Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

To read Jeremiah 2:1-37, click this link HERE.

“If a man divorces his wife
    and she leaves him and marries another man,
should he return to her again?
    Would not the land be completely defiled?
But you have lived as a prostitute with many lovers—
    would you now return to me?”
declares the Lord.
“Look up to the barren heights and see.
    Is there any place where you have not been ravished?
By the roadside you sat waiting for lovers,
    sat like a nomad in the desert.
You have defiled the land
    with your prostitution and wickedness.
Therefore the showers have been withheld,
    and no spring rains have fallen.
Yet you have the brazen look of a prostitute;
    you refuse to blush with shame.
Have you not just called to me:
    ‘My Father, my friend from my youth,
will you always be angry?
    Will your wrath continue forever?’
This is how you talk,
    but you do all the evil you can.”
During the reign of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, “Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every spreading tree and has committed adultery there. I thought that after she had done all this she would return to me but she did not, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it. I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery. Because Israel’s immorality mattered so little to her, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood. In spite of all this, her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to me with all her heart, but only in pretense,” declares the Lord.
The Lord said to me, “Faithless Israel is more righteous than unfaithful Judah. Go, proclaim this message toward the north:
“‘Return, faithless Israel,’ declares the Lord,
    ‘I will frown on you no longer,
for I am faithful,’ declares the Lord,
    ‘I will not be angry forever.
Only acknowledge your guilt—
    you have rebelled against the Lord your God,
you have scattered your favors to foreign gods
    under every spreading tree,
    and have not obeyed me,’”
declares the Lord.
“Return, faithless people,” declares the Lord, “for I am your husband. I will choose you—one from a town and two from a clan—and bring you to Zion. Then I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding. In those days, when your numbers have increased greatly in the land,” declares the Lord, “people will no longer say, ‘The ark of the covenant of the Lord.’ It will never enter their minds or be remembered; it will not be missed, nor will another one be made. At that time they will call Jerusalem The Throne of the Lord, and all nations will gather in Jerusalem to honor the name of the Lord. No longer will they follow the stubbornness of their evil hearts. In those days the people of Judah will join the people of Israel, and together they will come from a northern land to the land I gave your ancestors as an inheritance.
“I myself said,
“‘How gladly would I treat you like my children
    and give you a pleasant land,
    the most beautiful inheritance of any nation.’
I thought you would call me ‘Father’
    and not turn away from following me.
But like a woman unfaithful to her husband,
    so you, Israel, have been unfaithful to me,”
declares the Lord.
A cry is heard on the barren heights,
    the weeping and pleading of the people of Israel,
because they have perverted their ways
    and have forgotten the Lord their God.
“Return, faithless people;
    I will cure you of backsliding.”
“Yes, we will come to you,
    for you are the Lord our God.
Surely the idolatrous commotion on the hills
    and mountains is a deception;
surely in the Lord our God
    is the salvation of Israel.
From our youth shameful gods have consumed
    the fruits of our ancestors’ labor—
their flocks and herds,
    their sons and daughters.
Let us lie down in our shame,
    and let our disgrace cover us.
We have sinned against the Lord our God,
    both we and our ancestors;
from our youth till this day
    we have not obeyed the Lord our God.”

• Jeremiah 3:1-25

“If you, Israel, will return,
    then return to me,”
declares the Lord.
“If you put your detestable idols out of my sight
    and no longer go astray,
and if in a truthful, just and righteous way
    you swear, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’
then the nations will invoke blessings by him
    and in him they will boast.”
This is what the Lord says to the people of Judah and to Jerusalem:
“Break up your unplowed ground
    and do not sow among thorns.
Circumcise yourselves to the Lord,
    circumcise your hearts,
    you people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem,
or my wrath will flare up and burn like fire
    because of the evil you have done—
    burn with no one to quench it.
“Announce in Judah and proclaim in Jerusalem and say:
    ‘Sound the trumpet throughout the land!’
Cry aloud and say:
    ‘Gather together!
    Let us flee to the fortified cities!’
Raise the signal to go to Zion!
    Flee for safety without delay!
For I am bringing disaster from the north,
    even terrible destruction.”
A lion has come out of his lair;
    a destroyer of nations has set out.
He has left his place
    to lay waste your land.
Your towns will lie in ruins
    without inhabitant.
So put on sackcloth,
    lament and wail,
for the fierce anger of the Lord
    has not turned away from us.
“In that day,” declares the Lord,
    “the king and the officials will lose heart,
the priests will be horrified,
    and the prophets will be appalled.”
Then I said, “Alas, Sovereign Lord! How completely you have deceived this people and Jerusalem by saying, ‘You will have peace,’ when the sword is at our throats!”
At that time this people and Jerusalem will be told, “A scorching wind from the barren heights in the desert blows toward my people, but not to winnow or cleanse; a wind too strong for that comes from me. Now I pronounce my judgments against them.”
Look! He advances like the clouds,
    his chariots come like a whirlwind,
his horses are swifter than eagles.
    Woe to us! We are ruined!
Jerusalem, wash the evil from your heart and be saved.
    How long will you harbor wicked thoughts?
A voice is announcing from Dan,
    proclaiming disaster from the hills of Ephraim.
“Tell this to the nations,
    proclaim concerning Jerusalem:
‘A besieging army is coming from a distant land,
    raising a war cry against the cities of Judah.
They surround her like men guarding a field,
    because she has rebelled against me,’”
declares the Lord.
“Your own conduct and actions
    have brought this on you.
This is your punishment.
    How bitter it is!
    How it pierces to the heart!”
Oh, my anguish, my anguish!
    I writhe in pain.
Oh, the agony of my heart!
    My heart pounds within me,
    I cannot keep silent.
For I have heard the sound of the trumpet;
    I have heard the battle cry.
Disaster follows disaster;
    the whole land lies in ruins.
In an instant my tents are destroyed,
    my shelter in a moment.
How long must I see the battle standard
    and hear the sound of the trumpet?

“My people are fools;
    they do not know me.
They are senseless children;
    they have no understanding.
They are skilled in doing evil;
    they know not how to do good.”
I looked at the earth,
    and it was formless and empty;
and at the heavens,
    and their light was gone.
I looked at the mountains,
    and they were quaking;
    all the hills were swaying.
I looked, and there were no people;
    every bird in the sky had flown away.
I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert;
    all its towns lay in ruins
    before the Lord, before his fierce anger.
This is what the Lord says:
“The whole land will be ruined,
    though I will not destroy it completely.
Therefore the earth will mourn
    and the heavens above grow dark,
because I have spoken and will not relent,
    I have decided and will not turn back.”
At the sound of horsemen and archers
    every town takes to flight.
Some go into the thickets;
    some climb up among the rocks.
All the towns are deserted;
    no one lives in them.
What are you doing, you devastated one?
    Why dress yourself in scarlet
    and put on jewels of gold?
Why highlight your eyes with makeup?
    You adorn yourself in vain.
Your lovers despise you;
    they want to kill you.
I hear a cry as of a woman in labor,
    a groan as of one bearing her first child—
the cry of Daughter Zion gasping for breath,
    stretching out her hands and saying,
“Alas! I am fainting;
    my life is given over to murderers.”

• Jeremiah 5:1-31

Noted Biblical Scholars, Teachers, and Preachers Comments

Jeremiah 2:1-3 ‘are we as loyal now as we once were?’: “God reminds his people of what they used to be in their first days, when they came out of Egypt. They had sadly declined from what they then were. Does not this passage come home to some of us who are not now what we once were?”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 2:5 ‘Worshipping wrong’: “Now we were made to worship, but the Scriptures tell us something else again. They tell us that man fell and kept not his first estate; that he forfeited the original glory of God and failed to fulfill the creative purpose, so that he is not worshiping now in the way that God meant him to worship. All else fulfills its design; flowers are still fragrant and lilies are still beautiful and the bees still search for nectar amongst the flowers; the birds still sing with their thousand-voice choir on a summer’s day, and the sun and the moon and the stars all move on their rounds doing the will of God.
“And from what we can learn from the Scriptures we believe that the seraphim and cherubim and powers and dominions are still fulfilling their design—worshiping God who created them and breathed into them the breath of life. Man alone sulks in his cave. Man alone, with all of his brilliant intelligence, with all of his amazing, indescribable, and wonderful equipment, still sulks in his cave. He is either silent, or if he opens his mouth at all, it is to boast and threaten and curse; or it’s nervous ill-considered laughter, or it’s humor become big business, or it’s songs without joy.”

• A. W. Tozer, Worship, the Missing Jewel

Jeremiah 2:6-7 ‘ignoring God as God grants our wishes’: “It is a sad charge against anybody that they forget the care God has shown them in the days of his poverty and affliction. When a person becomes rich and is surrounded by earthly comforts, it is a terrible thing that he should then forget God, or that the more God does for him the less he thinks of God. This is ungrateful conduct.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 2:8 ‘when the priest is wrong’: “It is always ill with the people when the ministers go wrong.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 2:13 ‘rejecting God who provides richly for inert, lifeless false gods’: “To go away from the flowing fountain to the stagnant waters of a cistern is great folly! But to go and hew out broken cisterns that can hold no water, but merely mock your thirst, is madness of the worst kind.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 2:15 ‘young lions’: “The figure represents invading soldiers who burned cities (cf 4:7); perhaps this is a reference to the disaster from the Babylonians during Jehoiakim’s fourth year, and again three years later when he relied on Egypt (cf. 20:4; 46:2; 2 Kin. 24:1, 2).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Jeremiah 2:17 ‘Times are better when near the Lord’: “Those who have grown spiritually poor, who are in great trouble of heart, should listen. When they did live near to God, when prayer was continual, when they did watch their conduct, when they did go softly asking God to guide them from day to day, was it not better with them at that time than now?”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 2:18 ‘pleasures become a plague’: “Those who are trying to find pleasure in the world, who are going to the resorts of sin to seek amusement, why are they drinking the muddy waters of sinful pleasure and beginning to like the taste of it? It will never do! What they dream of as pleasure will prove to be their plague.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 2:23 ‘the Baals’: “An inclusive term referring collectively to false deities. dromedary. The nation, in chasing other idols, is depicted as a female camel pursuing its instinct, and as a wild ass in heat sniffing the wind to find a mate, craving to attract others of its kind. Other pictures of Israel are that of a thief, who is ashamed when exposed (v. 26), and that of a maid or a bride who forgets what beautifies her (v. 32).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Jeremiah 2:25 ‘no belief in forgiveness – no repentance’: “See what despair will do for its victims. When a person says, ‘It’s hopeless,’ then he feels that for him there is no repentance. When he believes that God will not forgive him, then he will not turn from his evil ways.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 2:35 ‘God abhors self-righteousness’: “The most guilty people are often the most self-righteous. Many a person still says, ‘I have not sinned,’ although God’s law condemns him and the Savior proves that the guilty one needs to be saved. Self-righteousness is a thing God utterly abhors.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 2:36 ‘failing one false hope leads to more false hope’: “First, Israel trusted in Assyria to save them. And when that broken reed failed them, then they trusted in Egypt. And in a similar fashion we go from one false hope to another-—from one carnal confidence to another—yet all the while refusing to turn to the Lord.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 3:1 ‘An unfaithful Israel’: “God’s people had gone away from him. They had acted unfaithfully to him. They had joined themselves unto other gods. If God freely forgives great sinners, will it not look as if he treated sin too leniently?”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 3:5 ‘a God of mercy’: “No, he will not! No one is so slow to anger as our God, and no one is so ready to be rid of it as he is. He is a God ready to pardon, waiting to forgive, delighting in mercy. Even though the sin should be so foul, God can put it all away in the greatness of his mercy. God says of them, ‘You have done the evil things you are capable of,’ yet this is the kind of people to whom God speaks in mercy, inviting them to return to him.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 3:7 ‘seeing sin in someone else, but doing the same thing is worse’: “That made Judah’s sin even worse than that of Israel. She saw this great iniquity in another and yet went and committed it herself. Some cannot be kept back from sin by the punishment of others, but they run into the fire in which others have been burnt, and so they aggravate their sin.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah3:8 ‘I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce’: “Though God hates divorce (Mal. 2:16), it is tolerated for unrepentant adultery (see notes on Matt. 5:32; 19:8, 9), as indicated by this analogy of God’s divorcing Israel for that continual sin in the spiritual realm. God had divorced Israel, but not yet Judah (cf. Is. 50:1). Cf. Ezra 10:3, where divorce is the right action of God’s people to separate from idolatrous wives.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Jeremiah 3:11-25 ‘The Coming Messianic Kingdom’: “Jeremiah 3 focuses on the precondition to setting up the messianic kingdom. Verses 11-14 issue a call to repentance, which is focused especially on Judah since, in the end, Israel has proved to be more righteous than Judah. The call is for the people to confess their sins, including their sin of disobedience to the Mosaic law. If they do, they will receive certain rewards (verses 14-18). First, they will be regathered one by one back to the land of Zion (verse 14). Second, they will be given righteous leaders who will never again be guilty of leading the nation astray (verse 15). Third, they will not so much as think of rebuilding the Ark of the Covenant (verse 16), because, fourth, God Himself in visible form, in the person of Messiah, will rule from Jerusalem. Therefore, Jerusalem itself will become the center of world attention. Fifth, and finally, the Jews will be so united as not to be split into two Jewish kingdoms again (verse 18). But before Israel can enjoy these Messianic and millennial conditions, they first must repent (verses 19-20).
“The restoration described in verses 14-18 cannot happen apart from repentance, and Israel must return to God as Father and not stray from following the Lord (verse 19). Israel has been the adulterous Wife of Jehovah, and just as a treacherous wife deserts her husband, so has the wife of Jehovah treacherously turned her back on her husband (verse 20).
“This section closes in verses 21-25 with a prediction about Israels future national repentance. Israel will enter a period of judgment that will bring her to the point of weeping (verse 21), and when she hears the call to repentance, she will respond (verse 22). Israel will confess her sins (verses 23-25), and finally be brought back to the Lord. That will bring about the establishment of the kingdom.”

• Tim LaHaye and Ed Hindson, Exploring Bible Prophecy

Jeremiah 3:12 ‘no matter what, God can forgive’: “What measureless mercy is in these gracious sentences! As deep as the sin is and fearful and terrible as is the description of it, how bright, how clear is the immeasurable love that promises to put that sin away and forget and forgive it once and for all.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 3:13 ‘We must confess to God that we are sinners’: “We must confess that sad fact, acknowledging that we have sinned. Into the ear of God we can pour out the full confession of our sin. It is all he asks us to do. We must confess we have done wrong. He cannot ask for anything less than this. If I have thus treated him, I can come and confess it, for he is willing to receive me even if I am the biggest sinner.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah3:14 ‘I am married to you’: “God pictured His covenant relationship with Israel as a marriage, and pleaded with mercy for Judah to repent and return. He will take her back. Cf. Hosea’s restoration of Gomer as a picture of God taking back His wicked, adulterous people”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Jeremiah 3:16 ‘Worshipping in spirit’: “They had been accustomed to the old ceremonial religion that was full of outward rites and forms. God says that when he brings his erring people back to himself, they will have done with all that externalism. They will come to worship God in spirit and in truth and to commune with him without the medium of the ark of the covenant or an earthly priest. They will walk before him in the joy of their spirits.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 3:18 ‘old wounds mended by God’s grace’: “There is no more quarreling when divine grace comes in. Israel and Judah in the old days fought against each other, but when they alike taste of pardoning grace, they will love each other. Nothing unites people like the grace of God.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 3:19 ‘the more that is forgiven, the greater the loyalty’: “God knows how to change the character and to change the heart so that those who went farthest astray should come back to him and should become among the most holy, the most loyal, the most obedient of all his children.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah3:20 ‘a wife treacherously departs’: “Hosea had earlier used this same imagery (c. 755-710 B.C.). Thus, God had given the divorce because the spiritual adultery was unrepentant. But when repentance comes, He will take Israel back (cf. 3:1). O … Israel. Since the irretrievable dispersion of Israel in the north (722 B.C.), Judah alone was left to be called by the name Israel, as Jeremiah sometimes chose to do (e.g., 3:20-23).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Jeremiah 3:21-22 ‘We must lament our fallenness and sin’: “How pleasant to God’s ears is the weeping of his backsliding people! God does not wish people to be sorrowful, but he is glad that they should be sorrowful for sin. Now that they have begun to lament their wanderings and their wickedness, they will come back to their God, so he says to them, ‘Return, … I will heal your unfaithfulness.’ ”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 3:25 ‘repentance is accepted, salvation follows’: “There you see the repentance the Lord commanded from his people, and wherever there is such repentance as that, there are sure to be acceptance and salvation.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 4:3 ‘Break Up’: “Jeremiah appealed for a spiritual turnabout from sinful, wasteful lives. He pictured this as the plowing of ground, formerly hard and unproductive because of weeds, in order to make it useful for sowing (cf. Matt. 13:18-23).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Jeremiah 4:4 ‘cleanliness of the heart’: “They had the outward form of religion, but the Lord’s servant bids them know that they must have heart religion. The heart must be purged; the inward must be cleansed. This they had no mind to do. They would multiply their sacrifices and their outward performances, but as to cleanliness of heart, they cared nothing for it.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 4:5-7 ‘the lion is coming’: “This was a terrible prophecy. The Chaldeans, who had broken to pieces so many other kingdoms and powers, were on their way. The enraged lion had leaped from his thicket and was about to tear, and rend, and do universal havoc. And it they did not turn to God, their whole land would be laid waste. One would think that such a heavy blow would have awakened them to a sense of their danger and their sin, but unfortunately it was not so.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 4:10 ‘No obedience, no peace’: “God promised them peace, but it was on a condition they did not fulfill.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 4:12 ‘guilty as charged’: “What an awful line that is! They had been on trial. They were found guilty.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 4:14-18 ‘punishment for sin is bitter’: “When the ungodly person begins to reap the result of his life—when, in his own body and in his own home, he begins to see what sin will bring, only then will he realize his punishment ‘is very bitter.’ ”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 4:18 ‘bitter punishment’: ”A basic principle is enunciated in Jeremiah 2:19: God punishes us by allowing our own sins to bring pain and discipline to our lives. ‘Your own conduct and actions have brought this upon you. This is your punishment. How bitter it is!’ (4:18 NIV). ‘Your wrongdoings have kept these [rains] away; your sins have deprived you of good’ (5:25 NIV). The greatest judgment God can send to disobedient people is to let them have their own way and reap the sad, painful consequences of their sins.”

• Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Decisive

Jeremiah 4:19-23 ‘’: “Now follows the lament of Jeremiah—one of the most amazing pieces of sorrowful writing we will ever read. The dreadful blast of war, the blood-red flag of murder flying through the land while the Chaldeans slew right and left, young and old-—we need to put ourselves in Jeremiah’s position to be able to realize the horror of this case. ‘l looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty. I looked to the heavens, and their light was gone.’  It was as if they had gone back to chaos—to the primeval darkness—to the first disorder before God began to create.”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

Jeremiah 4:22 ‘wise to do evil’: “Israelites were wise in doing evil but were dull in knowing to do good, i.e., God’s will. Paul, applying the principle but turning it to the positive, wanted the believers at Rome to be wise to do good but unlearned in the skill of doing evil (Rom. 16:19).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Jeremiah 4:24-29 ‘Patience eventually runs out’: “Judah was made as dreary as a wilderness. Oh, what a sight it was when God at last had ended his patience—poured out the vials of his wrath on his once favored land!”

• Charles H. Spurgeon, from sermon notes

 

My Thoughts

Israel started out holy, coming out of Egypt.  This is a strange statement, in that the people coming out of Egypt that saw all of God’s wonders there had shown a lack of faith.  They were punished by not being allowed into the Promised Land, but their children showed faith.  They took the land that God had promised.

But then, a generation removed had totally ignored God.  They did not even ask where God was.  I think this means that the one true God was not ever a thought on their minds.  Many atheists today are angry and obsessed with dishonoring a God that they do not believe in.  The Israelites had gone beyond that in not even thinking about God,

Yet, when they got into trouble, God was the first person that the Israelites turned to ask for salvation.  I recently wrote a post about the Jelly Roll song, Need a Favor, and with a few cuss words sprinkled in there, he basically says, “Who do I think that I am to expect a Savior when I only go to God when I need a favor?”  He encapsulated many of the lives of professing Christians today, but also the people of Judah in the time of Jeremiah.  And at this point, God’s mercy had run out.

God speaks of His Chosen People rejecting Him, who can provide living water, which Jesus describes in John 4.  In God’s place, they worship something that is not alive and can do nothing for them.

The metaphor of Israel as God’s bride is sprinkled through these chapters, loving, loyal bride and unfaithful bride, turned to prostitution.  Jeremiah also mentions animals in heat.  Having bred beagles in my youth, some female dogs took to the idea the way the text described, but others would do anything to avoid it, but those animal metaphors were a powerful way to express the insanely ravenous appetite the Israelites had for a stick of wood.  In Jeremiah 2:28, they had as many gods as they had towns, and the true God was not among them.  And even when getting into trouble, they often did not even call God then, aligning with the Assyrians and then the Egyptians, and neither could save Judah.  They had their own troubles to deal with.

God, who detests divorce, described the northern tribes, Israel, as being His divorced wife.  They would talk nice, but their actions were horrible.  But even when Israel was being divorced, Judah followed the same path as did Israel.  Jeremiah even morphs his language in calling Judah Israel.  After all Judah was a son of Israel.  But is this an acknowledgement of that fact or is Jeremiah saying that Judah is even worse than Israel?  For one, they saw what happened to Israel in doing the same things.  But even then, if we acknowledge our guilt and repent of our sins, God will be faithful to us.

Jeremiah 3:16 talks about the Ark of the Covenant and how there will be a time that no one will mention it.  Sorry, Indiana Jones.

And I had to make a note on Jeremiah 3:22 that God gives us the power to prevent backsliding.  I screw up and I know others do.  I wonder if Jesus is in Heaven shaking His head and saying, “Oh, ye, of little faith.”  But then, God did great things through those who Jesus had made that statement in the Gospels.

Again Jeremiah 4 talks of redemption and repentance, and how bitter the punishment will be for those who do not confess and turn from their sins.

Do we not know how to do good, even for a little while?

And God has decided that this time – no mercy.

When will He do the same with this wicked and perverse generation?  How bad does it have to get?  But then, who among us is bold enough to ask, “Lord, if 100 are righteous in the city, will you destroy it?”

Some Serendipitous Reflections

“Jeremiah 2:1-19 Israel forsakes God, Part 1: 1. What emotions do you think God is trying to convey through these vivid pictures? How does God feel: Hurt? Betrayed? Outraged? Jilted? Jealous? Or what?
“2. What was wrong with worshipping a few other gods as long as the Lord was included? Or making military alliances with the major powers of the day? Why do you think God takes these things so personally?
“3. As reflected in this passage, is sin breaking rules or hurting a person? Which way of thinking about it better motivates you to avoid it? Why?
“Jeremiah 2:20-3:5 Israel forsakes God, Part 2: 1. Not many people bow down before or converse with gods of wood and stone in our society. Do you think we’ve licked the sin of idolatry? What kinds of things do people worship today? What things are you tempted to worship?
“2. Do you think God regards you as a ‘bride’ or a ‘prostitute’? Why? How do you show your loyalty to God as your first love? How do you handle conflicts of loyalty between God and other loves (such as Israel found herself in)?
“3. How important is loyalty to you in your relationships apart from God? To what or whom do you feel most loyal? Why? How loyal do you feel towards your small group? In what ways can you show your loyalty to them?
“Jeremiah 3:6-4:4 Unfaithful Israel: 1. How would you feel if your dating friend or spouse were unfaithful? Would you take him or her back? If so, under what conditions? What does it tell you about God’s love that he wants to take Israel back?
“2. Do you have trouble forgiving yourself for something you’ve done? Does it help knowing that God forgives you? ls something more needed? How can the group help?
“3. Optional: did you feel like the preferred child in your family, or was another sibling preferred? How did that make you feel about your parents? Yourself? The preferred sibling?
“4. Is it easy for you to feel responsible when things go wrong? Or do you feel most problems in your life are caused by other people? When is the last time you admitted you were wrong? How did it go over?
“5. When have you experienced honesty and trust in the group? What can members do to encourage that sense of openness?
“Jeremiah 4:5-31 Disaster from the North: 1. The false prophets told the people of Judah that they need not change because God would never punish them (3:10). What was in it for them and their listeners? Who tends to ‘profit’ from such ‘prophets’?
“2. Do you know of any situations where trouble is coming unless people change? What, if anything, can you do to help them?
“3. How do you feel when you hear that a wicked person has suffered? How does your response compare to Jeremiah’s? If your feelings are different, why do you feel that way? How should you feel?
“4. Do you ever see people reacting to God‘s judgment in one of the ways described in 4:29-31? How should they respond instead?
“5. Have you experienced God as Judge or Avenger? How did the experience affect you? How do you square the pictures of God the loving parent with God the avenging judge?
“6. Think of a place that has been devastated recently by war or disaster. Do you ever experience something like Jeremiah’s concern and agony when you learn of people’s suffering? Why or why not?”

• Lyman Coleman, et al, The NIV Serendipity Bible for Study Groups

Jeremiah 2-4 is divided into four sets of questions as noted above.

Substitute whatever group for any reference to a small group or ask who could come to your aid.

If you like these Thursday morning Bible studies, but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Thursday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.