“Judah’s sin is engraved with an iron tool, inscribed with a flint point, on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars. Even their children remember their altars and Asherah poles beside the spreading trees and on the high hills, and my mountain in the land.

Your wealth and all your treasures I will give away as plunder, together with your high places, because of your sin throughout your country. Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you. I will enslave you to your enemies in a land you do not know.” (Jeremiah 17:1-4)

Jeremiah has now accepted the inevitability of judgment upon the whole nation of Judah. Their sin is engraved in the very stonework of the Temple, representing the heart of the nation. It is an undeniable fact. Judah is guilty as charged. The record is there that cannot be altered or airbrushed away. It is written on the hearts of the people and on the altar in the Temple, where it is on display: a public record of sin.

Relentless Idolatry

The sin of Judah was idolatry. Even the children could remember how the altars to Baal and the Asherah poles were erected up in the high places in the countryside around Judah. The same altars and Asherah poles had been torn down by King Josiah after the discovery of the Book of the Law (Deuteronomy) when the Temple was being repaired. Josiah had read the terms of the covenant and had seen the Ten Commandments, the first of which was that they should have no other God than Yahweh, the God of Israel.

Josiah had first consulted the prophetess Huldah, who had confirmed that the scroll was genuine. He had then recognised the sinfulness of the nation, where altars to Baal could be found under every spreading tree in the villages and on the mountain tops. He swore an oath to purge the nation of idolatry, tearing down the altars to foreign gods and the Asherah poles as fertility symbols that the people thought were essential for producing a good harvest from the land.

The record of Josiah’s reform in 2 Chronicles 34:33 says that he not only removed all the detestable idols from the territory belonging to the Israelites, but that “he made all who were present in Israel serve the Lord their God.” But such enforcement does not change people’s hearts. It was only a short time later that Josiah lost his life in an unnecessary battle against the Egyptians and his godless son Jehoiakim took the throne. He immediately reversed Josiah’s reforms and gave the people their hearts’ desire – even turning a blind eye to the symbols of foreign gods in the Temple itself.

In God’s eyes, Judah’s sin was engraved in the very stonework of the Temple, representing the heart of the nation. It could not be altered or airbrushed away.

Inevitable Consequences

In today’s reading Jeremiah sets out the inevitable consequence of what was happening in the nation. It was a straight case of cause and consequence: breaking the covenant with God led to destruction. It was a theological reality that was built into the covenant that God had established with his people at Mount Sinai. Disobedience and destruction belonged together. There was no ambiguity and there was no other outcome: unrepentant disobedience would end in displacement – the loss of heritage.

The national wealth would be given as plunder to the enemies of Judah as a symbol of what they themselves had failed to value. The godly heritage gathered over the centuries through the toil and faithfulness of their forefathers would all be handed over to the enemy, the Babylonians. This was now inevitable - as if inscribed in stone - and it was a direct consequence of the sinfulness of the nation. It was the outcome of their own actions.

The loss of their heritage was as much a consequence of their behaviour as the deliberate action of Esau in giving away his inheritance to his brother Jacob. He valued it so lightly that he gave it away for a mess of pottage – a bowl of hot, tasty food to satisfy his hunger. Likewise, Judah had thrown away the spiritual heritage of generations: they had discarded the great benefits of prosperity and protection that were provided by Yahweh, the God of Israel, in return for their faithfulness.

Judah had thrown away the spiritual heritage of generations: they had discarded the great benefits of prosperity and protection that were provided by Yahweh.

A Powerful Parable

This should provide a powerful parable to the people of Britain who, for the past 60 years, have been steadily dismantling the pillars of Christianity in the nation. It began in 1951 with the abolition of the Witchcraft Act, in direct contradiction of Deuteronomy 18:11 (against the casting of spells, spiritism and necromancy). This was followed by the Obscene Publications Act of 1959 and its amendment in 1964 opening the way for all kinds of offensive and immoral publications. Then in 1967 the Abortion Act was directly against the commandment, “Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire” (Deut 18:10).

The history of Britain since then, written on the statute book of the nation, shows a string of laws that are directly against the word of God in the Bible – from the Sunday Trading Act of 1983 to the Gender Recognition Act of 2004, the Equality Act of 2010 and the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act of 2013. These last three acts upturned our society’s understanding of gender and sexuality and dared to ‘redefine’ the traditional concept of marriage between a man and a woman, crossing a fundamental red-line of disobedience by defying God’s act of creation in making human beings in his own image.

If God did not spare his own covenant people from the consequences of their deliberate sinful actions; can the British people expect to escape the consequences of deliberately discarding the biblical heritage handed to them by their forefathers? The godly heritage that millions of men and women in two world wars gave their lives to preserve has been discarded in a single lifetime as rubbish! Can Britain really expect to escape some form of judgment?

This article is part of a series on the life and ministry of the Prophet Jeremiah. Click here to read previous instalments.