Tuesday - Jeremiah 27 - Lessons from a Bully

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TUDY the life of Nebuchadnezzar. He was a world conqueror. He was brutal. He was a bully (see Daniel 1:10, 2:5, 3:15, 4:27 & 30). Yet, God chose to give him victory over nations all around him (Jeremiah 27:6). Not that God had an agenda that chiefly regarded Neb. He did have an agenda for Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4:34-37), but His plans were much grander than that. He had a program of discipline and correction for Israel and for all of her neighbors. Nebuchadnezzar was just an executioner assigned to a task. He was a bully, turned loose on a school full of insubordinate children, there to make them miss their old teacher.

God directed Jeremiah to lock himself up in chains and a yoke (Jeremiah 27:2). He was required to proclaim to nations around Jerusalem that (by God's decree) they were going to become slaves to Nebuchadnezzar. Beyond that, Jeremiah was supposed to instruct them all to surrender willingly to the Babylonian. This is not a new revelation. It is well known that God told Nebuchadnezzar's enemies to surrender to him. However, it is expressed particularly plainly here (Jeremiah 27:8-11).  Even the number of Babylonian monarchs and the length of the stay of the sacred temple vessels are given as specifics, delineating the certainty of Nebuchadnezzar's conquest. If Jeremiah 26 offered us a picture of some of God's conditional purposes, this chapter offers a view of some of His unconditional purposes.

One of the things that God intended to teach through the bullying of this mighty bully was that false prophets are dangerous. Several verses here are devoted to the false claims of the false prophets of Jeremiah's day. Unfortunately, it does seem to take violence to teach us humans our lessons well.  And sometimes even that is not enough (Proverbs 17:10b).  The point is that here God used a bully to teach His stubborn people a few vital lessons.