Scripture Daily

Context No. 1909 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 16:8-13: in context

8“You shall not go into the house of feasting to sit with them, to eat and to drink.” 9For the LORD of Armies, the God of Israel says: “Behold, I will cause to cease out of this place, before your eyes and in your days, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. 10It will happen, when you tell this people all these words, and they ask you, ‘Why has the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us?’ or ‘What is our iniquity?’ or ‘What is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?’ 11then you shall tell them, ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me,’ says the LORD, ‘and have walked after other gods, have served them, have worshiped them, have forsaken me, and have not kept my law. 12You have done evil more than your fathers, for behold, you each walk after the stubbornness of his evil heart, so that you don’t listen to me. 13Therefore I will cast you out of this land into the land that you have not known, neither you nor your fathers. There you will serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’

God tells Jeremiah that judgment is coming, that the sounds of joy and celebration, the voices of bride and bridegroom, will cease from the land. And he foretells the people's reaction: when you tell them this, they will ask, why has the LORD pronounced all this evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is our sin that we have committed? They will be genuinely puzzled, unable to see what they have done wrong. And God's answer is that their fathers forsook him, and they have done worse, each following his own stubborn evil heart.

The revealing thing here is the people's question: what is our sin? They are not being sarcastic; they genuinely cannot see it. Judgment is falling, and they are puzzled, unable to identify what they have done wrong, asking in real bewilderment what their iniquity could be. And this is perhaps the most dangerous condition of all: to be so blind to our own sin that we cannot even see it, so that we are genuinely puzzled when its consequences fall, asking what have we done? while the answer is all around us. Their sin was real and grievous, forsaking God, following other gods, their own stubborn hearts; but they had grown so accustomed to it that they could no longer see it as sin at all. There is a sobering warning here about the blindness sin produces. Sin has a way of blinding us to itself; the longer we practice it and the more accustomed to it we become, the less we can see it, until we are genuinely unaware of what is wrong, puzzled by consequences we cannot connect to any fault of ours. This blindness to our own sin is one of the hardest conditions to escape, precisely because we cannot see what we cannot see. And it points to our need for God to show us our sin, and for honest self-examination that asks him to reveal what we have grown blind to. Who can discern his own errors? the psalmist asks; cleanse me from hidden faults. And elsewhere: search me, God, and know my heart; see if there is any wicked way in me. We cannot rely on our own sight to reveal our sin, for sin blinds us to itself; we need God to search us and show us what we have grown unable to see. The people of Jeremiah's day asked, what is our sin? and could not see the answer written across their lives. The safeguard against such blindness is not our own self-assessment, which sin corrupts, but the honest asking of God to search us and reveal the sin we have grown blind to, that we may see it, and turn.

Have I grown so accustomed to some sin that I can no longer see it, puzzled by its consequences and unable to connect them to any fault of mine, and rather than rely on my own self-assessment, which sin blinds, can I ask God to search me and reveal the sin I have grown blind to, praying, cleanse me from hidden faults and see if there is any wicked way in me?

Sources