Jeremiah 4 & 5 -- Hope Turns

Chapter 4 begins with hope:  “If you will return …”  Chapter 5 end is despair:  “But what will you do when the end comes?”

 

And in between, God decides that the people simply don’t care about Him anymore and they certainly aren’t worried about punishment.

 

God said, “If you will throw away your idols that I hate, then don’t wander away from Me.”  In other words, throw away that which separates you from Me, then remain close to Me.”  Despite our sin, He wants us back!  He wants us to get rid of that which causes the distance between us and Him to grow.

 

Jeremiah can see that God is becoming more certain of what He must do, and in desperation he cries out to the people:  “How terrible it will be for us!  We are ruined!  Clean the evil from your hearts so that you can be saved.  Don’t continue making evil plans … The way you have lived and acted has brought this trouble to you.  This is your punishment.  How terrible it is!  The pain stabs your heart!  Oh, how I hurt!  How I hurt!”

 

What God hates the most is that His people don’t know Him.  He formed them out of nothing and grew them from one family into a powerful nation, but now they’ve forgotten Him.

 

The people have gone too far.  They’ve dared God and crossed that final line, and God says, “All the land will be ruined.  I have spoken and will not change My mind.  I have made a decision, and I will not change it.”  Even God sounds incredulous at how they have completely ignored every warning:  “WHAT are you DOING??”  He continued to show Jeremiah what He saw about them:  “They refused to learn what is right.  They became more stubborn than a rock;  they refused to turn back to God … even the leaders had all joined together to break away from the Lord!”

 

This wasn’t the result of just one episode of sinning either:  “They have wandered away from the Lord many times.”  At some point, they’d stopped coming back to Him.  God knows this about them:  “They have eyes, but they don’t really SEE.  They have ears, but they don’t really LISTEN …”  They lost all sense of who God is:  “You should shake with fear in My presence … They do not say to themselves, ‘We should FEAR the Lord our God …’ “

 

So God has made up His mind.  He’s got a question to ask the unrepentant unbelievers:  “But what will you do when the end comes?”

 

Father, I know there was once a time when I’d become that spiritually blinded.  I couldn’t even hear Your voice and I dared You to speak to me.  I was so incredibly foolish and thought I knew it all.  Instead, I was incredibly stupid:  the creature daring to shake his fist at the Creator.  Thank You for not giving up on me.  Thank You for coming after me and loving me when I didn’t love You.  Thank You for lifting the veil and allowing me to see what, like these people, I’d almost missed.  How tragic for them!  And how amazingly merciful for me!

 

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford