Week 33: Jeremiah 30-45; Lamentations; Ezekiel 1-11

Here's this week's reading plan as we make our way through the books of Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel:

Weekend: Jeremiah 37-39
Monday: Jeremiah 40-45
Tuesday: Jeremiah 46-52
Wednesday: Lamentations (entire book)
Thursday: Ezekiel 1-6
Friday: Ezekiel 7-11

If you are starting to feel that you've been reading the book of Jeremiah for a long time now, it's because you have. Jeremiah is the longest book in the Bible, even though other books, like Isaiah and Psalms, have more chapter divisions.

The books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel have some interesting similarities and differences. Like Jeremiah, the prophet Ezekiel lived and prophesied during one of Jerusalem's darkest periods. The year 586 BC marks the Holy City's worst catastrophe up to that point in time...its total destruction by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army. The city walls were breached and reduced to rubble. The temple was looted and burned to the ground. Homes and business were demolished. The majority of Jerusalem's population was exiled to Babylon, where the people remained for decades.

Jeremiah and Ezekiel (along with Isaiah and Zephaniah) followed the same basic sequence in writing their books. They began with a series of oracles against Israel, then moved to a set of oracles against the surrounding nations, and came full circle with oracles consoling Israel, which promised restoration and future blessing after God's judgments had run their course. While Ezekiel arranged his oracles chronologically, however, Jeremiah did not.

Ezekiel and Jeremiah ministered to many of the same people, but those people were in very different circumstances when they encountered the two prophets. Jeremiah prophesied to the inhabitants of Jerusalem before they were carried off into captivity. Ezekiel was "a missionary prophet" of sorts. He lived among the people after their exile to Babylon and instructed them on how they should conduct themselves among their captors.

The message for us is that God meets us where we're at...regardless of our circumstances in life. He instructs us on how we should live, and leaves the choice (along with the blessings and consequences of those choices) up to us. Yet, even after we've messed up in the worst possible ways, we can trust that God will never leave us or forsake us. He will deliver us and infuse us afresh with hope and joy.

A passage in Lamentations, the book that lies between Jeremiah and Ezekiel, is particularly instructive. As the early morning sun broke over Jerusalem's eastern horizon, it illuminated brown and yellowish hues of smoke, which wafted slowly heavenward from the Holy City's smoldering ashes. Jeremiah stood motionless and wept softly as he wrung these words from his lonely soul, speaking as if one with the city whose destruction he had predicted for some 40 years:

Like a bear lying in wait,
like a lion in hiding,
he dragged me from the path and mangled me
and left me without help.
He drew his bow
and made me the target for his arrows.
He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver.
I became the laughingstock of all my people;
they mock me in song all day long.
He has filled me with bitter herbs
and sated me with gall.
He has broken my teeth with gravel;
he has trampled me in the dust.
I have been deprived of peace;
I have forgotten what prosperity is.
So I say, "My splendor is gone
and all that I had hoped from the Lord."

But then the Spirit whispered to the worn-and-weary prophet and his face brightened.

He continued...lament giving way to consolation:

I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord's great love we
are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, "The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will hope in him."
The Lord is good to those whose hope
is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord.
(Lamentations 3:10-26)

Jeremiah made the faithful acclamation: "The Lord is my portion; therefore I will hope in him."

Whatever circumstances we find ourselves facing in the coming week, let's make this common commitment: "Come what may, the Lord is our portion; therefore we will hope in him!"

Chuck