Jeremiah 2:19,30

Jeremiah 2 reads like a sad story or tragedy. God tells Jeremiah to cry in the hearing of Jerusalem, saying what God tells him to. The story he recites is definitely tragic. It tells of how God brought Israel from slavery in Egypt through the wilderness and into the promised land, taking great care of them. And then it tells the story of their rejection of him in favour of all manner of idols. It asks serious questions, like: why? They had the true God, looking after them at every single step, providing for them and caring for them. And yet they are bored with this, and turn to idols made with their own hands. God asks them: where will your gods be when you call on My name to be saved? When the enemy rolls in and you are overwhelmed, who will you call on? Your Baals and Ashteroths? Or Me? In the end it is an almost despairing tone in which God says

‘In vain I have chastened your children;
They received no correction.
Your sword has devoured your prophets
Like a destroying lion’. (Jeremiah 2:30)

The Israelites had come to the point where they didn’t even want to be corrected in their ways: when God sent prophets to warn them and convict them, they killed them. It was a complete rebellion against God. But let us not think too lowly of these sinful Israelites, for where they sinned, we sin also.

Although we don’t have Baals and Ashteroths, we have television and music. We have no wooden gods sitting on our window sills, but we have sport. We might not mold golden images or golden calves, but we have vain celebrities, selfish ambition, computer games, and academia. We have worldliness. And God has given us many prophets, speaking by His word, warning us against these very things. And though we may not kill them, we silence them. Killing them in principle. They are the unwanted preachers, the unpopular pastors, the annoying (and convicting) voice that you find it hard to listen to. Those we defend ourselves against with arguments from ‘Christian liberty’ or ‘seeker-sensitive Gospel’. And, so we continue, God chastening us in vain because we are stubborn in our desire to please ourselves, to have fun, to be recognized by the world. But to this, God says:

‘ “Your own wickedness will correct you,
And your backslidings will rebuke you.
Know therefore and see that it is an evil and bitter thing
That you have forsaken the LORD your God,
And the fear of Me is not in you”
Says the Lord GOD of hosts.’ (Jeremiah 2:19)

The LORD doesn’t even have to stretch his hand to rebuke us: the way we choose to live our lives will do that for us. Because the rules and laws that God has set us are not arbitrary – they are for our benefit and well-being. When we contravene these laws, the only thing that can happen to us is harm. Maybe not immediately, but definitely in the long term. And so our own misguided lives will be our rebuke, our wickedness will show us the correct way.

Indeed, it is an evil and bitter thing when we forsake our God. When we have no fear of Him. Because it is the lack of the fear of God that leads us to idolatry. We know God to be true – as did the Israelites – but we become bored of this, since God is not to be seen, and so, lacking holy fear for Him, we turn to any other thing that can bring us pleasure in the immediate sense. As Jars of Clay say:

‘We are bored of all the things we know
Do you know what you are
'Cause we are, we are so in love with ourselves
And we are forms of all the things we love.’ (Good Monsters, 2006)

Let us turn back to God in all things. Let us not be bored by what we know, but let ‘deep call to deep’, in that the more we know, the more we yearn to know about God. The more we love Him, the more we want to love Him. Only then will we be able to forego our temporary idols and focus on the only One deserving of our praise and worship. This is what sacrifice is – giving up the right to control your life. Giving up what you love lots, for what you love best.