As I mentioned in a recent post, a friend and I are reading Jeremiah. Jeremiah was sent by God with quite a message, “Thus saith the Lord, I am fed up with you and I am about to remove you from your land.” But once they went off into captivity, God gave Jeremiah a message of hope, “I will return you and restore you.”
But, even in the message of judgment, God offered hope to Judah. Throughout Jeremiah God repeatedly tells the people that if they will respond to Him, He will save and deliver them. And what does He want from them? I think Jeremiah 35:15 is a good representation of His plea:
I have sent also unto you all my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, saying, Return ye now every man from his evil way, and amend your doings, and go not after other gods to serve them, and ye shall dwell in the land which I have given to you and to your fathers: but ye have not inclined your ear, nor hearkened unto me.
I am amazed at the strength of these words. God is not playing games with them. When it comes to what God is looking for in man, these may be the four strongest words in the Old Testament!
Return – turn from your evil ways and turn to Me. Sometime back I wrote a post about turning to the Lord. This word occurs numerous times in Jeremiah and is the fundamental word for describing getting right with God, Turn unto me.
Amend your ways – make your ways good
Incline your ear to me – listen to Me
Hearken unto me – we think of hearken as an old way of saying hear, but in the Hebrew it is a much stronger word. It means to hear, listen to, to obey. To hearken means you listen with the intention of doing what you hear.
God is very clear, “You have turned away from Me. You are not living the way I told you to live. Turn to Me by forsaking your sinful ways and begin again to obey Me.”
Two things strike me about this message.
1) The message is NOT simply, “Jeremiah has my words, believe I sent him, believe I am your God and everything will be OK.” Faith is important and forms the foundation of “turn unto me”, but they cannot receive the blessing if they “believe” these things but don’t amend their ways.
2) There is nothing in this message about how bad they should feel about their transgressions. I’m sure that when they come to their senses they will feel bad about their sinful ways, but God doesn’t seem too interested in their feelings. Instead He says, “Amend your ways.”
Is this an Old Testament message, a message of the Law, that has been replaced a message of grace? A new message that says, “I’m not really concerned with how you live or what you do, just believe.” No! I’m working on a post on repentance that will explore this further, but consider this:
John the Baptist – Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance
The Apostle Paul: Repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.
The Lord Jesus: Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works
These are literally taken from the beginning, the middle, and the end of the New Testament. The message has not changed. What does God want from me? He wants me to incline my ear to Him, to hearken unto Him. And if I fall into sin, He is not really interested in how bad I feel about it, He wants me to return to Him and amend my ways.
Turn unto me. Amend your ways. Incline your ear to me. Hearken unto me. Strong words. God is not playing games with me. And if I want the blessing of God, I can’t play games with Him.
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