Open your copies of God’s word to Jeremiah 3. As you are turning to this place in the scriptures, I want to remind you about what the prophet Jeremiah is doing. God has called Jeremiah to preach to the nation of Judah, the southern nation that remained after Assyria destroyed the northern nation, Israel. Jeremiah has been telling the people about how they are addicted to their sinning. The people are unable to see the foolishness and emptiness of following their sinful hearts. We looked at these points in chapter 2. The people have traded away living waters for broken cisterns. They have exchanged life for death. What Jeremiah is going to talk about in Jeremiah 3 is about the need for guilt and shame.
Enabling Clarity (Jeremiah 3:1-5)
The Lord begins by providing clarity to the situation the people of God have put themselves. He illustrates the polluted situation is Jeremiah 3:1. If a man divorces his wife and she goes to another man, can he return to her? The answer is no based on Deuteronomy 24. Doing this would be a great defilement. Now God points out the problem. The people have not just left the Lord for one lover. They have left the Lord for multiple lovers. They have acted like a prostitute with all of their idolatry. Look at the shocking question in verse 2. Where have you not been immoral? Where have you not polluted the land with our idolatry? Your idols are on every height in the land. Now look again at the end of verse 1. Do you think you can return to the Lord? You have left the Lord and have been immoral with many lovers all over the land. Do you think you can come back to the land with all of this promiscuity?
God goes further to say in verse 3 that he has tried to provide them clarity to their problem by withholding the showers and spring rains. But the people are stubborn. They are hardheaded. They refuse to be ashamed of their actions. Not only are they not ashamed, they think they can call the Lord their Father and friend since the days of their youth. They think God won’t continue to be angry with their sinning. They think God will be their Father and friend rather than their judge. Since they have been God’s people for so long, surely God will overlook their sinning. Look at the end of verse 5. You call me Father. But you continue to do all the evil you can.
As we begin our lesson, what I want us to see clearly that the problem with the people is that they refuse to be ashamed. They are brazen with their sins. They are stubborn in their behaviors. This will be a repeated problem throughout Jeremiah 3-4. The people refuse to be ashamed. The culture of Judah is like the culture of our world today. Our culture teaches that you should not be ashamed of anything. You should not be made to feel guilty about anything you feel or do. You should be proud of your behaviors and lifestyles. In fact, you should be ashamed of trying to make me feel shame and guilt. God is telling us that this is a problem. There is a goodness to feeling guilt and shame. But we try to erase that goodness and make it evil.
Enabling Genuineness (Jeremiah 3:6-11)
Now the Lord explains to Jeremiah what Judah has done. As we read this paragraph I want us to see that this message from the Lord came during the reign of King Josiah. Josiah was a very good king over Judah who initiated many spiritual reforms to try to turn the people back to God. But listen to what the nation’s condition is during Josiah’s reign.
The Lord begins by describing what happened in Israel, the northern nation, before it was judged and destroyed. Faithless Israel did the same thing, playing the whore on every high hill and under every green tree. There was idolatry spread throughout all of their land also. The Lord thought that Israel would return to her after all of her evil, but she also refused to return and was destroyed. Now look at the end of verse 7. The people of Judah saw what happened to Israel. They saw Israel’s unfaithfulness. They saw that the Lord sent her away for her immorality. But treacherous Judah did not fear and did not learn (3:8). The people of Judah committed the same sins as faithless Israel. They did not care that they were sinning against the Lord. They were indifferent to their defilements and wickedness (3:9). In spite of seeing what happened to Israel, look at what Judah did according to verse 10. “Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense.” The people acted like they were changing, but they did not really change. They claimed to return to the Lord, but it was fake. It was for show. There was not a true repentance. Even though Josiah was trying to turn the people back to the Lord, all the people did was fake it. They pretended to turn back to the Lord. But you cannot fake out the Lord. So in verse 11 God proclaims that faithless Israel was more righteous than treacherous Judah. The point is that Judah knew what their behavior meant and what the consequences would be because they saw it happen to Israel. But they committed those same sins anyway. Judah threw away its advantages. They had Israel’s example of failure. They had the kings from the lineage of David to lead them. They had the temple in Jerusalem. Yet they committed the same sins as faithless Israel.
I want us to see that when we lack guilt and shame, then there is no motive to experience true repentance. They took their sins lightly. They were not bothered by the wickedness they were committing. They did not care that their land was full of false gods and their hearts were full of idols. Friends, we should be terrified if we are not bothered by our sins. We should be frightened if we do not feel any guilt when we sin against the Lord. If we are brazen with our sins, then we are in a hopeless situation because their is no way to convict the heart. I have sat down with people who claim to be Christians who have committed grievous and serious sins. It is shocking to sit down with the person and hear them say seeming words of sorrow. But their eyes show that they are stubborn and brazen. There is no guilt. There is no brokenness. There is no devastation of heart. They are going through the motions to get me off of their back. There needs to be guilt and shame to provoke repentance. You see the Lord say this in the next paragraph.
Enabling Repentance (Jeremiah 3:12-14)
The Lord tells Jeremiah to proclaim this message toward the north. To speak to the north means to speak to Israel, even though Israel has already been captured by Assyria and scattered. But the message proclaimed is to show the way back home to the Lord. The message is for Israel to return. Now I want us to think about this picture. God proclaimed that bringing your spouse back after being promiscuous with many lovers would be a defilement (3:1). Further, God said that he did give Israel a decree of divorce for all of her infidelity and immorality (3:8). But even still God says, “Return, faithless Israel.” How can the people return? What the people have done is too sinful, isn’t it? Haven’t their sins made repentance impossible?
Look at the rest of verse 12. God says that you can still return because God is merciful. God’s unfailing love means that even though wrath is deserved, God will not look on you in anger. God will not be angry forever. Now I want us to think about what God said because the people have abused this message. God says that he is full of mercy and will not be angry forever. So return to him. Remember that the people of Judah were saying this, which is recorded in verses 4-5. Were the people right? Can we continue sinning and God will eventually get over it? No, not at all. Note carefully the way back to God in verse 13.
“Only acknowledge your guilt” (Jeremiah 3:13). You need to acknowledge what you have done. You need to admit that you have rebelled against the Lord. You need to admit that you have turned from God and ran to your idols. Confess that you have done wrong. Admit your guilt. Do you see the goodness of guilt and shame? We need our guilt to move us to acknowledgement. We need our shame to move us to confession. The worst thing we can do is try to suppress our guilt. The worst thing we can do is to ignore our shame. Guilt and shame are blessings from God to move you to repentance. The first step to experience the mercy of the Lord and return to him is to acknowledge your guilt. I cannot tell you how often I have sat down with people who have committed sins against God and against others, only to tell me that they have done nothing wrong. They deny their sins. They pretend that they did nothing wrong. God says that he will take us back. The problem is not that we have committed sin. The problem is that we will not admit that we have committed sin.
Friends, we cannot come back to God without confession. We cannot return without admitting what we did. Our guilt and shame is supposed to lead us confession, not a coverup, denial, or dismissive behavior. Listen to how the apostle Paul spoke of what he did regarding the sins in the Corinthian church.
For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it — though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. (2 Corinthians 7:8-10 ESV)
Paul says that he did not regret making the people grieve regarding their sins because it had its intended effect. They were grieved into repenting. They had a godly grief that moved them to repent so they could be saved. They were willing to acknowledge what they had done and were moved to change. This what the problem that Judah was not doing. They were saying that God will not angry with them forever. So they kept sinning and God’s anger remained. But God will not be angry with us if we will only acknowledge our guilt. Be cut to the heart. Be broken for your sins and confess your sins to the Lord.
Enabling Readiness (Jeremiah 3:15-18)
Notice what God says he will do for the people if they will only acknowledge their guilt. God says he will give them shepherds after his own heart who will lead them and feed them (3:15). God says that he would give them good shepherds. We see two pictures of this in the New Testament. First, God will give human shepherds for his people. There is a responsibility on human shepherds to be people after God’s own heart who feed the people with knowledge and understanding. The apostle Peter in 1 Peter 5 instructed the spiritual leaders of a church to shepherd the flock of God among them. It is a blessing from the Lord to have shepherds who seek to have God’s own heart. Second, the other picture and the greater picture, is that Jesus is the chief shepherd. After talking about human shepherds, the apostle Peter then concludes in 1 Peter 5 by saying that we have a chief Shepherd who will appear who will give us the unfading crown of glory. Jesus called himself the good shepherd in John 10. He is the perfect shepherd we need to lead us and feed us so that we can be in a right relationship with our Father.
Second, God says that when the people have multiplied and are fruitful in the land that they will forget about the ark of the covenant (3:16). This is an amazing proclamation. There was a time coming when the ark of the covenant would not come to mind, would not be remember, and would not be missed. Further, another ark of the covenant would not be made. How could this happen? Why would the people no longer think about the ark of the covenant? Remember that the ark of the covenant represented the very presence of the Lord where atonement was made. The presence of God was depicted as resting above the cherubim that were on the lid of the ark. But there would be a day when the ark of the covenant would not be necessary. The reason is because God’s presence would no longer be visualized with a gold box. Rather, God himself would come in the flesh to lead his people. We do not need an ark of the covenant because we see Jesus who is leading us to the promised land. We follow him so that we can enter and enjoy the promised rest.
Third, God says that his people will have a different heart (3:17). The people will no longer stubbornly follow their own evil heart. There is one simple characteristic we cannot have if we want to be his people. We cannot be stubborn with our sins. The apostle John said that if we confess our sins, the Lord is faithful and righteous to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (cf. 1 John 1:9). But that confess cannot happen from the heart if we are stubborn. God’s people must be a repentant people. God’s people must be a confessing people.
Finally, we want to return to God because God says there will be a full restoration for all Israel (3:18). There was going to be a time when God will gather all his people from all over the earth and join them together as his own inheritance. The apostle Paul proclaimed that in Christ those who were far away have now been brought near by the blood of Christ (cf. Ephesians 2:13). He continues by saying that any divisions that existed in the past have been broken down so that we are all reconciled in one body in Christ. In Christ, God is uniting us as God’s children.
We need the guilt and shame that comes from sin. We need to have soft hearts and guilty consciences so that we will listen and return to the Lord. Our guilt enables clarity regarding our sins, enables us to have genuine hearts that desire restoration, and enable a true repentance as we confess what we have done. If you will acknowledge your guilt, God says he will no longer be angry. Instead, you will have the chief Shepherd lead you, Jesus himself, to the promised rest, united with other people around the world of the same precious faith. Do not ignore your guilt. Lean into it and come back to the Lord.