February 21, 2015
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

Acts and Consequences

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Opening Prayer

Lord, You have liberated me from the past. Help me to stay faithful to You this day, and every day.

Read Jeremiah 19:1-15

[1] This is what the LORD says: “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take along some of the elders of the people and of the priests [2] and go out to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. There proclaim the words I tell you, [3] and say, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, you kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem. This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Listen! I am going to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. [4] For they have forsaken me and made this a place of foreign gods; they have burned incense in it to gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah ever knew, and they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent. [5] They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal-something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind. [6] So beware, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Valley of Ben Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. [7] “‘In this place I will ruin the plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, at the hands of those who want to kill them, and I will give their carcasses as food to the birds and the wild animals. [8] I will devastate this city and make it an object of horror and scorn; all who pass by will be appalled and will scoff because of all its wounds. [9] I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them.’ [10] “Then break the jar while those who go with you are watching, [11] and say to them, ‘This is what the LORD Almighty says: I will smash this nation and this city just as this potter’s jar is smashed and cannot be repaired. They will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no more room. [12] This is what I will do to this place and to those who live here, declares the LORD. I will make this city like Topheth. [13] The houses in Jerusalem and those of the kings of Judah will be defiled like this place, Topheth-all the houses where they burned incense on the roofs to all the starry hosts and poured out drink offerings to other gods.'” [14] Jeremiah then returned from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy, and stood in the court of the LORD’s temple and said to all the people, [15] “This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘Listen! I am going to bring on this city and all the villages around it every disaster I pronounced against them, because they were stiff-necked and would not listen to my words.'”

Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Reflect

“Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me” (Jonah 1:1). In contrast to Jeremiah, Jonah refuses to obey the Lord and takes off in the opposite direction!

Judah was established by God and backed by his wonderful promises. It had such promise, but it sank to the murkiest depths (Isa. 3:8). God asked Jeremiah to proclaim another prophecy and perform another dramatized sermon. The prophet took priests and elders to the Valley of Ben Hinnom, at the foot of the mount on which Jerusalem was located. This notorious valley was “a place of foreign gods” (4). It was an idolater’s dream but a godly person’s nightmare. Baal, the popular Canaanite god, was the super-idol there, represented by iron images with raised arms. These were heated red hot and crying infants were placed on the idol’s arms to die horribly as sacrifices (5). To such despicable depths had Judah fallen!

Imagine how Jeremiah felt when he saw the repugnant acts in that valley of idols, just outside the city of God (cf. Acts 17:16). What a travesty! Filled with God’s Spirit, Jeremiah pronounced God’s judgment on the valley, which would become a death valley. Jerusalem’s inhabitants would suffer from a siege that would turn them into desperate cannibals (9). Jeremiah took out the clay jar he had bought and smashed it in front of his audience, acting out symbolically what God would do to Jerusalem and Judah (10-13). Was this enough to send a chilling fear down the spines of the idolaters bowing before their idols? No, they were described by God as “stiff-necked” (15) because they stubbornly refused to listen to God.

These days we hear of despicable things being done around the world–murder, child abuse, parents murdering their children, pedophiles–all in pursuit of the modern idols of pleasure, power and possessions. We know what God thinks of these perversions and we are sent to the valleys of idolatry to warn people and pray for them.

Apply

Christians often choose to live safe, cloistered lives. To what modern valley of Hinnom may God be sending you? How would it change your life?

Closing prayer

Faithful One, I know I am more like Jonah than Jeremiah. I am fickle while You remain faithful. Strengthen my resolve to be faithful to You.

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