Jeremiah 4:19-31 No Turning Back
Jeremiah is in anguish over what he sees coming. But God will not relent. He KNOWS the hearts of His people and there is no turning back. Judgment is on the way!
I can feel Jeremiah’s pain! God is showing him clearer than any other person, at this time, what is on the horizon. And just as God would not relent in David’s punishment, neither will He relent in Judah’s. God is totally disgusted with His children! He even calls them “stupid children.”
This surprised me when God called His children “stupid.” This is a word I wouldn’t allow my children to use because it is a hurtful and angry word. This shows me just how angry God was! I was curious to see if it was just my ESV translation that labeled them with this word, so I went to BibleGateway.com and looked at this verse in all the English translations. “Stupid” was used in quite a few translations. Another common word was sottish (stupefied with or as if with drink; drunken). The Message translation gave me a chuckle and definitely brought it down to where we live today:
“What fools my people are! They have no idea who I am. A company of half-wits, dopes and donkeys all! Experts at evil but klutzes at good.”
In short, God had had it up to His eyeballs with His people’s behavior!
Jeremiah saw what God’s wrath was going to bring. How it would devastate ALL the cities of Judah and the land around it. He likened the result back to a pre-creation state. This would probably be akin to one of the sayings heard today depicting total devastation: “bombing them back to the stone age.” Nothing of the once beautiful and proud cities would remain. And with good reason. Their pride is what got them in trouble in the first place.
Pride in their own accomplishments. Pride in what they had created. Too proud to believe they needed anything they couldn’t find or acquire on their own. Too proud to humble themselves before God. Effectively becoming masters of their own disasters.
OH, how familiar this looks! How this description brings today’s world into alignment with Jeremiah’s time. I wonder how many were actually on their knees at the words of Jeremiah. Jeremiah certainly was. God didn’t ignore those prayers but neither did they have the effect the people were praying for; His relenting in what was to come. As a nation and people, they had gone too far. And the returns that they did proclaim were shallow and short lived.
Where are we on this spectrum? Have we reached the point of no return? We KNOW that there will be a point of no return because we have been given that information in several places in His word. How many heartfelt prayers will it take to give us a reprieve? How many are we in comparison to the evil ones in this world? Like when Abraham bargained with God for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, will He find enough to fill that lowest quantity of righteous men who would stave off His hand of judgment, even for a little while longer?
Father God, I want to be one of those that You count. I don’t know how far we are from the end, but I feel as if I can see it on the horizon. I KNOW I’m not the only one calling out to You for my nation and this world. But I also KNOW that there WILL be a point of no return.
I also KNOW that time will NOT be the end. There is joy in the morning; on the other side of it. Help ALL of us who are praying to hold onto that hope. Even if we are beyond judgment, we are NOT beyond hope! YOU are that hope. There is NO OTHER. Jesus is our ONLY salvation as HE IS THE ONLY SAVIOR.
