Jeremiah 11:1 - Meaning and Application

The prophet now acts as a prosecutor in God’s name. He brings a charge against the Jews for willful disobedience to the commands of their rightful King. But he does this in a solemn way, because God gave him the message and told him to speak it to the people of Judah (Jeremiah 11:1, Jeremiah 11:2).

The wording is plural, “Speak to them.” What God said to Jeremiah was the same message he had given to all his servants, the prophets. None of them taught anything different from what Moses had already written in the law. So the people were to be sent back to Scripture: “Hear the words of this covenant.” In other words, turn to your Bible, and let it judge you. Jeremiah had to proclaim this in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, because everyone was involved.

All the words of warning and correction from the prophets were rooted in the words of the covenant and agreed with them. The people needed to hear those words and understand what terms they had once stood on with God. Then, by comparing themselves with the covenant, they would soon see what their present standing with him really was.

He also opens up the charter on which their nation had been founded and by which they held their privileges. They had forgotten what it said. They lived as if the gift were unconditional, as if they could do whatever they wanted and still keep all God had promised. Or they acted as if God cared only about their outward religious ceremonies. So God makes the matter plain: what he required was obedience, and obedience is better than sacrifice. He says, “Obey my voice” (Jeremiah 11:4, Jeremiah 11:7).

That means they must acknowledge God as their Master, give themselves to him as his subjects and servants, and pay close attention to everything he makes known. They must do his commandments, not only some of them, but all that he commands. They were to be especially careful about moral duties, not resting in rituals alone. They were to hear the words of the covenant and do them.

This was the original agreement God made with them when he first formed them into a people. It was what he commanded their fathers when he brought them out of Egypt (Jeremiah 11:4, Jeremiah 11:7). God never meant to guide and protect them on any other terms. He had redeemed them from the Egyptians, who were like a furnace of iron, so that they might serve him instead. He delivered them from slavery so they could enter his service, which is perfect freedom (Luke 1:74, Luke 1:75).

This duty was not only set before them, it was pressed on them with great urgency (Jeremiah 11:7). God did not only command it, he strongly warned their fathers when he brought them into covenant with himself. Moses kept repeating it, again and again, teaching them line by line and precept by precept.

This obedience was also the condition of their special relation to God, which was their great honor and privilege: “So you shall be my people, and I will be your God.” That means God would own them as his own, and they could call on him as theirs. But it also warns that if they refused to obey, they could no longer claim the benefit of that relation.

It was also on these terms that the land of Canaan was given to them as a possession: “Obey my voice, so that I may carry out the oath I swore to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey” (Jeremiah 11:5). God was ready to fulfill the promise, but they had to fulfill the condition. If they did not, the promise would no longer stand for them, and God would be just to remove them from the land. They had entered it on good behavior, so it was no wrong to expel them for bad behavior. Obedience was the rent reserved in the lease, with the right to take the land back if the rent was not paid.

This obedience was required not only as the condition of blessing, but also under the penalty of a curse. That is stated first here, so the people might, if possible, be awakened by the fear of the Lord: “Cursed is the man,” even if only one person, “who does not obey the words of this covenant” (Jeremiah 11:3). How much more serious it was when the whole nation rebelled. There are curses in the covenant as well as blessings. Moses set before them not only life and good, but death and evil too (Deuteronomy 30:15), so they had been plainly warned about the deadly results of disobedience.

To keep this covenant from being forgotten, God kept reminding them of it from time to time. Through his servants the prophets, he kept pressing the same claim on them. So they could not excuse their disobedience by saying the demand had never been made. From the day he brought them out of Egypt until now, nearly a thousand years, God had been, in one way or another, calling them back to obedience. He keeps account of how long we have had the means of grace, how strongly those means have worked on us, and how often we have not only been spoken to, but warned with solemn urgency, about our duty.

This covenant was also answered with consent (Jeremiah 11:5). “Then I answered and said, ‘So be it, O Lord!’” These are the prophet’s words, and they may mean one of three things. He may be speaking for himself, agreeing to the covenant and wanting its blessing. He may be expressing his good wish that the people would enjoy the covenant’s benefits and remain in the land. Or he may be speaking for the people, saying that they had once agreed to these terms.

If we take it in this last sense, it points to the people’s own declared agreement to the covenant. They had accepted its commands when they said, “All that the Lord says we will do, and we will obey.” They had also accepted its penalties when they answered Amen to the curses on Mount Ebal. The more solemnly we bind ourselves to God, the more reason we have to hope that our commitment will last. And yet, in their case, it did not.

The prophet then charges them with breaking the covenant, a break so serious that it amounted to losing their right to the charter itself (Jeremiah 11:8).

God had spoken again and again, through his law and through his prophets, saying, “Obey my voice, do what I command, and all will be well.” But they would not obey. Since they had set their hearts against God’s commands, they would not even listen to them. They kept as far from God’s call as they could.

Instead, each person walked in the stubborn plans of his own evil heart. They followed their own ideas. Every man did what his own taste and temper led him to do, whether right or wrong, lawful or unlawful, both in worship and in daily life (Jeremiah 7:24). What could they expect, then, except to fall under the covenant’s curse, since they would not meet its commands and conditions? So God says, “I will bring on them all the words of this covenant,” meaning all the warnings and judgments it contains, because they did not do what they were commanded.

The words of God’s covenant never fail. If we do not obey and so place ourselves under its blessings, then our disobedience will place us under its curses. What made their turning from God even worse was that it was widespread, and, as it were, agreed upon together (Jeremiah 11:9, Jeremiah 11:10). Jeremiah could see that many people were openly disobeying God, but the Lord told him the matter was worse than he thought: “A conspiracy is found among them,” known to the One whose eye sees hidden evil.

There was a plot against God and religion, a dangerous plan to tear down God’s rule and bring in false gods. This shows that they were deliberate in their sin, not careless or unaware. It also shows they were clever in evil and carried out their attack on true religion with skill and planning. They were joined together in the scheme, and, as often happens with conspirators, they were pledged to support one another and to stand or fall together. It was a cursed conspiracy. Oh, that there were none like it in our day!

Notice what this conspiracy aimed to do. They meant to overthrow God’s revelation, cast it aside, and keep people from hearing or caring about God’s words. They did all they could to weaken the authority of Scripture and make it seem of little value. They wanted people to follow other gods, to consult them as if they were oracles, and to court them as if they were their helpers and givers of good things. In effect, human reason would be their god, an inward light would be their god, an infallible judge would be their god, saints and angels would be their gods, or the god of one nation or another would be theirs. Under many different masks, it was the same conspiracy against the Lord and against his Anointed One, that is, his chosen King.

Who were part of this conspiracy? One might have expected foreign leaders to be at the center, but that was not the case. The people of Jerusalem were joined with the men of Judah, city and country united in this, even if they differed in other matters. The people of this generation also seemed to join with the people of the former generation, carrying on the war against religion from age to age. They had gone back to the sins of their fathers and stood in their place, a seed of evildoers, a people growing in sin (Numbers 32:14).

In Josiah’s time there had been a reform, but after his death the people returned to the idol worship they had then rejected. Judah and Israel, the kingdom of the ten tribes and the kingdom of the two tribes, though often fiercely opposed to each other, were still united in breaking the covenant God had made with their fathers, the fathers of all twelve tribes. The house of Israel began the revolt, but the house of Judah quickly joined the conspiracy.

What else could be expected except that God would deal severely with both the conspirators and their conspiracy? No one ever hardened himself against God like this and prospered. He who rolls this stone will find it roll back on him.