Not Much Left

Thursday, September 15, 2022

This is what the Lord said to me:  “Go and buy a linen loincloth and put it on, but do not wash it.”  So I bought the loincloth as the Lord directed me, and I put it on.  Then the Lord gave me another message:  “Take the linen loincloth you are wearing, and go to the Euphrates River.  Hide it there in a hole in the rocks.”  So I went and hid it by the Euphrates as the Lord had instructed me.   A long time afterward the Lord said to me, “Go back to the Euphrates and get the loincloth I told you to hide there.”  So I went to the Euphrates and dug it out of the hole where I had hidden it.  But now it was rotting and falling apart. The loincloth was good for nothing.  Then I received this message from the Lord:  “This is what the Lord says:  This shows how I will rot away the pride of Judah and Jerusalem.  These wicked people refuse to listen to me.  They stubbornly follow their own desires and worship other gods.  Therefore, they will become like this loincloth—good for nothing!  As a loincloth clings to a man’s waist, so I created Judah and Israel to cling to me, says the Lord.  They were to be my people, my pride, my glory—an honor to my name.  But they would not listen to me.  Jeremiah 13:1-11

This sermon of Jeremiah’s was a long time cooking.  God had told the prophet to buy some new underwear, put it on for a while, and then go bury it under a rock near the river.  Then, after a long time, God instructed Jeremiah to dig it up.  When the cloth was retrieved, there wasn’t much left.

Why would God orchestrate this strange behavior?  What was the Lord doing?  Well, it’s not too difficult to figure out…a garment that’s meant to be worn doesn’t do well buried in the damp ground…it will rot. 

The meaning in the story’s impact makes Israel God’s undergarment, meant to stay closely-wrapped to the One who saved them, and led them to the land flowing with milk and honey.  The short version is painful…they wouldn’t, and they didn’t.

To sensible people it seems odd that anyone who had been carried like a child by a loving parent would want to stray from that relationship.  But, as seen over and again in Scripture’s account of Israel’s history, God’s people left the calling of JHWH in the dust to serve other gods.  Chalk up a win for stubbornness and pride!

Over the course of human history the willfulness, and very stubborn pride of humans, has preciptated much grief and pain.  People leave the one true God to serve all kinds of other gods, easier gods, gods that will let you indulge your own whims, and applaude your decision.  In the end, when you dig up what is left of their life’s record, it is as rotten as discarded underwear, buried on the riverbank.

For You Today

A Christian is a person who has surrendered all rights to self-determination, committing his or her life to following the one, true, living God’s will and calling.  And that calling, no matter if it is to business, church, government, or a billion other occupations and ways to spend your days on earth…unequivocally means staying close to the God who loves and saves you.  To do anything other makes the human the god.  That didn’t work for Israel, and it will not fare better for any of us.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Nervous Kings and When Faith is Discarded

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©