by
Terry Schlossberg
*NARRATIVE*
*I. Introduction to the passage*
Grasping the full impact of idolatry requires a clarity about the
meaning of loving God and the right worship of him as the only true
God. That is a primary emphasis of Jeremiah which is not emerging
well in these lessons. This lesson, for example, continues the
subtle focus on nations and persons as the primary actors in
history. The person of God, so clearly expressed through the
prophet, is reduced to such expressions as “essential tenets of
their faith,” the “Torah,” and “core religious truths.” While these
are all related to God, focusing on them alone reduces God to an
idea or set of teachings. By contrast, in lesson 3 it is Jeremiah
who has personality and who speaks and acts. Jeremiah’s critique of
Judah and his relationship with the people of Judah are emphasized.
But it is God we are meant to discover in the pages of Scripture.
Unless we encounter the living Lord in this book of Jeremiah, we
will not see the profound distinction between him and the false gods
of the “broken cisterns” (Jer. 1: 13), and of “stone and tree”
(3:9). And we will not comprehend the depth of the sin expressed in
the many metaphors of marital sexual infidelity (e.g. Jer. 2:32-33;
3:20; 5:7,8).
*If we are coaxed into seeing Jeremiah as the primary figure, we
will not understand properly his role as prophet. Mother Teresa once
described herself as God’s pencil. God used her life as an
instrument, she said, to accomplish his purposes and to communicate
his message. This is how we should know Jeremiah.*
*Questions to ask:*
*As you work your way through the book of Jeremiah note the places
that describe particular characteristics of God: his love for his
people, his longing for their return to him, his grief and anger
over their sin, his promises as parent and lover.*
*Read all of Jeremiah 1 and Jeremiah 26:1-6. Read also 2 Peter 1:20;
Gal. 1: 11, 12; John 7:16. Where in Chapter 1 do you discover that
it is the mind of God to which we are being exposed in this book
rather than the opinions of Jeremiah? How do the other passages help
describe the true prophetic voice?*
*II. Examples of Idolatries*
Because the PW study ends lesson two at Jeremiah 1:14 and this
lesson begins with Chapter 7, verse one, information essential to
understanding this “temple sermon” has been bypassed. The
intervening passages contain God’s charges against the people of
Judah, to which this “temple sermon” of the prophet is the
concluding summary and “therefore” statement of the consequences of
their rebellion. Lesson 3 focuses so much on the bricks and mortar
of the church as an object of idolatry, even in the application it
asks readers to make, that it trivializes the principal point. The
book of Jeremiah is a both a prelude to and includes the destruction
of the temple and the city of Jerusalem and the captivity of a
people because they broke their covenant with God and spurned his
love, his warnings and his many offers of mercy and forgiveness. By
chapter 7 the relationship between God and his people has reached a
point of terrible crisis. And we should be able to see ourselves and
the spiritual crisis of our own age in the pages of this book. The
people use the Temple to delude themselves into a false sense of
security, as the author says, but their sins run much deeper than
that. In their defiance they have repudiated the whole of the moral
law, and the God who has claimed them as his own people.
*The Westminster Confession of Faith teaches that the moral law
“doth forever bind all,” meaning that though the incarnation of God
fulfilled and supplanted the ceremonial laws, the moral law
continues. Jesus and the New Testament writers summed up the whole
of the moral law as loving God and loving neighbor (Mark 12:29-33;
Rom. 13:9-10; James 2:8), the most fundamental standards for right
relationships.*
*Questions to ask:*
*Read Jeremiah 23. As you read through the early chapters of
Jeremiah, and chapter 23, find the passages that identify and
describe the false prophetic voice. How is it distinguished from the
true prophetic voice? How would you distinguish between the two in
the church today?*
*Consider who the people are whom Jeremiah is addressing? Are they
the profane skeptics and unbelievers of the society? Look, for
example, at Jer. 2:8; 5:30,31; 6:13. Who are the particular objects
of God’s anger? How would you relate this to our situation today?*
*As you read through chapters 2-6, and the whole of chapter 7, pick
out examples of the sins of Judah to which this sermon in chapter 7
is addressed. Find examples of the breaking of specific
commandments.*
*In the introduction to the PW study of Jeremiah, the author says
she has chosen the particular passages in this study for their
pertinence to issues we as women face today “about the role of
women, the relationship of ethnic groups to each other, the range of
human sexuality, and the centrality of biblical authority.” Consider
each of the issues she mentions and how any of them have been
addressed in this lesson.*
*Read 2 Chron. 34:1-21. Jeremiah’s ministry begins in the 13th year
of Josiah’s reign (Jer. 1:2). Until at least the 18th year of
Josiah’s reign the Book of the Law, which was required to be kept in
safety in the Temple, had disappeared. John Calvin suggests that it
might have been discarded deliberately by the evil king Manasseh.
How does this passage from 2 Chronicles shed light on the religious
practices and keeping the commandments in Judah during this period?*
*How would you restate the forms of idolatry you have found in
comparison with statements in lesson 3? To what extent are we as a
nation and a church committing the same or similar sins? How does
our attitude toward God compare to these chapters of Jeremiah?*
*What does it mean to us to “go after other gods to [our] own hurt”?
What biblical teachings undergird our understandings of the alien,
the widow, the fatherless, and the shedding of innocent blood in our
own society? Who are our most vulnerable? If true worship of God is
the reformation of how we live, what changes would we expect to
follow repentant hearts in the areas where we have identified our
own departure from the will of God?*
*Lesson three asks, What kind of temple sermon would Jeremiah
deliver to us today? How would your response change if the question
were, What elements of his sermon are particularly applicable to us
in the church today?*
*III. The response to Jeremiah’s message*
Lesson 3 rightly notes the false security of trusting in God’s favor
without reference to how we live our lives. But the lesson overlooks
the extent to which the people had not only substituted a “shallow,
twisted, self-indulgent” theology, but also had recreated God and
his covenant with them to suit their own lusts and the standards of
lifeless gods. They had a false and easy confidence in the presence
of the temple, as lesson 3 points out, based on the false assurances
of peace from their leaders (Jer 6:13-14; 8:11). Yet they had gone
so far as to sacrifice their own sons and daughters on the altars of
Baal (Jer. 7:31; Psalm 106:38). The society and the church had
become completely depraved. They were teetering on the brink of
their own destruction. Jeremiah is issuing an urgent call to bring
them back from the brink to repentance. Their response, as lesson 3
explains, is rejection of this call to repent obstinate and defiant
rejection and persecution of the messenger.
*Questions to ask:*
It is very easy to see how the people of Judah listened to the wrong
prophets, followed the inclinations of their own hearts, and
rejected the God who loved them and wanted to restore them. It is
surprising to see how far from the mind and heart of God they
strayed, even as regular churchgoers. One benefit of the book is to
let us see ourselves through the lives of other people in another
time and place. It is the same God, then and now, and we should now
have some sense of how he is contending with us. How will our
response compare to that of the people of Judah?
*SUGGESTIONS FOR LEADERS*
*Preparing the Lesson*
The previous session, additional reading should be assigned to
include Jeremiah 1-7, all of Chapter 26, and 2 Chron. 34. It is
hazardous to approach a book of the Bible in the highly selective
manner that the PW study does. Reading the whole is a first
principle of getting the message intended and avoiding
misinterpretation. In this case only 10 chapters of a book
containing 52 chapters are used and, in most cases, only short
portions of the chapters have been selected for reading and
discussion. That makes it quite important to encourage reading the
entire book for a proper understanding of its message. You as leader
should make a point of reading through the entire book more than
once. And in preparation for lesson three, it is particularly
important that you have a working knowledge of Chapters 1-7.
*A word about focus*
Historically, the book of Jeremiah records Judah’s last days prior
to her exile and finally going into exile. To be sure, there are
political, social, and religious factors at play in Judah’s demise,
as Bellis points out. But she fails to help us see clearly what the
biblical account particularly gives us as a way of viewing history.
Jeremiah helps us understand historical events from a heavenly
perspective: as God’s action. Judah did not succumb to political and
military forces. She was overtaken by God’s judgment. The book’s
principal themes are the persistence of sin in the face of God’s
warnings, his continual calls to repentance, and his promise of
mercy, forgiveness and love. Through our study we should be
discovering God’s redemptive action in history.
*Connecting with God and with One Another*
*Since disobedience comes more easily than obedience and the point
of Jeremiah is the invitation to restoration of relationship with
God, invite those who want to share an experience of God’s work of
transformation in their lives.*
*Discovering the Scripture*
*Use chosen readers to read the whole chapter, breaking it up into
discussion segments.*
*Bring a list of the Ten Commandments enlarged in size enough for
the whole group to see. Some in your group may have forgotten one or
more of them. You will want to refer to them as you examine the
assigned portions of Scripture.*
*Exploring the Scripture*
Since we want to understand why God executed judgment on Judah,
destroyed their city and the temple, and allowed a foreign nation to
take them into exile, ask particularly for words or phrases that
express Judah’s broken relationship with God, and their rejection of
his love. List also those words and phrases that show God’s care for
his people in their rebellion. Try to alternate examples from both
lists to illustrate the people’s breaking of their covenant
relationship and God’s faithfulness.
*Consider the lists, but as you judge the relationship between the
people of Judah and God, go back to the text and defend your
judgment.*
Be prepared for disagreement in listing our culture’s idolatries and
“disconnections” from God. Challenge each woman to defend her item
for the list from the Scripture. You may have a short list in the
end but, if this is done well, you will also have had an exercise in
discerning the difference between current cultural judgments and
judgments derived from biblical teaching. And that, after all, is a
strong emphasis of Jeremiah. The leader might begin this exercise
with a discussion of the difference in judgments between the
“leaders” of the church and society in Josiah’s time, and those of
Jeremiah.
*Take some time to define the meaning of words like “sin,”
“idolatry,” “repentance,” and “covenant.” These words are not a part
of common parlance and may not have a common meaning in your group
of women. Clarify misconceptions of their meanings.*
*Avoid dividing into very small groups for this discussion. Lead the
whole group through the difficulty of grappling with an ideology or
a false teaching that some in the group may never have been
challenged to think through biblically before.*
*Spend some time discussing the difference between guilt and a
“guilt trip.” Discuss repentance as a key to freedom from guilt, as
opposed to denial of guilt.*
*Reflecting at Home*
*Jeremiah’s speech is a call to repentance. Encourage each woman in
your group to spend some time alone this week reflecting on this
chapter and its application to her life in particular, and to keep a
journal of her thoughts and her commitments to God based on the
challenges she finds in this chapter.*