Lessons From Jeremiah – Part 7 – Rejection Of God Leads To Rejection By God Series

LESSONS FROM JEREMIAH – PART 7 – REJECTION OF GOD LEADS TO REJECTION BY GOD

PART 7 - Jeremiah 2:20-28

CHAPTER 2

[A]. JUDAH - GUILTY AND MUTANT, BUT IN SELF-DENIAL

{{Jeremiah 2:20-23 Long ago I broke your yoke and tore off your bonds, but you said, ‘I WILL NOT SERVE,’ for on every high hill and UNDER EVERY GREEN TREE YOU HAVE LAIN DOWN AS A HARLOT, yet I planted you a choice vine, a completely faithful seed. How then have you turned yourself before Me into the degenerate shoots of a foreign vine? Although you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, THE STAIN OF YOUR INIQUITY IS BEFORE ME,” declares the Lord GOD. How can you say, I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Baals? Look at your way in the valley. Know what you have done. YOU ARE A SWIFT YOUNG CAMEL ENTANGLING HER WAYS,”}}

In every aspect of its existence, Israel justified its sinful self, and its behaviour was set against her Lord. It was a nation given to arguing constantly with God. In verse 20 they opposed God – “I will not serve.” They reasoned they would not serve their God, but they willingly served the Baals. They would not serve God in His appointed way, yet on every higher hill and under every shady tree their shrines were there to serve Baal, and they’d lie down happily in the places of idolatry committing sins of spiritual adultery against Jehovah.

God originally broke the bonds of slavery and oppression from them in Egypt, then freed them altogether from the yoke of oppression, but it was a wilful, destructive choice the nation later made, for they broke the bonds of love and godliness off them. God’s bonds are not restrictive bonds, but gentle, loving bonds of guidance and care. Actually their decision was not to be guided by God, so they could have their freedom, but that freedom was bondage to a cruel and dead religion of man’s invention. People say they do not want to be under God’s control but want to be free. However the fact is, that what they believe is human freedom, is bondage to Satan’s world system.

Verse 23 reveals how perverse they had become. Their excuse was a full-faced denial of what they were, yet I think they believed it. Their excuse was a denial. To serve Baal and to depart from the Lord, and yet to believe you have not done that, is the worst delusion. God had planted them as a pure vine, free from disease and mutant behaviour and had given them the blueprint for productive growth. They were a choice vine developed from a faithful seed (from faithful Abraham); yet this vine developed the mutant shoots of a foreign vine from a foreign vineyard. It came from the Vineyard of the Old Nature, the devil’s own vineyard, and had infected God’s choice vine. The people enjoyed it though, and made no effort to prune off the mutant shoots. They loved the idolatrous feasts and the Baal sacrifices and the cult prostitutes. Israel lived idolatry to the full, but it still claimed not to be serving Baal. They claimed to be clean in their own rituals and washings, and before God, they believed the spiritual lye and soap made them clean, but they were altogether stained by iniquity. There was no cleanness in them. Their lye and soap was of the counterfeit kind.

How disappointing it is for a farmer or an orchardist to have obtained a very special and rare tree, and to have ensured the best possible rootstock, and to have safeguarded the orchard’s growing conditions, but when the tree matured, it was found to be some wild, unusable, degenerate tree. God found that with Israel, but the root was good. Into that tree and branches He grafted the Gentiles, and later on, when the Gentile grafts have been removed by the Rapture, He will graft back into that tree the most wonderful grafts that will produce an excellent, luxurious outcome for the root of Abraham. Isaiah writes of a similar thought in his prophecy that brings out the tender care of Jehovah for His people, pictured as grape vines in Jehovah’s vineyard in chapter 5:1-7, when all expectation for that vineyard was to produce the best grapes but it only yielded worthless ones. Where Isaiah and Jeremiah leave off, Paul takes up again in Romans chapters 10 and 11.

[B]. JUDAH, THE WILD DONKEY ON HEAT

{{Jeremiah 2:24 “a wild donkey accustomed to the wilderness that sniffs the wind in her passion. In the time of her heat who can turn her away? All who seek her will not become weary. In her month they will find her.”}}

Then God likens the nation to a swift young camel in verse 23 earlier on that gets itself all caught up in the tethering line because it charges around without any rational thought in its own self will. It has become entangled in all sorts of knots and restrictions and idolatrous entrapments, yet the nation would claim it enjoyed freedom.