Don't Be Stupid (Jer. 51:15-18)

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Sanctity of Human Life Sunday always makes me stop and think, and yesterday was no different in that regard, yet a difference for me was present. Due to my fresh reading of Jeremiah and Lamentations, the thought struck me that many of us in this generation as Christians have taken the same dangerous stance as Baruch did. Let me try to explain.

Jeremiah had a scribe/secretary (probably a relative) named Baruch who wrote down his messages for him. Baruch diligently labored alongside Jeremiah and didn’t seem to quail at hard things Jeremiah asked of him; outwardly he was obedient to God and to the tasks given him by Jeremiah. Yet the Lord saw something else in him, his true heart, and offered in a very short chapter of Jeremiah a direct message for him. This chapter is a pause—God turns from speaking of calamity to the Jews and to the nations around them and speaking to Jeremiah to speaking to Baruch’s complaining, which God had heard, as he hears our complaints, whether petty or not. Apparently, Baruch’s lament was this: “Ah, woe is me! For the LORD has added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning and have found no rest” (Jer. 45:3, NASB Revised). 

God’s direct message to him implicated Baruch’s self-deception about his control over his own fate: “Behold, what I have built I am about to tear down, and what I have planted I am about to uproot, that is the whole land” (v. 4). Apparently, Baruch felt that he shouldn’t have to endure the sufferings of his nation since he was obedient to God’s command and faithfully helped Jeremiah. He didn’t want to suffer. He felt he should be spared the sorrow, the weariness, the groaning that being under siege and/or attached to a rejected prophet and his people brought. Lest we think we’re so much better than Baruch, how often do we groan or lament our own suffering, whether deserved or undeserved, and contrive to escape it? We, too, forget that it is God who builds a nation, and it is also God who has the right to tear it down when it no longer brings Him glory nor serves His purpose. The United States of America stands because God wills it to do so.

Here is the rest of God’s disconcerting message to Baruch: “But you, are you seeking great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for behold, I am going to bring disaster on all flesh,” declares the LORD, “but I will give your life to you as booty in all the places where you may go” (v. 5). Are we, too, doing things for God’s kingdom with an underlying motive of advancement or ambition? God’s answer to us is probably much of the same: Don’t seek them! As it goes with your country so goes it with you. Life is not lived in a vacuum or bubble, regardless of how much we love God and seek to serve Him; even if that desire is pure, we live in the midst of a crooked, perverse nation. The message is not all despair, though, as God called out Baruch's treacherous heart in the midst of his service. God still generously assured him that He will preserve him in the places he goes in the midst of his country's captivity as well as Jeremiah's rejection by the people in authority. God preserves for His purposes. We can be assured.

The intersection is this: we who are of the Church in the United States of America cannot avoid the judgment for the sins of our nation, which is sure to come, by being obedient or faithful in our own little safe sphere, by seeking only our own good. Much to my own condemnation, it is simply not enough! When it comes time for our nation to pay the price for its blatant ignoring of the abhorrent sin of abortion (along with all the other abhorrent sins we condone by our silence), we too will suffer along with it just as Jeremiah and Baruch both suffered with their nation when it fell because of its rebellious, defiant sin. Speaking as God commanded to their nation about injustice didn’t spare either Jeremiah or Baruch hardships, hunger, or captivity; instead it brought the rejection of the nation they tried to serve in addition to the consequences that nation suffered. Why should we think ourselves any different, any more advantaged or privileged? Seemingly, most of us are going about our own insulated lives much like Baruch, thinking that something we are doing for God will benefit us and spare us any suffering, but we will not be spared the hatred of the world when we speak His truth. Jesus tells us this.

For some reason (maybe because the Word has been abandoned to in-church-only reading for many), the American church when it pays any attention to politics seems blind to its workings and wants to “chew up the meat and spit out the bones.” This seems to be quickly overtaking the truth of the Word, especially as the “Christian” population has also now eagerly embraced Trump’s seemingly-calculated embodiment of the desire for the prosperity gospel message proclaimed in much of the church today, all while ignoring the ravagement of sin in this country. Saying the right things won’t save us. God condemned His chosen nation’s speaking of words without heart. They said the right things, yet served other gods while doing so. They “obeyed” outwardly God’s laws while adding to them their own interpretation, devaluing them of any power because they took away God’s intent from them. I can’t believe that God is pleased with the church in America any more than He was pleased with Israel or Judah. Their hearts were not turned back to God with the spoken truth, and they were destroyed when God rejected those in whom they trusted and took away any hope of prospering with them. Our hope is not in America’s greatness, but rather in the Lord's. 
It is He who made the earth by His power, 
Who established the world by His wisdom,
And by His understanding He stretched out the heavens,
And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth;
He makes lighting for the rain,
And brings forth the wind from His storehouses. (Jer. 51:15-16)


God’s next words? “All mankind is stupid, devoid of knowledge” and all the things they have created, the things they worship are “worthless, a work of mockery; in the time of their punishment they will perish” (vv. 17-18). So . . . let’s not be stupid, believing that our own works or our own righteousness or the things we cherish will offer us escape! Let us speak His truth boldly, not burying our heads in the sand of self-preservation or the hope for prosperity in a world that is not our home.



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