Jeremiah 14 Physical and Spiritual Drought

Review of Jeremiah

We are still within the 3 year gap between the defeat of Pharoah Necho and Babylon taking the first exiles from Jerusalem. Last time we spoke about Jeremiah’s trips to the Euphrates and their prophetic meaning. Today Adonai explains to Jeremiah why there is so much drought in the land.

Read Jeremiah 14

Jeremiah 14 TLV

The word of Adonai that came to Jeremiah concerning the droughts: Judah will mourn, and her gates languish. They will bow in black to the ground And Jerusalem’s wail will go up. Their nobles will send their lads for water. They come to the cisterns, but find no water. Their jars return empty. They are ashamed and humiliated; they cover their heads. Because the ground is cracked, since there has been no rain in the land, the farmers are ashamed— they cover their heads. For even the doe in the field abandons her newborn fawn, because there is no grass. Wild donkeys stand on the barren hills, as they pant for air like jackals. Their eyes fail, since there is no foliage. Though our iniquities testify against us, Adonai, act for Your Name’s sake. For our backslidings are many. We have sinned against You. O hope of Israel, Savior in time of trouble, why are You like a stranger in the land, or like a traveler who stays for a night? Why are You like a man overcome, like a champion who cannot save? Yet you, Adonai, are in our midst, and we are called by Your Name. Do not forsake us! Thus says Adonai to this people: How they loved to wander, They did not restrain their feet. So Adonai does not accept them. Now will He remember their iniquity, and punish their sins. So Adonai said to me: “Do not pray for the good of this people. If they fast, I will not hear their cry. If they offer burnt offering or grain offering, I will not accept them. Instead I will consume them with sword, with famine and with plague.” Then I said: “Oh my Lord, Adonai! The prophets keep telling them: ‘You will not see the sword nor famine, but I will give you true peace in this place.’ ” Then Adonai said to me: “The prophets prophesy lies in My Name! I did not send them, nor commanded them, nor did I speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, divination, futility, a delusion of their heart.” Therefore thus says Adonai: “About the prophets who prophesy in My Name, though I did not send them, yet keep saying, ‘Sword and famine will never be in this land’—by sword and famine will those prophets be consumed. Also the people to whom they prophesy will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem, because of the famine and the sword. They will have no one to bury them, their wives, their sons or their daughters. For I will pour their disaster on them.” You will say this word to them: “Let my eyes overflow with tears. Night and day, may they never stop. For the virgin daughter of my people is crushed with a great blow, with a sorely infected wound.” If I go out into the field, see, those slain by the sword! And if I enter into the city, see, the sick with famine! For both prophet and kohen will travel to a land they do not know. Have You utterly rejected Judah? Has Your soul loathed Zion? Why have You smitten us, and there is no healing for us? We looked for shalom, but nothing good came, and for a time of healing, but suddenly, terror! We acknowledge our wickedness, Adonai, the iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against You. Do not despise us, for Your Name’s sake. Do not dishonor Your glorious throne. Remember Your covenant with us— do not break it! Can any of the idols of the nations bring rain? Or can the skies grant showers? Is it not You, Adonai our God? Do we not wait for You? For You have done all these things.

The Physical and Spiritual Drought

In verses 1 to 6, we see that the drought has become so sever that the cisterns are dry. Everyone from the wealthiest noble to the poorest farmer suffers from the lack of water. Even the wild animals are suffering due to the lack of rain. This is in direct fulfillment of what Adonai had said to Beni Yisrael in Lev. 26:16

Leviticus 26:16 TLV

then I will do the following to you in return. I will appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever that will dim the eyes and cause the soul to pine away. You will sow your seed in vain, because your enemies will eat it.

and Deut. 28:32

Deuteronomy 28:32 TLV

“Your sons and daughters will be given to another people while your eyes look on, longing for them all day long—but your hand will be powerless.

Oh, that the people would have recognized their sin! Jeremiah realizes in verse 7 that the weight of their sin is so heavy, that all they can do is cry out to Adonai for mercy. Jer. 14:8-9

Jeremiah 14:8–9 TLV

O hope of Israel, Savior in time of trouble, why are You like a stranger in the land, or like a traveler who stays for a night? Why are You like a man overcome, like a champion who cannot save? Yet you, Adonai, are in our midst, and we are called by Your Name. Do not forsake us!

Adonai’s Explanation

Adonai explains to Jeremiah in two different ways; first in general terms and then specifically to Jeremiah. The Lord point to how His people “loved to wander.”

Dr. Michael Brown points out that:

It is significant that the verb “to love” occurs three times in Jeremiah prior to this verse, in each case speaking of Israel’s propensity to sin. In 2:25 as the straying wife she says, “I have loved strangers”; in 5:31 the people love the corrupt ways of the prophets and priests; in 8:2 they love and worship the sun, moon and stars and sacrifice their children to them. Thus the Lord can rightly say, “they have loved to wander”, and their present sorrow cannot remove the guilt of their persistent, habitual, past sin.

There is a point where the consequences of our sins catch up with us.

Adonai then tells Jeremiah that there is no point in praying for the good of the people, because judgement is determined.

Jeremiah’s Question

Jeremiah’s question to Adonai is phrased as a complaint against the other prophets.

“But God, there are so many other prophets who are saying that there will be peace in our time.” Is it fair that the people are getting a mixed message? Was a lying spirit sent from the Lord, like in the days of King Ahab of Israel?

Adonai’s Retort

Adonai is adamant. “I did not send them. I did not speak to them. I did not command them.”

In a time of judgement, people go to the voice that they like to hear the most. We don’t like being told that the disasters that have come upon the nation are the result of our sins. We desperately want to blame someone else, or something else. And so, just as with supply and demand, the people were not interested in listening to Jeremiah, and desired a nicer outcome, therefore the prophets spoke their own lying vision, their own futility and divination, and their own delusion of their heart. It was exactly what the people wanted to hear.

But Adonai warns, that exactly what the false prophets and priests were saying would NOT happen, was about to happen directly to them, their wives, their sons and their daughters.

Adonai’s Response

Just as with many passages we have talked about before, it is difficult to separate the voice of Adonai from the cry of Jeremiah. I think that Jer. 14:17 is Adonai revealing to Jeremiah the broken heart of Adonai.

Jeremiah 14:17 TLV

You will say this word to them: “Let my eyes overflow with tears. Night and day, may they never stop. For the virgin daughter of my people is crushed with a great blow, with a sorely infected wound.”

It breaks our heart when we watch someone walk away from God and suffer the consequences of rejecting the ways of Adonai. How much more does it break the heart of our Lord, when we suffer the consequences of our own rebellious sin?

Jeremiah’s Intersession

Jeremiah can not help himself. He must intercede. He sees the current sickness and famine, he know of the coming war. He cries out, Jer. 14:19 “Have You utterly rejected Judah? Has Your soul loathed Zion? Why have You smitten us, and there is no healing for us?”

Jeremiah then confesses and acknowledges the sins of Judah in three different ways, Jer. 14:20 “We acknowledge our wickedness, Adonai, the iniquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against You.”

Now Jeremiah, instead of appealing to the mercy of Adonai, now appeals to the glory of the Name and reputation of the Lord. Jer. 14:21 “Do not despise us, for Your Name’s sake. Do not dishonor Your glorious throne. Remember Your covenant with us— do not break it!”

This is exactly what Moses did in the wilderness when Israel sinned with the golden calf. Ex. 32:11-14

Exodus 32:11–14 TLV

Then Moses sought Adonai his God and said, “Adonai, why should Your wrath burn hot against Your people, whom You have brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘He brought them out to do evil, to slay them in the mountains, and to annihilate them from the face of the earth?’ Turn from Your fierce wrath, and relent from this destruction against Your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of I will give to your offspring, and they will inherit it forever.’ ” So Adonai relented from the destruction that He said He would do to His people.

And next week we will see how Adonai responds to this cry.

Application

So how do we apply this passage to our lives today? I have come up with a few questions from this passage: Why does Adonai ask Jeremiah to stop praying for the good of the people? How do we recognize between true and false prophets in our day? What should our response be toward our sin-filled nation?

Why did Adonai ask Jeremiah to stop Interceding?

God knew, what Jeremiah did not, that the only way to ultimately save Israel was to bring a cleansing of the sin. God knew that there would be a New Covenant established, something that Jeremiah does not find out about for another 15 chapters. God knew that the people had not hit rock bottom. What does that mean specifically?

Well, sometimes the only way that we will learn the lesson is by suffering the consequences for our actions. It is called by some, the School of Hard Knocks. Paul, when writing to the Congregation in Corinth, puts it this way, 1 Cor. 5:1-5

1 Corinthians 5:1–5 TLV

It is actually reported that among you there is sexual immorality, and such immorality as is not even among the pagans—that someone has his father’s wife. And you are puffed up! Shouldn’t you have mourned instead, so that the one who did this deed might be removed from among you? For even though I am absent in body, I am present in spirit—I have already passed judgment on the one who has done this thing, as though I were present. When you are gathered together in the name of our Lord Yeshua, I am with you in spirit. With the power of our Lord Yeshua, you are to turn such a fellow over to satan for the destruction of his fleshly nature, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Yeshua.

Now many people today, may think that is too harsh, unkind, or not merciful enough, however that is because we have forgotten the destructive nature of sin. And just in case you are wondering what Yeshua would do, let’s also look at Mark. 9:43-48

Mark 9:43–48 TLV

“And if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off! It is better for you to enter into life crippled than, having two hands, to go to Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire. () And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off! It’s better for you to enter life lame than, having your two feet, to be thrown into Gehenna. () If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out! It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than, having two eyes, to be thrown into Gehenna, where ‘their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’

I do want to point out, that in the case of Judah, and in the case of the man mentioned in 1 Cor. 5, there was repentance and reconciliation. The restoration of Judah comes 70 years after Jeremiah lived as recorded by Ezra and Nehemiah, and the restoration of the man in Corinth is written about in 2 Cor. 2:1-11.

True and False Prophets

In Jeremiah’s day most, if not all the other prophets were false, and Jeremiah’s voice stood out against the crowd. How can we tell which prophet is from God? Well, firstly according to Deut. 18:20-22

Deuteronomy 18:20–22 TLV

But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My Name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods—that prophet will die.’ “Now should you say in your heart, ‘How would we recognize the word that Adonai has not spoken?’ When a prophet speaks in Adonai’s Name and the word does not happen or come true, that is a word that Adonai has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously—do not be afraid of him.

Another way is by looking at the person’s lifestyle, just as Yeshua said in Matt. 7:15-23

Matthew 7:15–23 TLV

“Watch out for false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruit. Grapes aren’t gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles, are they? Even so, every good tree produces good fruit, but the rotten tree produces bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will recognize them by their fruit. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, and drive out demons in Your name, and perform many miracles in Your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. Get away from Me, you workers of lawlessness!’ ”

And finally Peter points out the immoral ways and the greed for gain in 2 Pet. 2:1-3

2 Peter 2:1–3 TLV

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you. They will secretly bring in destructive heresies. They will even deny the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their immoral ways, and as a result the way of the truth will be maligned. In their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction does not slumber.

So simply put, we must judge to see if a persons words and actions line up with Yeshua.

Our Response

Our response needs to be the same as Jeremiah’s. We need to intercede for our nation, our city and our neighbours. This is a call for me as much as anyone else. I need to be praying for those around me, for those I work with, for those I live next to. Sin is serious, and God is the same yesterday, today and forever. Our hearts should be broken for our people, just as Jeremiah wept for his people.

We often ask to have the heart of the Lord, well this is one way. Let us pray for our nation: Jer. 14:17 “[Lord,] let my eyes overflow with tears. Night and day, may they never stop. For the virgin daughter of my people is crushed with a great blow, with a sorely infected wound.””