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Jeremiah 3:22-25 – Please Repent
All of us, even if we bear just a slight resemblance to God, have ached and pled for a loved one to change and repent. God loves His children, even when they sin. God loves His children, despite their sin. Consequences and chastisements are burdens of love not only to those under their infliction, but also to those inflicting the punishment. Sin hurts; punishment hurts; love hurts. That is why we ache when we plead for someone to repent.
A parent, a friend, a sibling, a loved one, must love us enough to help us learn to be better; to help us learn to be more like God – even if that lesson is hard to bear for both “the sinner and the saint.”
Faithful are the wounds of a friend,
But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy. (Proverbs 27:6)
God – our parent, our friend, and a loved one, loved Israel. He loved them enough to be hurt by their sin. He loved them enough to plea that they repent. He loved them enough to finally send them away into captivity when they outright refused repentance, and when they feigned repentance because they did not return to (God) with all her heart, but rather in deception. (Jeremiah 3:10).
May we learn from their lesson to repent…fully repent.
In Jeremiah 3:22, we see what God begged His children to do. “Return, O faithless sons, I will heal your faithlessness (Jeremiah 3:22). Can we all hear in those words God aching? God would and could heal their faithfulness because throughout it all, He remained faithful. Even sending them away into captivity proved his faithfulness – for He kept His word, no matter how much it hurt (Psalm 15:4c).
In Jeremiah 3:22-25 we see what Israel needed to do in order to return:
- #1 – Admit Humbleness – [22] “Behold, we come to You.”
- #2 – Admit God’s Rightful Place – [22] “For You are the LORD our God.
- #3 – Admit Sinfulness – [23] “Surely, the hills are a deception, A tumult on the mountains.” This would be a place of idol worship – what they replaced God with.
- #4 – Admit God is the Only Solution – [23] “Surely in the LORD our God Is the salvation of Israel.”
- #5 – Admit Shame – [24] “But the shameful thing has consumed the labor of our fathers since our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. [25] “Let us lie down in our shame, and let our humiliation cover us; for we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day. And we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.”
Repentance is far more than flippantly saying, “Oops, I made a mistake.” Repentance is far more the offender demanding forgiveness from the one offended. God further explains repentance in Jeremiah 4:1-2. God’s description of a return (v.1; 3:22) is an involved action:
- Repentance Involves Positive Action – “Then you should return to Me.
- Repentance Involves Negative Action – And if you will put away your detested things from My presence. Repentance and Conversion are never just a negative action. Spirituality is not simply removing sin – it is replacing self with God.
- Repentance Involves Continual Action – And will not waver.
- Repentance Involves Verbal Action – And you will swear, ‘As the LORD lives,’ In truth, in justice and in righteousness;
Analogies often help the spiritually blind to see more clearly. God gave two analogies in our text to help us all better understand (4:3-4) repentance.
- #1 Analogy – Repentance Involves Outward Action – Remove from our Life Obstacles: “Break up your fallow ground and do not sow among thorns. Plowing would remove obstacles such as thorns – sometimes we have to break down before we can build up. Removing what is in the way of a good relationship with God is essential to a successful repentance and conversion (i.e., Parable of the Sower).
- #2 Analogy – Repentance Involves Inward Action – Remove from our Heart Obstacles: “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD and remove the foreskins of your heart. To a Jew, or Israelite, to be considered “uncircumcised” would be a great insult – if not the greatest of insults. God basically said that He had no covenant with them due to their hearts (Jeremiah 9:25-26). Why? Because they needed to repent.
God loved Israel enough to give them the tools of true repentance. He let them know what they needed to do. Therein lies a lesson for us as to what is required in repentance – for ourselves and for others. And this is something we all need to do to become more like God.
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