A Day of Judgment is Coming
March 23, 2021
Commentary
The setting for this chapter is about ten years after Jeremiah’s agonizing prayer of despair in chapter 15. That was during the time Judah suffered a great drought, King Jehoiakim was attacking his ministry, he was being rejected by his own family and their was an assassination attempt on his life.
Jeremiah calls a number of priests and elders of the nation to go with him outside the city gate to the valley of Hinnon, which was the cities garbage dump (vv. 1-2). With the Hinnon Valley as a backdrop he delivers his message of how God has vowed to bring a disaster on Jerusalem because of her idolatry (vv. 3-15). Judah had forsaken God, worshiped idols, desecrated the temple, murdered the innocent, and offered their children in altar fires dedicated to Baal (vv. 3-5). This has been the location of child sacrifice under King Manasseh. Dramatically, Jeremiah elaborates on the coming catastrophe (vv. 6-9). He holds up a clay pot and says in effect, “This nation is like a hardened clay pot that has resisted God’s truth.” He throws the pot and smashes it saying “God will destroy this nation as this pot has been destroyed” (vv. 10-13). Jeremiah then goes directly to the temple court where he repeats the message to all the people that he has given to the leaders (vv. 14-15).
In this book we learn what a Christian can expect to go through in the final years of a nation’s collapse. We would hope this can be avoided in America. However, as we go through this book we can see that we are living in times that are very similar to Jeremiah’s day. In the midst of shocking moral decay, increasing international threat, and the failure of national leadership, God patiently taught and strengthened the prophet to meet the conditions that he was going to encounter.
Application
Regardless of what men may think God is just as much against sin today as he was in Jeremiah’s day and there is a day of judgment coming. I need to pray that God will keep me from an indifference and hardness of heart toward the conditions of my day and to be speaking out for my Lord.
Jeremiah 19:1– 15 (NET)
1 The Lord told Jeremiah, “Go and buy a clay jar from a potter. Take with you some of the leaders of the people and some of the leaders of the priests. 2 Go out to the part of the Hinnom Valley that is near the entrance of the Potsherd Gate. Announce there what I tell you. 3 Say, ‘Listen to the Lord’s message, you kings of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem! This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, has said, “Look here! I am about to bring a disaster on this place that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it ring. 4 I will do so because these people have rejected me and have defiled this place. They have offered sacrifices in it to other gods that neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings of Judah knew anything about. They have filled it with the blood of innocent children. 5 They have built places here for worship of the god Baal so that they could sacrifice their children as burnt offerings to him in the fire. Such sacrifices are something I never commanded them to make. They are something I never told them to do! Indeed, such a thing never even entered my mind. 6 So I, the Lord, say: “The time will soon come that people will no longer call this place Topheth or the Hinnom Valley. But they will call this valley the Valley of Slaughter! 7 In this place I will thwart the plans of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. I will deliver them over to the power of their enemies who are seeking to kill them. They will die by the sword at the hands of their enemies. I will make their dead bodies food for the birds and wild beasts to eat. 8 I will make this city an object of horror, a thing to be hissed at. All who pass by it will be filled with horror and will hiss out their scorn because of all the disasters that have happened to it. 9 I will reduce the people of this city to desperate straits during the siege imposed on it by their enemies who are seeking to kill them. I will make them so desperate that they will eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters and the flesh of one another.”’”
10 The Lord continued, “Now break the jar in front of those who have come here with you. 11 Tell them the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says, ‘I will do just as Jeremiah has done. I will smash this nation and this city as though it were a potter’s vessel that is broken beyond repair. The dead will be buried here in Topheth until there is no more room to bury them.’ 12 I, the Lord, say: ‘That is how I will deal with this city and its citizens. I will make it like Topheth. 13 The houses in Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled by dead bodies just like this place, Topheth. For they offered sacrifice to the stars and poured out drink offerings to other gods on the roofs of those houses.’”
14 Then Jeremiah left Topheth where the Lord had sent him to give that prophecy. He went to the Lord’s temple and stood in its courtyard and called out to all the people. 15 “The Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says, ‘I will soon bring on this city and all the towns surrounding it all the disaster I threatened to do to it. I will do so because they have stubbornly refused to pay any attention to what I have said!’”