Jeremiah (1-31) 3:2 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Jeremiah (1-31) 3:2

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They had committed spiritual adultery in all those shrines. It was apparently nothing to them that their idolatry had been so widespread. This was God’s chosen people, a nation singled out from all the nations of the earth, and given incalculable privileges: the promise that the Lord would be their God, a land to dwell in, just and righteous laws, regular springtime and harvest in a fertile country. Yet they had turned aside to worthless idols that could not move or speak, or hear, or answer prayer. They must be made to see how extensive it has been, and how carelessly they had multiplied their sins. There is hardly a Canaanite god that you have worshipped, is the message. There is hardly a Canaanite shrine you have not imitated. There is hardly a hilltop around the holy land, which hasn't been turned into a shrine.‘In the ways [in the roads] hast thou sat for them.’ The illustration implicit there, is those among the Arabs, nomadic people, who would live by plundering, and would attack caravans. They were notorious for it, and they would pick up intelligence; they would know when the treasure laden, wealthy caravans were coming through a particular desert area, and they would organise themselves and ambush. When the caravan came, how they would pounce, with such viciousness, aggression, and delight. The illustration of marauding Arabs is no doubt here, and the idea is that the people of God hath pursued idolatry with the same eagerness and planning, and then with delight have they gone and worshipped those idols. They believed in them, you see. This wasn't just a nominal thing, or a longshot thing; ‘We’ll try the gods of the Canaanites.’ They believed in these things. They put their trust in them. They did two things at once. Strictly, they didn't syncretise religions; they were God worshipping Israelites sometimes, and idolaters at other times. They ran two quite different and opposed religious systems at the same time. That was what they did, and it was an awful thing and an abomination, and so this very dramatic language is used: ‘Thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and thy wickedness.’ So now there is a more accusing note.‘Haven't you thought about this’, he says to them?’ He is preaching to the people of Judah, of course. ‘Therefore, the showers have been withholden.’ God had warned about that in the time of Moses: that his principal punishment for idolatry would be to bring about drought, and that happened repeatedly. Yes, there was a great famine in the time of King Josiah. He was a good king and a reforming king. But the people, in so far that they followed his reforms, did not do so sincerely, but hypocritically. And so famine visited the land, and that is recorded later on in two long passages in this prophecy of Jeremiah. ‘Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain.’ In spite of this; in spite of the lack of food and near starvation at times – ‘thou hadst a whore’s forehead’, which is intended to stand for the impudence of an adulteress. The regular prostitute has no conscience and is brazen about it, and if she were to be accused by the village elders, she would tough it out. She is quite brazen; she is not going to burst into tears. She is as tough as they come, and that is why she is pressed into service by way of illustration. ‘Thou refusedst to be ashamed.’ There wasn't a flicker of shame or concern about their conduct.

Application

We are seeing the same indifference played out today. We have pandemics; we have financial crises; we have that shadow of war, but nobody these days in this atheistic society thinks this has anything to do with our behaviour, and our rebellion against a Creator, against God. There have been times in the history of this country, and other countries too, when tragedies and catastrophes have caused the church to be crowded. But not today. Like Judah in the time of Jeremiah, we have ‘a whore’s forehead’, that is, the impudent face of somebody who has been an adulteress for years and is proud of herself, and refuses to know any shame. Men and women together, completely unmoved, and even by the tragedies in their personal lives! The only thing you ever hear these days from a secular world is, ‘How can there be a God if he allows this to happen?’ not, ‘Is this telling me something about my unbelief and rebellion against God?’ And Jeremiah points this out. This is how hard the people of Judah were.

There is a warning for believers too. Always listen to the discipline of the Lord. If we should wander and neglect some vital duty; if we should commit some compromise with the world or some sin and there is a discipline upon us, then heed God’s warnings. First of all, the disciplines of God are gentle. It will begin with the troubling of the conscience. Listen to it. Be sensitive. Pray daily for a tender conference. Always respond and seek the Lord's help and get away from that thing that we have got into. If we don't, and conscience then fails to work, and we become brazen, and we make our compromise a regular thing – that particular lascivious programme on the television, the rubbish, the nonsense, and we even allow ourselves as God's people to be hooked or something like that, then the punishment becomes more severe, and something more burdensome to you. Listen to it; respond to it. Don't ever be in the position with worldliness or any sin, which those people got into with their idolatry, where they became so hardened that they were not touched anymore. What a tragedy to allow that to happen!

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Jeremiah (1-31) 3:2 Commentary and Bible Study