Jeremiah 3
The third chapter of Jeremiah is ultimately about God’s anguish regarding his bride, the people of Israel, and their incessant tendencies towards idolatry. Starting in verse 1 we read,
1c You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me? Declares the LORD. 2a Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been ravished?
It is also about God’s desire for his bride to return. That through his bitter anguish, he still loves his people.
12b Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD; I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the LORD your God…
And then in 19 God starts on how things would or should have been.
19b And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me.
But this simply is not how it worked out. In verse 24 Jeremiah laments to his fellow Israelites:
24 But from our youth the shameful thing has devoured all for which our fathers labored; their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. 25Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us. For we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.
Immediately, the question that enters into my mind is: what has Israel done that they need to return to God? The text uses imagery of adultery. But this is obviously a figurative adultery. The adultery in this text is clearly idolatry. The writer uses imagery of a cheating wife in order to bring to the mind of the reader the severity of the offense. Just as earthly marriage between a man and a woman is a covenant where each participant enters into a relationship of trust fidelity and dependence, Israel had entered into a similar relationship with Yahweh. The covenant is tread upon literally by everyone from Abraham on. But this is the thing, God remembers his covenant with men who are absolute failures. The humanity of the Bible is this, Abraham pimped out his wife to save his neck, Moses killed a man with his bare hands, David had an affair with another mans wife and then had the husband executed, all 12 disciples were failures three of the closest fell asleep while Christ was at the height of his distress in the garden, one, Peter the apparent rock that the church was to built on was referred to by Jesus as Satan. Paul went out and found Christians in order to kill them. These are the people that the Bible chooses to emphasize. If God’s grace is great enough to cover their sins, I feel reassurance. Over and over, again and again, Israel fails to keep Her covenant. Just as difficult and painful and destructive as infidelity is in a relationship between a husband and wife, God is relating, or trying to communicate with Jeremiah the pain and anguish He feels with Israel’s betrayal. Israel was meant to be different, they entered into a relationship with Yahweh. This relationship is marked by a number of unique cultural and religious attributes. Namely, where as other cultures would have an image of their deity in the temple, there was no image for Yahweh. As Eric had mentioned last week, there was not even to be a king or a political representation for Israel. As a sign of this covenant, God was to give to the Israelites the land of Canaan, and the men of Israel were to be circumcised. However, somewhere along the way, Israel decided that their relationship with Yahweh was not as compelling or as beneficial as they had once thought. At least, not beneficial in the sense that they were expecting. As an alternative to this covenant with Yahweh, Israel decided that they would give up dependence on God for political establishment. As the concentration of the nation grew more dependent on their king and his political treaties, their concentration on worshipping Yahweh was inevitably pushed further and further on the back burner to make way for new religious icons. This trend goes on for many generations and dynasties of kings from Solomon to Manasseh, various kings would take wives from surrounding nations as a sign of treaty with the other country. With the new relationship, came new religious practices. The new monarch would instill religious customs in honour of Baal and Ashera, the ancient deities of fertility. Every once and a while there would come a king who would forsake the trend and enforce nation wide religious reform. However, the good king would die and the succeeding generations of kings would eventually succumb to yet again forsake Yahweh. This is the cycle of Israel. This is the story in which we find Jeremiah. Jeremiah lived through 7 kings of the seven kings only one, only Josiah did what was right in the sight of the LORD. But strangely, with every failure that is brought about with Israel’s inability to keep the law, the story does not end. It goes on, and on and on, it’s cyclical.
I do not think that it would be missing the mark to suggest that there are similar cycles in our lives, certainly in mine. Betrayal, sin, repentance, this is the cycle of the life of a Christian. In the fall of 2009, I had gotten involved with a girl I had intended to help. She had just come out of a damaging relationship and I was attempting to counsel her. But the good I had intended to do turned into one of my life’s biggest regrets. I cannot express in words the guilt and anguish I felt and the pain I caused her. A month after the incident, I attended the church where one of my professors and dear friends was giving a sermon. It was an Anglican church and if you have never been to an Anglican church before, there is a part in the service where the church corporately confesses their sin. When I confessed with the rest of the congregation my sin, as much pain and anguish my sin had inflicted, I felt just as much love and peace and acceptance. It was as if I had never heard of God’s forgiveness. Although it was relatively awkward, crying in front of a bunch of people I didn’t know, but I didn’t care. I finally understood the gospel. And I was free.
One of the greatest theologians that ever lived was a man named Martin Luther. He was the leader of the reformation, although now he is greatly misunderstood. At a time in history when the catholic church was doing some really stupid things, Luther sought for moral and theological reform within the catholic church and instead found himself an outcast. Playing into his theological writings is Luther’s overwhelming sensitivity to guilt. He would spend hours in the confessional booth confessing to his priest. He would spend nights alone lamenting his sinful nature. He was a man who was constantly plagued by his sin and quite honestly a man I can relate to. Luther says that the purpose of the law, the purpose of the first five books of the Bible, is to show us that we cannot fulfill it. I simply cannot agree more with him. We simply cannot achieve right standing in the eyes of God, not alone. I think perhaps one of the most terrifying and yet reassuring things about this statement is that Luther is not simply referring to the times when we fail at keeping the law, but that even in those select moments when we somehow manage to do well, it is simply not enough. We cannot do it. We need a savior, we need someone who can do what we cannot do, to live a life we should have lived, who can die a death we should have died. We need Christ.
In Colossians 1 starting in verse 3 we read:
3We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints…
Here, Paul is attributing their faith to God, the love they have for one another is from God. It is only there because God has given it to them. In many parts of the evangelical community there is a strange strand of Pelagianism. Pelagius was one of Augustine’s opponents in the 4th & 5th centuries, he believed that human nature had not been tainted by Adam’s original sin and that any one individual had the ability to be good without divine assistance. Augustine rightly pointed out that if this were the case, then Christ’s death and resurrection were meaningless. But here, Paul is pointing out to the Colossians that he thanks God for their love. He goes on to say in verse 9:
9And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. 11May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, 12giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
In Jeremiah 3:12 God’s desire is for us to return to him.
12b Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD; I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the LORD your God…
Why is October 31st important? Wrong, anyone else? It’s reformations day. What happened October 31st 1517? Luther nailed to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg the 95 theses. For those of you who have absolutely no church or theological background, Luther’s 95 Theses were Luther’s original argument against what the catholic church was doing at the time and is essentially one of the watershed moments which resulted in the reformation. The first thesis reads: The life of a believer should be a life of repentance. Repentance is a big deal to Luther, not because he believes in hollow rituals in order to check off our list of things we need to do as Christians, but because he recognized that the sin in his life needed to be forgiven. We are not good, we are sinners. It does not matter what you do for yourself, without God there is no forgiveness of sins.
Today we are going to recite an Anglican prayer of confession, this is call and response, so you all can read the bold, I will read the rest: Almighty and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from your ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against your holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders. Spare us, O God, who confess our faults. Restore us who are penitent; According to your promises declared to your church in Christ Jesus. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to the glory of your holy Name. Amen
Your benediction is this:
Go, in God’s peace, knowing your sins are forgiven. Go out into the world doing His work and spreading His good word: Christ came and died for our sins, forgiveness is found at the cross. Acts 2:39 “For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.
