THIS is a sad passage where Jeremiah outlines the inevitability of God’s judgment on His people. The Lord is taking away their harvest and the people realise that there is no way out of their predicament. However, they come to very wrong conclusions because they haven’t understood the position. Their immediate reaction is to flee to their fortified cities (v14). Instead of turning to God, even though they know they can’t escape His judgment, they suggest a last-ditch attempt to save themselves.
This is the attitude of many people today. They look at society and they see everything degenerating into chaos. They see no answer to society’s problems, so what do they do – turn to God? No! They blame the government, they blame the schools, they blame the unemployed- anyone but themselves for having turned away from the living God. Despite being unfaithful the people of
Jeremiah pictures the people (v 19) unable to accept that the Lord is no longer defending them. This is a cry we hear in the Church today. It is as if we have mislaid God somewhere. We turn to all sorts of schemes for reforming the Church, for getting more “with it” to attract young people. The real problem, which never seems to occur to people, is that God isn’t given His rightful place any longer. Members are exhausted with all the effort to keep their church-circus on the road and still things go from bad to worse. It never occurred to the people of
