8 “Furthermore, tell the people, ‘This is what the Lord says: See, I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death. 9 Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague. But whoever goes out and surrenders to the Babylonians who are besieging you will live; they will escape with their lives. 10 I have determined to do this city harm and not good, declares the Lord. It will be given into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will destroy it with fire.’ –Jeremiah 21:8-10
Can you imagine hearing this word from the Lord if you were a Jew living in the Promised Land?
If you stay and fight and try to persevere the land then you are going to die by the sword. If you go into captivity by the Babylonians…if you surrender…then you’ll live. This seems so counter-intuitive. Shouldn’t they fight for the Promised Land? Isn’t this the land that God gave them? Why would God be giving it to someone else?
But what Jeremiah is all about is whether or not folks will believe the Word of God over their tradition, culture, and intuition. Can they discern the Word of the Lord from the words of the lying prophets?
What happens is that a ton of people turn against Jeremiah. Church people. People who are absolutely confident that God would never do a thing like this. Jeremiah is a sell-out, they thought. He’s calling them to surrender everything they’ve worked for, to go back on years of tradition, and to be in a season of pain and surrender. That’s certainly not the will of God for his chosen people.
But it was.
And the message of Jeremiah (just as it also does today) exposed the two groups of people: Those who are messed up and know it and those who are messed up and deny it or are blind to it.
Every one of us is messed up. It’s just a matter of whether or not we are going to believe God’s Word on this or our culture, our feelings, our tradition, or something else. But if you realize that you’re messed up, that you’ve fallen short, that it’s not just that you aren’t perfect—but inwardly (apart from grace) every thought of your heart is evil, then you are in a position to enjoy the gospel.
On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity. –Zechariah 13:1
That’s just news if you’re clean. If you’ve got everything all put together then it’s somebody else’s news. But if you’re dirty, if you are in dire need of a fountain, then this is the best news you’ve ever heard. That’s why the people in Jeremiah’s day had to go off into exile. The good news isn’t good news if you don’t think you need it. And so that’s why Jeremiah 21 was such a strange request.
Is their heart fixated on the Promised Land or the Promised One?
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