Jeremiah 26-29
Oh, how I love God’s Word in Jeremiah 29! But before we get there, we must remember: The life of a prophet is anything but easy.
Jeremiah 26 recounts his last great public plea for repentance. “Perhaps they will listen and each will turn from his evil way,” God says. But instead of repentance, the people, high and low, seized him and shouted, “You must die!” Jeremiah comes within an inch of martyrdom then and there. This chapter reminds us of another prophet who did not escape martyrdom during that same period: Uriah the son of Shemaiah (vv. 20-23).
Jeremiah 27 tells us of the false prophets who completed with Jeremiah for the hearts of Israel’s leaders. They were prophesying false hope. Jeremiah was prophesying the reality of the Lord’s discipline: “You must submit to the Babylonians; those who do will not be destroyed, but rather carried into exile—from which they will return!” As an object lesson, the Lord instructed Jeremiah to wear a yoke of submission as he prophesied.
Jeremiah 28 introduces one false prophet in particular, who removed Jeremiah’s yoke and broke it, saying that Nebuchadnezzar, who had already taken much of the Temple furnishings to Babylon, would bring them back in two years. Jeremiah denounced him, and he was dead within a year!
In Jeremiah 29, the prophet sits down to write a letter to those Nebuchadnezzar had already carried away to Babylon. It is a letter of encouragement. It reads like a letter God may have wanted to send to us, for we, like the Jewish exiles of Jeremiah’s day, are strangers in a strange land, citizens of another country. What does God have in mind for us, while we are in exile? Jeremiah 29:11 sums it up beautifully:
“I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Your fellow pilgrim through the Prophets,
Pastor Gary
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