Jeremiah 15:1-9
Then the Lord said to me, “Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people. Send them out of my sight, and let them go! And when they ask you, ‘Where shall we go?’ you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord:
“‘Those who are for pestilence, to pestilence,
and those who are for the sword, to the sword;
those who are for famine, to famine,
and those who are for captivity, to captivity.’
I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, and the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth to devour and destroy. And I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.
“Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem, or who will grieve for you?
Who will turn aside to ask about your welfare?
You have rejected me, declares the Lord; you keep going backward, so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you—I am weary of relenting.
I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land;
I have bereaved them; I have destroyed my people; they did not turn from their ways.
I have made their widows more in number than the sand of the seas;
I have brought against the mothers of young men a destroyer at noonday;
I have made anguish and terror fall upon them suddenly.
She who bore seven has grown feeble; she has fainted away; her sun went down while it was yet day;
she has been shamed and disgraced.
And the rest of them I will give to the sword before their enemies, declares the Lord.”
There is a funny scene in the Steve Martin movie, “Father of the Bride.” Playing the role of George Banks, he nervously meets for the first time his daughter’s future in-laws who own a very large lavish home in upmarket San Marino, California—the MacKenzies. These folks also have large Doberman pinscher guard dogs.
In the scene of their first meeting, George witnesses John MacKenzie at his front door control these threatening dogs with a sharp command, “Release!”
But then, in a later scene, George, on the way to a bathroom is cornered by the same muscular, snarling dogs who mean business. Martin in his classic “splayed legs” physical comedy tries to remember what John MacKenzie said before to quell these critters at the front door.
George: Can you tell me where the restroom is?
Joanna MacKenzie: Oh, actually the one down here is a mess. We're remodeling. Try the one at the top of the stairs. It's the seventh door on the left.
George: Second door?
Joanna: Seventh.
(The scene changes and George is met in the upstairs hallway by — you guessed it — the dogs)
Dogs: Snarling
George: I'm leaving. I'm relaxed and I'm leaving. Relent! Recoil. Reverse!
Apparently the dogs have a good ear and discriminate between these similar homonyms and “Release!”
Now, I admit it is far funnier in the film than in my retelling. But now consider the passage from Jeremiah 15 which accompanies these thoughts. There is no joking here. God says, “I am weary of relenting.”
There is no punch line. There is no comedy “hook.” There is no amusing word like “Release!” or “Relent!” or “Reverse!” to make all the seriously unfunny, sad and sickly wrongs in God's people just scamper away. Jeremiah is “the weeping prophet.” He is not a wit or dramatist. He is an ambassador of the Living God, and here God's Word through Jeremiah is a fateful and foreboding Word.
It’s not a screenplay. It’s not theater. It’s not farce.
It is very important for us to know that God's Word is not a stock word, and the people in Jeremiah’s narrative are not fictional characters set by convention. Nor are we who read Holy Scripture just flipping through a tale.
I remember someone once making the point that they hesitate to refer to Bible narratives as Bible “stories” because the word “story” with some people implies that what is told is merely an invention or an imaginary tale and therefore is not real, not to be taken all that seriously.
A skilled jester like Steve Martin, with his deserved reputation for comedy, can make that encounter with the Dobermans into a hoot because it’s make-believe. It’s a pretend menace. It looks real, but no one takes it seriously.
But when God says to unrepentant —persistently unrepentant — Judah that He will appoint over them destroyers, one of which is “dogs to tear” — He means business.
God is not pulling contrived script out a stock repertoire of theatrical “God lines.” He is not just employing staged formulas. And we are not just an audience. The people of God are not spectators or onlookers in a gallery.
There is momentous dialogue here in Jeremiah, but it doesn’t come from the pen of a playwright. Holy Scripture exposes us to God Himself and the seriously earnest truth He pours from His heart and mouth. God’s bona fide Word is so authentic that it is dangerous. This text transports divine power to devastate and destroy.
God is righteous—He keeps His Word—and He will bring down the curses He threatened. (Deut. 28:15-68)
The Lord will not relent. He will not recoil. He will not reverse. He will not release. There is no cliché to neutralize Him, no quip or wisecrack to get around Him, and no “messin’ with him.
God says through Jeremiah, “You have rejected me … so I have stretched out my hand … I am weary of relenting … I have winnowed … I have bereaved them … I have destroyed my people … I have made anguish and terror fall upon them” ---------- (fade to black)
“But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8)
This is not God relenting. This is God redeeming!
