The Smoldering Scroll
October 20 Jeremiah 35:1-36:32
Object Lessons That Demand Obedience
“The Smoldering Scroll”
My husband has told a story from his childhood of a time that he got angry with his mom and tore a Bible into shreds and threw it down. He was a rebellious little handful on that day!
Why do you think he did such a thing? His mom was a very godly person and the Bible was a symbol of what was most important in her life… her God. It sounds like he was trying to get her attention in a “big way” and I am sure he did! I am pretty sure that some kind of “wisdom” was applied to him. I can tell you that in the years to come he has admired her faith above rubies and she was the rock that anchored their entire family. She prayed for everyone!
One way to show utter contempt for something is to rip it up and publicly burn the symbol associated with what one is protesting. People have in recent years taken to the act of burning our nation’s flag which is the symbol of our country. They are showing their public contempt for the land that gives them freedom and burning the flag that many brave soldiers have given their lives to uphold that freedom. While their coffins came home draped in the flag, others shred it and burn it.
Perhaps you remember hearing of the riots in Portland, Oregon in 2020. Groups of protestors burned stacks of Bibles and American flags. All of their actions were revolting against rules, spiritual truth, order, and the church.
Do you know that there is actually a recording of this exact type of rebellion in the Bible?
Oh, by the way, it wasn’t by a young child having a little temper tantrum.
Quite the contrary, it was by the King of Judah, tyrant King Jehoiakim who sliced up Jeremiah’s scroll and threw it in the fire. He was begged not to do this but did it anyway. In fact, he took a knife and cut off the section of the scroll that he didn’t want to hear and threw it section by section into the fire.
Neither the King nor his attendants showed any sign of fear or repentance in response to what they heard. They simply wouldn’t listen!
In case you haven’t connected all the dots yet, King Josiah, the godly child king who turned the kingdom around for God by destroying idols was King Jehoiakim’s father.
Well, maybe it was a childhood temper tantrum! This king seemed to stand against everything that his father had given his life for. Sad, so sad for his dad!
He not only disrespected the prophet whom God had sent, but he also disrespected his own father, and his heavenly Father and sovereign God!
Next, he commanded his son and another to arrest Baruch he read the scroll, and Jeremiah who wrote the scroll as God had commanded. “But the Lord had hidden them.” (36:26)
Have you ever wondered why were are reading such a long reading in the book of Jeremiah where the people are given “object lesson after object lesson”?
“So, Jeremiah took another scroll and dictated again to his secretary, Baruch. He wrote everything that had been on the scroll King Jehoiakim had burned in the fire. Only this time he added MUCH MORE!
“Turn & Burn”!
This is exactly what happened to King Jehoiakim. God pronounced judgment on him, “ Therefore this is what the LORD says about Jehoiakim King of Judah: He will have no one to sit on the throne of David; his body will be thrown out (There’s the TURN!), and exposed to the heat by day (There’s the BURN!), and the frost by night.” (Jer. 36:30)
“He will be buried like a dead donkey--dragged out of Jerusalem and dumped outside the gates!” (22:19)
According to Josephus, a famous historian, Jehoiakim was killed during the siege, and his body was thrown over the city wall.
God had been utterly removed from Judah’s political process and so God removed their leaders and people. This shows how far they had fallen away from “Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.”
Instead, the king is using the scrolls of instructions for the people from God through Jeremiah for kindling and to light his fire!
It is interesting to me that in Revelation 5:4 we see another passage about a “famous scroll”. Here is what we have learned about it, “I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.”
In prior verses, the angel had asked who was worthy to open this scroll that contained judgments from God. The answer was no one was morally or legally able to open it… SAVE JESUS.
When I look at this passage today through New Testament eyes, here is what I see.
The king cut up the words of God and threw them into the fire, but another king named Jesus would take upon himself the judgment of the world written in the scroll upon himself. He went to HELL and back so that we wouldn’t have to go into eternal captivity.
That, my friends, is “The Smoldering Scroll.”
