DAY 220: Jeremiah 4–6

Welcome to 5-Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today's August the 8th, and we'll be looking at Jeremiah 4 -6. Now, yesterday we saw how God called Jeremiah the prophet, and placed his words in the prophet's mouth, and exposed Judah's corruption.

And the people had abandoned the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns, and yet the Lord still invited them to return. What a day that invitation becomes even more urgent, because an enemy is coming from the north, and Jeremiah sees Judah's devastation with striking clarity.

Religion and outward reform cannot protect uncircumcised hearts from the coming disaster, because God searches Jerusalem for justice. He warns through their watchmen, and he calls his people back to the ancient paths, but they refuse to listen, and the prophet grieves over the coming disaster.

Jeremiah 4: Judah's Call to Repent and the Coming Invasion

And that way, chapter 4 begins with an invitation to return. Judah must remove the idols and swear truthfully, break up the unplowed ground, circumcise the heart, because without inward repentance, God's wrath is going to burn.

Then alarm sounds across the land. A lion has left its thicket. Destruction approaches from the north, and Jeremiah hears the trumpets, and the battle cries, and he describes his anguish as pain within his heart, because he cannot remain silent.

The vision grows cosmic, because Jeremiah looks upon the earth, and he sees it formless and empty, almost like it's returning back to the creational chaos. Before God organized it in seven creation days, he sees mountains quaking, birds fleeing, the fruitful land becoming wilderness, judgment, and as a kind of decreation event, although in the midst of all of that, God promises that he will not make a complete end, and he will not undo everything.

Jeremiah 5: God Searches Jerusalem for Justice and Truth

Then chapter 5 searches Jerusalem for even one person who practices justice and seeks truth. You'll remember Abraham negotiating with God, God, will you really destroy the city if there's 50 or 40 or 30 righteous people within the city?

And here God does the same thing, searching for even one who practices justice and seeks the truth. The rich and the poor have broken God's yoke. They commit adultery. They reject correction. They deny that judgment is going to come.

They treat prophetic warnings as empty wind. So God will bring a distant nation against Judah. Even then, he says, I will not completely destroy you. The people will serve foreigners because they forsook the Lord in their home.

Jeremiah 6: Jerusalem Rejects the Ancient Paths

Then chapter 6 places the besieging army right at Jerusalem's gates. The leaders cry, peace, peace, but there is no peace. And God tells his people to stand at the crossroads, to ask for the ancient paths, to walk in the good way.

And they answer, we will not walk in it. And the chapter ends with Judah like rejected silver because refinement revealed her persistent evil. So as you read today, I want you to ask the following question.

God's Escalating Warnings Are a Mercy

Why does God's warning become more severe in these chapters? Because repeated refusal hardens the heart and brings consequences nearer. God's escalating language is not proof that he delights in destruction.

No, it is mercy refusing to whisper when the danger is approaching. The alarm bells are going off. The watchmen are screaming. Prophetic grief is occurring. An invasion is about to urge all of Judah to turn before the judgment completely falls.

And yet they continue to ignore. And in that way, the central tension in these passages between external confidence and an uncircumcised heart. Because Judah has a capital city, a temple, religious leaders.

They have Josiah's reforms. But God looks beneath all of those visible safeguards and he sees the rot that is going on within. The issue isn't whether idolatry is being visibly practiced. It's whether loyalty to God actually exists in the heart.

Jeremiah uses images of resistance. The ground being unplowed, the neck refusing the yoke, the ear being closed, the silver not being refined. Each of these subsequent pictures is showing God's people that they've encountered God's word, but they're not yielding to it.

False Prophets Promise Peace Without Truth

False prophets intensify the danger by announcing that there's peace when there is no peace. Their message comforts the people, but it exposes their lack of belief and it doesn't prepare them for the judgment that's coming.

The Ancient Paths Call Judah Back to Covenant Faithfulness

Because biblical peace cannot be separated from God's truth. Healing a deep wound lightly may soothe a patient briefly, but it leaves the disease underneath untouched. The ancient paths are not nostalgia for the sake of custom.

They're God's revealed covenant ways. Justice, truth, faithful worship, trust in Him. Judah does not lack direction. She just refuses the road. And in that way, Jeremiah's anguish reveals something about the faithful proclamation of the word because he's not coldly predicting their ruin.

Jeremiah's Grief in Faithful Proclamation

The coming judgment moves through his heart like meat through a meat grinder. Truth tears at him. And in that way, truth and tears belong together. Because we can name evil clearly without enjoying another person's fall.

Hearing God's Word With Repentance

And these chapters ask us to examine how we hear the word of the Lord as well. Familiarity with scripture can coexist alongside of resistance. The proper response to the word is not admiring it for the warning, but repenting.

Actually breaking up the hard soil of our heart, seeking after the good way and walking in it. That is what repentance looks like. And in all of that, Jeremiah 4 through 6 points us straight to Jesus.

Jesus Gives New Hearts and Bears Judgment

He's the one who gives us new hearts who actually can repent. He speaks true peace so that we actually can be saved. He's the one who bears the storm of judgment instead of us. Judah was the one who needs circumcised hearts, not merely changed behavior.

Well, through the new covenant, we are told that Jesus is the one who circumcised our hearts. He forgives our sins. He transforms his people by the Holy Spirit. What the law exposed but could not do, Christ supplied through grace by what he's done.

Christ Brings Peace With God Through the Cross

Jerusalem's leaders are the ones who say, peace, peace, without even understanding what that means. But Jesus is the real peace of God. So that when you've seen him, you've seen God. And because of the blood of his cross, there is actually peace with God without minimizing our guilt, but by him bearing it.

Because the sword of judgment fell upon him instead of us. And by that, we are reconciled back to God. Jeremiah searches Jerusalem for one righteous person. Well, the gospel does reveal that one person.

Jesus Is the Righteous One Jeremiah Sought

And that one person is Jesus Christ in Christ alone. He's the one who by himself practices justice and truth. He's the one that God was looking for who satisfied the demands of the law. And he alone is the one who can save Jerusalem.

Like Jeremiah, he weeps over the city, but unlike Jeremiah, he dies for it. And then the image of decreation in this passage is striking, but it points to Jesus as well. Because darkness falls on the creator as he hangs upon the cross.

The ground starts to shake. The night sky comes over the midday sun. And you see in that moment that the world is shaking in chaos, almost returning back to the same decreation that Jeremiah is describing.

The Cross Prepares the Way for New Creation

But it doesn't do so for destruction. It does so in preparation of a new creation that will arise out of Jesus. And in all of that, what we see is that reform is insufficient. Warnings can be resisted.

Judgment is going to still approach. But our hope doesn't rest in our performance, but in the faithful Savior who did it all for us, who opened up our ears, who softened up our hearts, and who leads his people in the way that they should go.

The Temple Cannot Guarantee Judah's Safety

So as you read Jeremiah 4 -6, listen to every alarm bell as an appeal to repent. Because tomorrow, Jeremiah is going to stand at the temple gate. He's going to confront Judah's most dangerous illusion that possessing God's house would guarantee their safety when it doesn't.

It's the same sin that the Jews believed when Jesus came. But with that, read your Bible carefully, devotionally, and joyfully. May the Lord use his word to sanctify you completely, and we will continue our journey tomorrow.

God bless you.