Saturday 8th August
Read Jeremiah 2:31-37
“‘You of this generation, consider the word of the Lord:
‘Have I been a desert to Israel
or a land of great darkness?
Why do my people say, “We are free to roam;
we will come to you no more”?
32 Does a young woman forget her jewellery,
a bride her wedding ornaments?
Yet my people have forgotten me,
days without number.
33 How skilled you are at pursuing love!
Even the worst of women can learn from your ways.
34 On your clothes is found
the lifeblood of the innocent poor,
though you did not catch them breaking in.
Yet in spite of all this
35 you say, “I am innocent;
he is not angry with me.”
But I will pass judgment on you
because you say, “I have not sinned.”
36 Why do you go about so much,
changing your ways?
You will be disappointed by Egypt
as you were by Assyria.
37 You will also leave that place
with your hands on your head,
for the Lord has rejected those you trust;
you will not be helped by them.” (NIVUK)
Immense danger lies in presuming upon God’s grace. There is nothing wanting in what God has done for His people (v31a) yet the very grace showered upon them has convinced them that they are free to roam (v31b) and they consider themselves innocent of sin (v35). To reflect for even a moment on the idea that a bride would forget the effort gone to on her wedding day…forget (v32)!
The temptations Jeremiah spoke of were just as present in the early church. When Paul outlined the good news to the Roman church he needed to make precisely the same point. “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase?” (Romans 6:1) (NIVUK). Why does Paul even need to outline such an obviously erroneous premise? Because, writing from Corinth as he was, he was all too aware of the exuberance of ‘faith’ in response to grace. The sins in Corinth (cf 1 Corinthians 6) matched the sins in Jeremiah’s Jerusalem (v33-34) awfully closely. They rose from the same misunderstanding Jeremiah outlines here – a misunderstanding of what the freedom provided by the grace of God means…
“‘I have the right to do anything,’ you say – but not everything is beneficial. ‘I have the right to do anything’– but not everything is constructive. 24 No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.” (1 Corinthians 10:23-24) (NIVUK).
God frees a people from their sins so that they can in turn love and seek the good of others. What are we using our freedom for?
