Then the Lord said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel stood before me pleading for these people, I wouldn’t help them. Away with them! Get them out of my sight! (Jeremiah 15:4)I had a van once that was basically a good van. But it kept breaking in small ways. Nothing really huge, but just kept breaking. I had spent money to fix it and all, but I was getting tired of it. Since I do not like to change cars, I was trying to make it work. If it had continued, I would still have it.
But finally, one thing too many broke and it was again sitting by the side of the road. I had a friend who was extremely good at keeping cars going and kept a sorry old pickup he had running with duct tape and spinner wire. He really needed something else. So I gave him the van.
He took it home and found out that there was a bolt that had come misplaced somehow in the underassembly somewhere. He put it on and it worked fine.
He told me that it was a small thing and that it ran fine now. He felt bad taking it when it was such a small thing. I said no. I was sick of it. It had been a hassle and I had worked on it and worked on it until I was through with it.
Jeremiah the prophet pleads for Israel before God. But God says no. I am sick of them. I have given them my love and shown them my power and fed and clothed them, protected them and they have never really loved me. They spurn me at every opportunity like an unfaithful wife who cannot get enough of other men.
He says to Jeremiah, even if Moses and Samuel came to ask me, Moses and Samuel, two of the best men who ever lived, men who had an extremely close relationship with God – even they could not convince God to help them now.
They had gone into idolatry so far that Manasseh, one of the kings in the recent past, had even introduced infant sacrifice to the idol Dagon. To God this was absolutely repulsive. He was through.
Oh, he would bring them back as a smaller group, under the control of other empires. But they would never be like they were. In 900 BC, under the leadership of King David, they were the largest empire in the world. now they were a remnant in captivity.
Sooner or later, they would turn from worshipping him and begin worshipping his law and he would finally cut them loose and set up a new Israel, spiritual Israel )Romans 9-11). In this new system, he would gather all of the people of earth who really wanted to be part of his family and make them his children.
No longer could someone brag that they were physically born into his kingdom. Now all of the people who wanted to be with God could do so. It was a voluntary family, made up of volunteers, of people who wanted to be there. Anybody who wanted to come into that family could do so.
The God who was rejected took all the people rejected by the world and made them his new family.
Sooner or later, enough was enough, even for God.
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