Jeremiah 3 continues the LORD’s condemnation of Israel and Judah for their sin. We find two images used for both Israel and Judah: the LORD calls them unfaithful wives, who have prostituted themselves before the other nations. He also calls them unfaithful children. Both images are appropriate, because the LORD has attached Himself to His people as the “groom” in a marriage relationships, but also as a “Father” to His children. Jesus also used this image of the Church as His bride, and He reminded us often that we are His Father’s children. The sad truth is while our unfaithfulness might not seem as bad as that of Israel’s and Judah’s were in their time, any amount of unfaithfulness breaks the LORD’s heart, because He created us to be His holy bride, and His holy children. While we often speak of the Lord’s love, grace, mercy, and faithfulness, and we ought to speak often of those qualities of the LORD, we must also remember He is righteous, just, and holy. We can’t accept the “soft” qualities of the LORD, without also accepting the “hard” ones. He is both loving and just, gracious and holy, merciful and righteous. The people in Jeremiah’s day experienced the full weight of the LORD’s judgment, because of their unfaithfulness. We cannot expect Him to forget our sin, if we continue to sin brazenly and willfully as the people of Israel and Judah during Jeremiah’s time. Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, but He also rose from the dead to show the power He has over sin and death. That power is to be used by us to live holy, righteous and just lives to His glory, honor, and praise.
Jeremiah 4 offers a long, detailed message of the impending destruction of Judah. Her sins are enumerated, Jeremiah weeps for her, but the LORD has had enough of her unfaithfulness, and He tells her the time is coming when the people will be wiped out. As always, there is some hope as He promises that not everyone will be destroyed, but this is a foundational judgment coming against the whole people. They will be driven into exile and their time for rebuilding will be in the distant future. We are told the LORD will use an enemy from the north to destroy them, which tells us once again the LORD sometimes uses history itself to enforce His judgment.
As we return to John 16, Jesus’ words are both hard and comforting. The hard words are Jesus tells the apostles they will be hated by the world as the world hated Him. He tells them He is “going away.” Even in that moment, they didn’t realize that meant He was going to be crucified, but He also told them He would be coming back to them. The comforting words, are Jesus’ words concerning the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells the disciples again the Holy Spirit will come and it was better for them that He leave, so the Spirit could come. I’m sure those words made little sense in that moment, and they were undoubtedly forgotten, during the time Jesus was dead and in the tomb. But when the Holy Spirit came to them on the day of Pentecost, and they experienced His presence and power in their lives, the physical loss of Jesus, must have been overcome to a great degree, because they experienced it internally and spiritually. We have never seen Jesus in the flesh, at least not to this point, but we can experience Him daily through the Holy Spirit. If you didn’t read this chapter carefully, go back and read it again, so you can see the great and powerful promise of the Spirit coming to be with us in Jesus’ absence from us.