The Written Word
“Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day that I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day.” Jeremiah 36:2
Anyone who has studied the book of Jeremiah know that this prophet was used by God to warn the people of Judah of impending disaster if they didn’t repent, change their ways, and return to the LORD, their Creator and Sustainer. Jeremiah began to prophesy in the 13th year of the reign of king Josiah, a righteous ruler, through the short reign of his son, Jehoahaz, the eleven-year reign of Josiah’s son, Jehoiakim, the short reign of Jehoiachin, Jehoiakim’s son, and the eleven-year reign of Zedekiah, another son of Josiah. These last four kings of Judah were all evil kings.
Jeremiah’s prophecies, given to him by God, had warned the people of Judah over and over that if they did not repent and return to the LORD, then the army of Babylon would overtake them, many would die or be taken as captives to Babylon. The people refused to listen and heed God’s word. During the reign of Jehoiakim, God decided to try another tactic. He sent Jeremiah to visit the Rechabites. From all indications, they were descendants of Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law who was a Kenite, descended from the Midianites who were descendants of one of Abraham’s sons by his second wife Keturah. (Diligent study of God’s word allows us to connect the dots from one generation to another.) The patriarch of the Rechabites was a man named Rechab whose son, Jonadab, a wise man who served under Israel’s king Jehu almost 300 years before Jeremiah’s day, had determined in his heart and mind never to drink wine which can, in moderate use, brighten the spirits of a man, but can also be abused and cause irreparable damage. He made the decision to let the God of Israel be the One to lift his spirits. This vow had been honored for generations of Rechabites.
The plan was to bring the Rechabites to the temple, offer them wine, knowing that they would not drink it because of their vow, in order to shame the people of Judah. These people honored a vow of a human who was long since deceased, yet Judah would not honor the covenant that God had made with them. This event took place in the fourth year of Jehoiakim’s reign. This was about the same time when Jehoiakim began to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar. When the Rechabites were offered the wine, they refused it in order to honor the vow of their forefather, Jonadab. There was no indication that the people of Judah, upon hearing about this event, made any move toward repentance. If the sin, perversions, and idolatry didn’t shame them, then apparently nothing would.
It was also the time when God told Jeremiah to write down everything that He had told Jeremiah concerning His warnings against His people since the time Jeremiah was called to be a prophet until the present time. The writing was to make available to any who had not heard the warnings. They could be read before gatherings of people. Besides, God knew that Jeremiah would be locked up for prophesying doom to the people of Judah and Jerusalem, and there was a need for written documents to carry on the warnings. We know that to put things in writing can preserve them for future generations and clear up any misconceptions about what had been said in the past.
God is a merciful God. He gave Judah over 40 years to repent. In contrast, He gave Nineveh 40 days, but they did repent. Judah did not. God knew that His people would fail to hear and heed His warnings, but Jeremiah did not know that. He had to go about prophesying with the hope that people would listen and return to the LORD. It’s the same for us today. God knows who will come to repentance and acknowledge Christ as Lord and Savior and who will not. However, we don’t know so that we can, like Jeremiah, have hope that our witness to the saving power of Christ to those with whom we come in contact will lead to their salvation. A sinner must hear the gospel in order to receive it or reject it. Once the gospel of Jesus Christ is heard, the sinner whom the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, has no excuse to reject Him. Even without the gospel message, God has produced enough evidence in the world around us to prove His existence, His power, and His deity as the sovereign Supreme Being, the Maker of heaven and earth (Romans 1:19-20). There is proof of God everywhere we turn so that there is no excuse not to believe in Him and search Him out.