Broken Hearted
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18 No healing, only grief; my heart is broken.
19 Listen to the weeping of my people all across the land: “Isn’t the Lord in Zion? Is her king no longer there?” Why then did they anger me with their images, with pointless foreign gods?
20 “The harvest is past, the summer has ended, yet we aren’t saved.”
21 Because my people are crushed, I am crushed; darkness and despair overwhelm me.
22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then have my people not been restored to health?
1 If only my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, I would weep day and night for the wounds of my people.
Broken Hearted
Broken Hearted
Over my lifetime I have watched family members who were diagnosed with cancer begin that journey that ended in their death. When we hear that someone is diagnosed with an awful diagnosis we pray for them. We pray that God will bring healing.
There have been times when that healing comes. Sometimes it is a temporary reprieve. If the person is a Christian and they die in their faith we grieve but we also rejoice that they are in the presence of our heavenly Father. As Paul said “for me to live is Christ, but to die is gain.” As much as we might want them back, we wouldn’t want them to leave the glory of all they are experiencing.
My father had a lump removed on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend in 1994. By the time September of that year arrived he had lumps all over and before the month was over he breathed his last and was gone.
My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy of the effected breast. Six years later she had the other breast removed. She along with us her children thought that the cancer would take her life because it had metastasized. She survived the cancer. About two years later she was standing in her living room drinking a cup of coffee and talking with my sister-in-law. One moment she was there and the next she stepped out of this life and into the presence of God.
Grief can be complicated. For some who have watched a family suffer with an illness, death can be a sense of relief. A sudden death can be shocking and grief takes an entirely different form. The overdose crisis that we are experiencing leaves many families grieving. There are family members who knew it was going to happen because of the depths of their loved ones use of drugs. For others, they had no idea that the person was using any kind of substance.
Sickness can lead to grief because of death or continued suffering.
There are days as a Therapist that I want to just shut my office door after a client leaves and have a good cry. There are clients that I would like to take them into a big hug and cry with them. There are some that I want to go home and bleach my brain because of the horror that they have revealed.
Sometimes the things I hear can bring strong emotions. I hear individuals talk about what they have experienced by their own choices. I more frequently hear about the unspeakable that has been done to them and the choices they made in order to cope with their life experiences.
It is easy to cry out in that brokenness, Where is God in all of this?
In our scripture text this morning it is hard to know whether it is Jeremiah speaking or if it is Jehovah.
Jeremiah had been called by God to be a prophet. Rather than standing on the sidelines telling the people what God was saying, Jeremiah lived among them. Perhaps that is why he is referred to as the weeping prophet.
This section of scripture opens with these words:
18 No healing, only grief; my heart is broken.
Israel and Judah had continued to walk away from God. They had become like the nations around them, worshipping idols rather than the one true and living God. God had kept his promise. He gathered the people out of Egypt and brought them to freedom.
The people would follow Him for a period and then they would turn their back on him. It started when Moses was on the Mountain receiving the Ten Commandments. The people were down at the base of the mountain fashioning a god to worship.
The spies went into the promised land and two came back and said that it was everything that God had promised. The remaining spies said that their were giants there. An entire generation died in the desert because of their disobedience.
When God brought them to the promised land the second time the followed Him and He gave them victory over the nations that were in their land.
After they had settled the land they looked around and saw that every nation around them had a king so they demanded a King other than God.
They began worshiping the idols of the nations around them. One king would be faithful to God and the people would worship God. The next several kings would be evil and idolatry increased. It was a vicious cycle.
That cycle sped up and here they are on the verge of being destroyed as a nation and hauled off into captivity.
It is into this mess that Jeremiah cries out Jeremiah 8:18 “18 No healing, only grief; my heart is broken.”
Jeremiah was not just putting on a front, he was living in the midst of the sin of the people. There can come that point that there is no hope for healing. Jeremiah appears to recognize that. He seems to recognize that the people have gone to far.
Have you heard the phrase “the tipping point?”
In sociology, a Tipping Point “is a point in time when a group—or many group members—rapidly and dramatically changes its behavior by widely adopting a previously rare practice.” [1]
Israel had reached it’s tipping point. Idolatry was rampant. They had turn their backs on God. The had been warned by the prophets. That had received a call to repentance by the prophets.
Despite all that God had done, they had reached that point of no return. There seemed to be no turning back. Jeremiah recognized that and said that there was no healing. Nothing was going to change. He said there was only grief left. There has nothing left to do but mourn the demise of the people who were set aside by God.
Jeremiah says “My heart is broken.”
The Psalmnist wrote about this.
20 Insults have broken my heart. I’m sick about it. I hoped for sympathy, but there wasn’t any; I hoped for comforters, but couldn’t find any.
A broken heart is that idea “for the intense emotional stress or pain one feels at experiencing great and deep longing.” [2] That is what Jeremiah was experiencing. He loved the people, he was being obedient calling them back to God. Even though he loved them intensely, he loved God more and was being obedient to God. It is that intense love of his people and his love and obedience to God that brings on this intense grief, this broken hearted.
This did not have to happen. I mentioned the promise last week. God had said
1 If you return, Israel, return to me, declares the Lord. If you get rid of your disgusting idols from my presence and wander no more,
2 and if you swear by the living God in truth, justice, and righteousness, then the nations will enjoy God’s blessings; they will boast about him.
If. That one little word is very powerful. I routinely talk with my patients and they talk about the “if onlies.” It is those things that they say if only had done this, or if only this hadn’t happened. If Onlies goes along with the woulda, coulda, shouldas of life.
God said to the people, “If you return, If you get rid of your disgusting idols, if you swear by the living God, then the nations will enjoy God’s blessings.
We know that they did not return, they did not get rid of their idols, and they did not swear by the living God.
They people seemed to be getting the idea that God was bringing punishment. They had witnessed Israel, those 10 northern tribes be destroyed and carried into captivity.
Babylon was on the verge of destroying Judah. Jeremiah writes:
Jeremiah 8:19 (CEB)
19 Listen to the weeping of my people all across the land:
It seems that the tipping point had been reached. The writing was on the wall. Destruction was coming. They seem to be getting it and they cry:
19 Listen to the weeping of my people all across the land: “Isn’t the Lord in Zion? Is her king no longer there?” Why then did they anger me with their images, with pointless foreign gods?
It is almost a cry of “Where is God?”
Don’t we sometimes say that when bad things happen? Where is God?
God had said long ago what would happen if they didn’t keep their part of the covenant. God spoke about the blessings and curses. There had been revivals and the Word of God was read to them. They weren’t totally clueless people.
To their cry, God asks Jeremiah 8:19 “Why then did they anger me with their images, with pointless foreign gods?”
God puts his finger on the problem. Idolatry was the primary issue. They had substituted things created by human hands for the one true and living God.
It seems that Jeremiah has come to the realization that there is nothing left but grief and mourning. No matter what he might say, Judah is not going to return to God. He is going to stay with them through the captivity. They are not going to admit that idolatry has caused them their problems. They are not going to seek healing, they will cry out that God has left them.
They were the holy people of God, called to be priests to the world. They claimed to be a place of holiness because of the Temple being there, but even the Temple would be destroyed.
The people say
20 “The harvest is past, the summer has ended, yet we aren’t saved.”
The Wesleyan Bible Commentary, Volume 3: Isaiah–Malachi a. His Identification with the People (8:18–22)
In Palestine the harvest was completed by the month of June; the summer fruits continued through September. If there had been no ingathering by that time, a winter of famine was the disastrous consequent. Applied to Israel the metaphor meant that hope was gone; the days were over when the servant of God might hope for a turning of the hearts of Israel.
He is painting a picture of hopelessness. It seemed like everything was lost and in fact it was lost because in a little while Jerusalem would be destroyed and the people would be carried off into captivity. The Temple, that place that was holy, where the Ark of the Covenant was located, where God’s presence was would be destroyed.
Jeremiah seems to reach his low point in verse 21
21 Because my people are crushed, I am crushed; darkness and despair overwhelm me.
Let those words sink in for a moment. The easiest thing for Jeremiah would have been to walk away. The psalmist wrote in Psalm 55:6-7 “6 I say to myself, I wish I had wings like a dove! I’d fly away and rest. 7 I’d run so far away! I’d live in the desert. Selah”
He didn’t run away, he stayed with them. He felt those extreme emotions. Despair is another way of talking about depression. Jeremiah was depressed because of what was happening and what was going to happen. The words of the song that Roy Clark and Buck Owens sang on that old show Hee Haw ran through my mind
Gloom, despair, and agony on me Deep, dark depression, excessive misery If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all Gloom, despair, and agony on me.
Those words sound a lot like what Jeremiah was saying.
Jeremiah ends this section with these words
22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then have my people not been restored to health?
1 If only my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears, I would weep day and night for the wounds of my people.
So, what can we take from this today? If we don’t answer the “So what?” question then this is just a nice talk, but it does nothing for us.
Judah was rushing headlong into destruction. The rock band Queen had a song with the word Headlong in the title. Some of the words of that song are almost prophetic.
And you're rushing headlong
You've got a new goal
And you're rushing headlong
Out of control
And you think you're so strong
But there ain't no stopping
And there's nothing you can do about it
We might feel that way. Judah was rushing headlong to destruction. Jeremiah wrote in verse 3 of chapter 9 Jeremiah 9:3 “They go from bad to worse. They don’t know me declares the Lord!.”
Our world seems like it is going from bad to worse. In many ways it is. Evil is now called good and good is called evil. We have a few options.
We can bury our heads in the sand. We can pretend that all is well in the world.
We can give in to the despair. We we can sit and reminisce about the good old days.
We are not called to do that. Paul wrote in Romans 1:17
17 This gospel unveils a continual revelation of God’s righteousness—a perfect righteousness given to us when we believe. And it moves us from receiving life through faith, to the power of living by faith. This is what the Scripture means when it says: “We are right with God through life-giving faith!”
The gospel gives us life and gives us the power of living by faith. Jeremiah asked if there was a balm in Gilead, if there was a physician.
Guess what, there is a balm in Gilead, there is a great physician. Jesus came so that we might have life, abundant life. God has provided everything that we will ever need. We have been blessed beyond measure with every spiritual blessing.
Do you want to have a revival in your life? Claim those blessings.
They are not material blessings - those things become idols. They are spiritual blessings, the power to pray. The power to bring hope and healing to someone.
The world is rushing headlong to destructions. Are we praying for the lost in our families, our neighbors, or co-workers?
The psalmist said Psalm 84:7 “7 They go from strength to strength, until they see the supreme God in Zion.”
That strength come through the Holy Spirit.
Paul wrote 2 Cor 3:18
18 All of us are looking with unveiled faces at the glory of the Lord as if we were looking in a mirror. We are being transformed into that same image from one degree of glory to the next degree of glory. This comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
That is what revival will do for us, being transformed into that same image. The verse just before that says 2 Cor 3:17 “17 The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Lord’s Spirit is, there is freedom.”
We are called to freedom, not slavery and bondage to sin. We are called to take that news to the world. Do you want that freedom in your life? It comes through repentance and obedience.
Do you want that for your family and friends? Pray, pray like their lives depend on it, because truly it does.
[1] Tipping point (sociology) - Wikipedia
[2] Broken heart - Wikipedia