13 “I will surely snatch them away,” declares the Lord;
“There will be no grapes on the vine
And no figs on the fig tree,
And the leaf will wither;
And what I have given them will pass away.”’”
14 Why are we sitting still?
Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the fortified cities
And let us perish there,
Because the Lord our God has doomed us
And given us poisoned water to drink,
For we have sinned against the Lord.
15 We waited for peace, but no good came;
For a time of healing, but behold, terror!
16 From Dan is heard the snorting of his horses;
At the sound of the neighing of his stallions
The whole land quakes;
For they come and devour the land and its fullness,
The city and its inhabitants.
17 “For behold, I am sending serpents against you,
Adders, for which there is no charm,
And they will bite you,” declares the Lord.18 [d]My sorrow is beyond healing,
My heart is faint within me!
19 Behold, listen! The cry of the daughter of my people from a distant land:
“Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not within her?”
“Why have they provoked Me with their graven images, with foreign [e]idols?”
20 “Harvest is past, summer is ended,
And we are not saved.”
21 For the brokenness of the daughter of my people I am broken;
I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me.
22 Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has not the [f]health of the daughter of my people [g]been restored?
As I was reading this again, v. 14 jumped out at me, “Why are we sitting still?” Now, this might be a little out of context, but it bears out in real life and echoes passages we see about laziness and sloth elsewhere in the Bible (Proverbs 6, 13, 19, etc.). So, why indeed were they sitting still? They had been told that they needed to repent, but instead, here they are just sitting.
Further, in v. 15, they were waiting for peace. Not working for it, repenting, changing their ways. Just waiting around, hoping peace would come, in spite of all of God’s warnings to the contrary. To be clear, they seem to have had plenty of false prophets promising them peace. They had likely been told that everything was fine, just go about your merry way, don’t worry about that crazy Jeremiah!
Yet I can’t get past those two verses. They needed to repent, and you can’t turn around very well when you’re sitting. Instead of repenting, they decided to run to the hills and fortresses. They knew at this point that God had “doomed” them, but somehow running into a fortress would be better than turning to God and meeting this head on.
I know, those are brave words for someone not facing the imminent conquest of a foreign invader. Either way, I’ve heard it said plenty of times that if you’re not moving forward, you’re going backwards. There is no such thing as sitting still when it comes to following God. Yes, we are to rest at times, but it is likely we don’t even do that as intentionally as God would have.
So, if we want to know God’s peace, we need to stop “sitting still” and waiting around for Him to drop something in our laps. We need to get up, turn to God, and run to Him. We ought not to put our trust in earthly things, but in heavenly ones, in a hope that is only found in God.
In the end, when God is telling you to rest, 100% do that. Any other time, we need to be actively pursuing Him. As we see in the book of Hebrews, “running the race with endurance”. That certainly doesn’t sound like sitting to me! I think that passage is a fitting reminder to us all, so I’ll include it here:
“Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 [a]fixing our eyes on Jesus, the [b]author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Let us follow Jesus’ example, taking up our cross, despising the shame, all for His joy which is set before us.