It may be that they will listen, all of them, and will turn from their evil way, that I may change my mind about the disaster that I intend to bring on them because of their evil doings.
Jeremiah 26:3
This passage is part of Jeremiah’s temple sermon - instructions by God to Jeremiah just before he is given a dire warning to the people of Jerusalem about their impending destruction, unless they change their ways. Judah is under the control of Babylon, with a puppet king in place, though the people continue to believe that YHWH will always protect Jerusalem since His temple is in the city. They believe the temple is their trump card, never mind how they are living their lives.
For me, this passage reinforces the absolute importance of grace. I look at this passage, and, while it appears God is being an optimist and giving the people another chance, an image that comes to mind is Mike Myers’ character in Wayne’s World sarcastically saying “yeah… it could happen.” God already knows that the people will not change – that they could not change even if they wanted to. 600+ years after Jeremiah, Paul would sum this up in Romans 7, stating that “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing... Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
With all the human experience since then how different are we from the people of Jerusalem? We still face the same problems, but we know we have options the people of Jerusalem could not have known or understood then: we can decide whether or not to use our freewill to surrender our freewill to God and whether or not to accept the grace necessary to carry out His will that God so freely offers us.
Richard Downs
