Tuesday 11th August
Read Jeremiah 3:8-10
“I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries. Yet I saw that her unfaithful sister Judah had no fear; she also went out and committed adultery. 9 Because Israel’s immorality mattered so little to her, she defiled the land and committed adultery with stone and wood. 10 In spite of all this, her unfaithful sister Judah did not return to me with all her heart, but only in pretence,’ declares the Lord.” (NIVUK)
When God divorced Israel it was brutal. Assyria, renowned for its violence (cf Nahum), pillaged and destroyed and deported the people. All the alliances the kings of Israel made with nations around them to gain security counted for nought. Israel was cut off from the land.
Judah witnessed all of this and personally experienced it when the Assyrian armies pulled up outside the walls of Jerusalem. Yet despite this continued to chase after idols and alliances to secure prosperity. Judah saw the fate of Israel and did not fear.
Why? Because they believed they were promised by God that Jerusalem would be His throne and therefore no enemy would prevail against them. They could conduct themselves with impunity. Over centuries they mixed and matched and added and subtracted from the faith handed down to them – adapting it to suit their circumstances and desires.
Josiah sought to turn it around. He read the Law and was horrified at how far they had drifted away from Yahweh – and knew what the consequences would be – for they were spelled out clearly in the covenant. But Judah’s ‘repentance’ during the reign of Josiah was all for show. Their heart was not, and was never, in it. They were merely going through the motions. They had created a counterfeit faith.
What would a counterfeit faith look like today?
