Jeremiah 4: Whose fault? All are guilty!

 

Jeremiah Chapter 6/7  

Jeremiah predicted that a great evil (Babylon) would come from the north and destroy Israel.  His prediction was based on an astute assessment of the current situation and a reasonable conclusion.  No one wanted to hear or head his warning.  

Today we have many people making such assessments and judgments about the state of our nation and the threats to it from the south and from within.  If Jeremiah was here today, I think he would be reminding us that all of us (or many of us) have benefited from the last thirty years of unrestrained capitalism and unprecedented environmental destruction.  We need to get past the blame game and all pull together to change our ways, turn ourselves back to our Christian values of justice and peace, repentance and mercy, compassion and love.  We need in our personal and corporate lives to reflect those values or our destruction will come just as surely as Babylon destroyed Israel and it won’t matter whose fault it was.

Always there is a note of hope that change can happen.   

Jeremiah by Rembrandt  Weary with Holding It In

The Imminence and Horror of the Invasion

6 Flee for safety, O children of Benjamin, from the midst of Jerusalem!

Blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and raise a signal on Beth-haccherem;

for evil looms out of the north, and great destruction.

⁶ For thus says the Lord of hosts:

Cut down her trees; cast up a siege ramp against Jerusalem.

This is the city that must be punished: there is nothing but oppression within her.

⁷ As a well keeps its water fresh, so she keeps fresh her wickedness;

violence and destruction are heard within her;

sickness and wounds are ever before me.

⁹ Thus says the Lord of hosts:

¹⁰ To whom shall I speak and give warning that they may hear?

See, their ears are closed, they cannot listen.

The word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn; they take no pleasure in it.

¹¹ But I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of holding it in.

Pour it out on the children in the street, and on the gatherings of young men as well;

both husband and wife shall be taken, the old folk and the very aged.

¹³ For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain;

and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.

¹⁶ Thus says the Lord:

Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, 

where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.

But they said, “We will not walk in it.”

¹⁷ Also I raised up sentinels for you:  “Give heed to the sound of the trumpet!”

But they said, “We will not give heed.”

Jeremiah Proclaims God’s Judgment on the Nation

7 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: ² Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah, you that enter these gates to worship the Lord. ³ Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you^[f] in this place. 

⁵ For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, ⁶ if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, ⁷ then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever.