This Week's Focus Passage

Jeremiah 3:6: ‘Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done?’

Jeremiah 3:6: ‘Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done?’

Moreover Jehovah said unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot. And I said after she had done all these things, she will return unto me; but she returned not: and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. And I saw, when, for this very cause that backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a bill of divorcement, yet treacherous Judah her sister feared not; but she also went and played the harlot. And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that the land was polluted, and she committed adultery with stones and with stocks. And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not returned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly, saith Jehovah. —Jeremiah 3:6-10

     Have we not sadly witnessed the downgrade of the professing church of Jesus Christ across this land? Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? May we presume, arrogantly, that it has not affected us in any way at all? Paul has warned us very clearly in his first letter to the church at Corinth, Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall—10:12. We, each one of us, by the remaining pride in our Adamic nature, most likely are among those who think that we stand, and are not likely to fall. If so, we are guilty of sinful pride, and we have forgotten what we are apart from the grace of our God through Christ. Isaiah calls us to look unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged—51:1. The problem is that we do forget to look into our beginnings. Is this not most likely exactly the guilt of Judah’s foolishness? Mankind is incredibly capable of failing to look into the mirror. If Judah had looked into a mirror, she most likely would have seen the terrible image of her likeness to ‘backsliding Israel.’
     We are unhappily too much like Judah in this. We are altogether too prone to respond with the asseveration that ‘nothing like that could ever happen to me.’ We may well sit down, as it were, and analyze just how we think that it was that some others could walk so close to the edge of some reckless behavior, or blatant sin, without pulling back ‘in the nick of time.’ We are so apt to think too highly of ourselves, engendering the assumption that we might know just how close we can come to the pit of hell without falling headlong into the same. We are reminded of John Bunyan’s ‘Book for boys and girls.’ The well-known author of Pilgrim’s Progress is much less known for these poems for children. They would not likely be considered to be okay for children in our day. This is not because they are loaded with violence and sex, but because they are loaded with truth. Listen to this poem that Bunyan wrote about ‘The Fly and the Candle’:

What ails this fly thus desperately to enter
A combat with the candle? Will she venture
To clash at light? Away, thou silly fly;
Thus doing thou wilt burn thy wings and die.
But ‘tis a folly her advice to give,
She’ll kill the candle, or she will not live.
Slap, says she, at it; then she makes retreat.
Nor doth the candle let her quite escape,
But gives some little check unto the ape:
Throws up her heels it doth, so down she falls,
Where she lies sprawling, and for succor calls.
When she recovers, up she gets again,
And at the candle comes with might and main,
But now behold, the candle takes the fly,
And holds her, till she doth by burning die.

It is most conspicuous that Bunyan’s allusion is relevant to the history of Israel and Judah found in our focus passage this week. Judah is represented by this foolish moth that imagined she could ‘play with fire’ and not get burned. This is extreme fallacy. Yet the ingrained thought of some sort of invincibility is very prevalent among the sons of Adam. It’s always some other guy that drinks and drives, that is killed in some horrific collision. It is always some other person that cheats on their income tax, that gets audited; not us! It is always some other fly that imagines they can play with fire, that gets burned; not us! By nature, we seem incapable of learning, or at the very least unwilling, to learn from the mistakes of others. Especially would we as parents wish that our children would learn from our mistakes. We can tell them until we’re blue in the face that we did such and such when we were their age, and it did not work out well at all.

     Here in our focus passage, we find God Himself making the same sort of lament when He must utter, And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not returned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly. This is the end of the matter after He has remonstrated with Judah most plaintively, Hast thou not seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? This grieving Father seems hardly to be able to believe that Judah, even after witnessing the punishment that Israel justly received for their sins, would not return to Him. And I saw, when for this very cause that backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a bill of divorcement, yet treacherous Judah her sister feared not; but she also went and played the harlot.

     M. Henry says of God’s dealings with Israel and Judah, “The treachery of those who pretend to cleave to God will be reckoned for, as well as the apostasy of those who openly revolt from him.” “Judah feared not, but thought herself safe because she had Levites to be her priests and sons of David to be her kings.” Does this speak of what we call today, ‘nominal Christianity’? May God be pleased to rescue many among the deceived in such church communities. May He put His fear in our hearts that we do not depart from Him as did ‘treacherous Judah.’

David Farmer, elder
Fellowship Bible Church

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