July 15, 2026 - Jeremiah 17-20

The people of Judah had sinned, they had rejected God and his pleadings.  It was so bad and so certain that God would discipline, without any hope of avoiding the exile, that Jeremiah observed, “The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; with a point of diamond it is engraved on the tablet of their heart” (17:1).  At that point, nothing could change the trajectory of the outcome.  The situation was pictured in yet another of Jeremiah’s word pictures.  The potter had formed a vessel but was displeased with it; so, “He reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do” (18:4).  The potter and the clay, though, was not an adequate depiction of Judah’s situation.  She was not clay that could be reformed from bad to good.  Rather, Jeremiah took an earthenware flask that was already hardened and “set in its ways,” so to speak.  It was not going to change.  It could not be reformed.  For the hardened flask to become something different, it cannot be mended, it must be shattered, the clay ground again to dust, rehydrated, and started anew.  So, the Lord declared of Judah and Jerusalem, “I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it can never be mended” (19:11).  Of course, God was gracious and, as the exile ended, he restored the remnant of the people.  Interestingly, though the returned people continued to struggle to obey, the old idolatry never again reared its head.  Like a cancerous tumor, it appears the exile cut that terrible sin out of the people’s corporate life.  The people would have done well, and we do well, to heed these words:

The LORD will guard the righteous well,

their way to Him is known;

the way of sinners, far from God,

shall surely be o’erthrown.   –Gray Psalter Hymnal 1 (1912)