Rocky Road Devotions: Jeremiah's Message from the Garbage Dump

Thursday, January 21, 202 1
This is what the Lord said to me: “Go and buy a clay jar. Then ask some of the leaders of the people and of the priests to follow you. Go out through the Gate of Broken Pots to the garbage dump in the valley of Ben-Hinnom, and give them this message. Say to them, ‘Listen to this message from the Lord, you kings of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem! This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: I will bring a terrible disaster on this place, and the ears of those who hear about it will ring! “‘For Israel has forsaken me and turned this valley into a place of wickedness. The people burn incense to foreign gods—idols never before acknowledged by this generation, by their ancestors, or by the kings of Judah. And they have filled this place with the blood of innocent children. They have built pagan shrines to Baal, and there they burn their sons as sacrifices to Baal. I have never commanded such a horrible deed; it never even crossed my mind to command such a thing! So beware, for the time is coming, says the Lord, when this garbage dump will no longer be called Topheth or the valley of Ben-Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. “‘For I will upset the careful plans of Judah and Jerusalem. I will allow the people to be slaughtered by invading armies, and I will leave their dead bodies as food for the vultures and wild animals. I will reduce Jerusalem to ruins, making it a monument to their stupidity. All who pass by will be astonished and will gasp at the destruction they see there. I will see to it that your enemies lay siege to the city until all the food is gone. Then those trapped inside will eat their own sons and daughters and friends. They will be driven to utter despair.’ “As these men watch you, Jeremiah, smash the jar you brought. Then say to them, ‘This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies says: As this jar lies shattered, so I will shatter the people of Judah and Jerusalem beyond all hope of repair. They will bury the bodies here in Topheth, the garbage dump, until there is no more room for them. This is what I will do to this place and its people, says the Lord. I will cause this city to become defiled like Topheth. Yes, all the houses in Jerusalem, including the palace of Judah’s kings, will become like Topheth—all the houses where you burned incense on the rooftops to your star gods, and where liquid offerings were poured out to your idols.’” Then Jeremiah returned from Topheth, the garbage dump where he had delivered this message, and he stopped in front of the Temple of the Lord. He said to the people there, “This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘I will bring disaster upon this city and its surrounding towns as I promised, because you have stubbornly refused to listen to me.’” Jeremiah 19:1-15

The state of Judah and Israel, along with its people, smelled like Ben-Hinnom, the garbage dump outside Jerusalem. Metaphorically, it was like the dumpster behind an abortion clinic…it smelled of death, and nothing living could survive there long.

Jeremiah’s message, something of a children’s sermon object lesson, was unmistakable; the broken pieces of a clay pot belonged on a rubble heap, useless – its purpose forever shattered. God was telling his people they’d done this to themselves, become a shattered mess of what hopes and dreams they’d sinned-away by worshipping other gods, and even resorting to the unthinkable practice of child-sacrifice. Disaster was about to be applied to the fragile clay pot of an unsuspecting nation. A message like this could not have had a pretty reaction. Indeed, Jeremiah’s future was probably sealed by this sermon. It would be thirty years later that Jerusalem would fall, but the memory of God’s enemies is long. The prophet’s message was fulfilled just a few years later as Jerusalem fell in BC 586.

I have long seen this as a shroud of warning to our country, once a beacon of life, now copying the practices of the garbage dump with opulence, hedonism, and children sacrificed to the god of convenience.

Today is the first full day of a new administration in our country. Some have said that the new president’s most daunting challenge is to unify a divided population. While that is an expected and somewhat laudable idea, I disagree. You cannot unify (in any lasting or genuine sense) people who have antithetical values. For Christians, guided by Holy Scripture, you cannot simply request that they accept darkness as light. Opposites may attract, but eventually they negate each other. When cold decides to coexist with hot the result is nauseating lukewarm. Frankly, shades of gray (produced by the marriage of light and darkness) may do well in a charcoal drawing, but as a life principle, anything short of stepping into the light of God’s will is well-short of the mark.

For You Today

I do not approve of anarchy or the kind of bloody insurrection we have seen of late in Washington. But neither can I keep from praying to God that we wake up to the smell of the garbage dump of Hinnom and turn away from the culture of death.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!