Journal 2009.

• God is so creative! He knew the Israelites needed visuals to get His point across. I counted 83 of them by chapter 14 of Jeremiah. I process best with symbolic representations of my emotions, so I get it with Jeremiah. Why didn’t the Israelites? Because of the blindness, hardness, and stubbornness of their hearts.

• In 14:11, God told Jeremiah NOT to pray for Israel—not for their good anyway! Astonishing! Even if they fasted, He said, He wouldn’t hear them. He wouldn’t accept their offerings either. That’s pretty bad!

• Jeremiah said the prophets were predicting peace (14:13-14). God said, “I didn’t send them, command them or speak to them. Their words come from the deceit of their own minds.” Ouch!

• In 15:1, Jeremiah pleaded with God to reconsider His judgment, and God said no, He’d made up His mind. Remember when both Moses and Samuel interceded for the people, and God refused to change His mind? He came to the end of His patience, tolerance, and kindness. This time, the rebellious son went too far, and God had to let him go. Lesson: Don’t rebel! There’s a time limit on God’s patience.

• Jeremiah struggled with the call of God on his life (sometimes I do too), but he kept remembering God’s words, and God kept comforting and reassuring him (Chap. 15).

• God named Manasseh as the reason for His wrath (15:4). One man, one ruler, can ruin it for an entire nation. Obviously, the people could have rebelled and refused to follow Manasseh in his wickedness (and maybe some did), but often it’s the case that as the leader goes, so goes the nation. (Be careful who I vote for . . .)

• “You [Israel] keep going in reverse” (15:6). What a strong visual—quite a contrast to the Disney movie I recently watched (Meet the Robinsons) with the motto: Keep going forward. I don’t like it when I slide backward. God promises that He won’t let my foot slip, but if I deliberately turn around and head back down the mountain, He may let me go my own stubborn way—but, because I am His, He will put obstacles in my way (think Jonah’s whale and Balaam’s donkey) to urge me to start climbing again.

• We often try to apply Jeremiah’s potter wheel metaphor (chapter 18) to our individual lives—and that’s okay if we’re sharing a devotional. But in this context, God was using it as a visual for what He intended to do to Israel (crush her and start over, using the same lump of clay) and to show Jeremiah that He had a right to do so because He is the Master Potter. (Yes, I sometimes struggle with God’s sovereignty.)