The Prophet as a Sign: When God Removes the Cushions Text: Jeremiah 16:1-13
Introduction: A Living Sermon
We live in a soft and sentimental age. Our therapeutic culture believes that the central purpose of life is to be happy, comfortable, and undisturbed. We have come to believe that the normal blessings of life, family, fellowship, and feasting, are inalienable rights. We assume that God's job is to be the divine facilitator of our personal fulfillment projects. But when a nation is in a state of high rebellion against the God who gave them those blessings, He has a startling way of getting their attention. He begins to take the good things away. He removes the cushions. He turns off the music. He lets the consequences of their sin run their natural, ruinous course.
In our passage today, God commands His prophet Jeremiah to become a living, walking, breathing sermon. His very life is to be a sign, a stark and painful object lesson for the people of Judah. God is not just going to tell them that judgment is coming; He is going to make them feel its sharp edges in the life of His own messenger. Jeremiah is commanded to forego the three great pillars of normal human society: marriage, mourning, and merriment. He is to be a man set apart, a man whose life is conspicuously empty of the ordinary comforts, precisely because God is about to empty the land of those very comforts.
This is a hard word. It is a severe mercy. God is showing them the blueprint of the coming desolation in the shape of Jeremiah's life. He is telling them, "Look at my prophet. The loneliness you see in him is a picture of the national loneliness that is coming upon you. The silence at his table is a picture of the silence that will fall over this entire land." This is what happens when a people's sin reaches a certain pitch. God stops whispering and starts shouting. And sometimes, the shout is a deafening silence. It is the sound of God withdrawing His peace, His lovingkindness, and His compassion. And when God withdraws, all the ordinary graces that hold a society together begin to unravel.
We must not read this as a distant, historical curiosity. This is a revelation of the character of God. He is a jealous God, and He will not be trifled with. When a people, covenanted to Him, decide they prefer the worship of idols, the stubbornness of their own evil hearts, they are choosing death. And God, in His justice, will eventually give them what they have chosen, pressed down and running over.
The Text
The word of Yahweh also came to me saying, “You shall not take a wife for yourself nor have sons or daughters in this place.” For thus says Yahweh concerning the sons and daughters born in this place and concerning their mothers who bear them and their fathers who beget them in this land: “They will die of deadly diseases; they will not be lamented or buried; they will be as dung on the surface of the ground and come to an end by sword and famine, and their carcasses will become food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth.” For thus says Yahweh, “Do not enter the house of the funeral meal, or go to lament or to console them; for I have withdrawn My peace from this people,” declares Yahweh, “My lovingkindness and compassion. Both great men and small will die in this land; they will not be buried; they will not be lamented, nor will anyone gash himself or shave his head for them. Men will not break bread in mourning for them, to comfort anyone for the dead, nor give them a cup of comforting to drink for anyone’s father or mother. Moreover you shall not go into a house of feasting to sit with them to eat and drink.” For thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I am going to cause to cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of rejoicing and the voice of gladness, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride. “Now when you tell this people all these words, they will say to you, ‘For what reason has Yahweh declared all this great calamity against us? And what is our iniquity, or what is our sin which we have committed against Yahweh our God?’ Then you are to say to them, ‘It is because your fathers have forsaken Me,’ declares Yahweh, ‘and have walked after other gods and served them and worshiped them; but Me they have forsaken and have not kept My law. You too have done evil, even more than your fathers; for behold, you are each one walking according to the stubbornness of his own evil heart, without listening to Me. So I will hurl you out of this land into the land which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers; and there you will serve other gods day and night, for I will grant you no favor.’
(Jeremiah 16:1-13 LSB)
The Prohibition of Marriage (vv. 1-4)
We begin with the first and perhaps most jarring command given to the prophet.
"You shall not take a wife for yourself nor have sons or daughters in this place." (Jeremiah 16:2)
In the Old Testament world, marriage and children were not just a personal preference; they were a covenantal expectation and a profound blessing. To be fruitful and multiply was the first command given to mankind. A large family was a sign of God's favor. For a man, especially a man of God, to remain single and childless would have been deeply counter-cultural and conspicuous. It would have invited questions, pity, and perhaps even scorn. And that was precisely the point. Jeremiah's celibacy was to be a public spectacle, a question mark hanging over the nation.
God gives the brutal reason for this command. It is not an arbitrary asceticism. It is a profound act of mercy toward Jeremiah and his hypothetical family. The coming judgment will be so severe that it would be better not to bring children into it. God says that the sons and daughters born in that place, along with their parents, will "die of deadly diseases," be unlamented, unburied, and left like dung on the ground. Their bodies will be carrion for birds and beasts. This is the language of total covenantal curse, straight out of Deuteronomy 28. God is saying, "The future here is so bleak, so full of death, that the blessing of children has become a liability. I am sparing you, My servant, the agony of watching your own family consumed by this." The joy of a wedding and the laughter of children would be a cruel prelude to an unspeakable horror.
The Prohibition of Mourning (vv. 5-7)
Next, God removes another fundamental pillar of human community: shared grief.
"For thus says Yahweh, 'Do not enter the house of the funeral meal, or go to lament or to console them; for I have withdrawn My peace from this people,' declares Yahweh, 'My lovingkindness and compassion.'" (Jeremiah 16:5)
Jeremiah is forbidden from participating in the normal rituals of mourning. He cannot go to a funeral, offer condolences, or share in the communal grief. Why? Because the coming wave of death is not a normal tragedy. It is a divine judgment. To mourn in the customary way would be to treat this as a sad accident of fate. But it is not an accident. It is the active, righteous judgment of God against unrepentant sin. Jeremiah's absence from the funeral home is a silent testimony that God Himself is absent. God has withdrawn His "peace," His shalom, which means wholeness, well-being, and security. He has also withdrawn His "lovingkindness" (hesed) and "compassion" (rahamim). These are foundational covenant terms. Hesed is God's loyal, steadfast covenant love. Rahamim is His tender, motherly compassion. When God withdraws these, the covenant relationship is, for all practical purposes, suspended. There is no comfort to be offered because the source of all true comfort has turned His face away.
The death toll will be so high, affecting both "great men and small," that the normal rites of burial and lamentation will be impossible. The social fabric will be so torn that these basic acts of human decency will cease. God is stripping away the very things that make us human in order to show them how inhuman their sin has made them.
The Prohibition of Merriment (vv. 8-9)
The third prohibition completes the picture of desolation. No marriage, no mourning, and now, no merriment.
"Moreover you shall not go into a house of feasting to sit with them to eat and drink." (Jeremiah 16:8)
Jeremiah is to be a party pooper by divine decree. He cannot attend weddings, festivals, or any joyful gathering. His refusal to celebrate is a prophetic sign that all celebration is about to end. God declares that He is going to "cause to cease from this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of rejoicing and the voice of gladness, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride." This is the sound of a healthy, functioning society. It is the sound of life, love, and hope for the future. And God says, "I am turning it off." The silence of Jeremiah's social life is the overture to the silence of the land.
This is a terrifying reality. When God judges a nation, He doesn't just send armies and plagues. He removes joy. He takes away the laughter. The land itself becomes barren of gladness because it is barren of His presence. This is the logical end of a culture that has sought its joy in things other than God. They have chased after the fleeting pleasures of idols, and God's response is to show them what true emptiness feels like.
The Inevitable Question and the Unflinching Answer (vv. 10-13)
Jeremiah's strange, anti-social behavior is designed to provoke a question. And when the people inevitably ask it, God has the answer ready.
"For what reason has Yahweh declared all this great calamity against us? And what is our iniquity, or what is our sin...?" (Jeremiah 16:10)
Here we see the breathtaking spiritual blindness of the people. They are surrounded by their idols, steeped in their rebellion, and yet they are utterly clueless as to why God might be upset. This is the nature of a hardened heart. It loses the ability to connect its own sin with God's judgment. They see the calamity, but they cannot see their complicity. They are like a man who has been punching a bear for ten minutes and is then genuinely surprised when the bear mauls him.
God's answer is a two-part indictment. First, He points to the legacy of sin they have inherited: "'It is because your fathers have forsaken Me,' declares Yahweh, 'and have walked after other gods...'" (v. 11). There is such a thing as corporate and generational sin. They are part of a long, sad story of covenant-breaking. The nation has a spiritual momentum, and it has been heading in the wrong direction for a very long time.
But they are not simply victims of their heritage. They are enthusiastic participants. God's second charge is even more damning: "'You too have done evil, even more than your fathers; for behold, you are each one walking according to the stubbornness of his own evil heart, without listening to Me'" (v. 12). This is the doctrine of total depravity in action. The problem is not external; it is internal. It is the "stubbornness of his own evil heart." They are not just making bad choices; they have bad choosers. Their hearts are bent, twisted, and inclined away from God. They refuse to listen because their hearts are fundamentally rebellious. They are not just worse than their fathers; they are compounding the interest on their fathers' sin.
"So I will hurl you out of this land into the land which you have not known... and there you will serve other gods day and night, for I will grant you no favor." (Jeremiah 16:13)
The judgment fits the crime with a terrible, poetic justice. They wanted to forsake Yahweh for other gods. So God will hurl them into a land filled with other gods. They wanted to serve idols. Fine, God says, you can serve them day and night, without interruption. You will have your fill of the idolatry you craved. But in that place, God says, "I will grant you no favor." The common grace that has restrained the full consequences of their sin will be lifted. This is one of the most frightening verses in all of Scripture. It is a picture of God giving a people over to what they want, and in so doing, giving them hell.
Conclusion: The Withdrawn Favor and the Offered Grace
The message of Jeremiah 16 is a stark reminder that God's favor is not to be taken for granted. His peace, His lovingkindness, and His compassion are gifts of grace. And when they are spurned long enough, they can be withdrawn. A nation can sin its way out from under the umbrella of God's blessing and find itself standing in the full force of the storm of His wrath.
We see in Jeremiah's life a faint echo of a greater Prophet to come. Jesus Christ was the ultimate man of sorrows. He was a man who, for a time, forsook the joys of marriage and family. He was a man who, on the cross, was forsaken by the Father. He was cut off from the land of the living. He experienced the ultimate withdrawal of God's favor so that we, who deserved it, would not have to. He drank the cup of God's wrath to the dregs so that a cup of comforting could be given to us.
The people of Judah asked, "What is our iniquity?" They were blind to their sin. The gospel comes to us and answers that question before we even ask it. Our iniquity is the stubbornness of our own evil hearts. We, like them, have forsaken God and gone after idols, the chief of which is the idol of self. We have all refused to listen.
But the story does not end in verse 13. Just a few verses later, Jeremiah prophesies a new exodus, a great restoration. The same God who hurls out in judgment is a God who gathers in mercy. The withdrawal of favor is meant to lead to repentance. The silence is meant to make us long for His voice. The desolation is meant to make us cry out for the only One who can restore. God's purpose in judgment is always ultimately redemptive for His people. He tears down in order to build up. He wounds in order to heal. He withdraws His common graces so that we might flee to the cross and find His saving grace, which He will never, ever withdraw from those who are in Christ Jesus our Lord.