Jeremiah 3c: When the Children Turn Away.

It may seem odd that God is pleading with Judah rather than commanding them. However, our God is a God of love, and his commands, his judgments, and even his punishments serve that purpose. In our study, God is still talking with Jeremiah the prophet, and Jeremiah is still preaching God’s word while Baruch, the scribe, is recording it all on scrolls. Jeremiah’s ministry is to a public that is deluded about where their political and religious leaders are leading them. They do not want to be fact-checked and told they have chosen poorly. 

Jeremiah 3: 14-18.  Return, O faithless (back-turning) children, says the LORD, for I am your husband; I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion. I will give you shepherds after my own heart who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. And when you have multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, says the LORD, they shall no longer say, “The ark of the covenant of the LORD.” It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed, nor shall another one be made. At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the LORD, and all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the LORD in Jerusalem, and they shall no longer stubbornly follow their own evil will. In those days the house of Judah shall join the house of Israel, and together they shall come from the land of the north to the land that I gave your ancestors for a heritage.

 In what days? What is God talking about? God is talking about the days after the destruction of Jerusalem and the collapse of the nation of Judah. It will be a time when a significant portion of the population has been killed in a foolhardy attempt to defend the nation when it was already too late. Jeremiah told them not to trust in their own strength, but instead to trust in God. They did not listen, as usual. The people were blind and deaf. Are they still that way in Exile?  

 God is offering, despite all the disobedience, to bring back the few who are left and build them up again. It could be a time when they directly depend on God, because the Ark and the temple in which it was housed are gone. 

 Surprisingly, God says that the time is coming when what is lost will not matter. A time is coming when politics and the nation itself will not be important, a time when God will assert again his long term mission plan for the people of Israel and Judah without the nations of Israel and Judah. They will be ruled by God and not by their national interests, and that will open the city of Jerusalem to worship by all the nations who have come to see the reality of YHWH.  

 Did this happen after the Exile was over? The seeds were there. The nations all saw that this little group of people, the Jews (from Ju-dah) were repatriated to Jerusalem and miraculously grew to be a unified force under God again.

 Did this happen in the long run? No. The people were still divided and divisive. Read Ezra and Nehemiah. They tried to follow God by walling out other people rather than bringing them in. They achieved a brief period of independence between Alexander’s Greek rule and the Roman conquest under Pompey.

 When Jesus came, his message was that they had taken the wrong track, preferring nationalism and a holier-than-thou exclusivism rather than carrying out the mission that God had given their ancestor Abraham. That mission was to become a blessed people who would be a blessing to the nations. That is what God had hoped for.  

Jeremiah 3:19-21. 

I thought how I would set you among my children and give you a pleasant land,   

the most beautiful heritage of all the nations.

And I thought you would call to me, ‘My Father’,   

and would not turn from following me.

Instead, as a faithless wife leaves her husband,   

so you have been faithless to me, O house of Israel,           

says the LORD.

A voice on the bare heights is heard,   

the plaintive weeping of Israel’s children,

because they have perverted their way;   

they have forgotten the LORD their God.

 First, God reveals his intentions, that he wanted to choose a people with whom he could develop a long-term covenant relationship. The goal was to make them a model for others and a vessel to demonstrate God’s loving kindness. This would be a lasting relationship, one in which God’s people would not turn away. 

 Look at the metaphors that God uses. Our closest relationships are with our spouse and our children, and it is these as metaphors that God uses to convey how disappointed he is. God intended to be a father to his children, to look after them, and to give them his choicest gifts. 

 However, like a faithless wife (metaphor switch), the chosen people turned away. In fact, the term used here, twice, is more like ‘treacherous’ than ‘unfaithful’. Then it would read: ”Instead, as a treacherous wife departs from her husband, so you have dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel.” That is what both the King James and New American Standard Bible say. God set Israel up for a blessed life in the Promised Land, but Israel was unfaithful.

 Now, the chickens have come home to roost (or the results are in on the performance of these new gods). On the same hill tops where Israel worshiped Asherah and Ba’al, one can now hear weeping and wailing because the people have learned the truth; these are no gods.

Jeremiah 3: 23-25.  

Return, O faithless (turning-away) children,   

I will heal your faithlessness (turnings).

“Here we come to you,   

for you are the LORD our God.

Truly the hills are a delusion,   

a tumult on the mountains.

Truly in the LORD our God   

is the salvation of Israel.

But from our youth the shameful thing has devoured all for which our ancestors had labored, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us, for we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our ancestors, from our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.”

 God once again repeats his passionate plea to his children: “Return to me.” This time, instead of salvation, God offers a similar concept that points more toward the end of the process of salvation: ‘I will heal your wanderlust’. Remember the old hymn (third verse).

  “O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be! Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above”

(“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, 1758, 1813),  

 After vowing that “Here we come to you…,” the prophet switches from poetry to prose. The people think again about their condition; are they able to return? The people confess how worthless their imaginary gods have been. They admit to having been deluded by their idols and to being delusional in their ideology. 

 So, the people reconsider whether or not they are really able to return and behave. Actually, they cannot, not without God empowering them. What is ‘the shameful thing’? It is Ba’al who deceived them and then marked them with a scarlet letter, a ‘T’ for 'turners' (backsliders). 

 How can they come back considering all that they have lost? God might forgive, but how can God heal and restore them to good spiritual and physical health? The shame gets heavier with every step. What an embarrassment they are to their ancestors!

 Perhaps you carry shame and can’t shake it. What God says to the Israelites is a sign of God’s ability both to save and to heal anyone. We will see how that works that next week.