Jeremiah
I spent this morning reading Jeremiah 1-3. Wow. It’s amazing to me how easily I forget how holy God really is and how deeply my sin affects Him. In Jeremiah (when he speaks for God), he talks of Israel’s flippancy (that may not be a word, but I think you know what I mean, i.e. fickleness, lack of passion/persistence) in regard to their relationship to Him and His commands.
Jeremiah chapter 3:
1 “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.
2 “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.
3 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.
4 Have you not just called to me:
‘My Father, my friend from my youth,
5 will you always be angry?
Will your wrath continue forever?’
This is how you talk,
but you do all the evil you can.”
When I think about how I’ve treated the sin in my life (at least some of it anyway), it’s pretty unbelievable. God uses the picture of an unfaithful woman returning to a husband as if nothing is wrong. Each and every time I sin, I’m choosing something else (usually me) over God. And (metaphorically) I walk away from my spouse. Then I come back, “I love you. It was just a small affair (see: sin). We only had sex once. It was just a little bit.”
And when I think about it that way, it changes my perspective a little bit (see: total paradigm shift). Every sin is like an affair. I’ve chosen something else over the one to whom I made a commitment. It’s not just a little sin.
There’s no such thing as a little affair. I either abandoned my wife, or I didn’t. There is no in between. There is no, “If I only went this far it doesn’t count.” I chose another. I walked away from the one who gave up everything for me, shared an intimate relationship with another, and came back, expecting everything that was there before.
And I don’t know if it’s because I rationalize or if I just don’t want to be “that bad” or both, but I tend to trivialize the “smaller” sins in my life. “It’s just this one small thing. God will forgive me this one vice. I mean, it’s not one of the ‘big’ sins.”
But I’m pretty sure there’s no trivializing an affair. That’s a big deal. And I’m sure that’s the reason God used that picture for us. The relationship He longs for with me (and anyone else) is that intimate. (I know we don’t really like that word because it makes us uncomfortable, but every descriptive picture in the Bible of the relationship between God/Jesus and man is that of marriage.)
I hope I can begin to grasp the amazing picture God has laid out for me in Jeremiah so I can begin to honor the marriage, the commitment I made to Him.
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