PROPHETIC MESSAGES Lesson # 9
Jeremiah 3:1-11.
THE NECESSITY OF ADMITTING GUILT
I. Introduction:
Q Do children readily admit to being guilty when they have done something wrong?
Q Do you remember a time when you were guilty but did not confess?
Q How did you feel when you did not share? What did it do to your relationship with your parents or a friend if the friend was involved?
Note: Let me talk about something even more scary or more dangerous….
Q Do you know of people who do wrong and do not think they are guilty?
An = I am not talking about people we disagree with and who have yet to see the vast superiority of our thinking, our point of view and our magnificence. I am talking about those who do commonly agreed upon evil deeds and deeds everyone can recognize as evil not just evil done to you.
Q What is dangerous about this?
An = They are living a delusion. Part of their perceptive ability is now damaged. We have a name for these people.
Q What do we call people who have no proper sense of guilt?
An = Sociopaths and they are a dangerous type of person.
Note: Jeremiah was dealing with “religious sociopaths”, and his task is a daunting one as he attempts to help them “see reality”. He must get intense if he is to get through to them and show them the “path of hope”.
II. A Poem of Accusation: Jeremiah 3:1-5.
>>>> Have someone read Jeremiah 3:1-3.
“If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him and marries another man, should he return to her again? Would not the land be completely defiled? But you have lived as a prostitute with many lovers – would you now return to me?” declares the Lord.
Look up to the barren heights and see. Is there any place where you have not been ravished? By the roadside you sat waiting for lovers, sat like a nomad in the desert. You have defiled the land with your prostitution and wickedness.
Therefore the showers have been withheld, and no spring rains have fallen. Yet you have the brazen look of a prostitute; you refuse to blush with shame.
Q What are the questions about that Jeremiah speaks of in 3:1? What does Jeremiah want them to think about?
An = That it is improper for a woman to be married to another man and then return to her former husband. Does a man want to be married to a woman who is sometimes loyal, sometimes not?
Q What is Jeremiah accusing them of at the end of verse 1?
An = He accuses them of “occasional loyalty”. Sometimes Israel is following God and other times or at the same time she has other gods. She is a spiritual harlot, a spiritual whore. They play around with other loyalties but still “turn” to God.
EXAMPLE: This is like a “drug mother” who is an occasional mother. At times she wants her child or children but at other times she wants nothing to do with them. Such actions can seriously harm or even destroy a child.
Q Are some Christians like this?
An = Jeremiah is instructed to call them spiritual harlots.
Q Does anyone know what Baal was supposed to control?
An = He was the rain god. He was often pictured with a lightning bolt in his hand. He was the god who was prayed to for rain. He was tied to financial success because in a farming community that depended on rain fall and not rivers for irrigation the rain cycle was crucial to prosperous times.
Q What were the results of such spiritual adultery according to 3:3?
An = God brought on economic disaster by messing with the rain cycle. So the very god they worshipped in defiance of the Lord was not able to give them what they wanted. Jeremiah is saying God has tried to get Israel’s attention by showing them that their disloyal actions with Baal were foolish. This would be similar to God collapsing someone’s finances who worshipped financial success over loyalty to God.
Note: Sadly, they still did not admit they were wrong. They refused to admit their guilt.
>>>> Have someone read Jeremiah 3:4-5.
Have you not just called to me: ‘My Father, my friend from my youth, will you always be angry? Will your wrath continue forever?’ This is how you talk but you do all the evil you can.”
Q What is Israel saying in verse 4?
An = They are assured that they have been friends with God since their beginning. They claim to be on such good terms with God that they can call Him their friend. Many Americans mistreated the American Indians and Blacks but they did not think they did wrong, and kept going loyally to church.
Q Are such people aware of their true standing with God?
An = No, they are not. This is often the case with those who are disloyal to the Lord. They really do not see that they have forsaken the true worship of the Lord. They wanted to keep the psychological and financial advantages that such behavior brought them because they worshipped money. Such worship kept them blind.
Note: The first part of 3:5 seems to ask “will the Lord be forever angry?” This could be a speech by Israel saying, “We are sure that we are on good terms because we have been religious for a long time, therefore God will get over His anger. He will cool down.” Israel is counting on their long religious association to weather the storm of God’s displeasure.
Q Do you know church people who think the same way?
Q What kind of answer is the end of 3:5 to the question of how long will the Lord be angry?
An = In Hebrew there are three phrases. You have spoken, you have done evil deeds and you have had your own way. The NIV and RSV has decided to translate only two verbs and use the first one to say Israel is talking like they are God’s friend but really are doing evil. The NASB and KJV translations do a better job of rendering the Hebrew. In Hebrew there are three verbs. Israel was talking a good game of religious familiarity, but had done evil and did it as they were able. They did it their way.
Note: Adam and Eve were given the freedom of choice to decide who was to determine what actions were good and what actions were bad. So the devil told Eve, you will be a greater person if you become the one who decides what is good and what is bad.
>>>> Have someone read Genesis 3:5
“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Note: This is what the Bible says was mankind’s original error. They wanted to decide what was good and what was evil. They wanted to possess the knowledge of good and evil and not let God define what was good and what was evil. Israel was speaking a lot of religious language but doing evil when it was available to them.
Q Does this sound like America?
Note: The key to religious authenticity is being willing to repent of what one has done in the past. If we have no shame of our past actions then we have no hope of ever getting right with God. If we whitewash our past mistakes we remain in religious delusion no matter what we claim.
III. A Yahweh Monologue: A Review of Israel and Judah’s Past. Jeremiah 3:6-11.
Q What is a monologue?
An = It is when someone speaks to themselves, or does all the talking and others present just listen. This is what Jeremiah is going to present next. It is the Lord speaking on an issue that was no doubt much talked about during King Josiah’s day. As they were in a very prosperous time and were regaining much of the Northern Kingdom of Israel’s former territory they must have discussed how the Northern Kingdom had been taken out of existence by Assyria over 100 years previously. Northern Israel had been the larger country of the two Israelite nations but had disappeared from history.
Q Do we often speak of the errors and misfortunes of “other” churches or “denominations”? I am sure you never did this but can you give me an example of someone else doing this (smile!)?
An = This is the Lord’s answer to those who find fault with other groups of religious believers. Remember Jeremiah is speaking to Judah. Israel had been wiped out by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. I am sure the people of Judah felt themselves spiritually and morally superior to their northern cousins from Israel.
>>>> Have someone read Jeremiah 3:6-7.
During the reign of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, “Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every spreading tree and has committed adultery there. I thought that after she had done all this she would return to me but she did not, and her unfaithful sister Judah saw it.
Q Israel is called what and Judah is called what in these two verses?
An = Israel is called “faithless” from the Hebrew word meshubah. This Hebrew word means “one who turns away” or is fickle. Judah is called bagodah which comes from the Hebrew word meaning to “betray”. So one is fickle and the other is a betrayer. Neither is a positive portrayal!!
Q What did Judah watch Israel refuse to do?
An = She saw Israel refused to “turn”. She was disloyal to God and then refused to repent or turn from their behavior at the preaching of the prophets like Hosea, Amos, Elijah, or Elisha, etc.
>>>> Have someone read Jeremiah 3:8-9.
I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery. Because Israel’s immorality mattered so little to her, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood.
Q Did Judah learn from Israel’s mistake?
An = No. They did not. They saw the judgment. The Lord divorced Israel and Assyria demolished her as a nation. This did not cause fear in the heart of Judah but instead she went on with her own form of sinning.
Q Do you know of people who have watched the consequences of bad or sinful behavior but did not learn from the destruction of their friends or acquaintances’ lives?
>>>> Have someone read Jeremiah 3:10-11.
In spite of all this, her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to me with all her heart, but only in pretense,” declares the Lord. The Lord said to me, “Faithless Israel is more righteous than unfaithful Judah.
Q What additional sin does Judah commit?
An = They repent only half-heartedly they only repent in words. She adds an additional sin and that is the sin of deception. She is disloyal to God but all the time only pretends to repent.
Q Do we humans have this capacity to repent half-way?
Q How do we do this?
Note: There is an amazing play on words that takes place in these verses. Israel in 6 a, 8 a, and 11 b is called “turnable”. Turnable Israel turned from God. Faithless Israel did not repent or turn from their turning. Israel turned from God but did not turn to God in repentance.
Judah is called by the adjective of “betraying” in 7 e, 8 d, 10 a, and 11 b as well as called deceptive.
Q Who is the more sinful of the two nations according to Jeremiah? Is it the “other” people or his own nation?
Q What would this sound like if we applied this to our day and age?
An = You could place your church’s name instead of Judah’s and the rival religious group your denomination broke away from in the place of Israel’s name.
Note: If we re-read 6:11 to them with these two modern names in place of Israel and Judah the preaching of Jeremiah becomes frightening material.
Q Do Jeremiah’s sermons fit our nation? How?
Q What is God going to do?
IV. Next Week we will see how Jeremiah will answer. It may surprise you! Read for next week: Jeremiah 3:12-18