The Lord God of Israel Who rules over all says: Change the way you have been living and do what is right. If you do, I will allow you to continue to live in this land.– Jeremiah 7:3 (NET)
As the prophet Jeremiah is still in the early stages of his prophecy of destruction and desolation and exile that is to come upon Judah because they have failed to be what God intended them to be, he passes along the instruction, from God, that His covenant people must “change the way” that they “have been living,” and to that end, must “do what is right.” God tells them that, if they do so, then He will allow them to continue to live in the land. By speaking of the land, and such an allowance, God is attempting to bring His people to remembrance of the major component of the curses that had been presented to them in Deuteronomy that would result from their not being faithful to the covenant into which they had been brought by their God. The greatest of all of those curses was the curse of being driven from their land and subjected to foreign oppressors, in exile from the land of their heritage.
Along with that, Judah would have had the extraordinarily vivid reminder of what had transpired in the history of their northern neighbor, Israel. More than a century earlier, Israel (the northern kingdom of the divided kingdom) had been conquered by Assyria and removed from their land of covenantal promise. God’s curse had come and exile had ensued. They had been scattered to the winds, never to be re-constituted in the form of the ten tribes that had composed the nation. The warnings had come to Israel through their prophets just as they were now coming to Judah. Israel had been directed to change their way of living and to do what was right. Because they did not, God faithfully executed His solemn promises by not allowing them to continue living in their land.
We find God repeating Himself in the fifth verse of this chapter, where we read “You must change the way you have been living and do what is right” (7:5a). To that is added “You must treat one another fairly” (7:5b). Now, because fairness is such a personally subjective and eminently fluid concept, we are probably best served by understanding this insistence on fairness as something more along the lines of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This second time that God speaks to His people about changing their ways and doing what is right, follows the mocking repetition of the high-mindedness of the people, in thinking that they were safe from judgment, because they could simply say, “The temple of the Lord is here! The temple of the Lord is here! The temple of the Lord is here!” (7:4b).
Why would they say that? To answer that, we must understand the purpose that the temple served? Along with being a reminder and representation of their God, of the tabernacle of the wilderness, and therefore of their redeeming Exodus from Egypt at the hands of their covenant-making-and-keeping God, the temple was the place where the people could go for the purpose of offering sacrifices for transgressions of the provisions of the law. The people could go to the temple, and through offering the requisite sacrifices prescribed under the law, receive atonement for their moral failings. In that day, God’s people relied upon this aspect of the temple every bit as much as God’s people, in this day, rely upon the sacrifice of Christ to provide the necessary atonement for transgressions that represent our failures to be the divine image and light bearers that God intends His people to be.
So when God directs His people to change their ways, what is it that they are doing that needs to be changed? When God instructs them to do what is right, to what is He referring as their actions that are wrong in His sight? What are His people doing that has God looking upon those things and saying, “If you keep doing these things, I am going to bring My promised curses and send you into exile away from the land that I have given to you”? After imploring them to treat others as they would want to be treated, God gives a list of those things that are severely offending Him. He says, “Stop oppressing foreigners who live in your land” (7:6a). You see, God’s people had forgotten that they had been foreigners in the land of Egypt. They had forgotten their previous exile from the land that had been given to Abraham. They had forgotten their exodus. They had forgotten Who it was that was represented by the temple, and from Whom they were seeking their atonement.
No comments:
Post a Comment