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.
Then Jeremiah likens Judah to a wild female donkey on heat that sniffs around for any male that will mate with her. She found Baal and Molech and Astarte and many other untamed wilderness donkeys, all loose in Satan’s paddock. The expression is used, “All who seek her will not become weary.” Make no mistake about it – the devil’s agencies never tire or rest but work day and night to bring about bondage in God’s people. It is such a subtle work as well, for the Galatian Christians fell into bondage, seeking to add to God’s work, and became entangled, for they did not stand fast in the freedom of grace won by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Galatians became as camels and donkeys.
Today the world generally has thrown off the chains of bondage of God love and tender care and claim to be free from superstitious religion, but in fact they open their minds to all sorts of deceptive lying wonders. That is why the New Age movement is so popular as is role playing in occult gaming applications. Once you empty your mind of the spiritual realities of God then Satan will fill it with all sorts of demonic delusions.
[C]. REMEDY REJECTED, IS DEPARTURE ACCEPTED
{{Jeremiah 2:25 Keep your feet from being unshod and your throat from thirst, but you said, ‘It is hopeless. NO, FOR I HAVE LOVED STRANGERS, AND AFTER THEM I WILL WALK.’}}
God said that Judah needed to keep its feet shod (needed to be shoed) and its throat well lubricated. What did God mean by this? When you have shoes then you can walk in the rough places and your feet have protection from objects that would puncture, cut and maim. God wanted the people to walk in the way after Him; to walk in faith throughout the land as Abraham did to the glory of God. By having shoes, or sandals more likely for Jeremiah’s time, then you could walk over difficulties and obstructions, but not to have prepared feet, means the difficulty and obstruction would master you.
Again the nation refused, and made some excuse that it was too onerous to put footwear on, and then refused with a “NO”. They did not see the point. “It is hopeless,” they said, as they made their excuse. They could see no sense in it. Many people see no sense in walking after God, or even wanting to know Him, even refusing to believe He exists, in which case, they must believe everything just suddenly happened and appeared from nothing, with no agency to make it happen. That is the blindest of faith and worse than fairy tales, a bit like spontaneous combustion (which has a logical explanation), but spontaneous creation from out of nothing, with no agency or mastermind? So the whole universe with billions of galaxies, and each galaxy with trillions of stars, came from a big bang in a mass no larger than a grain of sand? Yeah! I’d rather believe in The Three Pigs.
Then God said they were to have throats that were not thirsty. Thirst affects speech and judgement and weariness. As God’s people, they were to have the right speech, to praise Him and to pray. They were to have correct judgement to decide correctly for God, not a mind jaded through lack of water. When one becomes weary in the way, then one just turns aside to rest and no longer follow. Once we stop following God, then we are easy targets for the devil to do his work. If our feet are unshod as well, then we are captive to all the enemy’s devious work. So it was with Judah because they had discarded their shoes and stopped drinking at the fountain of living water. In spite of God’s instruction and pleading and care, they claimed it was hopeless serving God. They had reasoned that out with logical minds, with their logic. The trouble was that a man out of step with God does not have a logical mind, and is illogically with spiritual matters. Yet their excuse was that they were being logical, and loving strangers and walking after them was all logical and natural. That is a sad excuse for adopting the worship of the devil through Baal.
[D]. THE WORTHLESSNESS OF IDOLS MATCHES HYPOCRISY
{{Jeremiah 2:26-28 “As the thief is shamed when he is discovered, so the house of Israel is shamed - they, their kings, their princes, and their priests, and their prophets, Jeremiah 2:27 who say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth,’ for they have turned their back to Me, and not their face, but in the time of their trouble they will say, ‘Arise and save us.’ Jeremiah 2:28 Where are your gods which you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you in the time of your trouble, for according to the number of your cities, are your gods, O Judah.”}}
After these excuses Jeremiah is led to expose the nation for what it is. Verse 26 opens with a declaration of shame with a thief being used as an example. There is no shame to the thief unless he is caught, otherwise he continues in his pilfering ways, content in his activities. The same was true for Israel and now Judah. The nation is oblivious of its wicked position, and in fact, actually makes excuses to defend that position. As Israel was shamed, so too shall Judah, once their activities are revealed, and that will happen when they are turned on their head and exposed for what they have become.
Babylon will drag the nation to the revelation of its condition, and then they will be naked in all their sin before the Lord, not even having the crumbly fig leaves of man’s invention to cover them. They will be undone, for they have sinned grievously against the Lord, and the sin will be revealed in all its foulness. Only then will Judah be shamed, but shame just leads to embarrassment, not necessarily to repentance. Most of them are carted away into Babylon, but even there they don’t repent except for some. When Nathan confronted David, no doubt he was greatly shamed, but that led to his restoration, only because conviction arose from the shame. Shame goes hand in hand with conviction for God’s children, but Judah would be set aside by the Lord when God’s servant Nebuchadnezzar arrived.
In verse 26, the leadership, both civil and religious is singled out for mention. These people will be more shamed than the inhabitants who often suffered under the evil acts of those in charge, such as judges who walked unjustly all over the poor as the prophet Amos wrote of many times. Those who had the greater responsibility and abused their positions, will have the greater shame and judgement. Verse 27 indicates that the classes mentioned in verse 26 are the ones who resorted the worst to idolatry, even defying the calculated logic that a tree or a stone which they set up or carved, could create life. Although the nation as a whole adopted the worst idolatry, it is the leadership that led them into it, and it was that same leadership that could have led them out of it under the hand of God, but they defied God, made excuses, and actually loved the sacrifices and the prostitutes.
One may wonder how a rational human being can create something out of wood or stone and attribute to it, powers of deity and magnificence. It can only happen through delusion of the darkened mind and Satan is the deceiver. God says they deliberately turned their back to him, and their faces to the idols. When their captivity came, their faces were turned to Babylon and their backs were still to God. At that time we read they will call from their trouble to God to arise and save them. In their finality they cry to God for deliverance but their cries are not of repentance, only of remorse. The dark heart is unrepentant.
The degenerate slide into idolatry is covered by Paul in this passage – {{Romans 1:22-25 “Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, that their bodies might be dishonoured among them, for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen.}} That was the great delusion of the pagan world and Israel became part of that world to its shame.
Are modern men and women any different? They bow down to the New York Stock Exchange, and to the bank accounts, to careers, to popularity, to all means of electronic pleasures, to materialism. Yes, they bow down to everything in this world, but not to God. One day they will be brought to shame, be it when the wrath of God is exposed in this world, or at the great white throne.
The answer God will give Judah is the response of rejection. They set up multitude of gods and shrines which were to be found in every town and village. God uses their own language of “let them arise” that they used to Him (v 27). Now God tells them to seek salvation from the very creations of their hands. The point is, that through God’s prophets, time and time again, warnings were issued and messages delivered but the messages were scorned, the warnings were rejected and the prophets were persecuted and killed. The nation had comprehensively rejected God, so the Lord leaves them to their own gods to save them. The Lord God is one, but the gods of the people are thousands so they ought to have the power! After all, they were created to be gods!
