“’Shall I not punish them for these things?’ says the lord.» ‘Shall I not avenge Myself on such a nation as this?’ (Jeremiah 9:9).
The kingdom was threatened by complete ruin. The few good ones left had to be encouraged; the many bad, rebuked and induced to obey.
Jeremiah was the one who worked the hardest to remind the people of God’s law, the importance of keeping the Sabbath and going back to the good, ancient ways.
The Lord commanded him to speak to all the people from the temple without omitting a word that the Lord gave to him. Everyone had to have the opportunity to hear it and turn away from evil.
God does not want to punish. «He stays His judgments that He may plead with the impenitent. He who exercises «loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth» yearns over His erring children; in every way possible He seeks to teach them the way of life everlasting» (Prophets and Kings, ch. 34, p. 413). His wandering people could hear about His willingness to defer punishment and give them another opportunity to repent, He told them that rites and ceremonies were not enough to atone for sin. Only the ”reformation of heart and of the life practice alone could save them from the inevitable result of continued transgression” (ibid).
We may be very familiar with an image of a God who «punishes because He loves» or of great destruction and captivity, but we must be very careful. Let us not sneer at God’s unwillingness to punish. Many of the calamities that fell on the people and that fall on us as apparent «punishments» are actually the result of our own decisions, a direct and obligatory consequence of our own actions.
«Let none refuse to be reproved for evil, nor charge the servants of God with being too zealous in endeavoring to cleanse the camp from evil-doing. A sin -hating God calls upon those who claim to keep His law to depart from all iniquity. A neglect to repent and to render willing obedience will bring upon men and women today as serious consequences as came upon ancient Israel)’ (ibid, p. 416).
God is calling us with more power than Jeremiah did that time. Let us be attentive to His rebuke of love. Let us ask for the direction of the Holy Spirit today and ask ourselves what things we could be punished for. In other words, let us ask ourselves what things we could be delivered from.