The Treachery of Forgetfulness and the Filth of Self-Justification Text: Jeremiah 2:32-35
Introduction: The Covenantal Amnesia
The book of Jeremiah is a record of a covenant lawsuit. God, the aggrieved husband, is bringing charges against His adulterous bride, the nation of Judah. And the central charge, the one that undergirds all the others, is a charge of radical forgetfulness. This is not the forgetfulness of a busy man who misplaces his keys. This is the willful, deliberate, and treacherous amnesia of an unfaithful wife who has determined to forget her husband, her vows, and her own identity in order to pursue other lovers. It is a spiritual Alzheimer's, self-induced.
We live in a culture that is suffering from the same disease. It is a culture that has forgotten God, and having forgotten God, it has forgotten what it means to be human. We have forgotten where we came from, who we are, and where we are going. And so, like Judah, we have become experts at decorating our path to destruction. We are adept at making our rebellion look sophisticated, our sin look like freedom, and our guilt look like innocence. We have taught the wicked our ways, and then have the audacity to stand before a holy God with blood on our skirts, declaring our innocence.
This passage in Jeremiah is a searing indictment, but it is also a mercy. It is the mercy of a physician who gives a clear and devastating diagnosis. It is the mercy of a judge who reads the charges aloud so that the defendant might have an opportunity to repent before the sentence is passed. God is laying out the case with breathtaking clarity, showing Judah the anatomy of their sin. He exposes their unnatural forgetfulness, their skillful depravity, their murderous guilt, and their brazen self-justification. And in doing so, He is exposing us as well, for the heart of Judah is the heart of man.
The Text
Can a virgin forget her ornaments, Or a bride her attire? Yet My people have forgotten Me Days without number. How well you prepare your way To seek love! Therefore even the wicked women You have taught your ways. Also on your skirts is found The lifeblood of the innocent needy; You did not find them breaking in. But in spite of all these things, Yet you said, ‘I am innocent; Surely His anger is turned away from me.’ Behold, I will enter into judgment with you Because you say, ‘I have not sinned.’
(Jeremiah 2:32-35 LSB)
Unnatural Amnesia (v. 32)
God begins with a rhetorical question that highlights the sheer unnaturalness of Judah's sin.
"Can a virgin forget her ornaments, Or a bride her attire? Yet My people have forgotten Me Days without number." (Jeremiah 2:32)
The imagery is potent. A young woman, a virgin, treasures her ornaments. A bride on her wedding day is consumed with her attire. These are not trivial things to her; they are expressions of her identity, her joy, her status, her hope. To forget them would be unthinkable. It would be like forgetting her own name. It is contrary to nature.
And yet, God says, this is precisely what "My people" have done. Notice the possessive pronoun. This is the sting. "You are Mine. I chose you. I betrothed you to Myself in the wilderness. I was your glory, your ornament, your bridal attire. And you have forgotten Me." This is not a casual oversight. This is a deep, settled, covenantal amnesia. "Days without number" indicates a chronic condition, a lifestyle of forgetting.
How does a people forget God? They do it by replacing Him. They fill their hearts and minds and calendars with other things, with idols. They exchange the fountain of living waters for broken cisterns. They stop remembering His mighty acts. They stop rehearsing His covenant promises. They stop singing His praises. They stop talking about Him to their children. And slowly, imperceptibly at first, He fades from their consciousness. They become practical atheists. And this is the great sin of the modern West. We have not so much fought God as we have simply forgotten Him. He has become an afterthought, a hobby for a few, but not the central, blazing reality of our lives. And this is as unnatural as a bride forgetting her wedding dress.
Adept Adultery (v. 33)
Having forgotten their husband, Judah has become an expert in finding new lovers. Their sin is not passive; it is active, skillful, and instructive.
"How well you prepare your way To seek love! Therefore even the wicked women You have taught your ways." (Jeremiah 2:33 LSB)
The language here is dripping with irony. "How well you prepare your way." The Hebrew word for "prepare" can also mean "to make good" or "to adorn." You adorn your path to seek "love," that is, illicit lovers, foreign gods, and political alliances. The energy and creativity that should have been devoted to adorning their relationship with Yahweh is now being poured into spiritual harlotry. They are meticulous in their rebellion.
And their skill in this depravity is so profound that they have become teachers of the wicked. "Therefore even the wicked women you have taught your ways." This is a staggering reversal. Israel was called to be a light to the nations, a teacher of righteousness to the pagan world. Instead, they have become so proficient in their apostasy that even the seasoned prostitutes of the pagan world could learn from them. They have taken the covenant blessings and truths of God and twisted them into a more potent, more perverse form of idolatry. This is what happens when a Christian nation apostatizes. It doesn't become neutrally secular. It becomes aggressively anti-Christian, pioneering new forms of wickedness that the pagans of old never dreamed of.
Bloody Skirts (v. 34)
This spiritual adultery is not a victimless crime. It has real-world, bloody consequences. The idolatry is connected directly to injustice and murder.
"Also on your skirts is found The lifeblood of the innocent needy; You did not find them breaking in. But in spite of all these things," (Jeremiah 2:34 LSB)
The image is graphic. The beautiful attire she has prepared for her lovers is stained with blood. The covenant-breaking that began with forgetting God has now manifested in the shedding of innocent blood. When a nation forsakes God, it will inevitably forsake the image of God in man. The "innocent needy" are the most vulnerable members of society: the poor, the orphans, the widows, those whom God's law was specifically designed to protect.
And God preempts their excuse. "You did not find them breaking in." This was not self-defense. This was not the execution of criminals caught in the act. This was cold-blooded murder and judicial oppression. The lifeblood of the innocent is on the nation's hands. And we must not miss the direct application to our own culture. We have forgotten God, and as a direct result, our national skirts are soaked with the lifeblood of the innocent needy. We have murdered millions of the most vulnerable, the most defenseless, in the abortuaries that dot our land. This is not some peripheral issue. It is the logical and bloody consequence of forgetting our Creator. When you deny the Creator, you will eventually deny that man is created in His image, and then the slaughter of the innocents is never far behind.
Brazen Denial (v. 35)
In the face of this overwhelming evidence, Judah's response is not repentance, but a doubling down on self-justification. This is the final, and perhaps most infuriating, charge.
"Yet you said, ‘I am innocent; Surely His anger is turned away from me.’ Behold, I will enter into judgment with you Because you say, ‘I have not sinned.’" (Jeremiah 2:35 LSB)
They plead "innocent." They have become so adept at self-deception that they can look at their blood-stained skirts and see only purity. They have redefined sin out of existence. More than that, they have developed a faulty theology to support their delusion: "Surely His anger is turned away from me." They mistake God's patience for His approval. Because the lightning bolt has not yet struck, they assume God is fine with their behavior. This is the essence of therapeutic religion. It is a religion that exists to make us feel good about ourselves, to assure us that God's anger is always turned away, regardless of how we live.
And God's response is swift and terrible. "Behold, I will enter into judgment with you." Why? Not primarily because of the idolatry or the murder, as horrific as they are. He brings judgment for this specific reason: "Because you say, 'I have not sinned.'" The claim of sinlessness is the ultimate provocation. It is the final rejection of grace. It slams the door on repentance and locks it from the inside. When a man says, "I have not sinned," he is calling God a liar (1 John 1:10), and there is nothing left but judgment.
The Gospel in Jeremiah's Courtroom
This passage is a dark and terrible indictment. We read it and we see our own culture, and if we are honest, we see our own hearts. We are the ones who forget God days without number. We are the ones who skillfully prepare our ways to seek other loves. We are the ones whose hands are not clean. And we are the ones who are experts at self-justification, who minimize our sin and plead our own innocence.
If the story ended here, we would be without hope, awaiting judgment. But this is not where the story ends. The covenant lawsuit that God brings against His bride in the Old Testament is a foreshadowing of the great transaction that takes place at the cross.
At the cross, God enters into judgment. But He does not enter into judgment with us. He enters into judgment with His own Son. All the charges in Jeremiah's indictment are laid upon Jesus Christ. He who never forgot His Father for a moment was forsaken by His Father. He who was perfectly faithful was treated as the ultimate spiritual adulterer. The one whose hands were clean was stained with our bloody guilt. He became sin for us.
And what of the plea? We stand before God and say, "I am innocent... I have not sinned." And we are liars. But Jesus stood before God, the only one who could truly say, "I am innocent," and He was condemned. He did this so that we, who are guilty, could stand before God and plead a different plea. We do not say, "I have not sinned." We say, "I have sinned, but my Savior is innocent, and He has taken my judgment."
And God, in a glorious exchange, takes the bridal attire of Christ, His perfect righteousness, and clothes us in it. He removes our filthy, blood-stained skirts and gives us a robe of pure white. He cures our amnesia and writes His law on our hearts, so that we will never forget Him again. He takes those who were experts at teaching wickedness and makes them ambassadors of reconciliation. This is the gospel. It is the only answer to the treacherous forgetfulness and filthy self-justification of the human heart. Let us therefore abandon our pleas of innocence and flee to the one who was condemned in our place.