LESSONS FROM JEREMIAH – PART 12 – THE TREACHEROUS NATION WILL REPENT AND BE GLORIOUSLY RESTORED
PART 12 - Jeremiah 3:19-25
CHAPTER 3
Today we continue with the remainder of Chapter 3 and look at different aspects in this whole story of Judah’s pitiful state in her rejection of God and her adoption of all the foreign gods. God created the trees and the stones but these Jews worshipped idols of wood and stone as their creator.
[A]. GOD’S GREAT DESIRE WAS SLAPPED DOWN BY JUDAH’S TREACHERY
{{Jeremiah 3:19-20 Then I said, ‘How I would set you among My sons, and give you A PLEASANT LAND, the MOST BEAUTIFUL INHERITANCE OF THE NATIONS,’ and I said, ‘You shall call Me, My Father, and not turn away from following Me.’ Surely, as a woman TREACHEROUSLY DEPARTS from her lover, so you have dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel,” declares the LORD.”}}
We now come to one of those prophetic jumps – verse 18 and 19 - taking us from the setting in the Millennium right back to Jeremiah’s own time as God reveals His great desire. These frequent jumps in the writings of the prophets can cover two and a half thousand years, and in Joel, the oldest of the prophets, it covers 2 700 years. Often there is no warning, just the next phrase or the next verse. This is where it is essential to have knowledge of the prophetic outline beginning at the Rapture right through to the new heavens and new earth of Revelation 20. When you know the order of events then you can slot in these time jumps in the prophets fairly well.
God will never force His desire for His chosen people, onto His people, and He wants it to be accepted joyfully and willingly, as a bountiful gift for a people He loves. All His blessings for Israel and for us as the Church, are wonderful, gifts from the heavenly Father. {{James 1:17 “Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow.”}}
Verse 19 begins with, “HOW I WOULD set you among the nations . . .” and that is the heart of God yearning over His sinful, idolatrous people in Judah. It is a desire we can not comprehend for the depth of God is infinite. I think it is the same deep desire that is behind these words in John 3:16 “For God SO LOVED the world . . .” The Holy Spirit is God in the Trinity, and think about these words and try to understand them – {{Romans 8:26-27 “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness for we do not know how to pray as we should, but THE SPIRIT HIMSELF INTERCEDES FOR US WITH GROANINGS TOO DEEP FOR WORDS, and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”}}
However the LORD will force His desire on His enemies, certain unquestioned judgement because of their sin. God shares His desire for the nation in verse 19, revealing inheritance and relationship. He wanted to set Jacob’s people as the chief nation among all the others with their land being pleasant and beautiful. All Israel's blessings are in the land, and the land was to overflow with fullness and productivity as God put His mark upon it.
However there is a principle at work that can not change. God will not add blessings to sin. For example we can not cheat in business and ask God to bless that business. He will not overlook rebellion, stubbornness and idolatry or selfish motives. The people forfeited their right to the blessings of the land. The LORD loves His earthly people but when the nation departed terribly from God, they lost all right to God’s blessings. God could do no more, because the nation rebelled and rejected their Source of life.
God’s desire for them, though, has not changed, and He will bring about those desires to fruition through trial and suffering as His people are refined in the Great Tribulation, and then we shall see the fullness of God’s unrestricted blessings. The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah write much about that and the great blessing ahead for Israel.
The second part of the LORD’s desire in verse 19 is relationship and that aspect is so very real to God. Adam was created so that He might have fellowship with God, with a relationship that in some way I can’t explain, but gave joy to God; and for Adam, he would know a sinless communion and connection with a God who shared with Him.
How unknowable (for us) and sublime, must have been those times of communion in the garden in the cool of the evening. In Eden you had the relationship of Creator with His created being. When it comes to Israel you have a different relationship for it is a Father-son relationship, both nationally and individually, in addition to the national one of Husband-wife; Jehovah-Israel.
God wanted to be acknowledged as Father, and as a Father who could not tolerate a deviation of mind or spirit, stated as a “not turn away” in the verse. The relationship God has with the Church is so much more beautiful, for the Head, the Bridegroom, is the Lord Himself, and the Father is Abba Father. The Holy Spirit has joined us into that relationship through being baptised in the Spirit when we were made to be the members of the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-14). Israel has never been able to follow the Lord in a straight path in all is history, and sadly there are a lot of Christians who can’t do that either.
Nevertheless there comes a time Israel is converted and never again will it wander away from God. In speaking of Israel's conversion, God declares – {{Isaiah 10:20 “Now it will come about in that day that the remnant of Israel and those of the house of Jacob who have escaped, will never again rely on the one who struck them, but WILL TRULY RELY ON THE LORD, the Holy One of Israel.”}}
[B]. SAD LAMENT FROM THE BARE HEIGHTS WHERE EVERYTHING IS STRIPPED BARE AND EXPOSED.
{{Jeremiah 3:21 A voice is heard on the bare heights, the weeping and the supplications of the sons of Israel because they have perverted their way. They have forgotten the LORD their God.”}}
On the bare heights is displayed a scene of misery. It is the lament of the Israelites because of what they have done. They had perverted their own way like a dog fouling up its kennel. Once your way is all crooked and twisted, you can’t find your way out of the mess, and Israel was in a deep mess. It was lost and helpless and there was only one solution, but we know they would have to go down that path of repentance. Their perversion was so great that they could not break free from their entanglement, and their stubbornness would not allow it in any case, except the Lord gave His grace for them to see their perversion and turn back from it.
When Moab was under great judgement this verse is recorded – {{Isaiah 15:2 “They have gone up to the temple and to Dibon, even TO THE HIGH PLACES TO WEEP. Moab wails over Nebo and Medeba. Everyone’s head is bald and every beard is cut off.”}} As with Israel, the high places where such perversion and gross sin took place, became the place of lament and reality of perspective. It is one thing to lament but another to repent.
Jeremiah is quite clear in this verse – “they have forgotten the Lord their God”, and once an individual or nation forgets God, then it is open to chaos and indecisive behaviour, and progresses deeper and deeper into wickedness. Australia has forgotten God, so it is little wonder that the economy is going bad and injustice is seen everywhere as value judgements are taken to support homosexuality and paganism, along with a whole range of deviant decisions. Crime is increasing rapidly in many communities.
Schools practise “behaviour management” because the problem of uncontrollable kids is put into the hands of humanist psychologists whose basis is that the kid is good and morally correct and all you have to do is modify its behaviour. This is contrary to the bible which tells us clearly that there is none who is good, not even one and the true solution can only be conversion.
The verse began with a voice on the bare heights. It reminds me of the musical composition by Mussorgsky “Night on a Bare Mountain” that is stark and frightening, associated with a witches’ Sabbath (revised by Rimsky-Korsakov later on). A bare mountain (or heights) is stark and uninviting with everything stripped bare, and that speaks of a soul who is not in the pastures and greenery of God. It is the opposite. I think there are many people who are multi-faced. Their inner souls are living on the bare mountains of despair and misery, but their public face is that of apparent happiness. They won’t face the reality, so they can understand the solution. They need to be told the solution, but the church pulpits are too full of play-actors rowing the congregations to destruction, and not preaching the powerful word of God.
In Israel's case, their episode on the bare heights is the start of their repentance. When the true repentance comes for Israel, it will be glorious for the nation returns to the LORD. They repent in remorse. Look at this – it will be the way it is at the Second Coming when Jesus returns to his people Israel – {{Zechariah 12:10-12 “And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, THE SPIRIT OF GRACE and of supplication, so that THEY WILL LOOK ON ME WHOM THEY HAVE PIERCED; AND THEY WILL MOURN FOR HIM, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him, like the bitter weeping over a first-born. “IN THAT DAY THERE WILL BE GREAT MOURNING IN JERUSALEM, like the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo. “And the land will mourn, every family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves;”}}
[C]. ISRAEL IN CONTRITION AND SHAME REALISES ITS GREAT SIN AND RETURNS TO THE LORD
{{Jeremiah 3:22-25 “RETURN, O FAITHLESS SONS. I WILL HEAL YOUR FAITHLESSNESS.” “Behold, we come to You for You are the LORD our God. Surely, the hills are a deception, a tumult on the mountains. Surely, in the LORD our God is the salvation of Israel, but THE SHAMEFUL THING has consumed the labour of our fathers since our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. LET US LIE DOWN IN OUR SHAME, and let our humiliation cover us for we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, since our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.””}}
I believe there are two speakers in this passage. Sadly the artificial chapter divisions cut right into the conversation which continues into chapter 4. There is some difficulty here in understanding the time sequencing of this passage. I can only give it as I see it. There is no doubt that in the first part of verse 22 Jehovah is the speaker and He calls the people to repentance. He invites them to return, and to do so, must mean that they come willingly, turning around from the direction they were travelling in. They are called faithless and indeed they were, for they had forsaken the source of life and placed their faith and practice in the false gods of the nations. God calls on them to return to Him, and all the past would be put behind them when He forgives their faithlessness.
Then you have a distinct change in the remainder of verse 22 for the second speaker is heard, and it is in response to the call of Jehovah for the nation’s return at the start of the verse. That second speaker continues through to verse 25 and then the Lord continues in the next chapter. We shall examine the content of this second speaker, then we shall look at who this second speaker is. Now the content: In verse 22, the speaker says THEY (for I think the speaker represents the nation of Israel (Judah and Israel)) are returning, for Jehovah is really the Lord their God (as opposed to all the foreign gods they had been joined to).
In verse 23 they state or infer that they were deceived by the hills, and all there was, was noise and no substance. I think this might do with their high places of idolatrous worship. Then there is an acknowledgement that Israel’s salvation rests in the Lord their God. It is stronger, I feel in that comment, for the Lord God IS Israel's salvation. Verse 24 is the confession that since Israel's early days they have pursued worthlessness, called in the NASB, “the shameful thing”. They can only look back on the worthless labour since coming out of Egypt, and deem it as nothing more than shameful, but that shame had consumed all that they are and have. The greater they pursued idolatry, the greater the shame. In the end all is worthless. All those centuries have produced nothing but shame.
That is a good confession if it was genuine, because one needs to acknowledge the present state in order to seek forgiveness of the past. The confession continues in verse 25 and leads to contrition. They seek to lie down in shame with humiliation covering them for they know that they have sinned against the Lord God, both they and their fathers, and that they have been disobedient to the voice of their God. True contrition does not seek to justify oneself. It is a confession of sin, and ownership of it. These people here are doing that and recognise that nationally, they have not obeyed since the youthful days of leaving Egypt.
One aspect we should not forget is why Israel is doing this, why it is repenting and returning to the Lord. A man just can’t come to God when he pleases and bring his ideas. In Israel's case it is the Holy Spirit that will move them, and we remember this from earlier – {{Zechariah 12:10-12 “And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the SPIRIT OF GRACE and of supplication . . .”}} This return begins with the move of the Holy Spirit and it is a national repentance.
Now who is speaking in verses 22b to 25? There are just two possibilities. It can be the people of Jeremiah’s time responding to Jeremiah’s messages about returning to the Lord, or it can be a people not yet born. If we consider the first possibility, we come to dead ends for Jeremiah lived in the last few years of Judah’s dying days before Nebuchadnezzar swept them away. We know there was no repentance and even under king Josiah, the people still pursued their gods. It could have been a false pretense then, of returning to the Lord, but in chapter 4, nothing has altered so I think we have to dismiss any repentance in Jeremiah’s time.
That brings us to a people not yet born and I believe that is the solution. Israel will have a national repentance during the Great Tribulation at which time, the Jewish saints are hounded by Satan who tries to destroy them in chapter 12 of Revelation, even if it is possibly one-third who are redeemed – {{Zechariah 13:8-9 It will come about in all the land,” declares the LORD, “that two parts in it will be cut off and perish, BUT THE THIRD WILL BE LEFT IN IT, AND I WILL BRING THE THIRD PART THROUGH THE FIRE, REFINE THEM AS SILVER IS REFINED, AND TEST THEM AS GOLD IS TESTED. They will call on My name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are My people,’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’”}}.
They are genuine in their repentance, and it seems correct that this is the great and final repentance of Israel. Even though the Jews do not bow down to literal stone and wood today, they do pursue the worthless things and all their labours are in the physical world with rejection of their Messiah. They might serve a different face of idolatry today, one of money and materialism. In a day to come, the nation will repent and come back to Jehovah, and I do believe this is their prayer. It will be a confession and contrition unlike any that ever rose from Israel in the past, and it will be genuine and lasting. No more will Israel turn to any form of idolatry including materialism. They will be restored in their land.
As their fall was great, so will be their restoration. Jeremiah has much to say prophetically about Israel's future restoration but so do all the prophets. It is amazing that people of the covenant theology persuasion still write Israel off as the Roman Catholic church did. There are so many confirming scriptures that could be used in support of our verses of Israel's return and blessing, here but I have chosen this one – {{Joel 2:25-27 “Then I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the creeping locust, the stripping locust, and the gnawing locust, My great army which I sent among you, and YOU SHALL HAVE PLENTY TO EAT AND BE SATISFIED, AND PRAISE THE NAME OF THE LORD YOUR GOD, WHO HAS DEALT WONDROUSLY WITH YOU. THEN MY PEOPLE WILL NEVER BE PUT TO SHAME. THUS YOU WILL KNOW THAT I AM IN THE MIDST OF ISRAEL, AND THAT I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD AND THERE IS NO OTHER, AND MY PEOPLE WILL NEVER BE PUT TO SHAME.”}}
Messiah will be in the midst of Israel and His people will never more be put to shame as their sins of the past did. Their return to the Lord will be marvellous.
ronaldf@aapt.net.au
