Jeremiah (1-31) 2:20 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Jeremiah (1-31) 2:20

Comments

This is probably a reflection of Egypt. When the children of Israel came out of Egypt, God broke their yoke of servitude, and their bands. On Sinai they undertook to do certain things and made certain promises (Exodus 19:8; 24:3, 7; Deuteronomy 5:27), but straight away some of them began to break their promises, until before terribly long they were breaking them comprehensively. It didn't last five minutes, that undertaking – ‘when upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot’, making shrines to the idols. ‘Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?’ We think of that great ‘I am’ saying of Christ – ‘I am the true vine.’ Here in Jeremiah, as in Isaiah and in the psalms, the vine appears. Israel was meant to be a pleasant plant, a vine unto the Lord. But she wasn't the true vine. Christ is the true vine: ‘I am the true vine’. She turned into a degenerate plant, of a strange vine, with bitter fruit. See how it gets worse and worse. ‘For though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the Lord GOD.’ You see what Jeremiah saying, If we scrubbed you with wire wool, you couldn't be any better. All such superficial remedies are unable to fix you. You need salvation; you need the Lord. Said the Israelites, ‘Well, yes, we have some idolatry in our midst’ – understating it. ‘Yes, we have done wrong, but we are still the Lord's people, and we can improve.’ And Jeremiah is going to have to insist to them, ‘You cannot improve. You have got to come to the Lord on your knees.’ He is going to come to this, we will see it. ‘You have got to seek new life. You have got to be radically changed. As you are, you cannot improve. You flatter yourselves. You are much worse than you imagine.’

Application

At conversion God brought you out of Egypt. All your old habits were broken and smashed, the sins that held you fast, the things, the misunderstandings, the atheistic ideas ruled your thinking. God shattered them and you were delivered and released, and you owe him your life, and you owe him your praise, and your thanksgiving. Some of these illustrations should certainly move us.

We can apply it to a local church. A church: – saved people, converted people who love the Lord – What a precious thing a church is! With the power of the Spirit of God in their midst, and the word of God, and all knowledge. And yet a church that compromises, becomes a pathetic and a hideous thing, and an offence to God. The same is true with the believer. Here is a believer, converted, knows the Lord, has the Holy Spirit indwelling, but foolishly turns aside to worldly things, and loses character, capacity to withstand temptation, usefulness, witness; everything is lost. You become, as it were, a strange plant. If you are truly saved, you don't lose your salvation – God will have to discipline you maybe to get you back – but what a sad decline! And the graphic language is to be applied to ourselves. Has this happened to me?

In the early stages when we begin to compromise, we can confess our sin to the Lord, and they can be cleansed away. It wasn't so deep. We can regret it and turn from it. But if we keep going back to compromise and worldly things, the sin becomes deeply ingrained, and the ordinary soap of simple daily repentance doesn't wash it away. It is ruling us now. So that is the danger of compromise, and eventually the Lord has to let us go – not lose our salvation, but to punish us by handing us over to the worldly things that we may be doing. When we remember these things, it helps us to keep ourselves on the road before the Lord, and clear before him.

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Jeremiah (1-31) 2:20 Commentary and Bible Study