Jeremiah's Message from the Garbage Dump

 

Thursday, January 21, 2021
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!

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

For other posts on this topic see Broken Pieces and Shattered Beyond All Hope of Repair      

 

The Cry Heard in Ramah

 

Monday, December 28, 2020

After the wise men were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.  “Get up!  Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,” the angel said. “Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”  That night Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother, and they stayed there until Herod’s death.  This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet:  “I called my Son out of Egypt.”  

Herod was furious when he realized that the wise men had outwitted him.  He sent soldiers to kill all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old and under, based on the wise men’s report of the star’s first appearance.  Herod’s brutal action fulfilled what God had spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:  “A cry was heard in Ramah—weeping and great mourning.  Rachel weeps for her children, refusing to be comforted, for they are dead.”  Matthew 2:13-18

Known as the slaughter of the innocents, Herod’s attempt to stamp out any possibility of claims to his throne is one of the more heinous acts recorded in history.  This blot on humanity is on the par of genocidal despots like Hitler, Stalin, or the Rwandan regime’s purging of the Tutsi’s in the 1990’s.

The estimated number of children ripped from their parents’ arms and annihilated range from less than 10, to as many as 144,000.  Considering the population of the area, the lower number is more likely.  But that does not lessen the murderous impact of evil.  When it comes to holding-on to power, bloodlust is a staple.

In our day it is no different.  We tend to dress up the pig for public scrutiny.  Abortion is called choice, or family planning, but it is what it is…infanticide.  Our maniacal culture has made it legal, convenient, and safe…but only for the adult.

Centuries before Jesus was born, the prophet Jeremiah looked at the destruction of his homeland from a jail cell.  The Babylonian king’s defeat of Jerusalem, and the captivity of its people that followed were a low ebb of God’s people’s history.  There was a cry in Ramah for the defeated ones.  Jeremiah’s prophetic voice rose from his prison pit and spoke a word of hope to the captives. 

But now this is what the Lord says:  “Do not weep any longer, for I will reward you,” says the Lord.  “Your children will come back to you from the distant land of the enemy.  There is hope for your future,” says the Lord.  “Your children will come again to their own land.  Jeremiah 31:16-17

Jeremiah was writing about the devastation of Mt Zion’s city, Jerusalem, and her inhabitants.  We all await the return of prisoners, and those in far away Babylon (Iraq) were the subject of Jeremiah’s prayers.

Fast forward 600 years, and, unbeknownst to Jeremiah, his words are applied to the mothers and fathers of Bethlehem, whose children became the extermination project ordered by King Herod.  But what word could comfort the mother holding the limp body of her little son, put to death by a Roman guard’s sword?  Jeremiah says your children will come again to their own land.

Enter the child whose parents left in the middle of the night, bound for Egypt.  It is 30 years later, and he is back.  And his promise is to proclaim what God will do, release the prisoners, and set the captives free.  Jesus would face the executioner, and the executioner’s consequences, nailed to cross beams on the town garbage dump.  And he would face death’s reality by descending into its very jaws and the gates of hell, and he would lead the captives back to their home.

Even his name, Jesus, means God saves.  It means the cry heard in Ramah will not go unanswered.

For You Today

For those who trust in Jesus, believing in His resurrection power, there is no Rachel syndrome, refusing to be comforted.  These are they about whom another prophet, Isaiah wrote, comfort, comfort my people ^{(Isaiah 40:1).} 

If there is any hurt in your heart that refuses to be comforted, strengthened, healed, and made to walk in the light, remember the cry heard in Ramah became the shouts of joy filling Jerusalem.  This is the way of our God!

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

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Title image:  By Domenico Ghirlandaio via Wikimedia Commons   W  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©

For another post on this text see When Life Gets Broken    

 

Violence in the Land

 

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

The Lord examines both the righteous and the wicked.  He hates those who love violence.  Psalm 11:5

The death of George Floyd while in the custody of policeman Derek Chauvin ignited a countrywide firestorm of protests, some erupting into rioting, looting, and injury.  The flood of blaming from both sides of another polarizing event is deafening!  Some law enforcement camps are circling the wagons.  Outraged citizens are calling for heads to roll.  Politicians are pandering, news-cycle junkies and pundits are both working the talking points to death.  Meanwhile, the now-fired former police officer is sitting in a maximum security cell, charged with 3^rd degree murder, and manslaughter, with a first-appearance to answer the charges scheduled next week.   

It is entirely understandable that a community backlash would/should follow such an horrific end to a man’s life.  Moral legal action is demanded to sort out not only what happened, but to seek justice when a law enforcement official (with 3 backup officers on the scene) chooses to exert force, apparently sufficient to kill, particularly when the apprehended man is secured and begging for mercy.  Society that quietly looks the other way from such brutality is hideously inhumane.

From a personal viewpoint, I cannot get my mind to move past the thought that, for George Floyd and Derek Chauvin, this was a family matter; they were brothers.   That statement alone is liable to get me a dozen or more are you crazy responses, so let me explain.  Scripture tells us we come from a common ancestor, named Eve.  Even for the less Biblically-based among us, current science proclaims her name was Lucy, or L.U.C.A., (Last Universal Common Ancestor).[1]  That ultimately means George Floyd and Derek Chauvin are of the same family, which makes them both part of the same race, human!  This was a family matter…even if neither of them knew it!

It’s important to note that the very first murder recorded in Scripture is perpetrated by the first human to be born on earth (God had put Cain’s parents together by hand; they never saw the inside of a neo-natal unit).  Cain and Abel were instructed what kind of offering to bring to give thanks to God for their lives.  Abel listened and was obedient, Cain didn’t and wasn’t[2].  When God called him on his poor choice, Cain got ticked, and since he knew he couldn’t wrestle with God and come out on top, he took his anger out on his brother with a rock to the head.  And brothers have been using rocks, clubs, guns, spears, swords and smart bombs to carry on the family tradition ever since!  That is bad enough; but, enter the rioters and looters.  In a kind of Cain profile some are just drawn by the lure of the mob.  Somehow it is a safe place to take revenge for injustice.  And people do love a safe place from which to proclaim (self) righteously their anger.  And, if being anonymous in a mob, you can get away with smashing a store window, you might as well take that 72” smart TV home too.  We have a word to describe that…cowardice!

In the end we all play Cain’s card – it’s somebody else’s fault.  After all, Cain learned it best from his and his brother’s parents.  When they sinned, God demanded an accounting; here’s how that played out:

Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”  He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid.  I was afraid because I was naked.”  “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked.  “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”  The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”  Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?”  “The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”  Genesis 3:9-13

Deflect, blame someone else, hide, don’t show your face.  It’s the blame game.  Only, in the case of George Floyd, it wasn’t much of a game.

Let’s Pray Together:

Father, our hearts and souls are pierced once again at the madness of violence we have in our land.  There seems to be no end of anger and fingers pointing at each other; we play the blame game with amazing and continually increasing disastrous effects.  And then we go to church on Sunday to worship the goodness of the Prince of Peace.  You cannot be pleased with your children and our unfaithful, brutal ways.  May our hearts be pierced with your love; may it extend to our brothers.

For You Today

Brutality & revenge; when have two wrongs EVER made right?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For another post on Psalm 11:5 see The Examined Life and Collapsed Foundations

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[1] Meet LUCA, the Ancestor of All Living Things, New York Times article

[2] See Genesis 4

The Brutality of SLAVERY

Title Image:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

Thursday, February 20, 2020

And God said to Moses, “I am Yahweh—‘the Lord.’  I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El-Shaddai—‘God Almighty’—but I did not reveal my name, Yahweh, to them.  And I reaffirmed my covenant with them.  Under its terms, I promised to give them the land of Canaan, where they were living as foreigners.  You can be sure that I have heard the groans of the people of Israel, who are now slaves to the Egyptians.  And I am well aware of my covenant with them.  “Therefore, say to the people of Israel:  ‘I am the Lord.    I will free you from your oppression and will rescue you from your slavery in Egypt.  I will redeem you with a powerful arm and great acts of judgment.  I will claim you as my own people, and I will be your God.  Then you will know that I am the Lord your God who has freed you from your oppression in Egypt.  I will bring you into the land I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  I will give it to you as your very own possession.  I am the Lord!’”  So Moses told the people of Israel what the Lord had said, but they refused to listen anymore.  They had become too discouraged by the brutality of their slavery.  Exodus 6:2-9[1]

The brutality of any kind of slavery is a powerfully discouraging kind of image; it’s also enraging to the heart of anyone with even a mild sense and desire for the decency of affording human dignity which freedom conveys to all people. 

In the context of Israel’s conscription into a slave nation at the hands of Egyptian power in 1700 B.C., my mind’s eye conjures mud and straw images, making primitive bricks to build monuments to domination of one people by another.

While the odiousness of slavery in American culture most often evokes the shameful history of plantation life in the 16^th – 19^th centuries (as well it should), there are other slave owners fully empowered and operational today.  And these are as brutal as any Pharaoh building a pyramid. 

The list of so-called Seven Deadly Sins serves as a prime example of the kind of brutal slave holding done long before Egypt; it started in the Garden of Eden.  The Apostle Paul uses “slave” as a metaphor to help us understand how powerful sin can be in our lives to hold us captive, away from God:

We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin.  Romans 6:6

The personal (and also powerful) choice of trusting the slave-busting act of sacrifice on the cross by Jesus – his blood cleansing us from the guilt of our sins – liberates us from being slaves to the baser nature.  It doesn’t make us perfect in the sense that we are above it all, better than others, but it means we’ve been given the power to depend on God fully for His power in our lives to keep us free.

I had a seminary professor who expressed it this way:  when God saved my soul I became free to sin all I want…and I do, you see, because when God saved my soul He also changed my ‘wanter’.

For You Today

If you find yourself stuck in some kind of bondage, always returning to the sin you don’t want to do, but can’t help yourself, there is a cure for doing those things you detest.  It can be found, if you start looking…down on your knees.

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

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[1] For another post on Exodus 6:9 see Discouraged 

Standing Out in a Blended World

[i]

Friday, March 8, 2019

One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”  Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this:  ‘Listen, O Israel!  The Lord our God is the one and only Lord.  And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’   Mark12:28-30(NLT)

Circular arguments tend to close-off everything else outside the circle.  And that gets really weird when the stated purpose of the circle is to proclaim inclusiveness.  It’s like this statement:  We are for total tolerance; we will not tolerate any intolerance.  Huh…what?

American culture today demands total inclusiveness, everybody equally welcome at the table.  Now that sounds wonderful, except for the fact that, while God created everyone equal, we didn’t stay that way.  Created equally, we devolved into baser, harsher, nearly bestial beings, capable of not merely intolerance, but capable of eradicating all traces of the image in which we were created.  Examples abound like Stalin, Hitler, and Cain, to name a few.

My nephew, Lars Brownworth, has written several books[ii] on historical movements.  After reading a few chapters of the Norman invaders, or about Bohemond leading the First crusade to liberate Jerusalem, you wonder how anyone was left alive, considering the abject brutality, constant warfare, and scheming power grabs that define our human (not humane) history. 

The so-called evolved, civilized, and tolerant society which we claim today, highly-touted and politically-correct, is but an illusion.  We are just as unprincipled, undisciplined, power-hungry, and celebratory of those who are successful in having achieved notoriety and position by such means, as are the pages of history, effusive in praise over the building of bigger and better towers at Babel.

Popular thought today celebrates diversity as wonderful, yet demands that no lines be drawn to point out differences.  We prefer to live in a blender culture, having a homogenized idea of our existence amid the diverse parts.  As with a kitchen blender, throw us all in at the top, push the button, and whatever mush is created will be the new norm.  We will only be defined by our median, that common value which separates the higher half from the lower half.  But we will never admit to what characteristics bring the median up or down, because that might not be kind, or politically-advantageous.

Now, save the cards, letters and tweets…I’m not advocating a new circle to keep anybody on the outside of anything.  I am simply pointing to the truth of that complexity with which we have muddied the looking glass.  By trying to accommodate every thought in the 7.7 billion minds upon this planet as equally-valid (a feat certainly only possible by God…who would probably laugh at the prospect, or the results), we have arrived at the kind of impasse in human social possibilities that pleases no one, and that makes more than a few mad!

So, what do you do when you have reached a dead end, and all you have is a circular road map that tells you to keep circling?  Common sense says turn around; go back to the place of beginning and start over…begin with the basics…keeping the purpose of the journey in focus!

That’s what Jesus was telling the Pharisee, whose colleagues had made faith so complex it was unrecognizable (to God).  He told his questioner the most important message we ever got from God was to love God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength…and love our neighbors with the same kind of respect we’d like to have.  To me, that means tell the truth, listen more than you speak, and believe God rather than every new whim of social science engineering claiming to have the next, best-ever idea!

For You Today

So, let diversity flourish; away with the boredom of one-size-fits-all.  There’s a difference between common purpose which promotes unity, and demanding uniformity of thought.  Stand-out in this blended world; stand up for God’s way.

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

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[i] Title Image:   via Pixabay.com

[ii] See a list of Lars Brownworth books HERE

Of Harmony and Upward Mobility

[i]

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words:  Be joyful.  Grow to maturity.  Encourage each other.  Live in harmony and peace.  Then the God of love and peace will be with you.  2 Corinthians 13:11^(NLT)

Continuing with our journal from a short-term mission trip to South Africa:

Zimbabwe Journal, 

Sunday afternoon, October 7, 2007

Game Drive – Hwange National Park/Preserve

“Wild animals cannot be scheduled – however, our guide, Livingston, is a native Zimbabwean who grew up walking daily in this African bush.  Over the years reading and observing the wildlife have made him a storehouse of information and wisdom concerning life in the bush.

He knows, for instance, that the red-billed weavers that build their nests like plumes at the end of tree branches do so to avoid having the heavier eagles land near their nests, endangering their young.  The mother will nearly close off the entrance to prevent snakes from entering, and the male will bring food to feed the group through the tiny opening.  They also build an exit as well as entry hole to vary their comings and goings; these are wise and faithful parents, protecting their young against the dangers.

During the dry season (which is every month except Oct/Nov) water determines almost every aspect of life here.  The elephants move in herds to find water. 

Today the watering hole was spectacular – as many as 30-35 elephants, a half-dozen giraffes, dozens of baboons, kudu (antelope) and at least one sullen and cranky croc.  When one giraffe was startled by a huge catfish jumping out of the water, probably scared by the croc, the whole group of antelope and giraffes dashed back from the water.  The kudu were barking and the elephants playing nervous trumpet!

This land is spectacular and ugly.  The brutality of beasts hunting and being hunted is echoed by the Spartan lifestyle of African people scratching-out an existence. 

This bull elephant decided to challenge our presence near the water hole.  We drove off, and his pride was protected.  (Not that we were much of a threat; He was less than 30 feet away, and I distinctly remember when he looked at us with that menacing stare that I wanted my mother!)

For all the violence of African bush life, there is beauty and order.  When considered against my Western worldview, there is a sense of futility in this lack of abundance and opportunity; “upward mobility” would be a strange phrase in Africa!  Yet things have stayed the same here for millennia.

Opportunity is also a word that can be applied to our Western culture’s lifestyles of self-destruction.  When you compare the human isolation of Western (so-called) civilization to the simplicity of Zimbabwean survival by cooperation and perseverance, it makes one wonder who, indeed, is the savage.

For You Today

Have you done some thinking lately about what’s really important?

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

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NOTES

[i] Title Images: Russell Brownworth (own work)