Sin's Consequences: Making Sense of our Pain and Disappointment

Jeremiah 2:19-32

19Your wickedness will punish you,
and your apostasies will convict you.
Know and see that it is evil and bitter
for you to forsake the Lord your God;
the fear of me is not in you, says the Lord God of hosts.


20For long ago you broke your yoke and burst your bonds, and you said, ‘I will not serve!’
On every high hill and under every green tree you sprawled and played the whore. 
21Yet I planted you as a choice vine, from the purest stock.
How then did you turn degenerate and become a wild vine? 
22Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, says the Lord God. 
23How can you say, ‘I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Baals’?
Look at your way in the valley; know what you have done —
a restive young camel interlacing her tracks, 
24a wild ass at home in the wilderness,
in her heat sniffing the wind! Who can restrain her lust?
None who seek her need weary themselves; in her month they will find her. 
25Keep your feet from going unshod and your throat from thirst.
But you said, ‘It is hopeless, for I have loved strangers, and after them I will go.’


26As a thief is shamed when caught,
so the house of Israel shall be shamed —
they, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their prophets, 
27who say to a tree, ‘You are my father’,
and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’
For they have turned their backs to me,
 and not their faces.
But in the time of their trouble they say, ‘Come and save us!’ 
28But where are your gods that you made for yourself?
Let them come, if they can save you, in your time of trouble;
for you have as many gods
as you have towns, O Judah.


29Why do you complain against me? You have all rebelled against me, says the Lord. 
30In vain I have struck down your children; they accepted no correction.
Your own sword devoured your prophets like a ravening lion. 
31And you, O generation, behold the word of the Lord!
Have I been a wilderness to Israel, or a land of thick darkness?
Why then do my people say, ‘We are free,
we will come to you no more’? 
32Can a girl forget her ornaments,
or a bride her attire?
Yet my people have forgotten me,
days without number.