Jeremiah 3:1 They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return to her again?… I. CONSIDER THE ILLUSTRATION BY WHICH IS SHOWN THE EXTENT OF JEHOVAH'S MERCY TO THE LOST, By an illustration drawn from the power allowed to the Israelite husband, Jehovah shows how great is his spirit of mercy and his desire that the deserting wife, so terribly described in the preceding chapter, should return. The reference is evidently to Deuteronomy 24:1-4. There the husband is invested with an authority which almost seems arbitrary, although from Numbers 5. it also appears that an accused wife had a right of appeal to ordeal, which ordeal would infallibly certify either innocence or guilt. The essential point here, however, lies in this, that there was an ordained inability for the wife to return to her first husband. The marriage tie, in spite of all the apparent facility of divorce, was not a thing to play fast and loose with. The way of departure might seem comparatively easy, but the way of return was altogether hedged up. We behold a curious mixture of indulgence and severity - indulgence for a time because of the hardness of the people's hearts; severity, in order that society might be kept together at all. For a husband to take back such a wife was ordained a ceremonial pollution, which needed to be cleansed away. But if such a return was impossible, still more evidently impossible was the return of one who had lived as a harlot. Yet thus did Israel, once the loving, devoted spouse (Jeremiah 2:1), now appear to Jehovah. Her life of desertion from Jehovah is described as one continuous, shameless exhibition of the harlot's lust. And it is just in the light of all this terrible impurity that the word comes to her, "Return again to me, saith the Lord." II. CONSIDER HOW IT COMES THAT GOD CAN ADDRESS SUCH AN INVITATION. It is the old story of God's power to do things which man, however loving and merciful he may be in disposition, finds to be quite beyond his reach. Man, with the best intentions, with the most sympathetic heart, is limited in his resources to the outcast by the necessities of human society. To put one who has been an habitual thief in a position of serious trust, is a thing so hard as to be practically impossible. The victims of vicious inclinations may be deeply pitied, and yet the moment one tries to give them any large measure of help, the claims of others somehow come in to forbid. But God, as he rises far above man in his love and mercy and insight into the sinning human heart, so he rises - if one may thus put it - higher still in his power to give an amply sufficient help. God can bring back into the privileges and possibilities belonging to his Church, he can bring under all the penetrating potencies of his grace, the very worst apostate. What creature can be thought of more defiled than the harlot? Human reclaiming agencies can do nothing to serve her or save her, except as they put in their forefront the loving-kindness of God in Christ Jesus. It is well for us when we have to consider the impure, the degraded, the despairing slaves of vice, to consider also these encouraging words of God, "Return to me." Think much of him who spoke them, and then of the sort of people to whom they were spoken. Those who are most of all suffering in social outlawry may read all the horrible descriptions of abandonment to impurity found not only in this prophet but in others, and then say with the most joyful hope, "If Israel, being such, was pressed to return, I also may return." Hosea gives the appropriate words for such, "I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now" (Hosea 2:7). And to keep up the 'figure, what will the end of such a Divine invitation and such a human resolution be? It is found in Revelation 21., where we read the following request, "Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife." The first Israel sank into an indescribable shame; the second Israel will rise into an indescribable glory. - Y. Parallel Verses KJV: They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD. |
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