Do Not Turn Around

In verse 11 of chapter 34 of the book of Jeremiah, we see the people of Israel turning around. To clarify, the people were turning back to their wicked ways instead of following God’s instruction. The particular instruction that was not being followed was the one that had to do with Jewish slaves. But I am jumping ahead of myself.

Let’s start from the beginning:

God Almighty gave a word to King Zedekiah through the prophet Jeremiah. The prophecy was as follows:

This is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to give this city into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will burn it down. You will not escape from his grasp but will surely be captured and given into his hands. You will see the king of Babylon with your own eyes, and he will speak with you face to face. And you will go to Babylon.’

Not the greatest thing to hear as the enemy's army is at the gate of Jerusalem. But God did not stop there. The prophecy went on: Yet hear the Lord’s promise to you, Zedekiah, king of Judah. This is what the Lord says concerning you: 'You will not die by the sword; you will die peacefully. As people made a funeral fire in honor of your predecessors, the kings who ruled before you, so they will make a fire in your honor and lament, “Alas, master!” I myself make this promise, declares the Lord.' It seemed that, while things looked bleak for the city of Jerusalem and its people, the king had some good tidings to rejoice over.

But that is not the end of the story. Jeremiah details how King Zedekiah and his officials followed the Lord’s instructions and re-instituted the ordinance that after six years of service all Jewish bond slaves would be set free. God established this ordinance when He freed the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, and He instructed them to follow His ordinance. Unfortunately, over time, the people of Israel rejected God’s instruction on this matter. They kept Jewish slaves past the seventh year.

But in Jeremiah’s time, following God’s word given through His prophet, the king and people repented of their sin and freed the slaves once again. God saw the people’s actions and showed them favor. It appears that the Babylonian army even moved away from Jerusalem. But now we come to the part where the people turned around.

As I mentioned previously, verse 11 tells us, “But afterward they [the people of Judah] changed their minds and took back the slaves they had freed and enslaved them again.” The people repented, followed God’s instruction, freed the slaves, and then turned around and re-enslaved their brothers and sisters. God was not happy with the people of Judah, and in verse 17 we see the consequences of their turning back,

“Therefore this is what the Lord says: You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom to your own people. So I now proclaim ‘freedom’ for you, declares the Lord—‘freedom’ to fall by the sword, plague and famine. I will make you abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth. Those who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces. The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests, and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf, I will deliver into the hands of their enemies who want to kill them. Their dead bodies will become food for the birds and the wild animals. I will deliver Zedekiah, king of Judah, and his officials into the hands of their enemies who want to kill them, to the army of the king of Babylon, which has withdrawn from you. I am going to give the order, declares the Lord, and I will bring them back to this city. They will fight against it, take it, and burn it down. And I will lay waste to the towns of Judah so no one can live there.”

The freedom that was offered and taken away from the Jews enslaved by their fellow Israelites would now cause freedom to be taken from those who enslaved them. God freed the sword and pestilence, and He freed the people of Judah to experience both. The Babylonian army had withdrawn! But now they would return, by God Almighty’s order, and destroy the city.

The lesson is straightforward: when you repent, when you turn from your wicked ways and follow God’s commandments, when God graciously relieves you from your enemy’s attack, do not then turn around and go back to your sinful ways. The end will be worse.

Jesus talks about a similar situation when discussing the end times. He said, “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” When one cleans his house of wickedness, that person should furnish it with holy articles and invite God’s Spirit to fill every room. When a person turns from the wicked way, they had better not turn back around to follow those same ways again.

According to Peter, a person is better off not escaping the corruption of the world through the power of Jesus Christ if their intent is to be entangled and recaptured once again by the same worldly sin they escaped. That person is “worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.”

Take heart, sinner and saint; God will respond to your repentance. He is faithful to act in accordance with His promises. But once repentant, do not turn around. Do not go back to sin. Do not walk away from the Godly path to be entangled in the world once again.

Jeremiah 34