The Liturgy of Homecoming Text: Jeremiah 3:21-25
Introduction: The Hangover on the High Places
Every sin is an act of idolatry, and every act of idolatry is an attempt to find life, meaning, or satisfaction somewhere other than the living God. Our modern world is littered with high places, just as ancient Israel was. Our high places may not be literal hills with Asherah poles, but they are high places nonetheless. They are the political ideologies that promise utopia, the therapeutic cults that promise wholeness, the consumerism that promises happiness, and the raw sensuality that promises transcendence. Men climb these hills seeking a party, a festival of self-worship. They want the loud music, the ecstatic frenzy, the "tumult on the mountains."
But the party always ends. The music stops. The morning comes, and the hill is no longer a place of ecstatic revelry, but a "bare height." All that is left is the spiritual hangover, the shame, and the wreckage. This is the scene Jeremiah paints for us. It is a picture of a people who have chased after every lie, and have found themselves bankrupt. But right here, on the bare heights of their own making, in the midst of their weeping, God speaks. And what He speaks is not the final word of condemnation, but the first word of grace.
This passage is a divine drama, a script for true repentance. It is the liturgy of homecoming. We see first the sound of honest grief, then the stunning invitation of God, and finally, the anatomy of a true and heartfelt confession. This is not just a historical record of Israel's failure. It is a timeless map for every prodigal son, for every backslidden church, for every wayward nation that wants to find its way home. We must learn this liturgy, because without it, we are doomed to remain on the bare heights, weeping without hope.
The Text
A voice is heard on the bare heights, The weeping and the supplications of the sons of Israel; Because they have perverted their way, They have forgotten Yahweh their God.
"Return, O faithless sons; I will heal your faithlessness." "Behold, we come to You, For You are Yahweh our God.
Surely, the hills are a lie, A tumult on the mountains. Surely in Yahweh our God Is the salvation of Israel.
"But the shameful thing has devoured the labor of our fathers since our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and theirdaughters. Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us; for we have sinned against Yahweh our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day. And we have not listened to the voice of Yahweh our God."
(Jeremiah 3:21-25 LSB)
The Sound of Accurate Grief (v. 21)
The scene opens with a sound, a lamentation from a specific place for a specific reason.
"A voice is heard on the bare heights, The weeping and the supplications of the sons of Israel; Because they have perverted their way, They have forgotten Yahweh their God." (Jeremiah 3:21)
The voice is heard on the "bare heights." This is crucial. The high places were the scenes of their idolatrous crimes. This is where they built their altars to Baal and cavorted with the cult prostitutes. This is where they sought life and blessing apart from God. Now those same places are "bare." The idols have failed. The party is over. The high of rebellion has led to the low of desolation. True repentance begins when you go back to the scene of the crime and see it for the barren waste that it is.
And what is the sound? It is "weeping and supplications." This is not the worldly sorrow that leads to death, a mere regret at being caught. This is godly sorrow, because it is tied to a specific diagnosis. They are weeping "because they have perverted their way, they have forgotten Yahweh their God." This is the root of it all. Forgetting God is the fountainhead of all sin. When you forget the Creator, you will inevitably pervert your way in His creation. You will twist and distort sexuality, justice, worship, and reality itself. Their grief is theologically precise. They are not just sad about their circumstances; they are broken over their sin. They have identified the cause: covenant amnesia.
The Unconditional Invitation (v. 22a)
Into this moment of honest grief, God speaks. And His word is not what they deserve, but what they desperately need.
"Return, O faithless sons; I will heal your faithlessness." (Jeremiah 3:22a)
God does not wait for them to fix themselves. He hears their weeping, and His immediate response is an invitation wrapped in a promise. "Return." The Hebrew is shuv. It is the great covenantal call to repent, to turn around and come home. But notice who He calls: "faithless sons." The Hebrew for faithless is meshuvah, from the same root as shuv. He is essentially saying, "You backsliding backsliders, come back." He names their disease in the very act of offering the cure.
This is the radical nature of divine grace. He does not say, "Prove your faithfulness, and then I will welcome you." He says, "Come to Me in your faithlessness, and I will heal it." The healing is not a precondition for returning; it is the consequence of returning. Salvation is not a deal we make with God after we have improved ourselves. It is a rescue operation that God performs on spiritual corpses. He provides not only the destination, which is Himself, but also the power to get there. He heals the very faithlessness that keeps us from Him.
The Confession of a Prodigal (v. 22b-23)
The people, hearing this gracious call, respond immediately. Their confession has two parts: a great affirmation and a great repudiation.
"Behold, we come to You, For You are Yahweh our God. Surely, the hills are a lie, A tumult on the mountains. Surely in Yahweh our God Is the salvation of Israel." (Jeremiah 3:22b-23)
First, the affirmation: "Behold, we come to You, For You are Yahweh our God." The word "behold" is the language of sudden, clear-sighted vision. The fog of idolatry has lifted. They see with clarity who God is and who they belong to. Their coming is not tentative; it is an immediate, decisive action based on a foundational truth: "You are Yahweh our God."
Second, the repudiation. They look back at the high places, at the idols they served, and they issue a verdict: "Surely, the hills are a lie." The word for lie here is sheqer, meaning deception, a fraud. The worship on those hills was a "tumult," a noisy, chaotic, orgiastic confusion. All false worship is like this. It is loud, frenetic, and distracting, because at its center is a hollow lie. It has to be noisy to drown out the sound of its own emptiness. In contrast, they declare, "Surely in Yahweh our God is the salvation of Israel." They are trading the loud lie for the quiet, powerful truth. Salvation is not found in the chaotic frenzy of self-worship, but in the covenant-keeping God alone.
Counting the Cost and Lying in Shame (v. 24-25)
True repentance does not skip over the consequences. The people now take a full inventory of what their sin has cost them, and they adopt the only appropriate posture.
"But the shameful thing has devoured the labor of our fathers since our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us..." (Jeremiah 3:24-25a)
The "shameful thing" is a common biblical euphemism for Baal. Idolatry is not a harmless private choice; it is a voracious predator. It "devoured" their inheritance. It consumed their economic prosperity ("flocks and herds") and, most horrifically, their future generations ("sons and daughters"), a clear reference to the abomination of child sacrifice. All idolatry devours. Our modern idols of sexual liberation and state power devour our children through abortion and godless education. Sin has a price, and it sends the bill to our children.
Faced with this devastating reality, their response is not to make excuses. It is to "lie down in our shame." This is not the groveling of a slave before a tyrant, but the prostration of a penitent child before a holy Father. In our therapeutic age, the goal is to get rid of shame as quickly as possible. The biblical path is to agree with it. It is to accept God's verdict on our sin. We must lie down in our shame before God can lift us up in His grace. We must let our dishonor cover us before He can clothe us in the righteousness of Christ.
The confession concludes by returning to the root of the problem:
"...for we have sinned against Yahweh our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day. And we have not listened to the voice of Yahweh our God." (Jeremiah 3:25b)
The confession is specific ("sinned against Yahweh"), generational ("we and our fathers"), and comprehensive ("from our youth even to this day"). And it ends where all sin begins: "we have not listened to the voice of Yahweh our God." The fundamental sin is a failure of acoustics. It is tuning our ears to the loud tumult of the hills instead of the authoritative, life-giving voice of God. Every sin you commit is because you listened to the wrong voice.
The Gospel Homecoming
This entire liturgy finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the embodiment of God's call to "Return." He is the Good Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one lost sheep on the bare hills of its own sin.
The "shameful thing," Baal, devoured the sons of Israel. But on another hill, outside Jerusalem, God took the most shameful thing imaginable, the cross, and on it, His own Son was devoured by the wrath we deserved. Jesus lay down in our shame and let our dishonor cover Him, so that we could be clothed in His honor.
God's promise, "I will heal your faithlessness," is fulfilled in the gospel. He does not just forgive our faithlessness; He nails it to the cross and gives us the perfect faithfulness of Jesus Christ in its place. Our response, then, is to follow this ancient script. We look at the idols of our age and declare, "Surely, the hills are a lie." We look to the cross and declare, "Surely, in Yahweh our God is our salvation." We stop listening to the clamor of the world and attune our ears to the voice of our Savior.
This is the only way home. It is the path of repentance, which is not a gloomy duty, but a joyful return to the only one who can heal our backslidings and love us freely.