I have paid attention and listened,
but they have not spoken rightly;
no man relents of his evil,
saying, ‘What have I done?’
Everyone turns to his own course,
like a horse plunging headlong into battle.
Jeremiah 8:6
Before God’s judgment fell upon Judah, He really did look for repentance from His people. But what He saw from the place to the temple, among the king’s court and with the priests & Levites in the temple courts, was unrepentant selfish evil. When God confronted His people through the preaching of Jeremiah, no one responded back with any awareness of their sin or a willingness to repent. Instead, the opposite was the state of the nation.
When a society emphasizes individual freedom (which is generally a good thing in principle) but also simultaneously refuses to believe God or accept His wisdom, individuals will make choices so tainted by selfishness and sin that they will corrupt the entire society. The sum of the bad individual choices will add up to a lot of corruption. What God saw in Judah was this moral chaos of individual freedom run amuck without any divine direction. The people refused to live by God’s design (Jeremiah 8:8-9), making them by God’s estimation worse off than animals in the natural world that follow divine instincts and patterns.
And so I must guard my own heart. I love that God has given me freedom. But I also know I am very imperfect and will make sinful and harmful choices left solely to my own insights. When I do, I pray I will have the courage and faith to always repent with the realization: “What have I done?” I trust God’s Word and the Holy Spirit to direct my life in the best possible course, away from a destiny of headlong destruction, and into the joy of my Lord!
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