January 8, 2003
Reading: Jeremiah 2:20-22

 

“Your iniquity is marked before Me” (22)

 

When God was ready to “perform His word” (Jer 1:12) in judgment, He announced to the people of Judah that their sin was the cause of it. He laid out to them the specifics of their sin and its effect on Himself. Their sins were the outward expression of an inward condition.

All the cleansing agents in the world could not remove the filthiness sin had accumulated in their hearts. For it was their hearts, not their bodies, that was the problem. God searched the heart (17:10), and Jeremiah pleaded with them to “wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved” 4:14. “But this people has a defiant and rebellious heart” 5:23; “Everyone followed the dictates of his evil heart” 11:8; “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?” 17:9. The promise of God under a new covenant was to “give them a heart to know Me, that I am the LORD; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart” 24:7. Ezekiel said the same thing, “Everyone of the house of Israel who sets up his idols in his heart, and puts before him what causes him to stumble into iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the LORD will answer him who comes, according to the multitude of his idols, that I may seize the house of Israel by their heart, because they are all estranged from Me by their idols” Ezek 14:4-5. The promise of Jehovah to His people was identical whether spoken through Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or any of the prophets. The issue is the heart, it is mentioned 54 times in Jeremiah and 34 times in Ezekiel. The outward expression was rebellion, disobedience, idol worship, etc., but the inward source of the problem was the heart. When asked what was the greatest of all commandments, Jesus answered, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment” Matt 22:37-38. This is not a New Testament concept. Even the lawyer who tested Jesus deciphered the true meaning of the law when he said the same thing, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,' and 'your neighbor as yourself” Luke 10:25-27.

Although the people sought to eliminate the outward expression of iniquity, it remained a stench in God’s nostrils because the heart was not cleansed. “Yet your iniquity is marked before Me” 2:22. The word translated “marked” is ‘katham’ which means to carve or engrave, and is used only this one time in the scriptures. Our sin is so hideous to God that it is “engraved” on His heart. Outward washing may make our body clean, but it does not remove the engraving on the heart of God. The only way for the mark of sin to be removed from God is for us to search for Him with all our heart (29:13) and return to Him with our “whole heart” (24:7). His promise is, “When you search for Me with all your heart, I will be found by you” 29:13-14. The result is forgiveness (31:34; 36:3), and the promise is “I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more" 31:34.

The message is forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus, “He (God) has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” Col 1:13-14. The mark on the heart of God has been removed by the blood of Christ and we are now clean. For those who ask, His answer is always, “I am willing, be cleansed” Mark 1:41.