AP

Jeremiah 18:11-12  Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, “This is what the LORD says: ‘Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you.  So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’”  But they will reply, “It’s no use.  We will continue with our own plans; we will all follow the stubbornness of our evil hearts.”

I find these verses very sad.  (Well, OK, I find the whole of Jeremiah sad reading, but I’m resigned to the fact that M’Cheyne has me facing this challenge till the end of August!).
There are two things that make me particularly sad:
Firstly, I feel sad for the faithful prophet whom the LORD has commissioned to stand alone among God’s people to declare a truthful message of doom, while all the other men-pleasing ‘professionals’ are proclaiming the lie of ‘Peace, peace’ when there is no peace (Jeremiah 8:11); and
Secondly, I feel sad that, as we try to warn the people of our own time and culture of the imminence of the coming judgement when Jesus will return as God’s Rightful King, in accordance with God’s long-standing warning in his declaration of Psalm 2, and with Jesus’ warning in the Gospels (eg Mark 13), it is getting exactly the same reaction as Jeremiah’ s warning received in his day.  This is the clear and loud message that permeates our own day through all the various forms of media at our disposal.
Eugene Petersen renders verse 12: “But they’ll just say, ‘Why should we?  What’s the point?  We’ll live just the way we’ve always lived, doom or no doom.’”  And when I read the accounts of what people – men, women and children – actually experienced when Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BC by the Babylonians, and again by the Romans in 70 AD, and realise that these are just foreshadowings of the final judgement, I feel really, really sad!
Lord Jesus, please instil a bit of ‘Jeremiah’ into all of us (me especially!), that we won’t shrink back from our ‘duty of care’ to be ‘faithful watchmen’ who ‘blow the trumpet to warn the people’ as urged in Ezelkiel 3 and 33.  And Lord, before it is too late, please send, in your grace and mercy, a powerful, genuine, Spirit-led revival among us that will have an extraordinary impact on our seemingly impenetrable culture, as has happened in earlier times.  “Spirit of God, I would your temple be; send a revival – start the work in me; your Word declares: you will supply our need; for blessings now, O Lord, I humbly plead”  (James Edwin Orr).
– Bruce Christian