Year 9, Day 56: Jeremiah 3

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There are three neat dynamics in this chapter.  First, we experience a great theme throughout many of the prophets, both major and minor.  God compares faithlessness to marital infidelity.  Essentially, God is saying that when we turn away from Him and out our trust in false gods, it is like a person turning away from their spouse and finding greater pleasure in another person.  Just as the rightful spouse is supplanted by an illegitimate lover, so too is God supplanted by an illegitimate god.

As easy as this concept is to understand, it is quite hard to appreciate and live out.  Human beings are all the time supplanting God.  Our hearts go to many different kinds of things instead of God.  Even good things take the place of God because they become the focus.  We love to invent all kind of ways to bring joy, peace, power, love, and other similar feelings into our life.  We love to ignore that God is the true lasting source of all of these things.

Perhaps even worse, even when we know this reality we cannot stop ourselves.  God is more harsh in His judgment against Judah than against Israel.  Yes, Israel was the first to rebel.  They were also the first to go int exile!  Judah had the benefit of seeing what happened to Israel when they went into captivity under Assyria!  They even had the benefit of seeing God’s mighty hand of power when He turned the Assyrian army around at the very gates of Jerusalem.  Yet, they did not learn the lesson.  They, too, fell into falsehood.  They, too, pursued other gods and profaned the relationship that they have with God.

Thank the Lord that this second truth is not the last truth in this chapter.  The third truth is the greatest one.  God is a forgiving God.  He will hand out consequences, surely.  However, there is forgiveness.  There is peace.  There is restoration.  All we need to do is to realize what we have done and return to Him.  He will always accept us back.  There is no sin that repentance and forgiveness cannot erase so long as the repentance and forgiveness is legitimately expressed.  God will restore both Israel and Judah.  He can restore us, too.

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