Read Jeremiah 19.
God instructed Jeremiah to call a meeting of Judah's national and spiritual leaders. They met in the Valley of Hinnom or Topheth. It was the city dump and it provided the perfect stage for the message God wanted the leaders to hear.
Topheth means fireplace or oven. It was here that a cult of the Canaanites practiced the worst kind of demonic worship. They literally burned their children in sacrifice to a made-up god. Some of the people in Judah had joined in as well (vv.5-6).
How could a parent do such a thing to their innocent children? How could these leaders look the other way and allow this abomination in their land? The LORD declared to Jeremiah in 16:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?"
Once a person rejects God and His word, then they have opened the door to every and any kind of sin.
Jeremiah was further told to take along a pottery jar as a visual aid. Dashing the jar to pieces illustrated the message. God would break the nation; their plans, hopes and dreams. The spiritual condition of Judah had reach a point where it could not be repaired.
How a person responds to what God has said determines their future here and where they will spend eternity. Disaster or deliverance is at stake. The God of heaven desires to look upon us with loving acceptance. What then does He require?
"But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word." (Isaiah 66:2b)
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