Title Jeremiah's Historical Consciousness, (October 3)
Jeremiah's History
Jeremiah 8:18-23
reason for groaning
The text of the sermon on the second Sunday in September was also the book of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 2:4-13). I have already told you briefly about the circumstances of Jeremiah's life at that time. Between Babylon and Egypt, which conquered Assyria and emerged as a new empire, the kings of Judah formed an alliance with Egypt and eventually fell to Babylon. If you look at the content of today's text, we should see it as the time after the fall of Jerusalem and the capture of many talented people to Babylon, rather than when the crisis is gradually approaching. According to verse 19, many people in Judah groaned like this. “Is the LORD not in Zion? Did you step down to stop being king?” Perhaps it was because Jeremiah himself could not bear such a miserable situation, he wrote, “My face is dark and my heart is trembling” (verse 21).
The situation in Judea that Jeremiah was facing was that the hundred pills had become invalid. This means that he wrote this grieving poem in front of a country that had been devastated by Babylon. This is similar to the situation in the 1910s when we were colonized by Japan, or similar to the situation in which the two Koreas were devastated by the Korean War. He now sees the situation where the foundations of all life have been destroyed and all hopes have been lost. And today we read the poem of Jeremiah, lamenting in such a desperate situation.
unfamiliar text
Let's ask the question again. What does that have to do with the case of the fall of Jerusalem by the Babylonians 2,600 years ago? Because of such an event, Jeremiah's heart that “it is dark and his heart is trembling” cannot be identified with us. If our hearts start to tremble due to such historical events, we may be in a state of psychological instability or being deceived. The fall of Jerusalem is an urgent matter only for Jeremiah, but not at all for us today. Nevertheless, today we read it as the Word of God. I may have read it without any emotion. Most Christians would be like us. However, if you are not moved by the Word of God, you may seem like you do not have faith, so even if you force yourself, you will only drive yourself away as if you are touched. This is the dilemma of us Christians today as we read the poetry and historical testimony of the prophets of ancient Israel.
Jeremiah's History
Even if we have such a dilemma as we read Jeremiah's poem set in the special history of Israel, as long as we find a way to the inner side of this poem, this poem is still the living Word of God to us today. What is the problem that stirs up Jeremiah's thoughts and heart in today's text? Like other prophets, Jeremiah did not remain frustrated or saddened by the fall of his people, but analyzed the event. Today's text contains the answers obtained through a kind of historical criticism in the form of poetry. He wrote this poem: “Then why do you still serve idols and rot inside me? Why do you peek into the scarecrow of another country to serve me and rot inside me?” (After 19).
idol and scarecrow
I will read the text again. “Then why do you still serve idols and rot inside me? Why do you peek into the scarecrow of another country to serve me and corrupt me?” (After 19).
Why did they worship idols? It's strange that they still worshiped idols while moaning that their condition was ruined. There are two possibilities here. One is that they thought that worshiping idols had little to do with the destruction of Jerusalem. The other is that they didn't think of idols as idols. I can't say which side the Jerusalemites belong to, but roughly both possibilities seem to be involved. Their actions and thoughts may seem foolish to us now, but they are not. They have chosen the most rational and desirable path for themselves. Rather than deliberately disobeying God's will and serving idols, as God's people, they believed that the happiest path was right there, so they worshiped idols.
What is an idol for us today? Let me give you one small example. Our secondary school students are being bred for only one goal: to get into a good college. That is the ideology of education in our country. Although there are people who partially emphasize the need for holistic human education, as a whole, we are a society where one goal is the Great Commission. Such is the idol. Idolatry is an act that undermines the fundamental human life by absolutizing man-made products, organizations, systems, and cultures. Of course, it is also reasonable to argue that entering a good university and gaining competitiveness and then getting a job at a company with a high salary is the way to save lives. Even if the conditions of life are guaranteed to the person who wins such a competition, we cannot say that such a system is the way to save lives if the lives of far more people are damaged as a result.
Even at the time of Jesus, opinions were divided over the actions of Jesus who healed the disabled on the Sabbath. To the Pharisees, doing nothing on the Sabbath meant keeping the Sabbath, but Jesus thought that even the Sabbath could not prevent life-related work. Judging from this situation alone, the law was an idol to the Pharisees. Although it was a religious law, it was no longer life-giving by absolutizing it, but merely a tool to satisfy their religious satisfaction. All of those things are idols.
Jeremiah diagnosed such idols as scarecrows. This was Jeremiah's sense of history. If you believe in an incompetent scarecrow, there is nothing as foolish as that, but the people of Jerusalem have always had such a thing in mind. That fact broke Jeremiah's heart. Of course, there is no guarantee that there will be no disasters or misfortunes even if we get rid of idolatry and believe only in the Creator Yahweh God and have such a life. We have nothing to say about things that go beyond what we can do. I'm just praying that that doesn't happen. Nevertheless, the appeal of the prophet Jeremiah remains appealing. It is the appeal that we can obtain true life by recognizing the reality of idols that are only scarecrows, and rightly knowing and believing in God, the creator of true life.