Loving God
Jeremiah 2:1-8
2 The word of the Lord came to me, saying:
2Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord:
I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride,
how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.
3 Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest.
All who ate of it were held guilty; disaster came upon them,
says the Lord.
4 Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel.
5 Thus says the Lord:
What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me,
and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?
6 They did not say, ‘Where is the Lord
who brought us up from the land of Egypt,
who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits,
in a land of drought and deep darkness,
in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives?’
7 I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things.
But when you entered you defiled my land,
and made my heritage an abomination.
8 The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’
Those who handle the law did not know me;
the rulers (shepherds) transgressed against me;
the prophets prophesied by Baal, and went after things that do not profit.
God remembers back to the way it was when he brought the people out of slavery in Egypt. How Israel/Judah followed God. The people of Judah were in love with God (vs, 2). But the love cooled and the people of Judah went away from God, turning their back. God confronts the poor choice the people of Judah had made in choosing to follow things of little value in comparison to the immense value of bring God’s people (vs. 5).
Vs. 6 (and again in vs. 8) indicates just how far the people have drifted from God. They are not asking where God is, they are not seeking after God at all. Even as the potential threat of Babylon invading grows day by day, the people of Judah and their leaders do not ask where God is. God, they believe, is completely irrelevant to their lives. The love has not turned to anger and accusation, but instead to complete apathy, absolute indifference.
Apathy and indifference are far more destructive to spiritual life than is anger and accusation. When people are angry at God they at least think God can do something, that God matters in the world. When people are apathetic, indifferent to God, they don’t think God matters. God is, to their minds, not important, so why be angry at God, because God does not matter.
The opening line of vs. 8 is telling, “those who handle the law did not know me.” Those responsible for the exercise of justice in the Judah did not know the heart and mind of the author of the law, how could they possibly apply the law as God would desire. Widening that concept a bit further, to understand the Bible requires knowing God, loving God, to understand God’s heart and mind. Only then will we be able to understand the Bible.
PRAYER:
Lord God, you have done good things for us, and we praise your name. We love you. By the action of the Holy Spirit, stoke the fire of our love for you, that we might love you with all of our heart and mind and soul and strength. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.