WFTD: “Breaking (shabar)”–Wholeness requires it.

EXPOSITION: Break (shamar) means to shatter sometimes to the point it cannot be put back together except by its Maker.

Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's vessel… Jeremiah 19:11

BACKSTORY:  God gives Jeremiah a show and tell: Go just outside the city gates and shatter a clay jar in front of the people. The location is important--Topheth:

They have also built places of worship in a place called Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom so that they can sacrifice their sons and daughters by fire. Jeremiah 7:35

This is to illustrate what He is going to do to His people for their atrocities of idolatry even to the point of sacrificing children. He is going to break them into unrecognizable pieces because the deeds of His people have made them unrecognizable as His people.

This place will be known as the Valley of Slaughter because of the ironic judgment to come—the slaughter of their children:

⁹"I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they will eat one another's flesh in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life will distress them. Jer. 19:9

When you care little about the welfare of children, then your own children will be the object of your judgment. God’s people were called to be light to the world in Genesis 12. They have now become people of unspeakable darkness.

Have you become so distant from the image of God’s people that He is willing to break you into unrecognizable pieces and bring a judgment of reciprocity that will hit closer to home than you ever imagined? He can and will do it. So where is your hope--in the hand of your Maker:

⁵Then the word of the LORD came to me saying, ⁶"Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter [does]?" declares the LORD. "Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. ⁷"At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or concerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy [it]; ⁸if that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it. Jeremiah 19:5-8

APPLICATION: Be available to be broken by God to be made whole again as only God, your Maker, can do. Repent. Care about other children as you do your own, as God cares about you as His own. It is the only way to being whole again.

YOUR NOTES HERE: Add your own exposition, illustration backstory and application. You are personally responsible for “rightly dividing the word of truth” for yourself according to II Timothy 2:16. Exercise makes you stronger. Personal engagement can’t be proxied. Enjoy the workout.