Call to Commitment

 Chapter 10

 1.      Hear the word which the LORD speaks to you, O house of Israel. 

 2.      Thus says the LORD: "Do not learn the way of the Gentiles; Do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, For the Gentiles are dismayed at them. 

 3.      For the customs of the peoples are futile; For one cuts a tree from the forest, The work of the hands of the workman, with the ax. 

 4.      They decorate it with silver and gold; They fasten it with nails and hammers So that it will not topple. 

 5.      They are upright, like a palm tree, And they cannot speak; They must be carried, Because they cannot go by themselves. Do not be afraid of them, For they cannot do evil, Nor can they do any good." 

 Rejecting the way of futility

 The Lord directs His message to the house of Israel (1). If there is any place, where He can possibly be heard, it would have to be in that house. If there are any people, who have the necessary understanding, to be able to discern the good sense of His words, it would have to be the Israelites.  No true wisdom at all can be expected from the pagan non-Jews, who do not know God and are given to worship idols.

 Jeremiah proves that in the first verses of this chapter. If people pray to and depend on a decorated piece of wood, chopped down with an ax, how can the Lord expect a reasonable response from them? A palm tree has living roots, which grow deeply into solid earth and hold it upright, while man’s creations are fastened in place by tools and hardware. They have no life, they cannot speak for themselves, and are not self-propelled, to rise and choose their way. Modern, man-made creations can move, but they cannot move independently, nor can they do good or evil, without the pre-ordained will of their inventors. They are not to be feared. When are we human beings, who cannot create life, going to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God?

 The Lord counsels His people: Do not learn the way of the Gentiles. Senseless pagans look to the stars, the moon and the sun for direction; they still do in modern times, by astrology, the zodiac, horoscopes and, with a certain degree of legitimacy, astronomy. Here is a definition of astrology from Wikipedia: Astrology is a pseudoscience that claims to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the movements and relative positions of celestial objects.  

 Chapter 9

 1.      Oh, that my head were waters, And my eyes a fountain of tears, That I might weep day and night For the slain of the daughter of my people! 

 

Grief because of sin

 Jeremiah, Moses and Paul, to name three, were intrinsically identified with their people. Their salvation was as vital to these intercessors as their own souls. Compassion is the fountain of intercession; tears are the overflow of compassion. When two Salvation Army ladies wrote General Booth for counsel concerning the hardness of the place and people, with which they were working, General Booth responded with two words: “Try tears!” May this prayer of Jeremiah be ours.

 Constant joy springs from the knowledge of the person and the attributes of God, but in the reality of a sinful world and sometimes, in the condition of the church, it is not possible or right to be happy. In one of his recorded sermons, I heard A. W. Tozer say, “I’m not as happy as I could be; I don’t want to be irresponsibly happy.” A born-again Christian cannot be happy in the presence of sin. In Ecclesiastes 7:6, wise Solomon gives us an example of irresponsible happiness: “For like the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool.” I think we have all heard plenty from these crackling thorns.

 In Ecclesiastes 3:4, Solomon said that there is a proper time to weep and in 7:2-4, he also taught that there is spiritual benefit in sorrow: “Better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that (meaning death) is the end of all men; and the living take it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, for by a sad countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Mt.5:4).