“1 The word came to Jeremiah from the Lord when King Zedekiah sent to him Pashhur son of Malkijah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah. They said: 2 “Inquire now of the Lord for us because Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon is attacking us. Perhaps the Lord will perform wonders for us as in times past so that he will withdraw from us.”
3 But Jeremiah answered them, ‘Tell Zedekiah, 4 “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am about to turn against you the weapons of war that are in your hands, which you are using to fight the king of Babylon and the Babylonians who are outside the wall besieging you. And I will gather them inside this city. 5 I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm in anger and fury and great wrath. 6 I will strike down those who live in this city—both men and animals—and they will die of a terrible plague. 7 After that, declares the Lord, I will hand over Zedekiah king of Judah, his officials and the people in this city who survive the plague, sword and famine, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and to their enemies who seek their lives. He will put them to the sword; he will show them no mercy or pity or compassion.”
8 ‘Furthermore, tell the people, “This is what the Lord says: See, I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death. 9 Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague. But whoever goes out and surrenders to the Babylonians who are besieging you will live; he will escape with his life. 10 I have determined to do this city harm and not good, declares the Lord. It will be given into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will destroy it with fire.”
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Enhancing and obvious—those two words describe modern spirituality—enhancing and obvious. It is all about enhancement. It is about helping me be a better me and you be a better you. It is about practices and habits that refine the soul. Given that it’s all about enhancement, if you aren’t spiritual person, you won’t suffer any real loss just as if you aren’t into classical music, you won’t suffer any real loss other than a loss of refinement. It is about enhancement—what can be added?
Modern spirituality also prioritizes what is obvious. It is assumes that what’s truly spiritual must obvious to all. The fact that turning over a new leaf is good is obvious and so that’s a hallmark of modern spirituality. The fact that people enjoy receiving kindness is obvious so be kind to everyone. There is nothing that truly needs to be revealed that the sensitive soul doesn’t already know. It is all obvious. We just need to grow in what’s so easy to know.
Then you bump up against a passage like Jeremiah 21 in which spirituality is not about enhancement but is rather about life and death. You bump up against a passage like Jeremiah 21 in which spirituality is not obvious but is completely counterintuitive. Since I’m more affected by modernity than I would like to think, I need this sort of corrective. It reminds me that spirituality is about far more than enhancement; it includes that, but even that is really about life and death. Jeremiah 21 reminds me that while spirituality can be obvious, much of it is counterintuitive. It can only be revealed. It reminds me that there is a way of life and a way of death, and that it is revealed by God. That’s the claim of this sermon: there is a way of life and a way of death, and it is revealed by God.
We will study this in two points. First: holy war. Second: surprising surrender. We see holy war in verses 1-7. We see surprising surrender in verses 8-10.
First: holy war. We are in a much different situation today in the book of Jeremiah than we were last week. Last week Jeremiah seemed like a troublemaker. This week the people were in such severe trouble that the king sent emissaries to Jeremiah; verse 1, ‘The word came to Jeremiah from the Lord when King Zedekiah sent to him Pashhur son of Malkijah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah. They said: “Inquire now of the Lord for us because Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon is attacking us. Perhaps the Lord will perform wonders for us as in times past so that he will withdraw from us.”’
The book of Jeremiah is not chronologically linear. It jumps back and forth quite a bit. We’ve jumped ahead significantly since last week. Babylon laid siege to Jerusalem. King Jehoiachin has surrendered and taken into exile along with the best and the brightest including Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar has placed Jehoiachin’s uncle Mattaniah on the throne and renamed him Zedekiah just to show everyone who was really in charge. It has been chaos ever since. As Jack Lundbom put it, “the king’s weak personal character, a city now bereft of its most capable citizens, and a rival Judahite king held captive in faraway Babylon combined to create a near-chaotic existence all during Zedekiah’s reign…” Egypt has been forming an anti-Babylon alliance. Zedekiah has been a loyal servant of Babylon for years, but due to pressure from his nobles has now thrown in his lot with Egypt and is opposing Babylon. Babylon isn’t happy and this second siege has been set up around Jerusalem.
This second siege the situation that caused Zedekiah to inquire of the Lord. Now before you give Zedekiah too much credit for inquiring of the Lord, know that he only did so after he had exhausted every other avenue. He couldn’t outthink Nebuchadnezzar. He couldn’t overpower Nebuchadnezzar. He couldn’t afford to pay Nebuchadnezzar off. Everything in which Zedekiah boasted was gone; “let not the wise man boast of in his wisdom, or the strong man boast in his strength, or the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this: that he knows me, that I am the Lord.” Zedekiah’s wasn’t turning to the Lord because his boast was in him. He was turning to the Lord because every option he considered in the least bit promising was cut off. He was turning to God because, “hey, what’s the harm in doing so?”
Zedekiah sent two officials to Jeremiah. The first was Pashur son of Malkijah. This is not the same Pashur we met last week. That Pashur was the son of Immer. This is the son of Malkijah. It’s not strange to have two Pashurs running around; think about how many Geralds or Gerrits we have in this congregation. This second Pashur was fiercely opposed to Jeremiah and would later push for the death penalty for the prophet. The other man Zedekiah sent, Zephaniah the priest, was less opposed to Jeremiah, which might mean that the king sent these two as a sort of good cop, bad cop team. It’s hard to pull the good cop, bad cop routine on God and Calvin makes the point that the prophet didn’t seem all that intimidated or honored by these two emissaries from the king.
Zedekiah wanted to know whether the Lord would “perform wonders for us as in times past”, as verse 2 puts it. The king was likely thinking about the crisis during the reign of Hezekiah when Sennacharib besieged Jerusalem. Hezekiah had asked the prophet Isaiah to inquire of the Lord; the Lord promised salvation and crushed the Assyrian army that night. Zedekiah was hoping for a repeat.
That’s the set up for the word “but” in verse 3; ‘But Jeremiah answered them, “Tell Zedekiah, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am about to turn against you the weapons of war that are in your hands, which you are using to fight the king of Babylon and the Babylonians who are outside the wall besieging you. And I will gather them inside this city. I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm in anger and fury and great wrath.’”’
This is holy war language. The God who fought against Egypt with “an outstretched hand and a mighty arm” was now using those to fight against Israel as verse 5 makes clear. The God who told Israel to show no mercy or pity or compassion to the Canaanites in the land was now ordering the same done upon the Israelites, as verse 7 makes clear. The God who was for Jerusalem when Hezekiah asked Isaiah to inquire of the Lord was now against Jerusalem when Zedekiah asked Jeremiah to inquire of the Lord.
Why? Why was the Lord now fighting a holy war against His own people? The answer to that has been almost the entirety of the book of Jeremiah to this point. The Lord was against His people because despite repeated warnings they would not repent. He warned them that He would break them like a clay pot because they were not moldable clay. He would administer the covenant curses because they would not keep the covenant; many ancient near east treaties called for the treaty breaker’s weapons to be turned against themselves; “I am about to turn against you the weapons of war that are in your hands,” as verse 4 puts it.
Since the people would not keep the covenant, they would suffer the curses of the covenant. You see that in the language of, “plague, sword and famine,” throughout this section, which were common covenant curses; these were also entirely natural when it came to siege warfare. During a siege the people inside the city would slowly starve because they couldn’t go out into the surrounding fields to plant and harvest—there’s famine; as a result of the lack of food, the people’s immune systems would weaken and since they were regularly exposed to dead bodies, excrement, and garbage, which they couldn’t dispose of because of the siege, you have a recipe for plague. When the people were sufficiently weakened by famine and plague, the besieging army would break through the walls and put the people to death by the sword—“plague, sword and famine.” The invaders would also carry germs with which the local population were unfamiliar and so new plagues would ravage the population who had survived the battle. The invaders would take their share of the crops for years to come which would result in more famine for the people; God simply turned Jerusalem over to the natural consequences of sword, famine, and plague. These were completely God’s doing and completely the result of Nebuchadnezzar’s siege. That’s how it works with God’s sovereignty and human responsibility.
King Zedekiah was hoping that the Lord would work wonders for Jerusalem. Jeremiah told him that the Lord would certainly work wonders, but that these wonders would be against Jerusalem. Look at the subjects and verbs of verses 4-7, “I am about to turn against you the weapons of war,” “I will gather them inside this city,” “I myself will fight against you,” “I will strike down,” “I will hand over Zedekiah.” The Lord is the subject of these warfare verbs. The Lord was executing holy war on His people and the reason was that they were no different from the Canaanites whom He had kicked out of the land. It was all promised in Deuteronomy.
King Zedekiah asked Jeremiah to inquire of the Lord because he was in trouble. Jeremiah let him know that he was in far more trouble than he realized. He wasn’t just fighting Nebuchadnezzar. He was fighting the Lord. “I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and a mighty arm in anger and fury and great wrath.”
If God is against us, we are done for, but as Paul made clear in his letter to the Romans, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” The question for you is how can you know whether God is for you or against you? Zedekiah could ask Jeremiah. He asked and found out that God wasn’t for him; God was against him. How can you know whether God is for you or against you? You look at your response to Jesus. That’s what life and death hinge on now.
Spirituality wasn’t about enhancement in Zedekiah’s situation. It was a matter of life and death. It was about whether God was for him or against him. God being for you is life. God being against you is death. We’re not comfortable with the idea of God being against anyone. We are comfortable with God offering tips on enhancement, but enhancement doesn’t require the cross. Truly dealing with sin that leads to death requires the cross. This is a spirituality of life or death. This is a spirituality of the cross. You see the offer in our second point: strange surrender.
To this point Jeremiah’s words were meant for the king; these next words were meant for the people; verse 8, ‘Furthermore, tell the people, “This is what the Lord says: see, I am setting before you the way of life and the way of death. Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague. But whoever goes out and surrenders to the Babylonians who are besieging you will live; he will escape with his life.”’
These ways of life and the way of death come from Deuteronomy. They come from the final text we studied in our survey of Deuteronomy, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to Him.” The irony here is that the people had chosen death by way of their unrepentant sin and now only way of life remaining was to surrender to Babylon.
These was mercy even in God’s judgment. Jerusalem would be destroyed because the people had refused to listen to God but even now if they listened to God they could escape with their lives. This is a way of saying, “you didn’t listen to me for centuries, you didn’t listen to me when I sent Jeremiah; this is now your last, last, last chance to live.” If you only see the wrath in this passage and miss the mercy of this last, last, last chance, you are missing the point.
This message of surrender was not popular. This was the message that got Jeremiah arrested for treason and put on trial for his life. It’s hard to think of a more offensive message to a besieged people. It’s hard to think of a more offensive message to a people who thought having the temple in their city would keep them safe. It was, however, the message. It was a call to accept the judgment of God. If, as Calvin put it, “they [stubbornly] defended themselves, God would be their enemy.” If, however, they humbled themselves under God’s judgment by the hand of Babylon, they would live.
This was the counter-intuitive choice they faced. Remember, modernity says spirituality should be obvious. Everyone should be able to see that it makes sense. This way of life wasn’t obvious. No one would have thought that obedience to God looked like surrender unless God had told them. We wouldn’t know much of what’s in this book unless God told us. Some of it is obvious. Much of it isn’t.
God told the people that if they defended themselves, they would die and if they surrendered, they would live. If they accepted that God had become their enemy, they could live but if they went on pretending He was their friend, they would die. What doctrine does that sound like to you? It sounds like repentance to me. If I accept that God’s wrath is upon me, surrender myself to the humbling means of escape He prescribes, I live. If I defend myself, I will die. To be friends with God, I need to see how I’ve made myself His enemy.
This story of strange surrender isn’t all that strange. Jeremiah 21 with its life and death spirituality as opposed to enhancement and counter-intuitive truth as opposed to what’s obvious isn’t all that strange. It’s often the way God works. He does it humble the proud and the wise.
Jesus saw that; he is, after all, the God of Jeremiah. “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” That’s the way of life and way of death and it is counterintuitive. It’s as counterintuitive as surrendering yourself to live.
Jesus told us what he told Zedekiah. “What good will it do a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” “Since I’m against you Zedekiah, it doesn’t matter who is for you.”
That’s not about enhancement. That’s not obvious. That’s about the way of life and death. That’s only revealed by God. That is what you get when you deal with Jesus. He didn’t come for our enhancement. He came because we are dead and needed life. Very little of what he did or taught was obvious. Much of it is counterintuitive to us because we are so distorted by sin and so, “whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”
You can have a spirituality that’s all about enhancement and obvious truths that everyone could agree with, or you can have what Jesus offers. You can save your life only to lose it or you can lose your life only to save it. The choice is yours. Amen.