Jeremiah 2:26

The Bible says in Jeremiah 2:26-30, “As the thief is ashamed when he is found, so is the house of Israel ashamed; they, their kings, their princes, and their priests, and their prophets, Saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth: for they have turned their back unto me, and not their face: but in the time of their trouble they will say, Arise, and save us. But where are thy gods that thou hast made thee? let them arise, if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble: for according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah. Wherefore will ye plead with me? ye all have transgressed against me, saith the LORD. In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction: your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.” In these verses the Lord is telling the people of Israel how great their sins have become. Verse 26 mentions a thief that is “found.” Every person who sins is “found” by God. When you sin, you sin against God. Jesus sees all and knows all. Nothing is done in secret that He does not see.

These people had turned away from God and had made false gods for themselves. The Lord said to them in verse 28, “But where are thy gods that thou hast made thee?” People have also turned away from God in the society in which we live. They do not make physical objects into idols like the Israelites did, except for those who worship materialism. But they do invent their own false religion. Humanism is a religion. For some people evolution is a religion. Atheism is definitely a religion that is believed in and trusted in by some. One of the problems with all false religion is that it has absolutely no power to save.

Another sin committed by the Israelites as mentioned in Jeremiah 2:30 is “They received no correction.” In other words the Lord tried to teach them and tried to reach them, but they would not turn to Him. They would not learn. They would not repent. They would not admit that they were mistaken. Any society is in danger of a great calamity when the vast majority of people in it have purposely turned away from God. God’s hand of judgment must come eventually if all of His offers of mercy are continually turned down.

Because these people have purposely turned away from God, these people also hate the message from God, and thus also hate those who bring the message about Jesus. That is why it also says about them in Jeremiah 2:30, “your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.” Jesus said the same thing to the people in the day in which He lived. Jesus said in Matthew 23:31, “Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.”

The Lord continues to enumerate the failures of the children of Israel and say to them in Jeremiah 2:31-37, “O generation, see ye the word of the LORD. Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee? Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number. Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways. Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all these. Yet thou sayest, Because I am innocent, surely his anger shall turn from me. Behold, I will plead with thee, because thou sayest, I have not sinned. Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria. Yea, thou shalt go forth from him, and thine hands upon thine head: for the LORD hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them.”

In Jeremiah 2:31 basically the Lord is saying that there is no justification for the Israelites to have turned away from the Lord. Of course, the Lord was not a “wilderness” to Israel and was not “darkness” to Israel. Just the opposite is the truth. The Lord gave them abundance, just as Jesus does today for those who believe in Him. Jesus said in John 10:10, “…I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Jesus also said in Luke 18:29-30, “And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, Who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.” It is illogical not to serve the Lord because of all the benefits and blessings that come when we do serve Him and walk in fellowship with Jesus. Do you remember how grateful blind people were when Jesus gave them their sight? Of course, they were grateful. To go from a life of darkness and be thrust into the Light would be wonderful beyond words, and that is exactly what Jesus does for us when He saves our soul. He takes us from darkness to light, spiritually speaking. Anyone who has tasted of the light of Christ’s love would be crazy to walk in darkness again. And yet that is what the Israelites did.

Let’s look at all of the spiritual problems the Israelites had that are mentioned in Jeremiah 2:31-37. We need to make sure that we do not make the same mistakes: 1. They made a conscious decision to not turn to the Lord. The Israelites said in verse 31, “we will come no more unto thee.” 2. They forgot God. In other words they stopped thinking about Him. Verse 32 the Lord said, “my people have forgotten me.” 3. Instead of being a good influence on those around them, they were a bad influence. Verse 33, “therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.” 4. The Israelites made a very untrue statement about themselves. They said in verse 34, “I have not sinned.” Every believer must always admit their daily sinfulness before the Lord. That is the exact message of First John 1:8-10, that must be followed if we are to continually walk in fellowship with our Savior. It says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

Notice the phrase in verse 36 where the Lord said, “Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way?” This means: “Why are you going to and fro so much to change your ways?” In other words the Israelites were making a big effort to get involved in things that they ought not to get involved with. They were looking for sin, and they found it. You will find whatever you look for. That is a principle of life. Jesus said in Matthew 7:7, “…Seek and ye shall find.” Just be careful that you seek the right thing. The Israelites sought sin, and therefore they found trouble. The Lord said to them in Jeremiah 2:37, “thou shalt go forth from him, and thine hands upon thine head.” They would end up going where they did not want to go: prisoners in a foreign land.

The Bible says in Jeremiah 3:1, “They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD.” God used the law of divorce and remarriage to demonstrate how much He loved the Israelites and how much He was willing to forgive them and accept them back to Himself. A requirement of the law was that once a man divorced his wife and she married another, the first man was not permitted to re-marry his wife. But God is saying that even though that was true concerning the law, God would change that requirement and allow the Israelites to come back to Him. God can change the law if He so wishes. More than that, in the age in which we live God has set aside the law and replaced it with grace. It says in Romans 8:2-4, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

The Bible says in Jeremiah 3:2-3, “Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou hast not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness. Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore's forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed.” The Israelites had fallen into great sexual immorality. The word that is translated “lien” refers to having sexual relations. Notice that they had “polluted the land with thy whoredoms.” Also, the people were described as having “a whore's forehead” because of how accustomed they had become to committing sexual sins. They were no longer ashamed of their immoral behavior. God created the intimate physical relationship between a man and a woman in marriage to be symbolic of His intimate relationship with believers. Those who fail to obtain and keep an intimate spiritual relationship with Jesus, are more likely to fail to keep themselves pure also.

In Jeremiah 3:4-10 we see a continuation of this theme of sexual immorality on the part of Israel. The sexual immorality was a result of something far worse: spiritual infidelity by departing from God. It says, “Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth? Will he reserve his anger for ever? will he keep it to the end? Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest. The LORD said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot. And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also. And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks. And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly, saith the LORD.”

One of the truths that these verses make very clear is that God gave the Israelites every chance to repent no matter how much they had sinned. God did not want to have to punish them. God offered them a way back to Himself: repentance and forgiveness. That is why we turn to Jesus: to benefit from God’s offer of forgiveness. It says about Israel: “she returned not,” and it says about Judah that she “feared not.” The Lord Jesus is tenderly calling and trying to convince you of your need to turn to Him. Turn to Jesus now before it is too late. Jesus said in Matthew 11:28, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

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