As a young person visiting family in Southern Saskatchewan, I made the fatal decision to run quickly down a hill. I soon found myself head over heels and landing on my back, bruised and in pain. Note to self, running speedily downhill is a painful experience. I quickly learned to avoid that mistake in the future. However, there is much to learn as we travel through life and hopefully, we do not have to make every mistake in the book, or worse yet, repeat painful mistakes over and over.
So, how do we overcome our sinful past so that we have a new future? How can we learn the lessons from our past mistakes, so we avoid making devastating and destructive decisions in the days ahead? This will become evident to us as we see an example of a group of people who learned nothing from their previous experience. God’s word is unchanging, and his ways remain the same. He is constantly calling us away from sin in all its varied expressions, so that we will come to Him to find our needs more than amply met. It amazes me how patient God is and how he continually communicates with us despite the constant disobedience that we pursue as human beings.
In the continuing drama of the remnant of Jews who had survived the destruction of Jerusalem and the pillaging that had happened in the countryside, we find that they had now fled for ‘safety to Egypt,’ or so they thought. They had asked Jeremiah to seek God for direction and had been warned that safety was found in obeying God, which in their case meant, staying in the land, but their fears drove them to Egypt. Egypt was now a land that was about to experience a Babylonian incursion. In Jeremiah 43 and 44, we hear the final messages of Jeremiah to the people who sought refuge in Egypt. How many of us have sought refuge in something that was outside of God’s best for our lives?
WHAT ARE THE LESSONS WE NEED TO LEARN FROM PAST MISTAKES SO THAT WE DO NOT NEED TO REPEAT THEM?
- START LISTENING TO GOD.
What I mean by listening is to take to heart the message and obey it. Once again, Jeremiah is explaining the consequences of their disobedience. He is trying to help them see that their present condition is because of their refusal to obey God. Now to add to their continued worship of the Canaanite idols, they were worshiping the gods of Egypt. It was idolatry that was at the root of the exile to Babylon in the first place. Whatever we look to provide security and safety apart from God is idolatry. Wherever it is that we look to find meaning and purpose for life apart from God becomes an idol.
In Jeremiah 43:8-44:30, we discover how a hardened heart keeps people in a state of rebellion and judgment. In Exodus it was insightful to see that one of the reasons for the people not to listen to Moses in the pressures of Pharaoh’s first refusal to release them was because of their broken spirit or discouragement and their bondage. But we know that God can heal the broken hearted and set captives free. What that means is that despite life’s difficulties, God’s grace is more than able to set us free and begin to walk in a new way of living. Another reason why people chose the way of disobedience and trust in idols rather than God is spiritual deception.
In Tahpanhes the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: “While the Jews are watching, take some large stones with you and bury them in clay in the brick pavement at the entrance to Pharaoh’s palace in Tahpanhes. Then say to them, ‘This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: I will send for my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and I will set his throne over these stones I have buried here; he will spread his royal canopy above them. He will come and attack Egypt, bringing death to those destined for death, captivity to those destined for captivity, and the sword to those destined for the sword.[i]
We see in this language the terms of the covenant agreement between the Lord and his people. God promised blessing if they walked in obedience, but if they forsook God, they would experience death (Lev 26). Why do we experience death when we forsake God? God is life and to turn from Him is to term away from life to death, from light to darkness, from love to indifference, apathy, and even hostility and hatred. God is love and in Him is fulness of joy. To turn away from Him is to forfeit all that makes life worth living.
In this text, we see that God is about to judge the gods of Egypt. The tragedy is that the remnant is turning to the very things that God is about to judge. This is the problem of idolatry. If we place our trust in what God is about to judge, then we experience the effects of that judgment. If we are placing our trust in a society that is in rebellion against God and God is about to judge, then we will stand under God’s judgment. But if we, like God’s people who by faith looked to God and trusted in Him rather than what our sinful culture is trusting in, God will deliver us.
He will set fire to the temples of the gods of Egypt; he will burn their temples and take their gods captive. As a shepherd picks his garment clean of lice, so he will pick Egypt clean and depart. There in the temple of the sun in Egypt he will demolish the sacred pillars and will burn down the temples of the gods of Egypt.’ ”[ii]
This is Jeremiah’s final “action sermon.” While the Jews were watching, he gathered some large stones and set them in the clay (or mortar) before Pharaoh’s house in Tahpanhes. Then he announced that Nebuchadnezzar’s throne would one day sit on those stones while the king of Babylon passed judgment on the people. As he did to the temple in Jerusalem, so Nebuchadnezzar would do to the gods and temples in Egypt. His victory would be so easy that it would be like a shepherd wrapping his garment around himself! And yet these are the very gods that the Jews would worship in Egypt, gods destined to be destroyed.[iii]
- STOP MAKING EXCUSES AND COMING TO THE WRONG CONCLUSIONS.
One of the great problems of being deceived, and then justifying our behavior, is that it keeps us in bondage. We never come to the place where we see how we have been responsible for our sins and our response is so often to blame others rather than take personal responsibility for our actions. When we do not repent and turn from our sinful ways, we become diminished in the process. Rather than becoming the best version of what God intended for us to become, which is like God or godly; we become wounded, angry, bitter, unforgiving, and living a defeated life.
A. The problem of idolatry.
Jeremiah reiterates that it is idolatry that caused their problems and caused God’s discipline and exile in the first place, but the people had come to the opposite conclusion. The refugees remembered the terrible atrocities that had happened, but they had a different understanding as to why it had happened. Rather than seeing God’s longsuffering, patient attitude toward their sin, his kindnesses and mercies calling them to repentance, they interpreted the past differently. They thought that while they were worshiping false gods, they lived well, but in destroying and forsaking themselves of these idols during the spiritual renewal under Josiah, they made the wrong assumption. They now assumed that they were better off as idolaters rather than seeing idolatry as the reason for the judgment.
This word came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews living in Lower Egypt—in Migdol, Tahpanhes and Memphis—and in Upper Egypt: “This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: You saw the great disaster I brought on Jerusalem and on all the towns of Judah. Today they lie deserted and in ruins because of the evil they have done. They aroused my anger by burning incense to and worshiping other gods that neither they nor you nor your ancestors ever knew. Again and again I sent my servants the prophets, who said, ‘Do not do this detestable thing that I hate!’ But they did not listen or pay attention; they did not turn from their wickedness or stop burning incense to other gods. Therefore, my fierce anger was poured out; it raged against the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem and made them the desolate ruins they are today.[iv]
B. The current warning to turn from their idolatry.
“Now this is what the Lord God Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Why bring such great disaster on yourselves by cutting off from Judah the men and women, the children and infants, and so leave yourselves without a remnant? Why arouse my anger with what your hands have made, burning incense to other gods in Egypt, where you have come to live? You will destroy yourselves and make yourselves a curse and an object of reproach among all the nations on earth. Have you forgotten the wickedness committed by your ancestors and by the kings and queens of Judah and the wickedness committed by you and your wives in the land of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem? To this day they have not humbled themselves or shown reverence, nor have they followed my law and the decrees I set before you and your ancestors. “Therefore, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: I am determined to bring disaster on you and to destroy all Judah. I will take away the remnant of Judah who were determined to go to Egypt to settle there. They will all perish in Egypt; they will fall by the sword or die from famine. From the least to the greatest, they will die by sword or famine. They will become a curse and an object of horror, a curse and an object of reproach. I will punish those who live in Egypt with the sword, famine and plague, as I punished Jerusalem. None of the remnant of Judah who have gone to live in Egypt will escape or survive to return to the land of Judah, to which they long to return and live; none will return except a few fugitives.”[v]
The remnant would only be survived by a few fugitives. Unbelief is the sin that leads to eternal separation from God. They refused to turn from their idols to serve the true and the living God, and the result is death.
C. An unrepentant and defiant response.
Then all the men who knew that their wives were burning incense to other gods, along with all the women who were present—a large assembly—and all the people living in Lower and Upper Egypt, said to Jeremiah, “We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord! We will certainly do everything we said we would: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm. But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine.” The women added, “When we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did not our husbands know that we were making cakes impressed with her image and pouring out drink offerings to her?”[vi]
The Jewish settlers, and particularly the women who had been deeply involved in popular religious cults in Jerusalem, including the worship of ‘the queen of heaven’, argue that their troubles really began when they gave up such cults. It was Josiah’s reformation, and the banning of all religious cults in Jerusalem with the exception of the worship of the one God, the Lord, which in their eyes, had led to national disaster.[vii]
Who was the Queen of Heaven? This goddess had a Babylonian and Canaanite tradition and known as Ishtar/Astarte.
[she] was associated primarily with life and fertility and was thought to ensure continuing life for the community through the birth of children and the provision of health and welfare. Jeremiah 44 could serve as a warning for all dispersed Jewish communities who, faced with death and dissolution, might be tempted to assure their future through the adoption of forms of worship linked to this goddess of life and fertility. Syncretism [a blending of the worship of Yahweh and idols] was not an option for any Jewish community if it would be faithful to its heritage.[viii]
Their argument was one of perceived pragmatics. In other words, what works is what we will do. Walter Brueggemann explains their thinking.
The reason for holding to this alternative faith is simple: It works (v. 17)! The queen of heaven delivers the goods. The worship of this god has led to “peace and prosperity.” Negatively, the neglect of the worship of this god has led to the loss of wellbeing (v. 18). The point seems irrefutable. It is the argument of every religion seeks to make, that a god is judged by the gifts that are given. On its own terms, the argument is unanswerable.[ix]
They reasoned that when they worshiped her, they were well off. They had plenty of food and “suffered no harm.” But when they stopped their idolatrous practices, probably as a result of Josiah’s reforms (2 Kgs 23:4–20), they had experienced nothing but hardship and privation. From their vantage point it seemed that the idols had done more for them than had the living God.[x]
The idea is simply we worship and serve God for what we get out of it. We do what benefits ourselves, but what happens when it becomes difficult and challenging? What happens when it costs us to serve God? Satan brought the accusation before God, that the only reason Job served God was because of what he was getting out of it. “Does Job for God for nothing? (Job 1:9).”
What happens when trouble and trials come our way? Will we still love and serve God because of Who He is, not just because of what He does? This can only be determined by our responses in trials. Job certainly reveals to us that his life was one of genuine faith because it had been tried and purified.
- LEARN FROM THE CONSEQUENCES OF OTHERS.
We can learn from the past mistakes of others and therefore not make them ourselves. Life is too short to continue to make live a life violating God’s word and ways. Better for us to observe how God works in the lives of those who have gone before us and learn both from their wisdom and folly.
A. Wise people learn from others what to avoid and what to embrace.
Wisdom is one description of godly people who have learned what to avoid as well as what to do from the lives of others. We know that it begins with having a right attitude toward God and a right response toward evil. Job reminds us in his wisdom speech what the key is.
The fear of the LORD—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.[xi]
Jeremiah is calling the people to remember past follies and their consequences. He is challenging the people at that moment to learn from their earlier sinful approach to life, as well as their ancestors’ sins, and not to repeat their follies that brought them to this place of destitution.
Then Jeremiah said to all the people, both men and women, who were answering him, “Did not the Lord remember and call to mind the incense burned in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem by you and your ancestors, your kings and your officials and the people of the land? When the Lord could no longer endure your wicked actions and the detestable things you did, your land became a curse and a desolate waste without inhabitants, as it is today. Because you have burned incense and have sinned against the Lord and have not obeyed him or followed his law or his decrees or his stipulations, this disaster has come upon you, as you now see.” Then Jeremiah said to all the people, including the women, “Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah in Egypt. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: You and your wives have done what you said you would do when you promised, ‘We will certainly carry out the vows we made to burn incense and pour out drink offerings to the Queen of Heaven.’ “Go ahead then, do what you promised! Keep your vows![xii]
Jeremiah’s response is to point out the folly of their current behavior in a sarcastic manner where he states that keeping their vows to idols will only bring about the same results that happened when they were in the promised land. There does come a point where it is futile to continue the conversation with people who are unwilling to change their minds.
B. A promise of the destruction that happens when we live in disobedience to God’s word.
But hear the word of the Lord, all you Jews living in Egypt: ‘I swear by my great name,’ says the Lord, ‘that no one from Judah living anywhere in Egypt will ever again invoke my name or swear, “As surely as the Sovereign Lord lives.” For I am watching over them for harm, not for good; the Jews in Egypt will perish by sword and famine until they are all destroyed. Those who escape the sword and return to the land of Judah from Egypt will be very few. Then the whole remnant of Judah who came to live in Egypt will know whose word will stand—mine or theirs.[xiii]
Here God allows a few to leave Egypt so that the word of the Lord will be remembered as standing against the falsehood of idolaters. There comes a point where people have so turned their back on God, that they no longer care what He thinks or says. They are now without hope, but even more horrifying, they are without God. God did not leave them, but they have left him. The irony of this whole episode is that as a people under Jacob, the few had come to Egypt, where God multiplied them, delivered them, judged the Egyptians and established them in the promised land. When we move away from obeying God, we see the opposite happen, the many become few. Now in rebellion only a few are returning.
C. The sign of God’s coming judgment.
“‘This will be the sign to you that I will punish you in this place,’ declares the Lord, ‘so that you will know that my threats of harm against you will surely stand.’ This is what the Lord says: ‘I am going to deliver Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt into the hands of his enemies who want to kill him, just as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the enemy who wanted to kill him.’”[xiv]
Here we find two examples of leaders under God’s judgment. One is their last king who has been taken into exile, and now this Egyptian King who is given the remnant asylum, but he will be killed. We know from historical records that he was assassinated.
Just as God warned of coming judgment, we know from many texts of Scripture that a day of God’s judgment is coming upon our world. Only those who are putting their trust in Jesus will be spared. He is our refuge and safe place.
This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and form the glory of his might on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.[xv]
So, what are we to learn from the past mistakes both our own and others? We need to respond to God in obedience. Secondly, we need to stop making excuses and acknowledge our own sin, confessing and forsaking them. Finally, we need to learn from the mistakes of others who have defied God and suffered as a result. May we learn from the past to do what is right and pleasing in God’s sight. In historical hindsight we see that the arguments made by the remnant were wrong, and God’s warning became reality. So, what should we learn from this but to embrace God’s word as eternal, true, and about to be fulfilled. Only as we are obedient to God’s word because of our faith in Him, will be able to stand in the day when the storms arrive and the lives of so many will be destroyed.
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[i] Jeremiah 43:8-11, The New International Version of the Bible, Zondervan, 2011.
[ii] Jeremiah 43:12-13.
[iii] Warren Wiersbe, Be Decisive, (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 159-60.
[iv] Jeremiah 44:1-6.
[v] Jeremiah 44:7-14.
[vi] Jeremiah 44:15-19.
[vii] Robert Davidson, Jeremiah, Vol. 2, The Daily Study Bible Series, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1985), 152-53.
[viii] Terrence Fretheim, Jeremiah, (Smyth and Helwys Publishing, Incorporated), 564.
[ix] Walter Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 407.
[x] Terrence Fretheim, Jeremiah, 367.
[xi] Job 28:28.
[xii] Jeremiah 44:20-25.
[xiii] Jeremiah 44:26-28.
[xiv] Jeremiah 44:29-30.
[xv] 2 Thessalonians 1:7b-10.
