My heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake. I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine has overcome, because of the Lord, and because of His holy words. For the land is full of adulterers; for because of a curse the land mourns. The pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up. Their course of life is evil, and their might is not right.
"For both prophet and priest are profane; yes, in My house I have found their wickedness," says the Lord. "Therefore their way shall be to them like slippery ways; in the darkness they shall be driven on and fall in them; for I will bring disaster on them, the year of their punishment," says the Lord. "And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria: They prophesied by Baal and caused My people Israel to err. Also I have seen a horrible thing in the prophets of Jerusalem: They commit adultery and walk in lies; they also strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns back from his wickedness. All of them are like Sodom to Me, and her inhabitants like Gomorrah." (NKJ)
Jeremiah was originally a priest. He was a religious leader of the people. And as such, he was able to see the leadership from the inside, to know the heart and soul of those who lead the nation. The priesthood worked closely with the monarchy-leadership to rule the people of Israel and to guide the nation.
Jeremiah was a contemporary of King Josiah, the young jewish king who recognized very early in his reign the corruption of the religious leadership and strove to clean up that corruption; unfortunately, both the majority of the priesthood and the majority of the people wouldn’t have it. They wanted their corruption; they wanted to live in their lusts. And Jeremiah was tasked by God with the responsibility of prophesying the result of their sinfulness. The enormity of what he saw was so great that he felt physically and emotionally off-center, out of control in the sense that one might feel when they are drunk. Not because he was drunk, but due to the weight of the truth.
It’s both amazing and sad that Jeremiah was so isolated in his grief, in his anguish over the state of the nation. Everywhere existed people who knew what God’s standards were, who knew the scriptures and the demands of righteousness upon their lives. Early in the experiences of the children of Israel, God had commanded them to build altars (e.g. Joshua 4) to remind them of their own history with Him and what He required from them in the way of righteous living. They had weekly synagogue meetings and religious training for the young men so that every family would be led in God’s ways. There was an entire tribe of the nation set aside as priests so there would be no lack of religious leadership. And yet, with all these provisions, Jeremiah felt so alone in his despair over the nation’s sins that he wrote, "My heart is broken because of the prophets." Even the leadership had turned against God.
When someone truly loves the Lord, it is almost inconceivable to them that a "leader from God" would turn against God to the point of turning their back on righteous living. Jeremiah saw the truth, but couldn’t believe his eyes. And yet, he knew in his heart the truth because the Lord had impressed it upon him. He was weighted down with what God was revealing.
In the Old Testament, adultery is often a word picture for idolatry. Here, Matthew Henry confirms that the priests were involved in both religious and physical adultery, that once a person has given their heart and mind over to the love of other than God, their body may soon follow the lust of their mind. And then what followed was "a curse" which involved both lying and common cursing. Everything righteous was gone as the priesthood told (and believed) one lie after another.
In Romans 1, the apostle Paul gives a kind of "sin hierarchy." He describes the process by which beliefs give way to thoughts which give way to practice and then which give way to lifestyle. He begins by saying, "because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things." (Romans 1:21-23 NKJ). One way in which we have "changed the glory of God" is by believing in evolution. We no longer believe that God spoke creation into existence, using His very glory to give life where nothing existed. Our society now believes that creation came as a result of animals mutating from one form into another. This results in many believing that animals are equal with people (or even believing that animals have more rights than human beings). I even know of Christians who are more concerned that their pets will be in heaven than they are that their unsaved neighbors might not be.
At every turn, there are parallels between our society and that which Jeremiah encountered. Many, many Christian leaders have committed adultery, either by having sex outside of marriage or divorcing without Biblical grounds in order to marry their new "soulmate." Many pastors spend more time with their televisions than their Bibles. And a vast majority spend more time on the Internet than they do in prayer. In 2005, a study was conducted about how much pastors pray. These are the results:
"The typical pastor spends 12 minutes per day with prayer requests, eight minutes in quiet time, seven minutes giving thanks, seven minutes in praise and five minutes confessing sin" (from http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=20918). This averages out to about 30-39 minutes a day or about 210-280 minutes a week. That sounds like a lot. But when you balance that with the amount of sin within the pastoral community ("One recent poll shows that 51% of all ministers admit to having at least occasionally looked at pornography on the net, and some 37% admit to having a problem with this matter." from http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2006/09/pastors-and-pornography-dirty-little.html), it’s obvious that 30 minutes a day either isn’t enough or it isn’t sincere prayer.
There is adultery in our nation and it has invaded the Christian leadership! The divorce rate for pastors is about 25%! That means one out of every four pastors has been divorced (and usually remarried). And while some of these divorces are based on Biblical grounds (usually adultery by the spouse), that still means that adultery is rampant within the leadership family.
When did it become okay to leave one’s family simply because you fell in love with someone else? In fact, when did "falling in love" become some kind of guarantee for happiness (rather than obeying God)? Jeremiah wrote: "Their course is evil and their might is not right." Just because someone’s in power doesn’t make what they say right. We need to begin to become smarter believers and begin to look at the lives of our leadership. Is this person really following God or simply mouthing the words? Those who refuse to live righteously will eventually lead us into error. We have no business following them!
© 2013 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.
