THE SEARCH FOR ONE RIGHTEOUS MAN ~ A Study in Jeremiah

 

“You don’t need an army to conquer a nation; all you need is fear!” That quote was from a recent interview Allie Beth Stuckey did with Pastor John MacArthur relating to the present-day Covid-19 “pandemic” crisis of 2020. He also said this: “You need to decide what your priorities are. This country has sacrificed tens of thousands of lives to gain our freedom, and people are going to give it all up if the government will protect them from some nebulous virus? It shows you the weakness of this generation; it shows you the susceptibility to suggestion and the ease with which fear can dominate people not related to reality.” Statistics and reality have proved that Covid-19 was not a legitimate fear. It is not an epidemic; there is something else going on. We must ask ourselves this: Will people realize their fatal mistake too late?

“Judgment is coming! Judgment is coming! Judgment is coming! Judgment is coming! Judgment is coming!” For five chapters, the message in the book of Jeremiah has been the same. While this is the truth proclaimed to the people by God’s prophet, we, the reader, don’t hear the only message the people are actually listening to—the message of the false prophets who are saying, “Peace, peace; you will have peace and safety.”

Our human nature does not want to hear words of judgment. At times, believers struggle against the flesh in this area. Sometimes, we, too, want to focus more on the blessings of God than on the moral necessity of God’s judgment. We will always have that innate desire to think that we are not as bad as God’s Word says we are. The reality is we are far worse than we could ever understand with finite minds. We have unsaved loved ones, so we try to mentally stretch the limits of God’s mercy and grace to cover the hardness of their hearts so that our minds are appeased and comforted.

Prison was a wake-up call for me—every day for 39 months. Not only was I surrounded with blatant reminders of human depravity 24/7, the Lord forced me to look within to see my own depravity, not so blatant to anyone other than Him. So, this one who believed she was too good to go to prison, who was unjustly accused and did not deserve her sentence, realized in a far greater way than she had ever done before that what she deserved was eternal death in hell…but God. Plunging me into the depths of the Gospel and the riches of His blessings of salvation gave me greater clarity in understanding the holiness of our God. We all need reminders that because God is just and holy, He not only has the right to judge all sin; He is right and good in doing so. Jeremiah got an object lesson in Chapter 5.

Throughout my ‘prison trial’ I asked the question over and over, “When did it become so acceptable to lie?” Sadly, I can ask that question more today—fourteen years later—than when it first crossed my mind. Referring to the system I believed stood for justice and truth, I was shocked and dismayed to find out it is not so. I learned just how deeply entrenched that root of human nature is that wants to believe people are basically good…beginning with me. That, too, is not so.

“Roam to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem and look now and take note. And seek in her open squares if you can find a man, if there is one who does justice, who seeks truth, then I will pardon her.” (Jeremiah 5:1)

When God’s people fear Him and rely on Him alone, He promises to defend them. We see this principle in 2 Chronicles 16. No matter the size of the enemy army, if God’s people trusted Him alone, He would fight for them. If they began to put their trust in man to protect them, they would fall. In 2 Chronicles 16:9 we see one of my favorite verses in Scripture: “For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.”

God told Jeremiah if he could find one man who executes justice and who seeks truth, He would pardon Judah. The search for one honest man began. (This is reminiscent of Genesis 18:23-32 when Abraham was pleading with the Lord over the fate of Sodom.) What Jeremiah found was corruption everywhere. Some commentators suggest that the Lord may have meant that there was not a magistrate or priest to be found who dispensed justice and truth and who was not corrupt. Whatever this verse means, corruption was the overall norm. Only God could see the hearts of His people, but it was their conduct that was deserving of divine punishment, conduct that came from wicked hearts that worshipped and served the creation rather than the Creator.

Justice and truth are often used together as the standards of righteousness only found in the perfection of God. As imperfect creatures, these are also to characterize the overall life of the believer as well. Micah 6:8 says: He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Jeremiah found not one man in Jerusalem who was just in judgment.

“And although they say, ‘As the Lord lives,’ surely they swear falsely.” O Lord, do not Your eyes look for truth? You have smitten them, but they did not weaken; You have consumed them, but they refused to take correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent. (Jeremiah 5:2-3)

People today affirm their words by saying, “I swear to God,” with no thought to what that means. They once placed their hands upon a Bible in a court of law and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help them God with the same flippant disregard for the weight of their words before Him. God said to Judah, “You swear by My name, but you disrespect Me with your lies!” Simply put, they took the Lord’s name in vain. Multitudes of professing believers stand before God and make a covenant marriage vow, and then take no thought to that vow when they want out by way of divorce—just because they have “fallen out of love” or aren’t “feeling it” any longer. Often, they give up without a fight. God’s people in the Old Testament knew that when they swore by God’s name, they were calling on Him to punish them if they later violated the terms of the oath. When they swore, ‘As the Lord lives,’ they were professing to know Him, yet their lives said otherwise.

Notice that while Jeremiah’s search for a righteous man was futile, he had no problem finding men who were religious. They were everywhere—just like our day. Religion meant nothing, and it still means nothing. Just like my judge said in chambers: “Religion is not relevant.” No man was seeking truth, but God always seeks truth. We can be assured that any man who seeks truth will not go unnoticed by God. His eyes will be upon that man watching over him to protect and provide for him. Psalm 94:9 says: He who planted the ear, does He not hear? He who formed the eye, does He not see? God sees everything. Proverbs 15:3—The eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good. Just as no good and loving father fails to discipline his sons and daughters, God has always disciplined His children when they need correction. But nothing this loving Father did in the way of discipline affected these sinful children of Israel. It just served to harden their hearts and caused them to dig in their heels against Him in rebellion and unrepentance.

Here is the thing we must understand about the willfully rebellious religious of Jeremiah’s day and ours. Self-righteous people do not even know how far away from God they are because they are deceived and deluded. Because they go through all the rituals and ceremonies of worship, they believe they are ‘okay’ with God and that He will never judge them—here and now, or in the future! Their hearts have become so hardened to sin, that they do not even realize they are sinning. They have no ability to tell right from wrong, no discernment in being able to divide the word accurately. Why do they not repent? They feel no guilt for their sin.

Then I said, “They are only the poor, they are foolish; for they do not know the way of the Lord or the ordinance of their God. I will go to the great and will speak to them, for they know the way of the Lord and the ordinance of their God.” But they too, with one accord, have broken the yoke and burst the bonds. (Jeremiah 5:4-5) Jeremiah could not believe the spiritual and moral foolishness of the people of Jerusalem. He erroneously considered it was because he had gone to the ignorant and foolish. Perhaps it was the ignorant and foolish people—the uneducated, those of low social status, the common people—who did not know the way of the Lord or His Laws. So, he went to the great, the educated, those of high class, to speak with them. What he found there was that the more educated a man, the more sophisticated his sin. Depravity belongs to all men, regardless of their social class. No victim groups hiding behind a victim mentality to excuse their sin will be able to stand before God on judgment day. No one will be able to say, “It was because of the environment in which I was raised. I was treated poorly. I grew up in this neighborhood or that neighborhood and had lesser opportunities because I was oppressed.” Those pleas may pull the wool over people’s eyes today, but not on THAT DAY!

But they too, with one accord, have broken the yoke and burst the bonds. The yoke was a curved piece of wood fastened to the pole or beam, laid upon the neck of beasts for drawing. The oxen were yoked together to pull the plow or to do something useful. If an ox stubbornly rebelled and refused to submit to the yoke, what could be done with it? He was of no use to the farmer at all. The yoke as it related to God’s people was the yoke of the Law and the bonds were God’s precepts, with which they were bound. Kept in God’s yoke, they would be able to accomplish all the purposes for which He had created them. They would be able to glorify Him. However, they broke free from their restraints—those restraints that were put on them by a good and loving God for their good and their protection—for His glory. They broke free just like wild animals.

In his depravity, this is man—all men. Believing he has free will to do as he pleases and according to what he believes is best for him, he makes the decision that he will not be controlled by God’s Law which he views as far too restrictive and binding if he is to live his ‘best life now’. He wants to be “free to live however he chooses, whatever he views as ‘right for him’. Psalm 2:1-3—Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!” What has been echoed from the corridors of time still reverberates throughout our days. And so does the prophet’s message, “Judgment is coming!”