As I continue my read through the Bible this year I came upon a group of verses in Jeremiah that struck me particularly hard. Jeremiah, called the “weeping prophet”, wrote and prophesied of the coming fall of Jerusalem and the nation of Israel. Throughout the book of Jeremiah God lays out his case against his wayward people and explains in great detail what the consequences of that rebellion are but also how he (God) feels about it.
Your relatives, members of your own family— even they have betrayed you;
they have raised a loud cry against you.
Do not trust them, though they speak well of you.
“I will forsake my house, abandon my inheritance; I will give the one I love into the hands of her enemies.” Jeremiah 12:6-7 (NIV)
Verse 6 speaks of relatives and family members who have taken part in betrayal and verse 7 tells us that God has decided to forsake his house (his residence in Jerusalem being the temple but also his presence with his people) abandon his inheritance (giving up on these people ever being what he wanted them to be – his righteous children and a light to all men) and, perhaps saddest of all, giving the one he loves (some translations say “the love of my life”) into the hands of her enemies.
Imagine for a moment if our own families betrayed us. What would we feel if those that we loved and trusted the most in this world turned against us and what we thought was our home and our place of rest became tainted and terrible to us as a result? What if my spouse, the person I love the most in this world, was involved in something so bad and so heinous that I had no choice but to allow the consequences of those actions despite the pain and suffering it would cause us both?
It’s not something I or any of us would like to think on but it is exactly what God was facing as he spoke to Jeremiah about what was soon to happen. And it is exactly how he feels when we turn away and rebel against him despite the fact that we once professed to love him and be his.
Sin is always serious and God is always a righteous judge but there is a difference between a lost person acting like a lost person (because it is the only nature that they have) and a saved person (who has the holy spirit living in him and is a new creation) deciding to act and look like a lost person. One acts that way because they have no choice while the other most certainly has a choice and is simply choosing not to walk in the spirit but to remain in the flesh.
I believe, based on what I have read and studied, that this breaks God’s heart. I also believe that this is one of the reasons why God gave us feelings; so that we could relate to him on an emotional level, so that we could feel his joy and his peace but also so that we could know and understand the sadness that sin brings and what it means to be separated from him.
God does everything he can to warn us of the dangers of sin and to equip us to be able to overcome temptation. He promises that if we will hide his word in our hearts then we will not sin against him and we will lives full of blessing and purpose. Those that do so are the apple of his eye and bring great joy to him. This is the kind of existence that he wants for all of us and the kind of lives that we should be striving to lead.