Jeremiah's first public prophetic word.

The word of the Lord came to me: “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem: I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of his harvest; all who devoured her were held guilty, and disaster overtook them,” declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 2:2-3)

This is the first word that Jeremiah was given to declare publicly in his ministry. Previously in his communication with God, the words he heard were for him personally. This first message to the nation was highly significant. Although Jeremiah knew that he was going to have to say some very hard things that would not be well received, this first word was a message of love which would have been easy for him to declare publicly. It was just what the young prophet needed to begin his ministry.

All the prophets of Israel constantly referred back to the history of the nation and what God had done for them. Here, Jeremiah is reminding the people of the amazing way God had cared for them, provided for them and protected them throughout their 40 years’ journey between leaving Egypt and entering the Promised Land.

Israel’s Spiritual Sojourn

For most of that period, Israel travelled through the desert. It was an exacting time for the tribal leaders and a time of enormous strain for Moses in maintaining order, discipline and unity among the tribes. But it was also a formative time when the Children of Israel became a nation.

There is nothing so powerful as shared hardship and danger in bringing unity to a disparate group of people. This is what happened to Israel in the desert. They were a group of nomadic tribes living in tents with no homeland, but the shared experience of facing the dangers and privations of the wilderness welded them together. They learned the value of community, co-operating in the gathering of manna, and caring for each other - especially the weak and the elderly.

The first word that Jeremiah was given to declare publicly was a message of love.

Above all, the sojourn in the desert was a spiritual experience that established them as a covenant people under God. They were his bride, newly brought into a sweet covenant relationship with him: a relationship of growing love and trust, as he practically demonstrated his love and his power in one miracle after another.

The first miracle was in persuading Pharaoh to let the people go. The deliverance from slavery was followed by the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea and the disaster that overtook the Egyptian army who were closely following with the intention of once again reducing them to slavery. But God had amazingly delivered Israel and thereby demonstrated his love and his power to protect his soon-to-be covenant people in fulfilment of his promises.

This love and power was demonstrated numerous times by the Lord’s provision of food and water in the desert. Many times the Israelites would have starved or died of thirst if he had not provided for them. But the desert was not only a time for the people of Israel to learn about the very nature of God, it was a time for sealing their bond with God and learning to trust him completely.

Separation unto God

The desert was not a place of separation from God. It was a place of separation from the world and from foreign gods: for leaving behind the fleshpots of Egypt, for ridding themselves of the pariah mentality of a people in slavery. It was a time of separation unto God, where there were no worldly attractions to compete for their attention. The conditions of the covenant relationship could be fulfilled – “I will be your God and you will be my people”.

The great silence of the desert was filled with the presence of the Living God. It was here that Israel learned holiness – separation – as they learned to love and to trust the Lord. In this first message given to the young Jeremiah, God remembered the devotion of Israel, her dependence upon him and her love for him.

This was to set the scene for all the dramatic warnings of danger that Jeremiah later had to pronounce – none of which were intended to be declarations of judgment so much as loving calls to recognise the folly of breaking the covenant with God by running after false gods. Israel’s worshipping of bits of wood and stone had tragically put them outside the protection of Almighty God and at the mercy of cruel enemy armies.

Israel’s sojourn in the desert was a profoundly spiritual experience that established them as a covenant people under God.

God’s Suffering

This first message reminding the people of God’s great love and care for their fathers in the desert was followed by a plea that was full of pathos:

This is what the Lord says, “What fault did your fathers find in me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves. They did not ask ‘Where is the LORD, who brought us up out of Egypt and led us through the barren wilderness, through a land of deserts and rifts, a land of drought and darkness, a land where no-one travels and no-one lives?’

I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and made my inheritance detestable. The priests did not ask, ‘Where is the Lord?’ Those who deal with the law did not know me; the leaders rebelled against me. The prophets prophesied by Baal following worthless idols.”

God’s question, “What fault did your fathers find in me?” shows the pathos in God’s heart when his people are faithless and turn away from him. It is as though God was saying, ‘After all I have done for you, how could you possibly deny me and turn your back upon me?’

It is almost inconceivable in human relationships that someone would turn against you if you had spent your whole life caring for them. And yet, it does happen! The sense of rejection and personal suffering is intense in such circumstances. But this should enable us to understand the suffering in God’s heart when those whom he has loved and cared for turn against him and no longer trust him.

Foundational Teaching

This is the truth about the nature of God that was revealed to the prophets of Israel, that laid the foundation for the revelation of God as our Father which was at the heart of the ministry of Jesus. The Gospel Jesus gave to his disciples to take to all nations can never be fully understood and embraced without the foundation laid by the prophets of Israel.

God’s question, “What fault did your fathers find in me?” shows the pathos in God’s heart when his people are faithless and turn away from him.

Sadly, this is missing in so many churches today, where the preachers do not bother to preach the whole word of God – because they rarely study the life and teaching of the prophets of Israel.

If we do not learn from the history of Israel, that disaster struck them when they departed from the word of the Lord, we will make the same mistake again!

Surely, the preachers in Britain and all the Western nations should be declaring with all the energy and power of the Holy Spirit that, like the people of Israel in Jeremiah’s day, we too have turned our backs upon truth and embraced powers of darkness that are leading us to destruction.

We too worship bits of wood and stone in our consumerist society where we compete with one another to show off our possessions which are worthless. In so doing we make ourselves worthless to God in working out his purposes of communicating his love, his faithfulness and his good purposes to the nations. We become, like Israel in Jeremiah’s day, useless servants!

This article is part of a series. Click here to read other instalments.