The Parenting of God

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.

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.

Jeremiah 28

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

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.

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.