Jeremiah 11 Part 2

I really enjoyed Warren Wiersbe's commentary on Chapter 11 and so am sharing some highlights of it with you here:

A general outline that you can use for Chapter 11 goes like this:

Breaking God's Covenant (11:1-8)

Conspiring Against God's Authority (11:9-12:6)
                  1) Conspiracy Against the King (9-17)

"God always keeps his promises, whether to bless or to chasten, and the greater the priveleges we have from Him, the greater the reponsibility we have to Him."

Two pictures that reveal how futile their religious faith really was:
     1.  a worshiper in the temple (11:15)

     "God called the nation "my beloved".  Their worship in the temple should have been an expression of their true love to Him but instead it was an exercise in futility...when worship becomes wickedness and people rejoice in sinning, then the light has turned to darkness and there is no hope."  

This will maybe remind you of Matthew 6:22-24.  (I have mentioned it before but I see a lot of connections between the content of Jeremiah and the Sermon on the Mount)

"The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light that is in you is
darkness, how great is the darkness!"

2.  a tree in the storm (16-17)

In scripture sometimes trees represent individuals  Jerem. 17:8; Psalm 1:3, 52:8, 92:12; Zech. 4:3, and sometimes nations:  Is. 10:33-34, 18:5; Ezekial 17:31

Israel is compared to an olive tree in verses 16-17, and image the Paul also uses in Romans 11 to describe the grafting in of the Gentiles to the Jewish tree.

"This tree is prized in the Middle East because of its fruit and the useful oil made from it.  Judah
thought of herself as a 'thriving olive tree' that would never fall, but God saw a storm coming and the wind would break the branches and the lightening would set the tree on fire.  Jerusalem would be
broken down and burned like a useless olive tree."

A good reminder the Weirsbe closes with is that before we condemn Judah we must first examine our own hearts and our own worship.  If you look to Revelation chapters 2-3 you see many years later the message of God to the churches....it isn't much different:

"But I have this against you, that you have lost your first love."  Rev. 2:4

"But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam,
who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacraficed to idols and to commit acts of immorality." Rev. 2:14

"But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and
she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacraficed to idols."  Rev 2:20

"I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead." Rev. 3:1

The Jews in Jeremiah's time said, "The temple, the temple, the temple."  believing they could never be destroyed.  We today need to be careful not to say, "The church, the church, the church..."  or some other salvation.  "And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved." (Romans 4:12  That is our rally...Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.  And we can never lose our awe of the Gospel....that He conquered sin and death for us.  Yet, it is obviously easy to become lukewarm...to have a reputation for being alive but be dead.  We can't treat the Gospel like the Jews treated the temple....the Gospel, the Gospel, the Gospel...only as the Gospel invades the heart and the Spirit works and the body lives in truth and faithfulness is the Gospel confirmed.  The Gospel is no talisman but a miraculous indwelling of the Spirit of God to produce the life of faithfulness the God desires and we too must look inward to the heart and search it.  God's work to the churches in Rev 2-3 is REPENT.

CONSPIRACY AGAINST JEREMIAH (11:18-23)

1.  The people of Anothoth, Jeremiah's home town, plotted to kill him because his message convicted them.  Rather than repent, they decided to destroy the messanger.

2.  They thought his prophecies were harmful.  Jeremiah preached judgment while the false prophets preached peace.  Jeremiah insisted that the people obey the law and being their sacrafices to the temple and not the high places.  Jeremiah was pro-Babylon, the rulers were pro-Egypt.

11:18  "The Lord made it known to me."

This is the first of several occasions in his life where Jeremiah privately poured out his heart to the Lord and asked him to fight his battles and help him with his depression.  (Jer. 11:19-20, 12:1-4, 15:10-17, 17:12-18, 18:20-23, 20:7-18)

"Publicly Jeremiah was bold before Men, privately he was broken before God."