Jeremiah's Yoke - Sabbath School Lesson 9, 4th Qtr 2015

Read for This Week's Study: Jer. 16:1-13; Hos. 1:1-3; Jer. 27:1-18; Dan. 4:25; Jeremiah 28:1-17; 2 Tim. 4:3-4.

Memory Text: And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me (Luke 9:23).

As we have already seen, God's prophets preached not only through words but also through object lessons. At times the prophets had to live out the messages; it was another way to get the point across.

Thus, Jeremiah again was called to live out the words he was to deliver. First, he had to wear a wooden yoke. Thus saith the Lord to me; Make thee bonds and yokes, and put them upon thy neck (Jer. 27:2). That had to have been a burdensome task, even under the best of circumstances; in this case, it became harder because a false prophet challenged what Jeremiah said. This week we can get a powerful look at truth and error contending for the hearts and minds of the people. We will see, too, how a message of grace can also be a false message.

Jeremiah also was forbidden to enter into mourning when others mourned and rejoicing when others rejoiced. In these cases, the point was to help the people realize what was coming because of their sins, and so to repent and obey, lessening the doleful consequence of their sinful actions.

A Solitary Life

No question, Jeremiah's lot in life wasn't an easy one (he would be the first to admit it too!). Things, though, were even harder than we might have imagined.

Read Jeremiah 16:1-13. What was the Lord's message to Jeremiah here? However harsh, in what ways would it have been a blessing to the prophet? (Compare with Hos. 1:1-3.)

In contrast to Hosea, who was to marry a harlot in order to show just how corrupt the relationship had become between the Lord and Israel due to the nation's spiritual harlotry, Jeremiah was to refrain from marriage and from having children altogether. This was something rather rare and extreme for that time and culture. In Israel, starting a family was very important for every young man. Besides the love and companionship between spouses, it was also important to carry on the family name. Why did God forbid Jeremiah from starting a family? So that his own life would be an object lesson on how terrible that time would be when families broke up and when the pain of separation became a heavy burden on the survivors. Jeremiah's lack of family life was a constant warning and lesson for his contemporaries.

Jeremiah's solitary lot extended into other areas as well. He was forbidden to enter a house where there was mourning; this would symbolize the people's unwillingness to respond to God's calls for repentance and revival.

Along with times of mourning, he was not to join their festivals of joy and celebration. This was to symbolize the coming time when the Babylonians would bring an end to all of their joy and rejoicing.

In these ways, the human bonds that are forged, whether in mourning or joy, would be denied Jeremiah. His life and the sorrows of his life were to be object lessons. If only the nation would learn from them!

How should this account help us learn to appreciate the human support that we enjoy getting from others, or that we give to others? However important this support, how can we learn that, ultimately, our best support comes only from the Lord?

Jeremiah's Yoke

Read Jeremiah 27:1-18. What is the message of the Lord to the people? Why would this seem treasonous to many who heard it?

The yoke Jeremiah had to put on his body was an unmistakable sign of the humiliation that the nation suffered; it's what we call a military occupation. (In Deuteronomy 28:48 and 1 Kings 12:4, the idea of a yoke appears as an expression of oppression.) Jeremiah had to experience physically what the Babylonian invasion meant. The wooden yoke Jeremiah put on his arms and shoulders was one and a half meters long and eight centimeters thick. The essence of his message was that if a country revolted against Babylon, the Lord would take it as if the country had revolted against Him, and the rebellious would suffer as a result.

Though there is some ambiguity in the original texts, it seems that Jeremiah did not have to make a yoke only for himself, but also for the envoys of foreign countries who had come to Jerusalem and were plotting against Nebuchadnezzar-despite the Lord's warnings not to. The natural response would be to fight against a foreign invader, which is what they wanted to do. No doubt, then, Jeremiah's words were not at all welcome.

What's especially important about the message in Jeremiah 27:5? (See also Dan. 4:25.)

Here again, as we find all through the Bible-Old and New Testaments-the Lord as Creator is Sovereign over all the earth. Even amid what appears to be chaos and catastrophe (invasion and dominion by a pagan nation), the power and authority of God is revealed, and this was, and is, to be a source of hope to all in the faithful remnant.

It's one thing to be under a yoke of bondage. However, ask yourself: Have you placed someone else under an unfair yoke, and if so, why not remove it now?

War of the Prophets

Bad news is bad news, and often we don't want to hear it, or we want to rationalize it away. Such was the case here in Judah with Jeremiah and the yoke that he bore, an unmistakable message of warning to the people. The amazement of the assembled council of nations knew no bounds when Jeremiah, carrying the yoke of subjection about his neck, made known to them the will of God.-Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 444.

Read Jeremiah 28:1-9. Imagine you are a Judean standing there and watching all this going on. Whom would you believe? Whom would you want to believe? What reason would you have, if any, for believing Hananiah rather than Jeremiah?

Jeremiah raised his voice in the name of God, and Hananiah spoke in the name of God too. But who was speaking for God? They both couldn't be! For us today, the answer is obvious. For someone at that time, it might have been more difficult, even though Jeremiah does make a powerful point in Jeremiah 28:8-9: the prophets in the past have preached the same message that I am, that of judgment and doom.

Jeremiah, in the presence of the priests and people, earnestly entreated them to submit to the king of Babylon for the time the Lord had specified. He cited the men of Judah to the prophecies of Hosea, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and others whose messages of reproof and warning had been similar to his own. He referred them to events which had taken place in fulfillment of prophecies of retribution for unrepented sin. In the past the judgments of God had been visited upon the impenitent in exact fulfillment of His purpose as revealed through His messengers.-Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 445.

In short, just as we today are to learn lessons from sacred history, Jeremiah was seeking to get the people in his time to do the same thing: learn from the past, so you don't make the same errors that your forefathers did. If it had been hard for them to listen to him before, now with the ministry of Hananiah there to counter him, Jeremiah's task was going to be that much more difficult.

Hananiah, whose name means God has been gracious, seemed to be presenting a message of grace, of forgiveness, of salvation. What lessons should we learn from this false preacher of grace?

The Yoke of Iron

The battle between the prophets wasn't just one of words, but of deeds as well. In obedience to the command of God, Jeremiah put the wooden yoke around his neck; this was an overt symbol of the message that he had carried to the people.

Imagine, for example, that after Jesus cursed the fig tree (Mark 11:13, 19-21), someone who had heard what Jesus said and knew what had happened had replanted a new fig tree in the same spot, all in an attempt to refute the prophecy of Jesus there. This is what Hananiah did with Jeremiah and the prophecy that the yoke around his neck symbolized. It was an act of open defiance of what Jeremiah said.

Note, too, Jeremiah's reaction. The texts record nothing of what he said right after the yoke was broken. He just turned around and walked away. If the story ended there, it would have seemed that the prophet had retreated in defeat.

Jeremiah's response wasn't a message of revenge: you did this to me, so I will do that to you. Instead, it was another clear message from the Lord, but even stronger than what came before. Hananiah might have been able to break a wooden yoke, but who can break an iron one? In a sense, what the Lord said to them was that by their obstinacy and refusal to obey, they only were making matters worse. If you thought a wooden yoke was bad, try an iron one.

Who hasn't learned the hard way about making things more difficult for ourselves by obstinacy? When dealing with the Lord, why is it always better to submit and surrender right away than to keep on fighting and making things harder on yourself?

Trusting in Lies

Hear now, Hananiah; The Lord hath not sent thee; but thou makest this people to trust in a lie (Jer. 28:15).

The answer about who was right, whether Jeremiah or Hananiah, came soon enough. Jeremiah 28:16-17 tells the fate of the false prophet, which was just what the true prophet had said it would be.

Though Hananiah died, he still had done damage to the nation. His works, in a sense, followed him. He made the people to trust in a lie. The Hebrew verb is hiphil, a causative form of the verb to trust. He caused them to trust in a lie, not in the sense of physically forcing them, but through deception. Even though the Lord had not sent him, he spoke in the name of the Lord, which carried a lot of weight in Judah. Added to that, Hananiah's message of grace, deliverance, and redemption was certainly something that the people wanted to hear, considering the great threat that Babylon posed to the nation. It was, though, a false gospel, a false message of salvation that the Lord had not given them. So, at a time when the people needed to hear the words of Jeremiah and the message of redemption that he brought, they listened to the words of Hananiah instead, and this made their woes only worse.

Things are no different today: we are in the great controversy, a battle for the hearts and minds of the world's billions. Satan is working diligently to get as many as possible to trust in a lie, and that lie can come in many guises and forms, just as long as it is always a lie. After all, because Jesus said I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), Satan's lies can be about anything and everything, just as long as they don't contain the truth as it is in Jesus.

What are some of the lies that are so prevalent in your culture today? Why is clinging to Jesus, and His Word, our only protection against them?

Discussion Questions:

Think about our earth's future as a whole, even if from a purely human standpoint. Does it look hopeful and full of promise, or does it look fearful, dangerous, and full of uncertainty? What reasons can you give for your answers?
Jeremiah's message, as we saw in the context of Hananiah's lies, was to look at the past, to look at history, and to learn from it. Ellen G. White wrote something similar: We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.-Life Sketches, p. 196. What does she mean by that? What has happened in our past, and God's teaching in it, that can help us be prepared for what will undoubtedly come in the future?
Hananiah gave a false message of grace. What are some of those false messages of grace today that we must guard ourselves against? Grace, of course, is our only hope, but in what ways can it be presented as a lie?

Inside Story~

God’s Saving Hand—Part 2

Treating the wounds was nearly as painful as the burns themselves. Every day nurses removed the bandages and soaked the burns in salt water. Then they gently scraped the burns to remove the dead skin. This would help prevent infection. The nurses taught Mrs. Banda how to wash the wounds and apply the medicine. She stayed in the hospital with her husband and son to prepare their meals and help care for them.

After two long months Pastor Banda insisted that he could stay no longer in the hospital. His muscles were weak, and he could barely walk, but he was concerned about his church members.

After Pastor Banda returned home, Joshua and his mother remained in the hospital for four more months. Every day his mother talked gently to him as she cleaned and dressed his wounds. Her presence strengthened the boy and gave him hope.

It was difficult for the family to be separated for so many months. They couldn’t visit one another, but they could pray.

After six months Joshua was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital for another three months of physical therapy. He couldn’t walk, but he learned to shuffle along behind a walker. His mother began a new routine of daily therapy. She soaked his legs in warm water, then stretched the muscles in his legs. It was painful, but she urged Joshua to sing instead of cry.

At last Joshua was able to go home, but his mother continued treating him and encouraged him to walk. When he saw his friends playing outside, he wanted to play too. After a year of recovery and therapy Joshua was able to walk without help.

Pastor Banda’s recovery took a long time too. His damaged leg muscles would not stretch enough to allow him to ride a bicycle. And this made it very difficult for him to get from one church to another in the countryside. But his churches continued to grow in size and in faith.

Pastor Banda knows that throughout their ordeal God was beside each member of the family, encouraging, blessing, and healing. God was blessing us even during our most difficult hour, he says. When I returned to work from the hospital, the church prospered even more, and more people came into the church than had been coming before the fire.

Mrs. Banda was also grateful for God’s blessings during the terrible ordeal. I thank God for saving my husband and son, she says. This experience taught me the importance of spending more time with my family. I had failed to notice some special qualities in little Joshua that I saw when he was in the hospital. For example, he has a wonderful talent for singing that I did not fully realize until I heard him singing while he was confined to his bed in the hospital. During our long hospital stay we had time to become good friends with each other and with God.

___

After studying at Solusi University in Zimbabwe, Wesley Banda is now an ordained minister working in Malawi. While at Solusi, Oliva Banda also took some classes, as time permitted.

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