The language of Jeremiah is the language of a Lover. A hurt Lover, but nevertheless a Lover.
Can you blame God? He’s done all he can to pour out his extravagant love on a nation that just doesn’t want what he is offering. It’s like an addiction. Once Israel gets out of slavery and tastes the “freedom” of the wide open spaces, she falls right back into a new kind of slavery. That is the nature of addiction. Until the root of addiction is broken we move from one kind of addiction to another.
America is a bi-polar nation. We are a nation of extremes. We are obese or we are anorexic. We are falsely positive all the time or deeply depressed all the time. We can’t find our equilibrium. The Church is exhibiting those same types of addictions.
For the Church, the answer is to quit chasing other lovers. Quit chasing the approval of a society that will just never love you. Quit chasing the 15 minute fame like you’re auditioning for some reality TV show. Quit trying to get your fix through the noise you call “worship.”
It’s not working. Yet, here we are trying to find another way to get our “fix.”
And here is our God crying out to us. HE has set us free.
I think of people I know who are trying to help others they love, but every time the friends of mine reach out to truly love that person, the addictions in that person’s life so overwhelms them they run away again. Others I reach out to, trying to love them, talk straight with them, call out to them with the love of our Father, and they get close for a time, but then other “lovers” come calling and off they go.
We need to see God as our Lover. The One who has TRULY set us free. He has what is BEST for us… and for whatever reason we don’t want his best. We reject it and then blame “the church” or some overbearing parent or something else. But what we are rejecting is our great Lover: God.
For the American Church, we need to hear the call of our Lover. And we need to come home.
If you return, Israel, return to me, declares the Lord.
If you get rid of your disgusting idols from my presence
and wander no more,
2 and if you swear by the living God
in truth, justice, and righteousness,
then the nations will enjoy God’s blessings;
they will boast about him.3 This is what the Lord says to the people of Judah and to the residents of Jerusalem:
Break up your hard rocky soil;
don’t plant among the thorns.
4 Dedicate yourselves to the Lord;
don’t be thick-skinned,
people of Judah and residents of Jerusalem,
or else my anger will spread like a wildfire.
It will burn, with no one to put it out,
because of your evil deeds. (Jer. 4:1-4, CEB)
Break up your hard rocky soil. Get the noise out. Get the addictions out. Hear the voice of your great Lover and come home.
His mercy had a limit for Israel, as we can see at the end of v. 4. We see it in the rest of Jeremiah as well.
Jilted lovers have limits. God needs the church to hear his call.
Apprentice 2 Jesus 
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