Jeremiah 12

Why God? Why!?

We hear this type of thing everywhere we go.  We have complained like this to God ourselves.  Whenever suffering appears in our lives we crease our foreheads and ask God, “Why is this happening?”  “Why is the world like this?”   Sometimes there is an obvious answer.  Sometimes the answer is so simple that even human beings who have a little wisdom can see it and explain.  Sometimes suffering is the simple consequence of poor decisions.  Perhaps someone squandered their time away and now is reaping the consequences of foolish actions.  God has never promised anywhere in His covenant that God’s people have a safety-net against the day of suffering. There are many teachers, megachurch leaders, and other false teachers who promise things that God never said.  They use clever arguments laced with Scripture to make it sound like a legitimate claim of God.  Thousands get swept away with this false theology and wonder “Why God?” when the “name it claim it” cliche fails to perform.

Multitudes of others simply are satisfied with a superficial understanding of the Almighty and live day to day clinging to an incomplete knowledge of how the Lord operates.  And so out of this ignorance of the Lord, people do not have the resources to understand suffering as it appears.  And so the ignorant say, “why God?!” .  Perhaps you have found that these periods of questioning God’s justice often prove to be a learning experience of how God does things. Sometimes suffering is the cure for ignorance as people learn the reasons for it.

But in Jeremiah’s case, his complaining towards God is similar to that of Job’s.  Jeremiah knows God intimately.  Later in 15:16 Jeremiah will exclaim, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of hosts.”  Jeremiah is saying that when he found God’s Word, he made it the joy of his heart and became the Lord’s name bearer.  So what does it mean when someone like this says, “why God?”  He says in 12:1 “Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper?”  Why do wicked people live such comfortable successful lives?

Jeremiah knows that God is sovereign.  If wicked people seem to be getting along OK, then it is because the Lord establishes it.  But why?  Wicked people seem to be prospering while those who say they are God’s people are suffering. How is this justice?  But the Lord gives an answer to Jeremiah, unlike in the record of Job, Job was never given reasons for his questions.  In Job, the reader is privy to a heavenly meeting between God and Satan which explains the suffering, but Job himself never received any explanation.  The answer God gives Jeremiah goes something like this: “Jeremiah, if you cannot race against mere human beings, how will expect to compete with race horses?  If you get tripped up in the plain flat land, then how will you expect to traverse harder terrain?” (see 12:5)

Before God gives the reasoning behind the injustice that Jeremiah sees, God first asks the above rhetorical question as if to say, “Why can’t you trust me in this small matter?  If you fail to trust me now, how will you trust me when things really start to get bad?”  God gives the reason for the injustice, God says His chosen people are like a lion in forest who roars in contempt at God. (v7)  This God’s chosen people who made a lawful agreement in the form of a covenant with Him long ago have failed in keeping their word.  God goes on to say that the rulers of Israel and Judah have abused His people, spoiling them.  Judah’s kings have led God’s people astray making them worthless, of no redeemable value. (v10-13) God expected a crop of righteous people, but instead receives the revolting rot of spiritual adultery.

Unlike Job’s case, the apparent suffering of God’s people  Jeremiah saw was justly due for the wicked things they were guilty of doing, mainly spiritual adultery encouraged by Judah’s leadership.  But what is similar with Job’s case is that the Lord expects Jeremiah to trust Him, and not trust any human standard of justice.  The conflict of the Bible all stems from humanities poor judgement against God.  Starting from Genesis three all the way until Revelation, the essence of sin is humankind rising up with clenched fists at God doubting His goodness and making false judgements that God isn’t trustworthy.  In this chapter humankind is like a roaring lion against God, bearing our teeth at Him in rejection of His will and sovereignty in our lives.  Just like Eve was convinced that God was unjust for hiding something good from her, so Judah is convinced their must be something good to be had in the worship other gods (mainly a system that is bent to their own lustful desires).  They failed to trust God’s leadership and His Word.  Failing to believe and trust God’s word resulted in this instance of suffering.

The Lord then tags a “good message”, a gospel message for the foreign nations that surround Israel.  God says He will remove the foreigns who are trying to rob Israel of their God given possession, the land itself.  But then He will compassionately give them a chance to be taught the ways of God and swear allegiance to God’s name, they too will be given a place and an inheritance among God’s people. (see v15-16)  But all nations who refuse God their Creator will be dealt with and destroyed (v17).  For further explanation and examples of how this gospel offer to foreign nations comes into effect see notes on Ephesians chapter 1.