Jeremiah 17:1-2 – Faith's Children
1
“The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron;
With the point of a diamond it is engraved
On the tablet of their heart,
And on the horns of your altars,
2
While their children remember
Their altars and their wooden images
By the green trees on the high hills.
"Children will imitate their fathers in their vices," laments Spurgeon looking at the legacy of his title subject in the sermon "Manasseh," seldom in their repentance; if parents sin, their children will follow them, without much doubt; but when they repent and turn to God, it is not easy to lead a child back in the way which it has once forsaken."
So it is that opening Jeremiah 17, God presents one of the most frightful exhibits of His people's depravity, the faith of their children. The opening metaphor He gives Jeremiah's attention-getting enough, indelible sin written with a pit of iron, engraved with the point of a diamond. It's frightful tally, but for His intervention, is not going anywhere.
Having captured eyes and hearts with that just condemnation, it is ironic but effective that He could top that with sin's etching upon flesh and blood, upon impressionable children. Even if the present generation whose sin prompted Jeremiah's jeremiads and brought on the exile repent, they have used the privilege of parenthood, the impressionable hearts God granted children, to carry forward their wicked ways.
This word picture is given Jeremiah at an interesting time. Isolated, it could bury them in hopelessness, for who but the most hardened idolater would wish the folly of beliefs he knows in his heart to be false on his own children? Even the wicked, Jesus said, have some sense of giving good gifts to their kids.
And yet, taken in conjunction with the close of Jeremiah 16, all is not lost. As the false faith that open Jeremiah 17 begets idolatry's children, so the sovereign grace of God can use even the cycle of conviction and correction to birth childlike faith in children of all ages and races.
Tarry on the comparison for a moment. God's covenant people are entrusted with His Word. They are told to explain it to their children and the wife rituals of getting up and lying down and on special occasions like the Passover to plant their children's resiliency in a redeemed past and point their children's hopes to the coming Messiah.
The idolatrous weeds of Jeremiah 17:1-2 reveal that they have botched this job entirely, using children who are a blessing from the Lord and a quiver full of arrows against the intentions of the enemy to instead further their own delusions.
Yet, alongside this diabolical drift, God continues to draw people to Himself. His historical people with the advantage of genetics and environment raise up children of the devil, the furtherance of the father of lies.
Yet God, in the most unpromising of heart soil, can plant His Word in the hearts of hardened conquerors and have it take root. God can make His instruments of correction new as instruction in His sovereign power to His own original people, as remediation in the scope of his promise to Abraham that HIS sense of community is not limited to one race managing to get the faith handoff right.
Are we willing to receive correction, then? Are we willing to sit, and look, and repent as God shows us the results of the seeds we plant? Are we willing to compare our readiness to err, and plant amiss the worst of our belief systems, to realize our just condemnation written with a pen of iron, a diamond tip, in the very behavior of those who would follow most closely after us?
Are we willing to receive this harsh lesson in order to turn to what CHRIST can do with the faintest wisps of the repentant faith which He grants?
“The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron;
With the point of a diamond it is engraved
On the tablet of their heart,
And on the horns of your altars,
2
While their children remember
Their altars and their wooden images
By the green trees on the high hills.
"Children will imitate their fathers in their vices," laments Spurgeon looking at the legacy of his title subject in the sermon "Manasseh," seldom in their repentance; if parents sin, their children will follow them, without much doubt; but when they repent and turn to God, it is not easy to lead a child back in the way which it has once forsaken."
So it is that opening Jeremiah 17, God presents one of the most frightful exhibits of His people's depravity, the faith of their children. The opening metaphor He gives Jeremiah's attention-getting enough, indelible sin written with a pit of iron, engraved with the point of a diamond. It's frightful tally, but for His intervention, is not going anywhere.
Having captured eyes and hearts with that just condemnation, it is ironic but effective that He could top that with sin's etching upon flesh and blood, upon impressionable children. Even if the present generation whose sin prompted Jeremiah's jeremiads and brought on the exile repent, they have used the privilege of parenthood, the impressionable hearts God granted children, to carry forward their wicked ways.
This word picture is given Jeremiah at an interesting time. Isolated, it could bury them in hopelessness, for who but the most hardened idolater would wish the folly of beliefs he knows in his heart to be false on his own children? Even the wicked, Jesus said, have some sense of giving good gifts to their kids.
And yet, taken in conjunction with the close of Jeremiah 16, all is not lost. As the false faith that open Jeremiah 17 begets idolatry's children, so the sovereign grace of God can use even the cycle of conviction and correction to birth childlike faith in children of all ages and races.
Tarry on the comparison for a moment. God's covenant people are entrusted with His Word. They are told to explain it to their children and the wife rituals of getting up and lying down and on special occasions like the Passover to plant their children's resiliency in a redeemed past and point their children's hopes to the coming Messiah.
The idolatrous weeds of Jeremiah 17:1-2 reveal that they have botched this job entirely, using children who are a blessing from the Lord and a quiver full of arrows against the intentions of the enemy to instead further their own delusions.
Yet, alongside this diabolical drift, God continues to draw people to Himself. His historical people with the advantage of genetics and environment raise up children of the devil, the furtherance of the father of lies.
Yet God, in the most unpromising of heart soil, can plant His Word in the hearts of hardened conquerors and have it take root. God can make His instruments of correction new as instruction in His sovereign power to His own original people, as remediation in the scope of his promise to Abraham that HIS sense of community is not limited to one race managing to get the faith handoff right.
Are we willing to receive correction, then? Are we willing to sit, and look, and repent as God shows us the results of the seeds we plant? Are we willing to compare our readiness to err, and plant amiss the worst of our belief systems, to realize our just condemnation written with a pen of iron, a diamond tip, in the very behavior of those who would follow most closely after us?
Are we willing to receive this harsh lesson in order to turn to what CHRIST can do with the faintest wisps of the repentant faith which He grants?
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