Jer 2:29-37 I Will Plead With Thee, Because Thou Sayest, I Have Not Sinned

[Study Aired January 9, 2021]

Jer 2:29 Wherefore will ye plead with me? ye all have transgressed against me, saith the LORD.
Jer 2:30 In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction: your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.
Jer 2:31 O generation, see ye the word of the LORD. Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee?
Jer 2:32 Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number.
Jer 2:33 Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.
Jer 2:34 Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all these.
Jer 2:35 Yet thou sayest, Because I am innocent, surely his anger shall turn from me. Behold, I will plead with thee, because thou sayest, I have not sinned.
Jer 2:36 Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria.
Jer 2:37 Yea, thou shalt go forth from him, and thine hands upon thine head: for the LORD hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them.

It may seem contradictory, and indeed it is, to be ashamed of being caught in an adulterous relationship, and still be able to say ‘I am innocent… I have not sinned’. This is exactly what Paul meant when He admonished us:

Rom 7:24 O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
Rom 7:25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

‘The law of sin’ tells us that our self-righteousness, the most insidious of all sins, is in reality, righteousness. We have become so ‘righteous’ that we now tell the Lord, “I am my own lord, I will no more come unto you.” That is the same as saying to the Lord, “I, Lord, not You, will choose whether or not I will obey You.”

Jer 2:29 Wherefore will ye plead with me? ye all have transgressed against me, saith the LORD.
Jer 2:30 In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction: your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.

‘Why do we contend with Christ? We have all transgressed against Him.’ He has chastened us for doing so, and we were so blinded by our adulterous ways that we weren’t even aware we were being chastened.

“In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction…” This statement is the Old Testament foundation for these words out of the mouth of John the Baptist:

Joh 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

Paul repeats this fact when he informs us:

Rom 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

The whole world is reaping what it is sowing even as it refuses to acknowledge the God who is making us all to reap what we sow:

Gal 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Gal 6:8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

We all “sow to [our] flesh” before we are granted to “sow to the spirit”. In that time of our walk, we are living under the Lord’s wrath, and we are not aware of it being so. We grow into adulthood under the Lord’s wrath, and it is few indeed who ever begin to come out from under the wrath of the Lord in this age:

Joh 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

Even the Lord’s ‘few… very elect’ begin life under the wrath of God and we do not realize it, which gives the Lord the occasion to exclaim:

Jer 2:30 In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction: your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.

‘Receiving no correction’ and ‘devouring [the Lord’s] prophets, like a destroying lion’ are the same thing. This verse is another example of how the Old Testament writers say the same thing twice when making a point. Jeremiah 1:5 is but one of hundreds of examples:

Jer 1:5 [1^st] Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and [2^nd] before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

It is in failing to receive our own correction from the Lord that we devour the prophets He sends to admonish us.

Jeremiah was obviously a student of the book of Isaiah even though there were approximately 70 years between these two prophets. Just look at how Isaiah was inspired to tell us the exact same thing about ourselves:

Isa 42:22  But this is a people robbed and spoiled; they are all of them snared in holes, and they are hid in prison houses: they are for a prey, and none delivereth; for a spoil, and none saith, Restore. [Jer 2:30  In vain have I smitten your children; they received no correction…]
Isa 42:23  Who among you will give ear to this? who will hearken and hear for the time to come?
Isa 42:24  Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? did not the LORD, he against whom we have sinned? for they would not walk in his ways, neither were they obedient unto his law. [Jer 2:30 …your own sword hath devoured your prophets, like a destroying lion.]

Isa 42:25  Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the strength of battle: and it hath set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart.

The “they” of verse 24 is also the “we” of that same verse. It is a principle that we must personalize the third person pronouns if we are to gain anything from the prophecies of the scriptures. It is each of us upon whom “He hath poured… the fury of His anger. It is each of us whom He “has set… on fire [and] yet [we] knew not… it burned [us] yet [we] laid it not to heart”.

Instead, even as the Lord is “pouring out upon [us] the fury of His anger” this is our response:

Jer 2:31  O generation, see ye the word of the LORD. Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee?

Why did we ever think that with our fabled ‘free will’ we could decide for our Lord whether we would obey Him? Yet that is what we all thought… ‘I am the captain of my fate!’ is the mantra of “the beast”. ‘It is I who chose to serve the Lord’, and we say that in the face of our Lord who tells us explicitly the exact opposite:

Joh 15:16 Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

Rom 8:20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,

Rom 9:15 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
Rom 9:16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.

“The fear of the Lord” and hearing and obeying His “instructions” are the ornaments of being the bride of the Lamb.

Pro 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Pro 1:8 My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother:
Pro 1:9 For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.

So, when we refuse to hear His instructions and we forsake His law, He asks us:

Jer 2:32 Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number.
Jer 2:33 Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.

These words are addressed to the “mother of harlots”, God’s own people, because we have been given His Words and have refused them. As we were instructed in an earlier study, we have thereby become worse than those to whom the Lord has not revealed Himself as yet.

Jer 2:20 For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; and thou saidst, I will not transgress; when upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot.

It is not the Lord’s love we are seeking when He asks us, “Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love.” It is in the rejection of our own spiritual husband that we “trim our way to seek [the] love” of our adulterous Babylonian leaders and friends. It is in doing so that we “teach the wicked ones our ways”. It is in Babylon, in our adulterous hypocrisy, that we make the poor wandering souls who come to us seeking to know the Lord “two-fold more the child of Gehenna than [our]selves.”  We did not think that was what we were doing. Nevertheless, it is while we are “playing the harlot” that we say, “I have done no wickedness.”

Pro 30:20 Such is the way of an adulterous woman; she eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness.

Mat 23:15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

At this point in the Lord’s work with us, He has given us eyes that see but cannot perceive. He has given us ears that hear but cannot understand:

Isa 44:18 They have not known nor understood: for he hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see; and their hearts, that they cannot understand.

Joh 12:40 He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

Rom 11:8 (According as it is written [Isa 44:18], God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day.

That is why Isaiah tells us this about ourselves:

Isa 3:9 The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded evil unto themselves.

Jeremiah’s admonition is the same as Isaiah’s. We are told that our hatred of the Lord is blatant:

Jer 2:34 Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all these.
Jer 2:35 Yet thou sayest, Because I am innocent, surely his anger shall turn from me. Behold, I will plead with thee, because thou sayest, I have not sinned.

The Lord doesn’t need to do a “secret search” because He found them “upon all these” referring back to these previous verses we just read.

Jer 2:31 O generation, see ye the word of the LORD. Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee?
Jer 2:32 Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number.
Jer 2:33 Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.

The Lord will make us give an accounting for such presumptuous rebellion against our own Husband. ‘We will come no more to you… we are our own lords’ will be chastened and scourged out of us, and we will be punished in His wrath for our insubordination and presumptuousness:

Eze 9:9 Then said he unto me, The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceeding great, and the land is full of blood, and the city full of perverseness: for they say, The LORD hath forsaken the earth, and the LORD seeth not.
Eze 9:10 And as for me also, mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity, but I will recompense their way upon their head.

Eze 14:10 And they shall bear the punishment of their iniquity: the punishment of the prophet shall be even as the punishment of him that seeketh unto him;

Ezekiel 14:10 does not have the word ‘punishment’ in the Hebrew, but it is certainly implied by telling us earlier, “…but I will recompense their way upon their head”, and then here in Jeremiah we are being told:

Jer 2:19 Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.

The Lord wants us to, “Know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that [we] have forsaken the Lord, and that [His] fear is not in [us].”

Somehow our carnal mind justifies our infidelity, and we tell ourselves we “[are] innocent” and actually believe the Lord will not pour out His wrath upon us. Such is not the case simply, “Because [we] say, I have not sinned.” Our false doctrines of a ‘secret rapture… a place of safety, or substitutionary atonement’ will not change the Truth of these verses of scripture:

1Co 3:13 Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.

Rev 15:7 And one of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials full of the wrath of God, who liveth for ever and ever.
Rev 15:8 And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power; and no man was able to enter into the temple, till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled. [aorist tense]

Every one of us, if we are the Lord’s “predestinated” ones (Rom 8:29-30; Eph 1:5, 11; Act 4:28, 1Co 2:27), have experienced how His Truth crushes the lies of our old man and all of his lovers. Notice that every time the word “predestinated” appears in scripture it is always used in reference to what the Lord is doing with His “firstfruits… the first to trust in Christ” and to be “glorified before all the rest of God’s creation:

Rom 8:29  For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Rom 8:30  Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

That is another study for another time, but ‘predestination’ always refers to the work of God within His firstfruits who are even now in the process of being glorified before all the rest of mankind.

Enduring the Lord’s wrath is the inward application of:

Jer 2:19 Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.

What a blessing it is to be judged in “this present time”:

Rom 8:18  For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
Rom 8:19  For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
Rom 8:20  For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
Rom 8:21  Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

However, there is always an outward dispensational application to every word as this age comes to an end outwardly. It was this outward application of which Christ’s carnal disciples enquired when asking Him:

Mat 24:3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming [G3952 parousia], and of the end of the world [G165 aion]?

We have been blessed to see the inward application of this chapter, but let us never forget that the words of this chapter also have an outward dispensational application to the time just before Christ’s physical ‘parousia’, at which time He will appear as a body which can be touched as Thomas was instructed:

Joh 20:24  But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.
Joh 20:25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.
Joh 20:26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.
Joh 20:27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
Joh 20:28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
Joh 20:29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

The outward application of the prophecies of Matthew 24 are essential to understanding the order in which the Lord is judging this world. All the “evil and bitter things” (Jer 2:19) mentioned by the Lord in that prophecy are coming on this earth because the whole world has said, “We are lords, we will come no more to you” (Jer 2:31). Just be aware of the certainty of the Lord’s wrath as it begins crushing the powers of the nations of this world with the fear of deadly pestilences, “every man’s hand against his neighbor”:

Isa 3:5 And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable.

Isa 19:2 And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom [Egypt typifies this world and its religions (Rev 11:8)].

Rev 11:8  And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.

Jer 51:45 My people, go ye out of the midst of her, and deliver ye every man his soul from the fierce anger of the LORD.
Jer 51:46 And lest your heart faint, and ye fear for the rumour that shall be heard in the land; a rumour shall both come one year, and after that in another year shall come a rumour, and violence in the land, ruler against ruler.
Jer 51:47 Therefore, behold, the days come, that I will do judgment upon the graven images of Babylon: and her whole land shall be confounded, and all her slain shall fall in the midst of her.
Jer 51:48 Then the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, shall sing for Babylon: for the spoilers shall come unto her from the north, saith the LORD.
Jer 51:49 As Babylon hath caused the slain of Israel to fall, so at Babylon shall fall the slain of all the earth.
Jer 51:50 Ye that have escaped the sword, go away, stand not still: remember the LORD afar off, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.

“The blood of the souls of poor innocents” of Jeremiah 2:34 is the blood of the proselytes we move heaven and earth to make in Babylon, and then after we proselytize them, we make them two-fold more the child of Gehenna than ourselves:

Mat 23:15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

We have all vouched for the lies which helped us curry the favor of our lovers in Babylon, and while doing so we thought of ourselves as witnesses and missionaries for Christ.

We suffer the Lord’s wrath and are made to give an accounting of our rebellious ways “because you say, I have not sinned”. We suffer His wrath because we cannot yet acknowledge our adulterous ways. We cannot yet acknowledge and bitterly confess that we are anything but ‘innocent’. When the Lord begins to judge us, we do not yet “know the hole of the pit from whence we were digged”. Then, as we are made to see the rebellion we have shown toward our Lord, His anger subsides only to reappear as needed to keep our feet from slipping:

Isa 28:26  For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.
Isa 28:27  For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.
Isa 28:28  Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen.

Psa 50:21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.

Psa 73:2 But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped.

Psa 119:67 Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now [that I have been afflicted] have I kept thy word.

Isa 51:1 Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.

Jer 2:22 For though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the Lord GOD.
Jer 2:23 How canst thou say, I am not polluted, I have not gone after Baalim? see thy way in the valley, know what thou hast done: thou art a swift dromedary traversing her ways;

We cannot change ourselves, but when the Lord begins changing us, then we will know clearly why ‘Ishmael’ within us will “not be made heir with the son of the free woman”, and why Christ within us is in the process of judging Esau within us in this present time, as well as the rest of mankind in the great white throne judgment:

Gal 4:28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.
Gal 4:29 But as then he that was born after the flesh [the old man within] persecuted him that was born after the Spirit [the new man within], even so it is now.
Gal 4:30 Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman [sin within our flesh] shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.
Gal 4:31 So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.

“Cast out the bondwoman” does not mean that the son of the bondwoman will rule with Christ on earth. What it does mean is that she will not be “counted as the seed… of Abraham… in this present age”. This is what the scriptures teach concerning who is to be counted as the seed of Abraham in this present time:

Rom 8:18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Rom 9:8 That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.

1Pe 4:17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
1Pe 4:18  And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?

Hagar, the bondwoman, symbolizes “Jerusalem which now is and is in bondage with her children”, and the Lord plainly tells us “the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.

Then the holy spirit defines ‘bondage’ in these terms:

Gal 3:22  But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.
Gal 3:23  But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.

Gal 4:25  For this Agar [Hagar] is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
Gal 4:26  But Jerusalem which is above is free, [the freewoman] which is the mother of us all.

“Jerusalem which now is and is in bondage with her children” symbolizes all Christians who still think that they are the Lord’s chosen spiritual children while physical Israel is God’s chosen physical people who will rule this earth for a thousand years when Christ returns.

Under inspiration of the holy spirit, Paul equated ‘bondage’ as being “under the law”, and under the inspiration of the holy spirit, he called the law of Moses “bondage under the elements of the world… the  letter of the law… the law… for the lawless… a carnal commandment [which is being] done away” while being replaced by “the law of the spirit of life… the law of Jesus… a new commandment”:

Joh 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

1Jn2: 8 Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.

Gal 4:1 Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;
Gal 4:2 But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father.
Gal 4:3 Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world:
Gal 4:4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,
Gal 4:5 To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

Many times we are told that the “ministration of the law” of Moses is being replaced by “the law of Christ”:

1Co 13:10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away [G2673 katargeo].

2Co 3:7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away [G2673, katargeo]:

2Co 3:11 For if that which is done away [G2673 katargeo] was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.

2Co 3:13  And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished [G2673 katargeo]:
2Co 3:14 But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away [G2673 katargeo] in Christ.

Gal 6:2 Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil  the law of Christ.

The holy spirit informs us that our redemption is from being “under the law… the elements of the world”. The ministers of ‘historic Christianity’ are simply blinded to what the holy spirit is saying to us here. ‘Law’ is not done away, rather the bar of the law is being raised to a spiritual level which is impossible for the flesh of itself to attain.

Rom 3:31 Do we then make void [G2673 katargeo] the law [of Christ] through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law [of Christ].

2Co 3:6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

1Ti 1:9 Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,
1Ti 1:10 For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;
1Ti 1:11 According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

Heb 7:16 Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.

The law of Moses is labeled by the holy spirit as “a carnal commandment”, a qualification which “the Gentiles having not the law” are able to fulfill by “being a law unto themselves”:

Rom 2:14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law [“a carnal commandment”] unto themselves:

“The law of the spirit… the law of Christ… the law of faith… is as high above the [carnal commandments of law of Moses] as the heavens are higher than the earth”:

Isa 55:8  For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
Isa 55:9  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Rom 8:2  For the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus set me free from the law of sin and of death.
Rom 8:3  For the Law being powerless, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh,

“The law being powerless” is true for the simple reason that it was never intended to save us. The exact opposite is true. The law is not designed to make us love one another. “The law works wrath” because its only function is to make “sin appear exceeding sinful”:

Rom 4:15  Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression.

Rom 7:13  Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death [to my old man with]in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.

Gal 3:10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.
Gal 3:11 But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.
Gal 3:12 And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.

Christ has made it clear that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”, and that life comes only “through death”:

Joh 12:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
Joh 12:25 He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

1Co 15:50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.

Col 1:22 In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:

Heb 2:14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;

In spite of this obvious Truth that we must die to our old man, almost all the churches of Babylon, because of their false doctrine of man having been given a will which is free of his Creator, believe and teach that we, our old man as mere “vessels of clay” (Jer 18:4), are responsible for our salvation or our lack thereof, and we of our own supposed ‘free will’ must choose to keep the law and be good creatures.  Then, if we ‘of our own free will’ make the right choice, we will be right with our God.

That false teaching is the subject of our next verse:

Jer 2:36  Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way? thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt, as thou wast ashamed of Assyria. [both teach that your fate is in your own hands]

I did not catch this earlier in this study, but Jeremiah 2:33, which in the King James reads:

Jer 2:33 Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love? therefore hast thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.

The Hebrew word for ‘wicked’, which is normally “rah“, is in this verse the feminine form ‘rahah’ and is therefore better translated as:

Jer 2:33  What? Do you trim your ways to seek love? For this reason you have even taught the evil women your ways.

The ACV, the ASV, Rotherham’s and several others catch that difference revealing that we are an integral part of Babylon and her daughters at this time in our experience.

“Why do you… change your way?” and “What? Do you trim your ways to seek love?” are the same question. The “love [we] seek” refers not to our love of our True Husband, but to our love for Egypt and Assyria, this world, our families and friends in this world and its religions, all of whom make us, the creature, gods in whose own hands our fate lies. This is because we believe that we have been given “free will”.  Every religion in this world agrees that we are “free moral agents” whose supposed ‘free will’ decisions will determine our ultimate fate. In other words, according to this lie, our salvation, or the loss of our salvation, is in the final analysis in our own hands. Thus we “gaddest… about so much to change [our] way… [we] trim our ways to seek [the] love” of ‘Egypt’, symbolizing this world, and ‘Assyria’, the symbol for the religions of this world.

This is where such blasphemous doctrines will take us:

Jer 2:37  Yea, thou shalt go forth from him, and thine hands upon thine head: for the LORD hath rejected thy confidences, and thou shalt not prosper in them.

“You shall go forth from Him…” Is this not exactly what we told the Lord we were going to do?

Jer 2:31  O generation, see ye the word of the LORD. Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee?

‘Yes, we will go forth from Him [thinking] we are our own lords, and we will come no more unto our Lord’… until we get into really deep trouble. Then, and only then, do we cry out to Him “with our hands upon our head” to deliver us from our own foolishness and sins.

As we were told earlier in this chapter:

Jer 2:19  Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
Jer 2:20  For of old time I have broken thy yoke, and burst thy bands; and thou saidst, I will not transgress; when upon every high hill and under every green tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot.

Yes, we do go forth from Him, but we do so with “thine hands upon thine head”. ‘Thy hands upon thy head’ is an expression of shame and grief, as experienced by King David’s daughter, Tamar, when she was raped by her own half-brother, Amnon, a type of the ten horns which turn on Babylon and “eat her flesh and burn her with fire”:

2Sa 13:15 Then Amnon [after raping his own sister] hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone.
2Sa 13:16  And she said unto him, There is no cause: this evil in sending me away is greater than the other that thou didst unto me. But he would not hearken unto her.
2Sa 13:17 Then he called his servant that ministered unto him, and said, Put now this woman out from me, and bolt the door after her.

2Sa 13:19  And Tamar put ashes on her head, and rent her garment of divers colours that was on her, and laid her hand on her head, and went on crying.

Rev 17:16  And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.

Tamar had been used and abused by her own brother. Though she did not bring this grief and shame upon herself, her grief and shame reveal the grief and shame we bring upon ourselves when we treat our spiritual husband the same way Amnon treated his physical sister, Tamar. “…For the Lord has rejected [our] confidences, and [we] will not prosper in them.” We bring shame and grief upon ourselves making us put our ‘hands upon our heads’, and in time we are made to cry out to the Lord to deliver us from ‘making us to err from His ways and hardening our hearts from His fear.’

Psa 107:25 For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.
Psa 107:26 They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble.
Psa 107:27 They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits’ end.
Psa 107:28 Then they cry unto the LORD in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses.
Psa 107:29 He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still.
Psa 107:30 Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.
Psa 107:31 Oh that men would praise the LORD for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!

Isa 63:17 O LORD, why hast thou made us to err from thy ways, and hardened our heart from thy fear? Return for thy servants’ sake, the tribes of thine inheritance.

The Lord has made every one of us “subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who has subjected the same in hope.”

Rom 8:20  For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
Rom 8:21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

That is our study for this week, and here are our verses for our next study:

Jer 3:1  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.
Jer 3:2  Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou hast not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness.
Jer 3:3  Therefore the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; and thou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed.
Jer 3:4  Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?
Jer 3:5  Will he reserve his anger for ever? will he keep it to the end? Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest.
Jer 3:6  The LORD said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king, Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done? she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree, and there hath played the harlot.
Jer 3:7  And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.
Jer 3:8  And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.