Jeremiah 3 -- Sick And Doesn't Know It

God gave Jeremiah images to use describing how the people of Judah had acted toward God.  One was a wife acting worse than a prostitute.  The other was an unhealthy patient.

 

Like a husband scorned, the Lord could have totally rejected His people.  But that’s not our God.  Instead He called out to them to return and be restored.  Yet their sinfulness was so great that they refused to even be ashamed of what they’d done – flaunting it in front of the whole world and in front of God.  I think that follows what God says elsewhere in the Bible about giving them over to a depraved mind, deceived in their thinking.

 

God’s love and grace for them and for us amazes me.  “Come back … I will stop being angry at you, because I am full of mercy … I will not be angry with you forever.  All you have to do is ADMIT your sin – that you turned against the Lord your God … and didn’t obey Me.”

 

God spoke of restoring them – and us:  “They will not follow their stubborn, evil hearts anymore.”

 

He cries out again, “Come back to Me, you unfaithful children, and I will forgive you for being unfaithful.”

 

My commentary talks about how sin is like a sickness:  “Like an infection entering the bloodstream, sin secretly gets into the system of the ‘inner man’ and goes to work weakening and destroying.  It gradually infects the whole system, producing spiritual lassitude and loss of spiritual appetite; and if not cared for, the sin sickness can lead to dire consequences.”

 

How incredible [unbelievable] that we willingly infect ourselves with something that we know can destroy us!  Yet we somehow buy the lie that we can handle it.  Pride does go before a fall.

 

Father, I can’t handle it.  If I cave and sin, I can promise with all my heart that I won’t let it happen again, but Satan just laughs and say, “Just watch!”  I need Your strength to stay pure.  I’m not strong enough to do it on my own.  Drill that fact into my brain.  Write it on my heart.  Remind me daily that Satan is a liar who only wants my destruction, and that nothing he promises ever pans out.

 

Your Brother In Christ,