Jeremiah 40

This Is Life

When I was 17 years old I spent the night at a friend’s house in Paxton, Casey Smith. He was the drummer in my newly formed band. He didn’t know how to drum. I didn’t know how to play guitar. We started writing songs. One of the early creations we made is a song called “This Is Life”. I don’t remember the lyrics. I remember it had an A major chord.

But I remember that this was one of the gifts that my parents divorce, and my subsequent near death experiences had given me, which was a philosophical bent, a kind of reflectiveness on the nature of life itself and what it meant, what it was about? What is happiness? What is truth? What is death? Why is there so much misery and evil while also so much glorious and good?

Here in our text today we see that what life means, sometimes, is enduring the heavy hand of God’s judgment, first expressed by the Lord to Adam when He admonished him not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, lest he, Adam, die. This was the first foreshadowing of what was to come. Enduring God’s hand of judgment, and then following the path of redemption forward.

———————————————————————————

Israel has now, in our narrative, drunk to the full, the dregs of God’s judgment. The nation has been destroyed, the nation of promise that the Lord had created, from nothing, from a displaced shepherd from Ur- and He had said that all the world would be blessed through this nation, it is now a Babylonian vassal state, and an impoverished one at that. Worse, most of those in power and those in authority had long since forsaken the Word of God in favor of pursuing their own desires and had happily worshiped false gods when it meant power or influence or carnal pleasures could be theirs through such practices.

The land has reverted back to something of a primitive state, politically speaking, reminiscent of the time of Judges perhaps, with the remnants of various leaders and militias wandering around what remains of war torn Israel. The reaper has swung his scythe, sin has once again brought death to the people of God, and all that remains now is to try and rebuild and reset the broken bones so that they heal stronger than they were before the break. Israel must, once and for all, put the worship of other gods behind them.

And so we enter the next chapter of the story of Israel.

So it is that Ishmael, Johanan, Seraiah, the sons of Ephai, and Jezaniah all gather at Mizpah with their militias. They gather at Mizpah because this is where Gedaliah has set up his headquarters. Gedaliah is Jewish, but he is the governor that Nebuchadnezzar has set up in Israel to do his bidding. He is not a king, he is more like a bureaucrat, a deputy of Babylon who has been given authority to administer the land of Judah.

By the end of verse 12 it sounds like things are looking up for the remnant left in Judah, namely, the poor of the land, who had been for generations abused by those in power who had forsaken God’s Word and His commandments. They now have the land themselves, and many who were in exile in neighboring countries are coming in, likely adding value to the country as farmers, metalworkers, potters, weavers, and so forth. Jeremiah tells us that “they gathered wine and summer fruit in abundance”.

Things are looking up. The storm has come, God’s wrath has been poured out, and now is the time to rebuild.

Now, what is the hardest thing in the world for us as humans to do? There are many difficult things in life, it is true. It is difficult to forgive. It is difficult to be disciplined. It is difficult sometimes to be kind. It is difficult to be patient, and so forth. But the reigning difficulty, the one that governs them all, if you will, is the difficult, well nigh impossible task, of exchanging your kingdom for God’s Kingdom.

This is not the kingdom that they wanted. What does God’s Kingdom look like for those in Judah right now? It looks unsafe. The city walls that provide protection are gone. Babylonian soldiers are in the land. And there is no King of Israel, no savior on the throne. And their bitterness will pull Israel even lower. It is a hard thing to accept God’s discipline, to accept a life moving forward that isn’t as glorious or as powerful as you wanted. It is a hard thing to look around the ashes of a dream and accept in your heart that this is the new normal.

But consider this. They are alive. Those that remain are those that were spared. And what is more many people who were slaves or had nothing suddenly find themselves with their own land or their own flock to manage and to benefit from. Good things have come from this tragedy, as was God’s will all along.

Those who are bitter are those who lost parts of their Kingdom, and want it back.

So we cling tightly to our little kingdoms, thinking that it is in them that we find our safety and our peace, and if we never hand them over to the Lord, then in the end we find that our kingdoms and castles were made of sand, and we sink into them, never to rise again.

They wanted the Kingdom of Israel, but they did not want the Lord to be sovereign in their lives. In the same way some people might want church...they might want the community, the safety of being around people with certain ethical standards, they might want to sing songs about God’s love and forgiveness because it makes them feel good, they might enjoy many things about the church and even about God Himself and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, our triune God, but they never really let go of the tight fist of control that they have over their own lives because they don’t REALLY trust God. Or maybe they do trust Him, but they don’t want to let go of the privileges that they feel their personal kingdom gives them. For sinners like us, we can think of a 1,000 reasons why we don’t want to give up our personal kingdoms.

Enter Ishmael the son of Nethaniah. The main thing to know about Ishmael is that he is of royal blood, that is to say, of the house of David. Most of the house of David has been either killed or taken into Exile. But not Ishmael. He remains, and he has soldiers.

English Standard Version Chapter 40

13 Now Johanan the son of Kareah and all the leaders of the forces in the open country came to Gedaliah at Mizpah 14 and said to him, “Do you know that Baalis the king of the Ammonites has sent Ishmael the son of Nethaniah to take your life?” But Gedaliah the son of Ahikam would not believe them. 15 Then Johanan the son of Kareah spoke secretly to Gedaliah at Mizpah, “Please let me go and strike down Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, and no one will know it. Why should he take your life, so that all the Judeans who are gathered about you would be scattered, and the remnant of Judah would perish?” 16 But Gedaliah the son of Ahikam said to Johanan the son of Kareah, “You shall not do this thing, for you are speaking falsely of Ishmael.”

Last week’s sermon from Acts 20 was largely about wisdom and how important it is. Gedaliah comes from a faithful remnant within Judah who believed in God’s Word and even protected Jeremiah at a key moment. Gedaliah is the son of Ahikam

During the beginning of the reign of King Jehoiakim, Jeremiah was on trial for his life after prophesying that the Temple would be destroyed like Shiloh. Ahikam used his political influence to protect Jeremiah.

Jer 26:24"Furthermore, Ahikam son of Shaphan supported Jeremiah, and so he was not handed over to the people to be put to death."

So Gedeliah came from a family that supported Jeremiah, and it makes sense that Babylon would put such a person in charge as governor because they believed, mistakenly, but reasonably under the circumstances, that Jeremiah and any who believed in his prophecies, were supporters of Babylon. That was absolutely not the case, they were accepting of God’s judgment but NOT supporters of Babylon.

Be that as it may, it can be inferred from these texts that Gedeliah was a good and honest man who trusted the Lord. None of the captains of these militias who come to him complain about him or deride him in any way. And as many good and honest people do, he has a hard time believing the worst of others.

Indeed he may be a good man, but he shows a distinct lack of wisdom here. It looks like kindness, or even faith, doesn’t it? He is defending the character of Ishmael, and so far the narrative has not let us, the readers, in on whether or not the charge is true or not, so we are sympathetic here to Gedaliah’s reluctance to allow Johanan to assassinate Ishmael. It also just seems underhanded the way Johanan is strategizing. He is not calling out Ishmael publicly or going to battle against him. He is talking about betraying Ishmael’s trust somehow and assassinating him in such a way that no one will even know who killed him or why. This does not seem godly.

So our first instinct is perhaps to be sympathetic, but for one detail. ALL the leaders of the forces in the open country had told him the same thing. They had all known or somehow found out that Ishmael was false. And Gedaliah should have taken that more seriously than he did. He trusted his own judgment far too much, which, again, might look like faithfulness sometimes, it might look like righteousness, but wisdom would say, no, that is foolishness.

Who will rebuild Judah and heal her wounds? Not Gedaliah, who does not take the advice of those trying to protect him. (Akin to Paul getting on the boat)- assassination parallels.

English Standard Version Chapter 41

In the seventh month, Ishmael the son of Nethaniah, son of Elishama, of the royal family, one of the chief officers of the king, came with ten men to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, at Mizpah. As they ate bread together there at Mizpah, 2 Ishmael the son of Nethaniah and the ten men with him rose up and struck down Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, son of Shaphan, with the sword, and killed him, whom the king of Babylon had appointed governor in the land. 3 Ishmael also struck down all the Judeans who were with Gedaliah at Mizpah, and the Chaldean soldiers who happened to be there.

Will it be Ishmael? Will Ishmael rebuild Israel? Ishmael’s strategy is never fully explained here in the text, and perhaps Ishmael himself was making it up as he went along. Or perhaps HE was ‘trusting in God’, telling himself that the Lord would protect him and further his cause, because, after all, he should be king of Israel.

Why? Because Ishmael is of the house of David. He has royal blood. And most of the descendants of David who were in line for the throne have either been killed or exiled. So why not him? Why shouldn’t it be his kingdom? Gedaliah can’t be king he is not of the line of David and anyway he is collaborating with a foreign power, the Babylonians! You could see how easy it would have been for Ishmael to convince himself that God is on his side.

And so he makes some kind of deal with the Ammonites, the nature of which we are never told about, and he assassinates Gedeliah in the worst possible way. In that time and place the most underhanded and dishonorable thing you could do to someone was to betray your host, an individual who was giving you shelter and food, and the worst of the worst was to kill them AT the dinner table while bread was being broken. But Ishmael presumably believes so strongly in his cause that he does the unthinkable and kills Gedeliah at his own meal.

He then goes on to kill all the Judeans AND the chaldean soldiers who were there. He basically massacres everyone in the vicinity. Which tells us that the ten men who went with Ishmael were not the only men he had. The ten men were probably his personal guard that ate with him and assassinated Gedeliah, but he had soldiers stationed either nearby or in the city and they were probably instructed to attack during or right after the assassination.

This is why Martin Luther said, and I only learned of this recently and it has resonated strongly within me, that the first commandment, which is you shall have no other gods before me, IS the first commandment, because you cannot break any of the other commandments without first breaking that one. If you are going to lie about something, for example, to protect your reputation, then the first thing you did was to make your reputation more important than God’s calling on your life, more important than God’s Kingdom, which you know in your heart is a place where falsehoods are not found.