May 14, 2013 – Jeremiah 2

I thought it was interesting that God talks about the devotion of the youth that followed Him through the desert.  If I remember the story, Israel fought God tooth and nail throughout the wilderness not wanting to follow Him and wanting to go back to Egypt.  If I were hearing Jeremiah say this, I would be thinking, “What, we aren’t much worse than those than followed through the desert and wanted to leave and worshipped other gods”.  Maybe the main difference is the end result and that they did eventually follow God out of the desert. It was hard to get them there.  This version of Israel isn’t following at all.

I thought it was interesting that God talks about other nations being loyal to their gods.  That is a pretty hard slap in the mouth seeing as their gods are stone or wood and cannot actually do anything and God is God and did so much, but the loyal ones are loyal to wood and stone.  That makes me think two things.  First, how much humans need to believe in something beyond us.  Humans have always made gods that they could go to or blame for everything.  It is inherited in us that we must do this.  I have talked before about that and that we were made to fill that hole with God.  The second thought is why Israel is the only nation that isn’t loyal.  I think this is because it had the only real God that actually required them to do something and obey Him.  The wood and stone gods didn’t require much, so they were easy to be loyal to.  God requires a lot and Israel saw how easy it was to follow the others and jumped ship.

They turn away until they need help, and real help, because I think deep down they know that what they are going and praying to in the wood and stone gods can’t help them.  Deep down they know that only God can actually do something and assist them.  How sad it must be for God to see us only turn to Him when we are in need of Him and realize that those things we were relying on are not fulfilling our needs.