Jeremiah 3:19
The Lord said to the Israelites in
Jeremiah 3:19-22, “But I said, How shall I put thee among the children, and give
thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations? and I said, Thou shalt call me, My
father; and shalt not turn away from me. Surely as a
wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so
have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith
the LORD. A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of
the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have
forgotten the LORD their God. Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal
your backslidings. Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art the LORD our God.” The
question that the Lord asked in Jeremiah 3:19 is a very important question. He
asked, “How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a
pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations?” In other
words, what does it take to have the blessings of God upon your life? It takes
two basic things: 1. To be able to truly call God your
“father.” In other
words you believe in Him through faith in Jesus, and therefore you are a child
of God. But a child can go astray from the teachings of the father, and so this
second basic truth is also important. 2. Do not turn away from the Lord. There
is something about the heart of human beings that even after coming to believe
in Jesus, there is that temptation and that pull to turn away from Him. But if
you are going to live in the sunshine of His love and enjoy the fullness of His
blessings, you must not turn away.
The ideal life is to have child-like
faith in the Lord with a relationship with Him that is similar to the
father-child relationship that we should all know and understand. But because
the Israelites turned away from God, their relationship with God was compared
to that of a treacherous wife who was unfaithful to her husband. As it says in Jeremiah 3:20, “Surely as
a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so
have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith
the LORD.” One of the reasons not to turn away is because of the
consequences that will come if you do turn away from Him. The Israelites turned
away, and notice that it says in Jeremiah 3:21, “A voice was heard upon the high
places, weeping and supplications of the children of
The last part of Jeremiah 3:21 tells
us more precisely what the Israelites did to turn away from the Lord. It says “for they
have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the LORD their God.” It had to do
with both their deeds and their thoughts. First they “perverted
their way.” No one else perverted them. They perverted themselves. They
exercised their own free will, and they chose to sin. The devil did not make
them do what they did, and neither did anyone else. As it says in James
1:13-15, “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God
cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any
man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and
enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth
forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth
forth death.” Once someone has perverted his or her own way, then if they do
not repent, the next error will undoubtedly follow just as it was said of the
Israelites in Jeremiah 3:21, “they have forgotten the LORD their God.” Once you
sin, the next thought that you will normally have is the fact that you need to
repent and ask the Lord to forgive your sins. But if you are not repentant and
not wiling to do that, the next logical step is for a person to push out of his
or her mind any thought of God. By the way, that is one of the primary reasons
that someone claims to be an atheist or an agnostic: they do not want to repent
of their sins and therefore, they remove from their own minds the idea of God.
They choose to sin, and then they choose to forget God. As it says in Psalms
10:4, “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek
after God: God is not in all his thoughts.” It also says in John
3:19-21, “And this is the condemnation, that
light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because
their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth
the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But
he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his
deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.”
Jeremiah 3:22 is a very important spiritual principle for Christians to put into effect in
their own lives. It says, “Return, ye
backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto
thee; for thou art the LORD our God.” The
first statement is God’s invitation to turn to Christ to be received by Jesus.
The second statement in this verse is how a believer should respond to this
call to turn to Jesus. Every believer should say, “we come to thee.” This is the exact same message that is found in First
John 1:9. The Bible verse First John 1:9 just might be one of the most
important verses of the Bible. How can a believer stay in fellowship with
Jesus? How can a saved person continue to walk with Jesus? It says in First
John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.” The importance of putting this
spiritual principle into practice cannot be over-stated. Christians still sin.
Of course, because of Jesus, Christians have a home in heaven, but unforgiven sin in the life of a Christian can have terrible
results: broken
fellowship with God, chastisement and painful consequences in this life, and
the loss of rewards in the next life. Since any Christian (especially one that
is weak or new in the faith) can easily sin and can often sin, it is critical
that every Christian knows and lives by First John 1:9. Once you sin, the Lord
will always offer to forgive you and bring you back into fellowship with Him,
but if any believer goes on in an unrepentant way, that believer will end up
just like the Israelites: walking in wickedness, forgetting God, and destined
for great chastisements in this life. Make sure that you are always ready and
willing to say to the Lord Jesus exactly what was said in Jeremiah 3:22, “Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art the LORD our God.”
The Bible says in Jeremiah 3:23-25, “Truly in
vain is salvation hoped for from the hills, and from the multitude of
mountains: truly in the LORD our God is the salvation of Israel. For shame hath
devoured the labour of our fathers from our youth;
their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. We lie down in
our shame, and our confusion covereth us: for we have
sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto
this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.”
Jeremiah 3:23 emphasizes the fact that salvation comes from the Lord and from
nowhere else. It is important to know this fact because everyone needs to be
saved. It says in Romans 3:23, “For all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
Once you understand that you need to be saved, it is very important that you
also understand where you must go to get saved. If you go to the wrong person
for salvation, then you will not be saved, and the impending doom of eternal
judgment will be hanging over you. Speaking of Jesus it says in Acts 4:12, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is
none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” That is why Jesus is called the Savior. Jesus saves.
Jesus said in Luke 19:10, “For the Son of
man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Of course, Jesus is called the “Saviour” in many places in the New Testament. For example, it says
in Philippians 3:20, “For our conversation
is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour,
the Lord Jesus Christ:” It says in First Timothy
1:1, “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by
the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus
Christ, which is our hope;” It says in Second
Timothy 1:10, “But is now made manifest by
the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath
abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the
gospel:” It says in Titus 2:13, “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing
of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” It says in Second Peter 1:1, “Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to
them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness
of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:” Salvation does not come from the hills or the mountains.
It comes from Jesus. Every person on this earth should ask the same question
that was asked of the disciples in Acts 16:29-30, “Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came
trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, And brought them out, and said,
Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Acts 16:31 has
the wonderful answer for everyone who will honestly ask that question. It says,
“And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”
Jeremiah 3:24-25 makes an interesting
connection between the spiritual condition of an individual and his or her
closest family members. It says, “For shame hath devoured the labour of our fathers from our youth; their flocks and
their herds, their sons and their daughters. We lie down in our shame, and our
confusion covereth us: for we have sinned against the
LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and have
not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.” The sins committed by those in the
past (the fathers) can have an effect on those in the present (their sons and
their daughters). The Bible says in Exodus 34:7, “Keeping
mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that
will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the
fourth generation.” One of the problems of sin is that it is contagious.
Human beings learn from other human beings. The sins of those who set up
Hollywood and decided its direction has influenced so many in the wrong way. Often
people learn from those who are closest to them. That means family members. But
with television and the internet and radio and iphones
and ipads, many other sinful people are given close
access to almost everyone on the earth. How can any person survive so many bad
influences from their own family and from outside? The answer is to repent of their
sins and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord says in Jeremiah 4:1-2, “If thou wilt
return, O Israel, saith the LORD, return unto me: and
if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my
sight, then shalt thou not remove. And thou shalt swear, The LORD liveth, in
truth, in judgment, and in righteousness; and the nations shall bless
themselves in him, and in him shall they glory.” Notice that in
Jeremiah 4:2 that the first thing a repentant sinner would say when he or she
turns to the Lord is, “The Lord liveth.” He liveth because He rose from the dead.
Jesus is not a dead Savior, but a living One. We celebrate the fact that He
died for ours sins on the cross of
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Copyright; 2012 by Charles
F. (Rick) Creech
All Rights Reserved