READ 3:12-18
The appeal to come back or to return to the Lord, comes three times in these verses, 12, 14, and 22 and Jeremiah does so with a bit of a linguistic twist. Literally he says, “Turn back, turn away Israel.”
Now, before we get to the condition and the promise of God’s calling them home, I want us to consider something. We know that they do not listen…we know, as Jeremiah knew, because the Lord told him so at the beginning, they are not going to come back…they are not going to repent…they are going into exile.
So, does the Lord send them away and then forget about them? No. Some of you remember our study in the prophet Zechariah. Zechariah was a book to the exiles who had come home, back to Jerusalem AFTER the 70 years. And what do you suppose God’s message was, 70 years later? The first 6 chapters of Zechariah consist of 8 visions to the prophet that all say, in different ways, that there is hope, that the Lord is for them, that He still loves them…He continues to mercifully call them to return to Him.
But do you remember what the first 6 verses of Zechariah’s prophecy are about? There is a condition to this hope, if there is to be hope, then there must be something that comes first. He says to them: “Return to the Lord”, return to relationship, return to knowing and walking with the Lord in faithfulness. Yahweh alone among “the gods” is a God who desires communion with those He has made and redeemed. He does not say “return to the ceremonies”, or “return to the sacrifices”, but He is clear: no more returning in pretense.
He says, “return to Me.” And Zechariah, speaking for the Lord, points at this generation in Jeremiah, the context of our study, 70 plus years before. And he says that Jeremiah’s generation did not heed the prophets and the Lord says, “But they did not hear or pay attention to Me, declares the Lord.” Listening to God’s Word through God’s servants is listening to God!
The significance of this seems to be that Zechariah is aligning himself with the message of Jeremiah whose warnings did not find the people obedient when he gave them, but now this community, having been in exile for 70 years, would recognize as having already come to pass.
If Jeremiah’s warnings from the “Lord of Hosts” have in fact been proven, then heeding the message of Zechariah, which is also from the “Lord of Hosts”, would be a necessity if the blessing of Yahweh was to return to His people.
The promise of the Lord’s presence with His people is conditioned upon a true and abiding repentance of the post-exilic community. In other words, if the people are to find the Lord’s covenant blessings returning to them, their repentance must be full and deepening. The Lord is not merely asking His people to “stop sinning”, but is calling them to a right and living relationship with Himself.
Back to Jeremiah. In verse 12 the Lord sets forward a simple truth: In 3:5 a question was asked, “Will you be angry forever?” And the Lord’s unambiguous answer is, No. God’s unchanging character is to be faithful, and He is a God who delights in mercy. Christopher Wright, in his commentary makes this observation:
“While we must affirm the Bible’s insistence on the reality of both love and the anger of God we should not regard them as equivalent. Love is an attribute of God, part of his eternal being and character. Anger is the response of God to evil and to human sin. Repentance and rejection of that evil and sin leads to the ending of anger. God will be love eternally. God will not be angry forever. God Himself says so.”
God’s love is not motivated by Himself. God loves us, because He loves us. However, it is conditioned on one thing that Israel, that we must do. Look again at verse 13. Only acknowledge your guilt. And we are back to the beginning. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But do you remember what the people were saying? And don’t put this far off away from you as though you are just reading a history book, put yourself within the community of God’s people, for that is where you are and who you are.
In chapter 2 the people denied the allegations the Lord was making against them. Look back at 2:23, 25. They actually said that they were not sinning! They were not worshipping the Baals, when that is exactly what they were doing! I am telling you, sin will make you stupid, it will literally make you blind, that you cannot see what is right in front of you!
Do you remember when the prophet Samuel confronts Saul for being disobedient to the Lord? The Lord had told Saul to kill all the people of the enemy and all their livestock, everything was to be devoted to the Lord, everything, every creature was to be killed. And Saul did not kill everything. He left king Agag alive and he kept all the good sheep alive. And yet he tells Samuel, Look Samuel I have obeyed everything the Lord says. And the text says that Samuel said, “Then what is this bleating of the sheep in my ears?” So, it went like this; Samuel, baaahhh, I obeyed, baaahhh, all that the Lord, baaahah told me, baaahhh to do. Are you kidding me? But isn’t that just like us?
I am sure you feel the tension of the text. There is the powerful yearning of the merciful husband, alongside the recognition of the sheer evil and assault upon grace that is evident among the people. I am not sure how to hold these things in tension but what we have is the heart of God being torn by the sin of his people along with His resolve that he will not be mocked, trivialized or used. (Wright, 83)
READ 3:19-20
In these two verses we find both longing and lament. The picture that is painted is one that all of us can relate to. The love between a parent and a child, between a husband and a wife speak to the deepest feeling and commitment that we as human beings experience in this life. But those relationships also have limitless capacity for causing pain and for the deepest form of betrayal. Some of you know that pain, humanly speaking, you know how real it is and how excruciating it can be. God is saying, Yea, and I know it too. That is what I feel when you walk away from Me. When you turn away to find your life somewhere else.
READ 3:21-25
In short the Lord is making it clear what is happening to them. He tells them false gods will deceive you, verse 23. He tells them that there is a cost to serving that which is false, a cost you don’t want to pay! And then he tells them, all that awaits you, if you do this, and walk away and refuse to repent, all that waits for you is shame, verse 25. Again, this is not a history lesson, it is a lesson in existential reality! This is the experience of any and all who have thought to do things their own way. WE know this, don’t we! Sin deceives us, it lies and blinds us, promising but never delivering. And we find out, soon enough, that it is costly, our dalliances away from the Lord leave us with nothing…nothing but to lie down in our shame.
All of this is happening to the people of God and still, still mercy is extended.
READ 4:1-4
The Lord starts in again. Return and if you return, please make sure you are returning to me…to relationship with me, which means a rejection of all other hopes, gods and loves. There is some confusion in the Hebrew text with the arrangement of the wording, so let me give you an expanded reading of what is being said, this too, from Christopher Wright.
IF you return, Israel, that is, if to me you return, by which I mean, if you put your abominations away from my sight and do not wander off, and if you swear, as the Lord lives, in truth, in justice and in righteousness, THEN nations will call themselves blessed in him and in him they will render praise.
So, repentance, true repentance is spiritual and ethical. Or in other words, repentance is a change of behavior. Do not think to have repented but to continue on, that is not repentance, that is pretense. That is what it means when we read that repentance bears fruit. Someone says, I repent, and there is the question if it is real…just wait…watch…repentance changes behavior, repentance changes us.
And then, the Lord says there will be new beginnings. I think an entire sermon could be done on verses 3 and 4. Repentance will break up the hard ground of your heart. It will take fallow ground, unable and unwilling to receive seed and it will dig it up, and make it fertile so that it will receive the grace and mercy of the Lord and produce fruit. Brother…sister…I mean no offense, and I assure you I ask you nothing that I do not ask myself…do you have a hard heart? Do you need the Holy Spirit to come and till the ground of your heart? If so, where?
I am not going to stand here and lie to you and tell you that such a digging is pleasant, or painless. It can be excruciating. You may remember how CS Lewis depicts this in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Eustace, a rotten boy, as Lewis put it, finds himself in possession of a large treasure. He imagines his life and comforts that he would now enjoy as he falls asleep.
When he wakes, he is no longer a boy, but a dragon, the outward manifestation of his inner greed and selfishness. The gold bracelet that he had put on his boy arm was now constricting his dragon leg and the pain was piercing. He was cut off from humanity and he began to weep big dragon tears. He realizes that if he can get into the well at the center of the garden that Aslan has taken him to, his pain will be soothed. But Aslan says he will have to be undressed first. So, Eustace begins tearing at his dragon skin and peels off one layer only to discover another layer of scales underneath. After three layers he realizes it is useless, he can’t get it off. “You will have to let me undress you”, says the Lion.
Lewis writes: The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I have ever felt…Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off, after I thought I had done it myself, only it hadn’t hurt, and then he threw me into the water.
Tim Keller comments: The way to deal with guilt is not to avoid it, but to resolve it. Eustace not only realized he couldn’t get his own skin off, but that only God can come and take your skin off, and to do this you have let him pierce deep. You must take all the guilt on yourself and stop blame shifting and take responsibility for what you have done wrong. No excuses. Full in the face.
The Lord is making it clear that repentance involves a new, radical beginning with the Lord, a fresh surrender of heart, mind and will, of worship and life. This is the message for our day…with this kind of grace realized there is nothing that cannot be accomplished for Christ, and without it, there is no reason to have any hope whatsoever.
Walter Brueggemann, one of the leading OT scholars in the world today makes the observation that Judah has no right to return and that the Lord is under no obligation to take her back. The themes of guilt and betrayal are stated with overriding power and clarity. So how, where, can this be solved? This will only be resolved when God’s heart is torn at Calvary. Jesus will suffer all the indignities, humiliations, guilt and pain due to man for sin. The tension of God’s father love and hatred of sin comes to calamitous climax…when God the Son suffers humiliation, pain, and torture…for you. This is the point…of everything.
Prayer: Father, grant me the wisdom and discernment to know if my repentance is that of pretense or if it is deep and sincere. Do not allow me to go on fooling only myself. Deepen my repentance and may I produce fruit worthy of repentance and worthy of the great work of grace that You alone work in the hearts of sinners, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Psalm 51
