Jeremiah (1-31) 3:4 Commentary and Bible Study

‘Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?’ Jeremiah was very fond of rhetorical questions, and there are going to be two here, one after the other in verse 4 and verse 5, which he doesn't intend to be answered. But he knows the answer; it is obvious, and he is just making a point. It connects with what has come just before. Are you going to cry unto God at this time that the rains have been withheld and famine has struck? Are you going to say, ‘My father, thou art the guide of my youth’? Certainly not. That is the last thing they are going to do. When the Holy Spirit works in our hearts, only then do we feel that we have a Father in heaven and a Creator God, and we sincerely cry out to him, a personal God: ‘Thou art the guide of my youth.’ But Israel was in a state of rebellion and refused to look to God. Yet this is what they should have done. That would have been a right response.The second question is in verse 5: ‘Will he reserve his anger for ever? will he keep it to the end?’ Will God reserve it in the sense of hold it back, keep back his anger for ever and ever and ever, so that you never see it? And the answer is, certainly not. ‘Will he keep it to the end?’ to the ultimate vanishing point, so that you don't have to worry about it; you will never know it in your life, or even afterwards. Again the answer is, ‘No, of course he will not hold it back, and refrain from exercising his anger and his judgment forever, and yet you are behaving as though he never will.’ You are gambling with your eternal soul.It is not as if you have not already done enough to be judged. Your sins are stacked up high. They are long overdue the judgment of God. You have gone through religious exercises, and you may have spoken words of repentance, and you may have confessed the Lord in your worship of the true God, but at the same time you have kept your sinful behaviour. So the prayer, the repentance, the worship, was not legitimate, not valid, not heard. It was an offence to God; it was accompanied by wrongdoing. ‘As thou couldest’ – although it has got an old-fashioned word ending, it is a marvellous translation. You have been as bad as you could have been, and you have done it simply because you could do it. You wanted to do it, and you pleased yourself, and you didn't hesitate. You went ahead and lived a life away from God, to the limit of what you could do.