God Doesn’t Give Up
“Nevertheless in those days,” says the LORD, “I will not make a complete end of you. And it will be when you say, ‘Why does the LORD our God do all these things to us?’ then you shall answer them, ‘Just as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so you shall serve aliens in a land that is not yours.’
“Declare this in the house of Jacob
And proclaim it in Judah, saying,
‘Hear this now, O foolish people,
Without understanding,
Who have eyes and see not,
And who have ears and hear not:
Do you not fear Me?’ says the LORD.
‘Will you not tremble at My presence,
Who have placed the sand as the bound of the sea,
By a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass beyond it?
And though its waves toss to and fro,
Yet they cannot prevail;
Though they roar, yet they cannot pass over it.
But this people has a defiant and rebellious heart;
They have revolted and departed.
They do not say in their heart,
“Let us now fear the LORD our God,
Who gives rain, both the former and the latter, in its season.
He reserves for us the appointed weeks of the harvest.”
Your iniquities have turned these things away,
And your sins have withheld good from you. (Jeremiah 5:18-25)
People can tell God no. When God created the heavens and the earth, the physical objects had no choice in what they did. The earth rotates on its axis. It doesn’t get the option to chose not to or to start rotating the other way. Gravity can’t just decide one morning to stop working. The sky can’t suddenly turn green.
God contrasts his people with the waves of the sea. The waves are constrained. They have no choice but to obey God. But his people go and do whatever they want. They have simply disappeared; they no longer come to God. They don’t even consider the possibility of repenting because they don’t understand that there’s any need. So far have they gone astray, so deep is their rebellion against God, that they can’t even recognize a problem.
The prophet’s job is to try to inform the people about why they are suffering and what they can do to fix it. Unfortunately, they just don’t get it. Not yet, anyway.
But God has not given up on them. In fact, he promises that they will, someday, come back to him. When it comes to his people, God won’t take no for an answer.
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