Absurdity

Jeremiah 44:7 ESV

And now thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel: Why do you commit this great evil against yourselves to cut off from you man and woman, infant and child, from the midst of Judah leaving you no remnant?

Jeremiah finds himself taken from Judah, after the destruction of Jerusalem, not by the Babylonian army who treated him well and let him decide to stay, but rather by his own people. Those who refused to submit to the Babylonians and instead chose to flee to Egypt despite God’s warnings through Jeremiah to the contrary. Once again Jeremiah finds himself called to preach and prophesy to those who give lip service to listening but in the end only are concerned with their own itching ears. This group not liking what he said chose to kidnap him and force him to live in Egypt.

After they have seen so much of God’s wrath, they persist in rebelling. They have seen the Jerusalem conquered twice and the temple sacked and burned. This then leads God and Jeremiah to the exasperated questioning. “Why do you commit this great evil against yourselves…” Two things of great significance in this question. Notice that it is the people killing themselves. Such is all sin. All sin is an attack on ourselves. Others may receive damages from our own sin, but no matter how private or public the sin. No matter how many are affected by it the first victim is ourselves! Just as Adam’s sin effected not just he and his wife, but also all their progeny and the natural world as well (climate change is a biblical issue!) and yet the first to feel the effects of sin were Adam and Eve.

The Second thing to be noted is that all sin, make absolutely no sense. The absolute bewilderment that God has at seeing the people persist in rebellion is understandable from our perspective, yet all sin, even losing my temper this morning, is as foolish and ridiculous as Israel’s. To this we must add our own bewilderment at what would cause men to cheat on their wives, murder 60 concert goers, run trucks into crowded streets, or women to murder the children in their wombs. The list of senseless sin is long because all sin is senseless when contrasted rightly with God’s majesty and grace.

Why do I persist then in committing this great evil against myself? In the end it is the same as the Israelites, I don’t want to acknowledge God as Lord, I want to be Lord. When I hold on to my sin time and again never truly repenting of losing my temper instead justifying it against “their” behavior instead of Christs death. I never see it as foolish and absurd as it rightly is. What sin are you holding onto? Failing time and again to conquer? Will you dare to look at your sin through the lens of scripture?

CRUCE, DUM SPIRO, FIDO