PERSONAL STUDY AND TEACHING IN JEREMIAH – PART 9 – JUDAH THE HARLOT BLINDED BY SIN POLLUTED THE LAND
PART 9 - Jeremiah 2:36 – 3:1-5
CHAPTERS 2 AND 3
[A]. THEIR END WILL COME IN REJECTION – GOD REJECTS THE NATIONS ON WHOM JUDAH RELIES
{{Jeremiah 2:36-37 “Why do you go around so much changing your way? Also, you shall be put to shame by Egypt as you were put to shame by Assyria. From this place also you shall go out with your hands on your head, for the LORD has rejected those in whom you trust, and you shall not prosper with them.”}}
The prophet challenges them regarding their indecisiveness and their fickleness and their instability. They are always changing their ways. An unstable man or nation is always changing procedures and patterns and laws. The nation in its last days was forever switching from one allegiance to another, to one god from another. They had done away with the absolutes of God, so they were on sandy ground and grasped one thing after another as they came along, in their endeavour not to sink further into uncertainty and meaninglessness. Any person without God lives a meaningless and uncertain life.
The Christian has the hope of God abiding in his soul and that is certainty. We live in times when uncertainty has overtaken us, as nations pursue all the latest fads because they have no stability and latch onto what appears trendy and popular. This is a recipe for failure for God wants certainty and stability.
Jeremiah asked the question but Judah had no answer. It could not answer because it was blind to the root of its problem, and indifferent to its solution. It was bound up in idolatry and all reason and godliness had gone. The prophets thundered but the words were empty to souls seared by false Baalism. The prophets were killed and persecuted for the nation had no sense of right or wrong.
It was Isaiah who said, {{Isaiah 5:20 “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”}} They knew not evil from good. There were none righteous, no, not one of them. Judah had changed allegiance from God to Assyria, then to Egypt thinking that would help them against Assyria and the growing power of Babylon. Assyria had failed them in the past and Egypt would do so in the future. Earlier in verse 18 Jeremiah spoke of the roads to Assyria and Egypt. All this had come about because they had cast aside Jehovah and adopted the strange gods of the nations.
Verse 37 tells us God has rejected Egypt so Judah will not prosper in its new connection with Egypt. Egypt is a broken reed and Judah can not lean on it for security. It will pierce the nation’s hand and wound them to become prey for Babylon. The nation is finished and in that last verse of the chapter the message is one of defeat. The defeated captives will be paraded out with hands on heads to show submission and they’d be led away to Babylon. Among them would be Daniel and a remnant of others who did trust the true God and had not bowed down to idols. Their hands on their heads was a sign of national defeat but the faithful ones were victors with the Lord in their hearts.
[B]. JUDAH IS THE ACCEPTING HARLOT WHO POLLUTED THE LAND
{{Jeremiah 3:1 God says, “If a husband divorces his wife and she goes from him and belongs to another man, will he still return to her? Will not that land be completely polluted? Nonetheless you are a harlot with many lovers yet you turn to Me,” declares the LORD.
Verse 1. The chapter opens with another question where marriage is used as the example. The nation is asked if a husband who divorces his wife and she then remains with another husband, would she return to her first husband? Now we know that is most unlikely, for a husband who divorces is not likely to accept the first woman back. That is the way of the world. However it is God and the nation in view here, and with God, things work differently.
God had divorced the nation, for the wife of Jehovah had been with many idolatrous lovers, and has committed gross spiritual adultery. God divorced the nation and it has spent ages in the arms of other men. In fact for 2500 years almost, Israel has continued in the state of divorcement, and will continue as such until the Jews supernaturally turn to the Lord in repentance, and come back into His presence, all after the Rapture). The answer to Jeremiah’s question then is, “Yes.” The Lord accepts the wife back again and she will remain with Him forever as the wife of Jehovah. In Israel’s absence the Lord has sought a Gentile Bride, then in eternity, Jew and Gentile will be surrounded by the love of the Husband/Bridegroom.
There are exact parallels here to what Hosea experienced. This is what God told him to do – {{Hosea 1:2-3 When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “GO, TAKE TO YOURSELF A WIFE OF HARLOTRY, and have children of harlotry, for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the LORD,” so he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.”}} Gomer remained unfaithful and represents unfaithful Israel. Yet Gomer would not continue unfaithful forever for the story continues in chapter 3. The unfaithful wife is bought back, and that is the price of Calvary, when the Lord bought his Bride the Church, but also redeemed unfaithful Israel as the wife of Jehovah –
{{Hosea 3:1-5 Then the LORD said to me, “GO AGAIN, LOVE A WOMAN WHO IS LOVED BY HER HUSBAND, yet an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes,” SO I BOUGHT HER FOR MYSELF for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley. Then I said to her, “You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man - so I will also be toward you,” FOR THE SONS OF ISRAEL WILL REMAIN FOR MANY DAYS WITHOUT KING OR PRINCE, WITHOUT SACRIFICE OR SACRED PILLAR, AND WITHOUT EPHOD OR HOUSEHOLD IDOLS. AFTERWARD THE SONS OF ISRAEL WILL RETURN AND SEEK THE LORD THEIR GOD AND DAVID THEIR KING, and they will come trembling to the LORD and to His goodness in the last days.”}} Israel has remained unfaithful for two and a half thousand years, but during the Tribulation, will return to the LORD and so “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-28)
The wife (Israel) will return to Jehovah at the end of time and this is the harlot wife’s account of her experience – {{Hosea 6:1-3 “Come, LET US RETURN TO THE LORD for He has torn us, but He will heal us. He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. HE WILL REVIVE US AFTER TWO DAYS. He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him, so let us know, LET US PRESS ON TO KNOW THE LORD. His going forth is as certain as the dawn and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.”}}. Great is the love of God right through unfaithfulness, and sometimes we are just as faithless as Israel/Judah was. If anyone reading this has turned away from the Lord, return to Him in repentance and He will abundantly pardon.
Jeremiah 2 verse 1 says that Judah’s idolatry has polluted the land, and that completely. The nation is a harlot with many lovers, all of them substitutes for Jehovah. Bare-faced, the nation deliberately chose individually to reject their God and bowed down to wood and stone and the craftsmanship of men’s hands, to lifeless forms, to the gods of the nations. In that state the people had a warped sense of the true God, probably counting Jehovah among the plethora of gods in its collection. In difficulty, such as a threatened invasion, the nation might seek some sacrifice to Jehovah as a mark of a false return to Him but will He receive her? The answer to Jeremiah’s question is, “No”. Thus in the immediate sense the answer is “No” for God has rejected what He has divorced, but in the future sense, the answer is “Yes” because it will be a national repentance and Jehovah is waiting in love to receive them.
[C]. THE HARLOT RECEIVED HER EARNINGS BUT THEY WERE BITTER
{{Jeremiah 3:2-3 “Lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see. Where have you not been violated? By the roads you have sat for them like an Arab in the desert, and YOU HAVE POLLUTED A LAND WITH YOUR HARLOTRY AND WITH YOUR WICKEDNESS. Therefore the showers have been withheld, and there has been no spring rain, yet you had a harlot’s forehead. YOU REFUSED TO BE ASHAMED.”}}
In verse 2 you have the reality and in verse 3 you have the consequence. The nation was commanded to lift up its eyes and look to the bare hills and cliffs and to consider where there was any place it had not been violated. This violation is through the pursuit of idolatry, associated with the rejection of Jehovah, and all over the land this craving had left the land spiritually polluted and full of wickedness. Looking to bare heights is a stark reality for it is harsh and empty. People who live in pleasant places of natural beauty can look up and see a picturesque scene that is calming and satisfying, but in Judah, it was harsh, bare and repulsive. It was not pleasant and that is how it was to God. There was nothing decent in the land for sin and idolatry was everywhere.
Jeremiah gives a simile where he compares the nation with a waiting Arab sitting by the roads. My understanding is that the Arab would welcome any visitor and have a connection with that person. Arabs, or desert Bedouins are noted for their hospitality to strangers, but Israel sits by the roads welcoming and accepting all wayfarers (and here, they are evil idolatrous systems, her own lovers as she waits and lusts for them) that came along. Israel would embrace everything evil, and as a consequence, the land was polluted by wickedness.
Israel’s blessings are always in the land, and when they walked with God, He blessed the land, but when they departed from their Lord, He withheld His blessings from the land. Over and over again in all the prophets, it is understood that the main blessing was the rains, the former and latter rains, the Spring rains and the Autumn rains for the harvest. Israel knew precisely that this was the case but it defiantly refused to repent to come back to God. They suffered by famine and hardship, by enemy incursion and plague, but they refused to repent and get right with God. It was obvious that God was displeased, for the rains had been withheld, but the people were stubborn because they had embraced other masters, especially master Baal.
It is a quirk of the evil, sinful nature that when a person departs from the right way, and enters into the dens of wickedness, that person has no intention of turning from his evil way. Satan has his hooks so firmly into that person that he has no will or strength to escape. He does not want to escape.
Jeremiah says that Judah had a harlot’s forehead, so it is assumed that this was a mark upon the forehead that indicated she was a prostitute in her trade. It was a mark easily recognised by her lovers that marked her out. The nation had this mark upon her, and it was so clearly inscribed on her because she had many lovers, and was notorious in her pursuit of idolatrous lovers. All the heathen gods were adopted and accepted. Hosea could say of Israel that it was joined to idols, like stuck fast with super glue, but Judah is now no different. Even though it had almost the best king of all the kings of Judah in the person of Josiah, the nation was grossly evil and was on its last legs.
The last thought in this verse was that Judah refused to be ashamed. Her shame, combined with the stench of idolatrous practices, was upon her, smothering her, yet she felt no shame or remorse or even genuine repentance, but carried on headlong towards her destruction. The feeling of shame is a good step along the way to repentance, but Judah was incapable even of that. Her fate was sealed.
[D]. SIN BLINDFOLDS THE TRUE REALITY OF SPIRITUAL CONDITION
{{Jeremiah 3:4-5 Have you just not now called to Me, ‘My Father, You are the friend of my youth? Will He be angry forever? Will He be indignant to the end?’ Behold, you have spoken and have done evil things, and you have had your way.”}}
God passes on an observation of the nation. Judah will make empty statements like, “God is our friend since the time of Abraham and Moses (inferred)”, the friend of their youth or former days. This is nothing more than a self-delusion. They were not aware of the seriousness of current reality, and such is the way of sin that it blinds and distorts the true standing of a man in God’s eyes. It will not allow him to see the things as they are. I think the worse a man or woman is joined to sin, then the greater the blurriness of that person’s position becomes. Sin is the cancer that overtakes the ability to repent. It is the true actor’s mask that hides the true state of his soul from exposure, and allows the person to continue in the numbness of true reality.
This distortion is such that Judah just can’t believe that God will be angry forever or maintain His anger and holiness until the end. Surely He will overlook them or accept them regardless of the errors they made or the mistresses they had or the devious way they may have carried out their business. It is a bit like some funerals. The priests stands there and says the person has gone to a better place and is in the presence of God, and at rest, when the reality was, that the person had no time for God and was an unrepentant sinner. It is the devil’s lie, the same lie that overtook the people of Judah who rejected Jeremiah’s message, for they did not repent and were taken into captivity. Self-deception was their motto, the same one many have today.
Jeremiah tried to bring them to reality by telling them they had spoken and performed what was evil – they had done evil things. He further told them, “You have had your own way.” This is the reckless, selfish, self-determined rebellion against God. They did what they wanted and there was no consideration of God in the matter. They were a stubborn, stiff-necked, rebellious people but there was no room for conviction, and the more the prophet spoke to them, the more they justified themselves. A prophet’s life was one of rejection and persecution, but he was sustained in the will of God.
