MY WORDS FIRE, THIS PEOPLE WOOD

Our passage begins with God announcing judgement against His treacherous people. Yet He would temper that judgement with mercy. It would not be complete destruction. The people’s reaction should still shock us. Confidently, they boasted that God would never intervene to bring calamity. Their thinking excluded the very possibility of God either being interested enough or powerful enough to judge them, Zeph. 1. 12. ‘They were practical atheists’, Feinberg. Arrogantly, they went on to say that prophets who declared a coming judgement were mere ‘windbags’, Moffat, with a message derived from their own imagination. Thus Judah’s irreverence had sunk to new depths. Tragically, their attitude is so contemporary. ‘Their airy dismissal of the wrath and word of God’, K idner, has become commonplace in our society.

The Lord’s response to this brazen impiety is to solemnly declare that Jeremiah is His authentic messenger. Just as He had reminded Jeremiah at his commissioning, so now he tells the people - the prophet’s words were actually no less than the very words of God Himself, Jer. 1. 9. The Lord would bring to pass Jeremiah’s predictions of national disaster unless the people repented. The metaphor of our text is that the prophet’s words of judgement would be fuel and the people timber for burning. The result would be conflagration. Derek Kidner puts it memora­bly, Jeremiah’s ‘oracle will be like a match to a bonfire’. Because the message from the prophet was the living powerful word of God, it was certain of fulfilment.

Jeremiah then predicts Judah’s judgement. God would use the Babylonian invasion to accomplish His purpose. Their for­eign foes would not even understand, far less heed the people’s pleas for mercy. The invaders would be invincible. They would wreak devastation on every hand. Judah’s prized fortifications would count for nothing. They would be easily overrun and demolished. Exile would be the result for God’s people. God would measure out strict justice. Those who had served foreign gods in His land would serve foreign rulers in their land.

We must never despise or disregard the word of the Lord.