God Deals With Sin (Ezekiel 36: 2–28)

Warning of the real dangers facing humanity

The true gospel is needed to break down sectarianism

Ezekiel: Father of modern Judaism

Living with other gods

A fearful message.

The God of Creation is a god of action.

The Prophet’s appeal to common sense.

Say to them, ‘This is what the Lord says: “When men fall down, do they not get up? When a man turns away, does he not return? Why then have these people turned away? Why does Jerusalem always turn away? They cling to deceit; they refuse to return. I have listened attentively, but they do not say what is right.

No-one repents of his wickedness, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Each pursues his own course like a horse charging into battle. Even the stork in the sky knows her appointed seasons, and the dove, the swift and the thrush observe the time of their migration. But my people do not know the requirements of the Lord.”’ (Jeremiah 8:4-7)

In this passage Jeremiah makes an appeal to common sense. He says: when someone stumbles and falls over, if they are a normal, healthy human being, they don’t stay lying on the ground bemoaning their plight - they get up. In the same way, if someone finds he is going in the wrong direction, he doesn’t just increase his speed hoping that he will get to the right place in the end! He recognises that he has to turn around and go in the right direction – it’s plain common sense!

Jeremiah then makes an appeal to nature, saying that even the birds in the air know the times and seasons, observing their times of migration so that they are not caught in the wrong place in wintertime. When they see the signs of winter approaching, they fly away to warmer places. If they did not observe the signs of approaching danger, they would not live to survive the winter storms.

The citizens of Jerusalem and the general population of Judah were so stupid, they were not even exercising ordinary common sense and recognising the danger that was plainly to be seen, if only they would open their eyes. If the birds were able to see the signs of approaching winter, the people of Israel and Judah ought to have had no difficulty in perceiving the signs of danger on the international horizon. There was plenty of news from travelling merchants that the Babylonian army was actually on the move and heading towards the land of Judah.

Jeremiah appeals to the people of Jerusalem and Judah to exercise plain common sense and open their eyes to the obvious danger ahead.

God’s Conditional Promises

Of course, Jeremiah knew that the major responsibility for this national blindness lay firmly with the priests and prophets. They proclaimed publicly that the Temple was a holy place where the Lord God of Israel had his presence. God would divinely protect the building that Solomon had created and dedicated - he would never allow it to fall into enemy hands.

But Jeremiah knew that when Solomon had prayed at the opening of the Temple, he had recognised that God’s presence and blessings were conditional upon the obedience of the nation, that they should have no other God than Yahweh the God of Israel.

Idolatry was everywhere to be seen: not only at countryside shrines and high places up in the hills, but even in the streets of Jerusalem, where the people baked cakes to Astarte, the goddess of the Assyrian Empire who was also worshipped by the Babylonians. She had obviously blessed the Babylonians greatly, so the people of Judah thought that she might do the same for them.

Common Sense Ignored

Jeremiah was horrified at the extent of spiritual idolatry right across the nation and while he primarily blamed the priests and prophets, there was really no excuse for the people, because from infancy each one was taught the Shema:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up… (Deut 6:4-7)

The first of the Ten Commandments was “You shall have no other gods before me.” Everyone in Judah should have known this, so there was really no excuse for spiritual ignorance. If the people simply exercised basic common sense, they should have known that God would not protect an unrighteous city and a land full of idolatry. They should have known the basic ‘requirements of the Lord’.

It was the responsibility of the priests to teach the people the terms of the covenant between God and the people of Israel that had been agreed by Moses when he called the assembly at Mount Sinai. But it was the responsibility of the prophets to look for signs of danger to the nation, including on the international scene. Both priests and prophets were failing in their duty, which is the reason why the people did not know the requirements of the Lord.

Jeremiah blamed the priests and prophets for the idolatry in the nation – but there was no excuse for the people either.

Disaster Ahead

Jeremiah was a lone voice on the streets of Jerusalem; banned from the Temple and even threatened by his own family. “Beware of your friends: do not trust your brothers,” he was warned. “Friend deceives friend, and no one speaks the truth. They have taught their tongues to lie” (Jer 9:4-5).

Jeremiah wept much for the people of Jerusalem because he could see what was going to happen to them: “Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people” (Jer 9:1).

If there was no excuse for not knowing the requirements of the Lord in Jeremiah’s time, there is surely even less excuse for us today. We not only have the teaching given to Moses by God; we also have the Gospel in the New Testament and the revelation of truth in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus our Messiah. Our generation has rejected truth and does not even have the common sense to recognise that we are heading for disaster. Will we stop and turn around before we reach the edge of the precipice?

This article is part of a series on the life and ministry of the Prophet Jeremiah. Click here to read previous instalments.

Jeremiah’s most devastating prophecy.

“At that time,” declares the Lord, “the bones of the kings and officials of Judah, the bones of the priests and prophets, and the bones of the people of Jerusalem will be removed from their graves.

They will be exposed to the sun and the moon and all the stars of the heavens, which they have loved and served and which they have followed and consulted and worshipped. They will not be gathered up or buried, but will be like refuse lying on the ground. Wherever I banish them, all the survivors of this evil nation will prefer death to life”, declares the Lord Almighty. (Jeremiah 8:1-3)

This is the most devastating piece of prose among all the prophecies of Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s prophecies are usually in poetic form; but this is different, and so too is its content. There are no conditions here, nothing suggesting that the prophesied disaster is conditional - that it may happen, unless there is repentance and turning. All the red lines have now been crossed. Judgement is inevitable.

The placing of this devastating statement at the conclusion of chapter 7 is highly significant. It needs to be read as the final word of that chapter, outlining the inevitable consequences of ignoring the warnings: “I will bring to an end the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, for the land will become desolate” (Jer 7:34).

“‘At that time’, declares the Lord…” describes in vivid language what is going to happen in the city of Jerusalem and the land of Judah because, “they will not listen to you!”

A Figment of Imagination?

The shocking rhetoric of this text has been dismissed by some biblical commentators such as Walter Brueggemann¹ as ‘unrealistic imagination’ designed to shock the people of Judah, as a kind of last hope of change and redemption. Many commentators regard this outburst from Jeremiah as something that could not possibly have happened.

Sadly, recent archaeological evidence confirms that what Jeremiah foresaw was not a figment of his imagination, but an accurate revelation of what happened in Judah, and Jerusalem, in the year 586 BC. Research in the land of Israel shows that there was a sudden and devastating demographic fall in the population of Judah, in the city of Jerusalem and its surrounding area at that time.

Archaeology shows that what Jeremiah foresaw was not a figment of his imagination, but an accurate revelation of what happened in Judah, and Jerusalem, in 586 BC.

Some archaeologists say that the population of Judah suddenly fell from 108,000 to 40,000 inhabitants at that period through a combination of exile and destruction. 2 Kings 24:15-17 estimates that about 10,000 were taken to Babylon in the year 586 BC. Jeremiah says that 832 people from Jerusalem were taken that year, but he also records that a further 3,023 had been taken ten years earlier and another 745 were taken to Babylon in the year 581 BC (Jer 52:29-30). In addition to these exiles, we know that an unknown number went to Egypt after the assassination of Gedaliah, and that none of them, including Jeremiah, returned (see Jer 44:25-27).

Anthropologists studying the archaeological evidence for that period reckon that the fall in population across the land of Judah was around 80%, but in the city of Jerusalem and its environs, it appears to have been as much as 90% or even more.²

The devastation of the city and the towns and villages of Judah was similar to our modern ‘scorched earth’ policy, with unburied bodies left scattered across the countryside and open to the prey of wild animals and birds.

Terms of the Covenant

All this is to say that the scene described by Jeremiah in this passage was not a wild flight of his imagination, but an accurate forecast of what has now been discovered to have taken place in history. His description of people from all ranks of society being left exposed to the sun and the moon and the stars of heaven is a poignant reflection of the idolatry that had encompassed the nation, sweeping whole communities into pagan practices that had been roundly condemned by the prophets of Israel for centuries.

Jeremiah spent the whole of his adult life pleading and reasoning with the people of Judah and warning of the inevitable consequences of turning to other gods. He saw with horror what was happening in the nation in much the same way as Moses saw with horror the ‘golden calf’. Moses had been called by God to establish his covenant relationship with the people of Israel and warned them of the consequences of breaking that covenant (Deut 4:24-26).

Jeremiah was present when Josiah renewed the covenant (2 Kings 23). The king pledged loyalty to Yahweh after he had sent the scroll to the Prophet Huldah, asking whether or not it was a genuine word from God (2 Chron 34:22-28). Jeremiah expressed full agreement with the words of Huldah, “Tell them that this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘cursed is the man who does not obey the terms of this covenant’” (Jer 11:3).

Jeremiah’s description of people being left exposed to the sun and moon and stars of heaven is a poignant reflection of the idolatry that had encompassed the nation.

From that time the ministry of Jeremiah was exclusively directed to warning the nation – the political and religious leaders as well as the ordinary people – about the consequences of breaking the covenant and putting the nation outside the covering protection of God. The brutal warning in this prophecy that concluded his message in chapter 7 accurately foresaw not only the desolation of the land and the slaughter of the population, but also the devastating effect upon the survivors who were taken into exile in Babylon, who preferred death to life. This is so poignantly depicted in Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’...” (Ps 137:1-3).

God’s Protection Removed

Can any Bible-believing Christian in Britain or the Western nations fail to tremble when we read the words of Jeremiah and those of the psalmist in Babylon? Historical facts confirm the prophetic words of Jeremiah 8:1-3: God removed his cover of protection from Jerusalem and the land of Judah, allowing the wrath of cruel humanity to do its worst.

In recent times we have seen history repeated in the central European Holocaust that murdered 6 million Jews. But in Israel today, as in all the nations of the West, the land is being polluted with the blood of the innocent, as babies are sacrificed on the altar of abortion clinics. Will God once again remove his cover of protection?

References

1 Jeremiah 1-25: To Pluck Up, To Tear Down. International Theological Commentary, Handsel Press, Edinburgh, 1988, p80.

2 Ahn, JJ and Middlemas, J, 2013. By the Irrigation Canals of Babylon: Approaches To The Study Of The Exile. T&T Clark, New York and London, p149.

This article is part of a series on the life and ministry of the Prophet Jeremiah. Read previous instalments here.

Idolatry is not hidden from the Lord.

“Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my name, and say, ‘We are safe’ - safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching!” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 7:9-11)

This would rank highly among the most devastating pronouncements of any of the prophetic writings in the Bible. The phrase “I have been watching!” was designed to strike terror into the hearts of the people. It is part of Jeremiah’s famous ‘Temple Sermon’, spoken to the crowds at the gate of the Temple, in which he highlighted six outstanding sins: false religion, injustice, oppression, violence, idolatry and immorality.

Spreading Idolatry

This incident in front of the Temple is generally thought to have been delivered near the end of the reign of Jehoiakim in the late 7^th Century BC. Ever since the death of Josiah in 608 BC Jeremiah had been bringing warnings to the people of Judah and especially to those in Jerusalem about the idolatrous practices that were increasingly gaining a hold on the nation, especially in the countryside. These practices had now spread into the streets of Jerusalem and onto the rooftops of the houses.

The people were ignoring their covenant relationship with the Lord, which had been renewed by Josiah following the discovery of a scroll of the Torah while carrying out repairs of the Temple. Jeremiah had added his voice to the strong warnings about the consequences of breaking the covenant and worshipping foreign gods. It was not just at the hilltop shrines, but actually in the streets of Jerusalem that people were offering worship to the ‘Queen of Heaven’, the pagan goddess Astarte.

Ever since the death of King Josiah, Jeremiah had been bringing warnings to the people of Judah about the idolatrous practices that were increasingly gaining a hold on the nation.

Whole families were involved in idolatrous practices: “The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger” (7:18).

The theme of the so-called Temple Sermon was designed to shock the people into facing up to the reality of the situation. They were not only indulging in idolatry of a particularly repulsive kind with Astarte, the goddess of fertility, but their social life was full of self-indulgence that included violence and immorality. They were breaking all the commandments at the heart of the Torah.

Safe?!

Jeremiah then reminded them of what had happened to Shiloh, the most ancient sacred place in Israel that had not been spared from destruction. Jeremiah recalled how the people in the northern Kingdom had not listened to any of the prophetic warnings God had sent to them, so he had allowed Shiloh to be destroyed. God was now warning that this would actually happen to the Temple in Jerusalem, in which the nation of Judah was putting its trust.

The word of the Lord was “I will thrust you from my presence, just as I did all your brothers, the people of Ephraim.” Jeremiah was then told to stop praying for the welfare of the people of Judah: “Do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you” (7:16).

Three times Jeremiah was given the same command to stop praying for the welfare of the nation. This is the first, and it occurs in the midst of a most shattering passage where God spelled out to the people the reason why he was giving notice of his intention to withdraw his covering of protection over the nation, over the city of Jerusalem and over the Temple that bore his name.

Three times Jeremiah was given the same command to stop praying for the welfare of the nation.

Jeremiah must have almost choked when he spoke the words in today’s reading – “Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal…And then say ‘we are safe’…? Safe?!” He thundered. “Safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my name, become a den of robbers to you?"

This was followed by the most devastating words in the whole of the prophecy: “‘But I have been watching’, declares the Lord!” God was watching and taking notice. He could see all that was going on that was in direct contravention of the teaching he had given to Moses. He was watching; and he knew that the people of Israel were breaking the covenant, thereby sealing the death warrant of the nation.

Timeless Message

500 years later, Jesus, who probably knew Jeremiah’s Temple Sermon by heart, said almost the same words as he swept through the outer courtyard of the Temple with a whip in his hand, driving out the sheep and the cattle, overturning the moneychangers’ tables, sending their money clattering to the ground, creating chaos and forcing the merchants to flee from his wrath. “My house will be a house of prayer for all nations”, Jesus declared, “But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17).

2,000 years later this same message is coming to the nations of the West whose civilisation is crumbling before their eyes, but every warning has been ignored. They have eyes and ears, but they neither see nor hear. They have had the Bible for centuries; they know the truth, and yet they have deliberately turned away to worship the gods of this world. “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie” (Rom 1:25). “‘But I have been watching!’ declares the Lord”.

This article is part of a series on the life and ministry of the Prophet Jeremiah. Click here for previous instalments.