Jeremiah 8:4-12
Deceiving Ourselves

You shall say to them, Thus says the LORD:
    When people fall, do they not get up again?
    If they go astray, do they not turn back?
Why then has this people turned away
    in perpetual backsliding?
    They have held fast to deceit,
    they have refused to return.
I have given heed and listened,
    but they do not speak honestly;
    no one repents of wickedness,
    saying, "What have I done!"
    All of them turn to their own course,
    like a horse plunging headlong into battle.
Even the stork in the heavens
    knows its times;
    and the turtledove, swallow, and crane
    observe the time of their coming;
    but my people do not know
    the ordinance of the LORD.

How can you say, "We are wise,
    and the law of the LORD is with us,"
    when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes
    has made it into a lie?
The wise shall be put to shame,
    they shall be dismayed and taken;
    since they have rejected the word of the LORD,
    what wisdom is in them?
Therefore I will give their wives to others
    and their fields to conquerors,
    because from the least to the greatest
    everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
    from prophet to priest
    everyone deals falsely.
They have treated the wound of my people carelessly,
    saying, "Peace, peace,"
    when there is no peace.
They acted shamefully, they committed abomination;
    yet they were not at all ashamed,
    they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
    at the time when I punish them, they shall be overthrown

New Revised Standard Version

Jeremiah is often called the "weeping prophet," because the word that he carried from God to the people was such a sad message. They had gone so far wrong, they were so self-confident that they refused and rejected God, and Jeremiah grieved for his people, for their separation from God, and for the consequences to come.

In this passage, God asks how it is possible to be so wrong! Put this way, it does seem so obvious--"When you fall down, don't you get up again?" Yes, of course we do! We know the difference between God's Word and lies. We strive to speak honestly, we repent of our wickedness, so how can this passage have meaning for us? How can we possibly learn from a passage written to people who were so foolish?

The first lesson is that they didn't start out to be foolish. They learned all they could about God, they worked hard at mastering the Law, and they had great respect for the prophets and priests who led their religion. It became a closed loop, though, where the people support the priests, and the priests support the people. The cycle got so tight that God had to find a boy, Jeremiah, to carry the message--a boy who would have become a priest had God not grabbed him first.

The second lesson is to recognize how much our minds can twist the absurd into the reasonable. They made a relogious practice of being dishonest with God -- God who knows everything anyway! In other passages, Jeremiah rebukes the people for worshiping pagan gods on the way to worship the God who commanded "no other gods." They announce "peace" when there was no peace, maybe because they wished so much for peace that they ignored the reality. It all comes together when we read that they declared themselves as wise because of the lies their prophets had written.

The third lesson is to realize how far we can go in this cycle of self-deception. They acted shamefully, but were so far gone they had forgotten how to blush. They were as stubborn as a horse plunging headlong into battle--a foolish military tactic that meant certain death for the horse and warrior.

The fourth lesson is to see how natural it is to walk in God's Way. Jeremiah compares it to knowing to get back up when we fall, both physically and spiritually. God pleads for the people to ask, "what have I done?", and through that simple cry, be restored to God. Jeremiah notes that birds have enough sense to follow the ways God has given them, so tells us living God's way is just as instinctual for us.

It is often not easy to do what is right, but God has created us so that we naturally will know what is right. When we have to use involved explanations to justify why we think something is right, we need to step back, look hard, think again, and see if we aren't deceiving ourselves.