significance derive from God’s unsolicited grace towards us and not from our own attempts to win his favour.⁷ But it didn’t sound like good news to Jeremiah at the time.⁸ He tries to postpone his operation to another day, protesting (verse 6), “Alas, Sovereign Lord, I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”⁹ The Lord responds by pledging to stand alongside him at all times to protect him and to give him wisdom beyond his years. The Lord fortifies Jeremiah still further by doing something that he knows will remind him of the commissioning of the prophet Isaiah. One of the interesting features of the book of Jeremiah is how often it echoes the other Old Testament prophets. He is even saved from death row in 26:17–19 when some of Judah’s leaders notice how similar his words sound to those of the prophet Micah. When the Lord touches Jeremiah’s mouth, it is therefore a deliberate echo of the way in which he commissioned the prince of prophets back in Isaiah 6:6–7. Whenever Jeremiah feels lonely and isolated, this action will remind him that he is merely the latest soldier in a great prophetic army.

The Lord offers Jeremiah a third encouragement through some clever wordplay. If the second syllable of the name Jeremiah comes from the Hebrew verb rūm, then his name means The Lord Lifts Up or The Lord Raises Up, but if it comes from the Hebrew verb rāmāh then his name means The Lord Throws Down or The Lord Razes to The Ground. God uses this ambiguity to encourage Jeremiah in verse 10 that both are true. His words will tear down the wicked in their arrogance and they will build up the humble in their salvation. He will preach the gospel that is later likened to a double-edged sword.¹⁰

The Lord encourages Jeremiah further by giving him some quick visions to kickstart his prophetic ministry. The Hebrew words for almond tree and for watching are shāqēd and shōqēd, so Jeremiah’s first picture is a simple promise that the Lord is watching to ensure that everything that Jeremiah speaks will be fulfilled. The vision of a pot of boiling water poured out from the north against Jerusalem is a first hint at which nation the Lord will use as his surgeon’s scalpel to operate on his people.¹¹

The Lord therefore ends this commissioning chapter by calling Jeremiah to go first. “Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them.¹² Today I have made you a fortified city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall to stand against the whole land … They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you.”

The people of Judah may not like Jeremiah’s prophecies but, when they watch him gladly go first onto the Lord’s operating table, some of them will start to believe his message that only radical surgery can save their nation.

_________

¹Shrek (DreamWorks Pictures, 2001).

²Joshua 21:17–18, 1 Samuel 2:27–36 and 1 Kings 2:26–27.

³Jeremiah’s father was named Hilkiah, which means The Lord Is My Portion and which was also the name of the high priest in Jerusalem (2 Kings 22:8). Although their cursed family had been barred from the Temple, the priests of Anathoth still longed to rejoin the other priestly families in Jerusalem.

⁴Josiah reigned 640–609 BC, Jehoahaz reigned 609 BC, Jehoiakim reigned 609–598 BC, Jehoiachin reigned 598–597 BC and Zedekiah reigned 597–586 BC. We do not know how Jeremiah died, but Jewish tradition says that he was stoned to death by some of the Jewish survivors in Egypt after the fall of Jerusalem.

⁵Jeremiah’s call to singleness would be a prophetic sign to his hearers (16:1–4), as was Hosea’s call to marry a prostitute and Ezekiel’s call not to grieve after his wife died (Hosea 1:2 and Ezekiel 24:15–24).

⁶Jeremiah is not just called to prophesy to the nation of Judah, but also to the Gentile nations. He does this in chapters 46–51, and also in his proclamation of God’s new and better covenant for everyone who believes.

⁷The Apostle Paul echoes this in Romans 9:10–16 and Ephesians 2:8–10.

⁸“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” is still greeted by many as bad news today, since it answers the question of when human life begins. It stands alongside Psalm 22:10, Luke 1:41–44 and Galatians 1:15 in declaring that life begins at conception and that to terminate a pregnancy is therefore to take a life.

⁹This is a poor excuse, since the priests of Anathoth had all been cursed with never living to old age (1 Samuel 2:32). Jeremiah was already in his teens or twenties, so the sooner he started, the better!

¹⁰Hebrews 4:12. Four out of the six things that God speaks over Jeremiah in 1:10 are about tearing down. Only two are about building up. If we want to preach for salvation, we need to preach against sin.

¹¹Jeremiah started prophesying in 627 BC, around the same year that Babylon threw off Assyrian rule in the north and began amassing its own empire. Still, God insists in 1:10 that Jeremiah is the real nation-changer.

¹²The great antidote to the fear of people is to fear the Lord instead. The Lord essentially warns Jeremiah: Do not be afraid of these people, or I will give you good reason to be afraid in front of them!

Head Down (Jeremiah 2:1–3:5)

“They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves.”

(Jeremiah 2:5)

An old Persian proverb warns us that “A fish rots from the head down.”¹ Whenever a nation or an organization goes bad, the problem can always be traced back to the top. In this first prophecy in his collection, the prophet Jeremiah agrees. He traces the heart of Judah’s problem right back to the heart of Judah’s problematic leaders.

The twelve tribes of Israel were always meant to look to the Lord as their true leader. In 2:1–3, the Lord reminisces fondly about the early days after the Exodus when that was briefly true. The Israelites looked to him as their Deliverer and they...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Contents
• About the Straight to the Heart series
• Introduction: Only Radical Surgery Can Save This Patient
• Jeremiah 1–25: Radical Surgery is Needed
• Jeremiah 26–52: Radical Surgery Has Begun
• Lamentations: Responding to Surgery
• Ezekiel 1–32: Further Surgery is Needed
• Ezekiel 33–48: The Results of Surgery
• Conclusion: Only Radical Surgery Can Save This Patient