The Heart's Engraving and the Sabbath Gate

The sin of Judah, the Lord declared through Jeremiah, was not a surface stain. It was cut with an iron pen, the point of a diamond, into the tablet of their hearts and into the horns of their altars. The people had not merely slipped; they had carved their rebellion into the deepest part of themselves and into the very furniture of worship. Their children remembered the altars and the sacred poles by the green trees on the high hills, and the Lord spoke of giving up their substance and treasures as spoil, their high places as the price of sin across every border.

The Lord drew two paths. One was the curse that falls on the man who trusts in flesh, who makes an arm of mere humanity, whose heart pulls away from the Lord. That man becomes like a heath in the desert, a stunted shrub in a salt land where no one lives. He does not see when good comes. The other path was the blessing on the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is the Lord himself. That man is like a tree planted by water, roots spread out by the river. When heat comes, the tree does not fear; its leaf stays green. In a year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not stop yielding fruit.

Then the Lord pressed deeper. The heart, he said, is deceitful above all things. It is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it? The Lord himself searches the mind and tests the heart, giving each man according to his ways and the fruit of his doings. There is no hiding from that search. The man who gets riches by wrong means is like a partridge that sits on eggs it did not lay; in the middle of his days the wealth leaves him, and at the end he is a fool.

A glorious throne, set on high from the beginning, is the place of the sanctuary. The Lord is the hope of Israel. All who forsake him are put to shame. Those who depart from him are written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters.

Jeremiah then spoke in his own voice. He cried out for healing and salvation, calling the Lord his praise. The people mocked him, saying, Where is the word of the Lord? Let it come now. But Jeremiah had not run from being a shepherd after the Lord. He had not desired the woeful day. He asked the Lord not to be a terror to him, but to be his refuge in the day of evil. He asked for shame and dismay to fall on those who persecuted him, and for the day of evil to come upon them with double destruction.

The Lord sent Jeremiah to stand in the gate where the kings of Judah came in and went out, and in all the gates of Jerusalem. He was to speak to the kings, to all Judah, and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The message was about the Sabbath day. The Lord commanded them to bear no burden on the Sabbath, to bring nothing in through the gates, to carry nothing out of their houses, and to do no work. They were to hallow the Sabbath day as the Lord had commanded their fathers.

But they had not listened. They had not inclined their ear. They had made their neck stiff so they would not hear or receive instruction. The Lord laid out the choice plainly. If they would diligently listen and hallow the Sabbath, bringing no burden through the gates and doing no work, then kings and princes sitting on the throne of David would enter through those gates, riding in chariots and on horses, and the city would remain forever. People would come from the cities of Judah, from the places around Jerusalem, from Benjamin, from the lowland, from the hill country, and from the South, bringing burnt offerings, sacrifices, grain offerings, frankincense, and thank offerings to the house of the Lord.

If they would not listen and hallow the Sabbath, if they kept carrying burdens through the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath, then the Lord would kindle a fire in those gates. It would devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it would not be quenched.