The Parenting of God

Jeremiah 26–28

Main Idea: The sovereign God of hope is serious.

1. God Is Hopeful (26).
   1. Jeremiah preaches in the temple (26:1-6).
   2. Death is threatened (26:7-10).
   3. Jeremiah is spared from death (26:11-24).
2. God Is Sovereign (27).
   1. The metaphor of the yoke and the prophecy (27:1-11)
   2. Prophecy to Zedekiah (27:12-15)
   3. Prophecy to the priests (27:16-22)
3. God Is Serious (28).
   1. Hananiah’s false prophecy (28:1-4)
   2. Jeremiah’s response (28:5-9)
   3. Hananiah breaks the yoke (28:10-11).
   4. Jeremiah responds (28:12-16).

The grocery cart wheel ebbs slightly to the right. You try to correct it, wondering why, in the twenty-first century, there is not a better solution to the grocery-cart-wheel problem. You have a mental list of things to buy. Your success as a grocery shopper depends on your getting everything in your cart at a good price and in a reasonable amount of time. It is not an impossible challenge, but it is a challenge, and you are up for it.

With all that you are multitasking in this moment, there is something that demands more of your attention and mental energy than anything else. It’s the twenty-seven pound two-year-old sitting in the cart. Toddlers are adorable. You think so, and any smart person agrees. If someone stops to tell you so, it won’t hurt your feelings. You don’t ask a lot of the child. She has snacks; she is content since your grocery run is strategically placed at a time when she is well fed and rested. You don’t need her to cross off things on your list or compare prices to online options. You don’t demand anything of her but this: she cannot under any circumstances embarrass you.

In your more honest moments you wish this did not bother you. You wish that your parenting were not influenced by what others think. You wish that you did not want the approval of perfect strangers. Yet we don’t live that way. Public perception still weighs on us as if we were in junior high all over again. We know, we just know, that the moment our baby cries the perfect parent will bob along down the aisle with her perfect, nonslobbering, athletically conditioned, baby Mozart, and she will judge us. Even if she does not know us, acknowledge us, or even see us, we just know she is judging us. How dare she!

So when parenting toddlers, we have this agreement: I will feed, clothe, and love you. You are only asked not to embarrass me in public.

It seems this is how the other prophets of Israel thought about Jeremiah. He is an absolute, perfect embarrassment to them. You have the sense as you read these passages that the others around Jeremiah are cringing. Every time he opens his mouth he does something more embarrassing than the last time. Why does he do this to himself in public?

Context

These three incidents have specific historical markers. The first takes place in the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim and the other two during the reign of Zedekiah. During the reign of these two kings, the attitudes of the people and the priests have not changed. The people have the wrong attitude because they have the wrong leaders.

What they do not see is that this embarrassing prophet is actually bringing the exact message they need to hear. Sometimes the thing we think is the most embarrassing is revealing to us something about the heart of God.

And this makes me wonder: Does God parent us like this? When we act up, how does God respond? Does he cringe at our behavior? No. God fears no one’s approval. He is not embarrassed by us, and this is really the point of this passage. At every turn God is not about behavior modification. He is not trying to get us to be better. If you read these chapters closely, you see that God is trying to teach them something about himself.

In the first two narratives God is sending Jeremiah to teach them about his character. God is sending because God is teaching. In the last narrative we see Jeremiah responding in a way that demonstrates he has already learned these lessons. So, what do we learn about the character of God from these stories?

God Is Hopeful

Jeremiah 26

Jeremiah Preaches in the Temple (26:1-6)

God commands Jeremiah to go and to stand in the court of the temple and deliver a hard message. The message is delivered and the response is horrific. While people gathered around to hear the message of the prophet, the people wanted to kill Jeremiah.

Death Is Threatened (26:7-10)

He is spared from death, but it will not be the last time he is threatened with death or physically abused.

Jeremiah Is Spared from Death (26:11-24)

Jeremiah’s defense is clear enough: he is simply saying what God sent him to say. The people respond to this. As much as they do not like his message, there is still a sense of respect for the prophetic mantle. His life is spared because they reasoned, “This man doesn’t deserve the death sentence, for he has spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God” (v. 16).

God Is Sovereign

Jeremiah 27

The Metaphor of the Yoke and the Prophecy (27:1-11)

Jeremiah effectively used the metaphor of the yoke. Yet it is as troubling as it is helpful. They were told to put their necks under the yoke of Babylon. Babylon hated God and tortured and abused God’s people, yet they were to submit to them.

Prophecy to Zedekiah (27:12-15)

Accepting this metaphor had to be especially painful for King Zedekiah. He was told to submit to this foreign nation. Few things in Scripture seem more counterintuitive. Zedekiah’s land was the promised land. This was the inheritance from God to the children of Abraham. This land was won at the price of great sacrifice and military conquest under Joshua and sustained under David. This land was a royal wonder under the hand of Solomon. And to complicate things, Zedekiah has a host of prophets telling him to stay. To obey God, Zedekiah must deduce that they are trying to deceive him or that they themselves are deceived (vv. 14-15).

Still, he was told also to put his neck under the yoke. Why? Because to submit to the foreign king was in reality to be saved. Think about how merciful this is on the part of God. He promises to bless his obedient people. Initially, they do not obey, so he gives them opportunities to repent over hundreds of years. When they still do not repent, he tells them, through the prophet Jeremiah, that he will destroy the land. Yet God gives them one last opportunity to repent when he allows them to escape to Babylon. They can walk off and avoid the destruction.

To be clear, they could not avoid the discipline. Those who did not submit to the discipline would be destroyed. Their disobedience had consequences from which they would not recover.

Sadly, as we know from the rest of the book, Zedekiah rejects the discipline of the Lord and is destroyed. He would not embrace the yoke, so he was dealt the rod.

There is an interesting passage in Jeremiah’s songbook, the book of Lamentations. In 3:27 he says it is good for a young man to “bear the yoke while he is still young.” In other words, he must bear down now under God’s discipline if he wants to bear up later in life. This is the advice Zedekiah was unwilling to take. In this way Jeremiah and Zedekiah are opposites. Jeremiah is bearing a heavy yoke now and God’s favor later. Zedekiah is rejecting God’s yoke now and will bear his anger later.

Prophecy to the Priests (27:16-22)

Jeremiah has a word to those who were trying to deceive. They submitted a positive message about the future of their ritual temple implements, but Jeremiah promised that all of it would be taken back to Babylon.

God Is Serious

Jeremiah 28

Hananiah’s False Prophecy (28:1-4)

Contrary to Jeremiah’s prophecy, Hananiah tells the king exactly what he would want to hear: that God had broken the yoke of Babylon.

Jeremiah’s Response (28:5-9)

Jeremiah is sympathetic. He wants this prophecy to come true. However, he is cautious and warns Hananiah the prophet that only when a prophecy comes true is a prophet vindicated.

Hananiah Breaks the Yoke (28:10-11)

Hananiah breaks the yoke off of Jeremiah in a public demonstration of his message. Again, the hope is that it comes true.

Jeremiah Responds (28:12-16)

Jeremiah has a new message: the wooden yoke will be replaced by an iron one. Jeremiah only spoke after God had spoken. Now he knows the truth, and he is willing to speak the truth. Hananiah will pay the ultimate price because he “preached rebellion against the Lord.”

These three narratives have a specific function in the book of Jeremiah. Taken as a whole, they carry the narrative of the book along by showing just how bad the times were when a prophet is treated like a criminal. In doing so, they also show how far the people of God are from the heart of God.

Conclusion

We began by talking about the paranoia of public embarrassment when other people see us dealing with an uncooperative child. However, often the shoe is on the other foot. Those of us who see a child acting up in public have been there. We know exactly how the parent feels, so even if the parent appears to be perfectly content and have it all under control, we cringe for them. We are embarrassed for them.

This is the irony: Jeremiah is faithfully following the direct words of God himself. So even though the whole world looks at Jeremiah and cringes, God does not. Everyone is embarrassed for God, but God is not embarrassed. Jeremiah’s Father approves of his public behavior. This is all that matters.

A mentor of mine often said, “The only person we have to please in life is God.” While we might at times feel like a lonely prophet, rarely is the whole world actually against us. Yet Jeremiah rarely had a friend to lean on, to confide in, and to stand with him. He had no private emissary for his public shame. But this is no matter. He is obedient to God, and that is enough.

So when we look in the mirror, we may ask if we can say that. Jeremiah is not passive. He is aggressive. He is not just looking out for his own interest but for the interest of others (Phil 2:4). He is speaking the truth in love (Eph 4:15), and he is being a good steward of his assignment (Matt 25:21). God was pleased with him when no one else was. So Jeremiah could sleep well at night. He had pleased the only one who mattered.

Discuss and Reflect

1. Why was the metaphor of the yoke so critical?
2. Is there a connection between Jeremiah 28 and Lamentations 3:27?
3. Based on the king’s unwillingness to listen to Jeremiah, what future actions is he likely to take?
4. What are we to do when someone preaches a message contrary to Scripture?
5. Is there a connection between this passage and the warnings to the teachers, such as James 3:1?
6. Could it be that the new false prophet is not a person but a feeling?
7. If our culture establishes that truth is in ourselves, and we hear something preached that makes us feel uncomfortable, could we not conclude that the preacher should not have a hearing? Would that conclusion be valid?
8. What would it look like if a preacher stood today and called out the false prophet of hearing things that just make us feel good?
9. What kind of courage was demanded of Jeremiah to call out Hananiah and prophesy that he would die?
10. With the exchanges of Jeremiah 26; 27; and 28, why is it that the people, especially the king, will not respond to the message? Why do they love the false prophets?