The Book of Jeremiah

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God sends a search party through Jerusalem with an astonishing offer: find just one honest person "that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it", pardon the whole city for the sake of one. It echoes Abraham's plea for Sodom (Genesis 18), and once again the just are too few. Even those who say "The LORD liveth" swear it "falsely", religious words with no truth behind them. God's discipline has had no effect: "thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved... they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return." Jeremiah first excuses the common people, "surely these are poor; they are foolish," they simply don't know God's ways. So he goes to "the great men," who should know better, but finds they have "altogether broken the yoke." From bottom to top, the city has rejected God. So judgment is pictured as wild beasts, lion, wolf, leopard, tearing the guilty. Their sins are gross: idolatry, and adultery so shameless they were like well-fed horses "neighing after his neighbour's wife." God's question is just: "shall I not visit for these things?"

Gospel Focus

God's offer to pardon a whole city for one righteous person reveals the bent of His heart: He looks for any reason to show mercy. In Jeremiah's day no such man could be found, "there is none righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10). But the gospel is that God finally provided the one Man He was searching for. Where Jerusalem could not produce a single righteous soul to spare it, God sent His own Son, the truly righteous One, and for His sake pardons not one city but a world of sinners. "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous" (Romans 5:19). The search of Jeremiah 5:1 finds its answer at Calvary. And notice the warning about a hardening heart: the same discipline that should have driven the people to repentance instead made their "faces harder than a rock." Trials do not automatically soften us; resisted long enough, they harden us. "To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts" (Hebrews 3:15). Let God's dealings turn you back, not turn you to stone.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God commands the invaders to strip Jerusalem's defenses ("take away her battlements") but still, in mercy, "make not a full end." The core sin is unbelief that has curdled into denial: "They have belied the LORD, and said, It is not he; neither shall evil come upon us." They convinced themselves God would do nothing, and dismissed His prophets as empty "wind" with "no word" in them. God's response is pointed: because you call the prophetic word "wind," "I will make my words in thy mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall devour them." The word they scorned will burn. Then God names the instrument: "a nation... from far," ancient, mighty, speaking an unknown tongue (Babylon), whose "quiver is as an open sepulchre." They will devour the harvest, the flocks, the vines, and the fortified cities "wherein thou trustedst." Yet even here the thread of grace holds: "I will not make a full end with you." And God explains the justice of it all in one clean sentence: "Like as ye have forsaken me, and served strange gods in your land, so shall ye serve strangers in a land that is not yours." The punishment fits the crime.

Gospel Focus

The deadliest error in this passage is practical atheism: "It is not he; neither shall evil come upon us." They believed in God formally while living as though He would never act, never judge, never keep His word. It is the same scoffing the New Testament warns will come, "Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were" (2 Peter 3:4). But God's word is not "wind." What He says, He does, "so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void" (Isaiah 55:11). Those who treat Scripture as empty air will one day feel it as fire. And notice the exact justice: "as ye have forsaken me... so shall ye serve strangers." Sin has a way of becoming its own sentence, we get more of what we chose. Yet threaded through the severest judgment is mercy, "I will not make a full end." God disciplines to redeem, never to annihilate His people. The word He speaks is fire to the scoffer but light to the one who trembles at it. Which will it be for you?

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God turns from the courtroom to creation to shame His people's lack of reverence. He calls them "foolish... without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not", spiritually blind and deaf to what is plain. Then He asks the piercing question: "Fear ye not me?... will ye not tremble at my presence?" And He gives a reason drawn from the shoreline: He "placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it." The vast, roaring ocean, for all its power, cannot cross a line of soft sand, because God decreed the boundary. If the untamable sea obeys Him, how foolish for His own people not to. Yet "this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart." They never think to say, "Let us now fear the LORD our God," the very God who "giveth rain" in its season and guarantees the harvest. And here is the tragedy: the good things they lacked were their own doing. "Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you." Their sin did not just offend God; it robbed them of His blessings.

Gospel Focus

The sea held back by sand is a picture of the reverence we owe our Creator. The same God who "shut up the sea with doors" and said, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further" (Job 38:8-11), is the God who commands our worship, and Jesus is that God in flesh, the One at whose word "the wind ceased, and there was a great calm" (Mark 4:39), so that His disciples asked, "What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?" (Mark 4:41). The sea obeys Jesus because Jesus is the LORD who set its bounds. To fear such a God is not cringing terror but the reverent awe that is "the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). And note the sober lesson of verse 25: "your sins have withholden good things from you." Sin is not only guilt to be forgiven; it is a thief that steals the blessings God longs to give. How much good do we forfeit by refusing to fear and obey Him? The remedy is to return to reverence, to tremble again at the presence of the God whom the ocean obeys, and to find that the hand which bounds the sea is the same hand that opens to give rain, harvest, and every good gift.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God ends by exposing the rot at every level. Among His own people are "wicked men" who "lay wait, as he that setteth snares," trapping fellow human beings for profit as a hunter traps birds. Their houses are "full of deceit," and by it "they are become great, and waxen rich", "waxen fat" and glossy with prosperity. But their wealth is built on injustice: "they judge not the cause... of the fatherless... and the right of the needy do they not judge." They ignore the very people God commands them to defend. So God asks again, "Shall I not visit for these things?" Then comes the summary of the whole tragedy, "a wonderful and horrible thing", and its three stunning parts: "The prophets prophesy falsely" (the preachers lie), "and the priests bear rule by their means" (the priests use the lies to grab power and profit), "and my people love to have it so" (the people prefer it that way). A corrupt pulpit, a self-serving priesthood, and a congregation that loves the comfortable lie, all three conspire together. And God closes with a question that hangs unanswered over the whole nation: "what will ye do in the end thereof?" When the lie finally collapses and the reckoning comes, what then?

Gospel Focus

Verse 31 is one of the most searching diagnoses in the Bible, because it does not blame only the false teachers, it indicts the hearers who "love to have it so." A lie needs a willing audience. Paul foretold the same, "the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears" (2 Timothy 4:3). People often get the preachers they want, and if we want to be flattered rather than confronted, we will find plenty who will oblige. The safeguard is to love truth more than comfort, to want the physician's honest diagnosis rather than soothing words. And the final question, "what will ye do in the end thereof?", is one every soul must answer. Comfortable lies feel good now, but they cannot help us at the end, at death, at judgment, when reality finally arrives. Only the truth, however hard, can save us, and the Truth is a Person: "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Do not love the lie. Love the Truth while there is still time to be saved by Him, for the end is coming, and the only good answer to "what will ye do in the end?" is to be found in Christ.