Calling The Backslidden Back

Jeremiah 3:21-4:2

Many parents know the heartbreak of when one or more of their children go astray and fall into crime, drugs, or some other dissolute lifestyle.  Despite the parents doing their best to bring them up properly, the children run headlong down the wrong path.  So many tears and prayers go forth for these children who have wandered away from all they had been taught.  This is the same way the Lord feels when He sees His children straying from the ways He had set for them, as we read from the Prophet Jeremiah today.

Jeremiah starts out in our passage with the sound of heartbreaking weeping in verse 21.  Can you just picture and hear a parent sobbing out their wrenching tears for their child who has gone so terribly astray?  Jeremiah, as God’s messenger, is also crying out because the people of God have also gone astray. They have forgotten God and gone their own way.  Jeremiah urges them to come back to the Lord who will heal their sin-sick souls (vs. 22).

Jeremiah calls them backsliding children.  They had been at a certain point of spiritual maturity, but have slid back and are further away from their goal. God had set them at one point and directed them to follow His path till they reached their eternal destination.  Instead of going forward, though, they have slidden backwards, going the opposite way.

When I was a young child living in suburban Chicago, we would go on a day-trip once or twice every summer to the beaches of the Indiana Dunes, along the south shore of Lake Michigan.  There are very large sand dunes along that beach, which as children we would try to climb.  Trying to climb a large hill of sand is difficult, and more often than not, I would keep sliding back down, making very little progress.  The park had provided much easier paths and stairways all throughout the area to get from the beach to higher ground instead of trying to climb loose sand.  Children, though, like to do things their own way.

That is a picture of backslidden people, whether those in the days of Jeremiah or people today.  They want to go their own way and have slidden off the path God has set.  Those who claim to be followers of God, but continue in a pattern of prolonged sin are inviting punishment from God.  He is a just and holy God, and will not just sit back and tolerate sin.  We need to see sin for what it really is. Very few people see it for the deception it is.  They only see that once sin has brought them down and ruined them.  Those bound and determined to ignore God, and stubbornly go on their own way in sin, whether it is drugs, alcohol, shoplifting, gambling, cheating in many ways, etc. they only acknowledge their folly when the sin has ruined their life, and they are hopelessly snared (vs. 25). Sadly some never do.

What hope is there for someone who sees how tangled he is in sin, for someone who has backslidden all the way down to the bottom? God is there waiting with His arms outstretched.  Just like the father of the prodigal son was waiting for his wandering son to return home (Luke 15:11-32), He is waiting for the wandering soul to turn to Him (4:1-2).

Three times in this passage God calls out to us to “Return”.   Just like the heartbroken parent of a straying child, God is standing there, calling out to His straying children.  “Return to Me!”, He calls, “Return to Me, and I will heal your backslidings.”  Are we willing to get up, throw off our shame and reproach, and go back to Him?  He is waiting for us.