Jeremiah 7:30-34 - The Valley of Slaughter

7:30,31

God reminds Jeremiah yet again why all this disaster is coming. It is not random, it is not undeserved. It is coming because Judah had done evil in the sight of the Lord, and repeatedly so. They had even set up idols in the temple of the Lord, and in so doing had defiled the temple. Remember that they thought they were safe in the Temple. How could they think such a thing when they had defiled it with foreign gods? Yet sin blinds us utterly.

7:32,33

God is slow to anger. He gives us chance after chance to come to our senses, but there comes a point when time is up. That time had been reached for Judah, so the Valley of Ben Hinnom would become the Valley of Slaughter. The slaughter would be so great that they would not be able to bury the dead, they would become food for the birds. We might find it hard to imagine how this can be, if so go and read some accounts of the battlefields in World War 1. We might also ask how can God do this? The people had been sacrificing their children, just as we sacrifice so many on the altar of abortion. We take the consequences of our actions.

7:34

So the sounds of joy and gladness , the celebrations at weddings will come to an end. “The land will become desolate”.We have seen a little, but only a little, of this in our own time with lockdown. Things do not always remain the same.

Matthew 3:13-15 - Let it be so

3:13,14

Now Jesus comes to be baptised, and this causes John some consternation. John knew that Jesus was far greater than he was, and it didn’t seem right to him at all that he should baptise Jesus. If anything, it should be the other way round. It also causes us problems. For Jesus was without sin, so why did He need to be baptised when this was a baptism of repentance from sins?

3:15

Jesus replies that “it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness”. Jesus was acting in our place, He was representing all of humanity. Is 59:20,21 are worth looking at in this context. God’s salvation is for those who repent. Jesus was repenting on behalf of us all. This does not mean that we do not need to repent, for we must do so. John accepted this and agreed to baptise Jesus. See also 2 Cor 5:21.

Jeremiah 7:25-29 - Cut off your hair and throw it away

7:25,26

It was not as though they were not warned. God sent them prophet after prophet to warn them they were on the wrong path, and the consequences that would ensue. Jesus’ parable of the tenants was a retelling of this. Instead of listening and responding, the people were stiff-necked and did even more evil than their ancestors. So things went from bad to worse.

7:27,28

They had ignored all the previous prophets, and Jeremiah is warned that this pattern is not about to change! It is no easy task being a prophet. Jeremiah is the last prophet, the final warning. And he is to tell the people that they are literally drinking in the last chance saloon. When the end comes the people will be without excuse. “Truth has perished, it has vanished from their lips”. We see this same pattern happening in our society. As people defy God, lies become their currency.

7:29

Cutting off the hair was a sign of morning, and Jeremiah is urged to take up a lament. There is a time to resist disaster, to seek to fight it off or avoid it. But there comes a time when the cause is lost and instead one has to learn from the experience. God had sent many prophets, all to no avail. Instead, Israel would need to endure the defeat, and then to learn from it. This generation was under His wrath. As an aside, we should note that even in these times there were some faithful, and it was still “worth” being faithful.

Matthew 3:11,12 - He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit

3:11

John’s mission was important, but he knew that he was preparing the way for someone far greater. This is a point emphasised again and again in the gospels. In Acts 19:1-3 we see that a legend of sorts had built up around John the Baptist, so the gospel writers were making sure that people knew what John was actually about, and it was certainly not about drawing attention to himself. As preachers we need to make sure that our role is to draw attention to Jesus, not to ourselves. One of the marks of Jesus being greater is that He would baptise with the Spirit and with fire. Jesus’ message and ministry is a ministry of judgement. It is also a ministry of forgiveness and of new birth.

3:12

In this verse it is the judgement side that is stressed. This is an aspect that is either overlooked or ignored by most. When sin-affirming churches prattle about the love of Jesus they usually have no idea what they are talking about. They have no idea what the love of God is, nor of the true depths of that love. We have all rebelled against God in many and various ways, and so are deserving of judgement, and are suffering the consequences. Our sin and rebellion goes deep, but God’s forgiveness and healing goes even deeper.

Jeremiah 7:21-24 - But they did not listen

7:21-23

The people thought they would be OK because they offered the sacrifices. God tells them that this is absolute nonsense. He points back to the time when He brought them out of Egypt and to the Law. The people focused on the ritualistic aspects, God draws their attention to the most important parts, the laws they were to obey. The laws had values in themselves: worshipping only God, loving their neighbours, not lying, not exploiting people etc. The ritualistic aspects had no value in themselves, but only in what they represented. Likewise, we should not place a wrong emphasis on communion or baptism. These things are indeed good and valuable in the right way, but if we think they have value in a “magic” type of sense we are badly mistaken. The command God had given them was that it would go well with them if they walked in obedience, as it was they were living in abject disobedience.

7:24

God had called them out, and they were meant to go forwards, not backwards, to learn Godly ways, not heathen ways. They did not listen to the Lord. Instead they followed the “evil inclinations of their stubborn hearts”. Oh, we need to be so careful about this, so careful that we follow God’s word not the imaginations of our hearts. 

Matthew 3:9,10 - The axe is already at the root

3:9

The religious leaders thought that their Abrahamic ancestry guaranteed their place in God’s Kingdom. This was also a point of contention with Jesus (John 8:31-37). The religious leaders just did not understand. They did not think that their own attitudes, actions and character mattered. This is a danger we all need to be aware of. We can so easily think that because we have a position, or because we go to a certain church, or some other reason, that God is not interested in who we really are. Moreover, God can make children out of any group of people, as indeed He does through the gospel and its global reach.

3:10

“The axe is already ...” We need to understand what the gospel is really about. It is not all about God “loving” everyone and our being nice to everyone and telling them they are doing OK. It is fundamental, it is getting to the root of humanity’s problem, which is our rebellion against God. Of course God is love, it is a love that faces up to the reality of our position and went to the cross to pay the price for our sin. If we do not acknowledge our sin then the gospel has nothing else to say to us,. But if we do, then there is complete forgiveness, and a wonderful work of transformation begins in us.

Jeremiah 7:19,20 - My anger and my wrath will be poured out

7:19

It wasn’t actually God who is provoked. Militant atheists and secularists may feel pleased with themselves when they attack God, but it is themselves that they hurt. When we sin we harm ourselves. Sometimes people boast of their sin, but in reality it is to their shame, and the truth of this will become evident one day.

7:20

“My anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place ... it will burn and not be quenched”. I have said this before, several times, but now seems a good time to say it again. We need to understand what the wrath of God is and is not. It is often portrayed as uncontrolled rage, this may be what human wrath ends up as, but this is not an accurate picture of divine wrath. There are two key aspects to divine wrath. One is that it is a passionate hatred of sin, and the effects of sin on both the sinner, and the one(s) sinned against. The other aspect is that it is entirely rational and just, based on truth. There is nothing uncontrolled about it. It is both passionate and just. Judah needed to understand the seriousness of the situation, judgement was coming.