The Unbearable Weight of Willful Sin Text: Jeremiah 44:20-23
Introduction: The Point of No Return
We come now to a terrible and solemn place in the book of Jeremiah. This is not a place of negotiation. It is a place of sentencing. The people of Judah, the remnant that fled to Egypt against the explicit command of God, have just finished telling Jeremiah that they have no intention whatever of listening to the word of the Lord. They have doubled down. They have declared their allegiance to the "queen of heaven," attributing all their former prosperity to her, and all their recent calamities to their brief flirtation with obedience to Yahweh. They have it exactly backwards, of course, which is the nature of a reprobate mind. They are calling good evil, and evil good.
So Jeremiah's task here is not to persuade. It is not to cajole. It is to pronounce. He is functioning as a bailiff in God's courtroom, reading the verdict and the sentence to a room full of condemned criminals who have their fingers in their ears. What we are about to read is God's final word to this generation. It is a lesson in the high-handed apostasy that brings a people to the point of no return. This is what it looks like when God's patience finally, and justly, runs out.
We live in a soft age, an age that has refashioned God into a sentimental grandfather who would never, ever bring real, biting judgment upon anyone. Our god is a god of affirmation, not a God of holiness. But the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a consuming fire. And He will not be mocked. A man, or a nation, reaps what he sows. Judah has sown the wind, and they are about to reap the whirlwind. This passage is a stark reminder that there is a line. And when you cross it, the only thing left to hear is the slamming of the door.
Jeremiah's words here are a post-mortem. He is explaining to the walking dead why they are dead. He is detailing the charges for which the sentence of desolation has been passed. And in doing so, he gives us a permanent and terrifying case study in the logic of covenant judgment.
The Text
Then Jeremiah said to all the people, to the men and women, even to all the people who were answering him with such a word, saying, “As for the smoking sacrifices that you offered in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your fathers, your kings and your princes, and the people of the land, did not Yahweh remember them and did not all this come upon His heart? So Yahweh was no longer able to bear it, because of the evil of your deeds, because of the abominations which you have done; thus your land has become a waste place, an object of horror, and an imprecation, without an inhabitant, as it is this day. Because you have burned incense and have sinned against Yahweh and not listened to the voice of Yahweh or walked in His law, His statutes, or His testimonies, therefore this evil has befallen you, as it has this day.”
(Jeremiah 44:20-23 LSB)
God Remembers (v. 20-21)
Jeremiah begins by addressing the central issue: their idolatry. He is responding directly to their insolent claim that things were better when they were burning incense to the queen of heaven.
"As for the smoking sacrifices that you offered in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your fathers, your kings and your princes, and the people of the land, did not Yahweh remember them and did not all this come upon His heart?" (Jeremiah 44:21)
Jeremiah makes it clear that this was not some fringe activity. This was a corporate, national sin. It was comprehensive. He lists the participants: "you and your fathers, your kings and your princes, and the people of the land." From the top down, from one generation to the next, the entire social fabric was saturated with this idolatry. This was not a private matter of personal devotion. This was the established religion of the land. They had turned the holy places, the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, into a great, stinking altar to a demon.
And their central defense is that God didn't seem to mind. They prospered, they had plenty of food, they saw no evil. They mistook God's patience for God's approval. This is a fatal error, and one our own nation is making at this very moment. Because the lightning bolt does not strike instantly, we assume the heavens are empty. But Jeremiah asks the rhetorical question: "did not Yahweh remember them?"
Of course He remembered. God is not forgetful. Every pinch of idolatrous incense, every prayer offered to a false god, every act of covenant rebellion is recorded. God keeps meticulous books. His silence is not consent; it is the storing up of wrath. The phrase "did not all this come upon His heart?" is a powerful anthropomorphism. It means that God took it personally. Their idolatry was not an abstract violation of a rule; it was a deep, personal, marital betrayal. He is the jilted husband of Hosea. Their sin was an offense that grieved Him to His heart, just as the sin of mankind before the flood grieved Him (Genesis 6:6).
The people thought their sin was out of sight, out of mind. Jeremiah tells them it was front and center in the mind of God, an accumulating debt that was about to be called due with crushing interest.
The Divine Breaking Point (v. 22)
Verse 22 describes the consequence of this accumulated, remembered sin. There is a limit to divine forbearance.
"So Yahweh was no longer able to bear it, because of the evil of your deeds, because of the abominations which you have done; thus your land has become a waste place, an object of horror, and an imprecation, without an inhabitant, as it is this day." (Jeremiah 44:22 LSB)
Here is the breaking point. "Yahweh was no longer able to bear it." This is not to suggest a limitation in God's power, but rather a limit defined by His own perfect justice and holiness. A holy God cannot endlessly tolerate high-handed, unrepentant rebellion in His covenant people. To do so would be to deny Himself. The cup of their iniquity was full, and it was time for it to be poured out.
Notice the description of their sin: "the evil of your deeds" and "the abominations which you have done." An abomination is not just a sin; it is a sin that provokes visceral revulsion in God. It is a stench in His nostrils. Idolatry is the chief abomination because it strikes at the very heart of who God is. It gives His glory to another. It is spiritual adultery of the foulest sort.
And the result is covenant judgment, spelled out in the precise terms of the curses found in Deuteronomy 28. The land itself vomits them out. It becomes "a waste place, an object of horror, and an imprecation." A waste place is desolation. An object of horror means that passersby would be shocked at the severity of the judgment. An imprecation, or a curse, means that people would invoke the name of Judah as an example of what happens when a people is cursed by God. "May God make you like Judah."
Jeremiah then adds the devastating phrase, "as it is this day." He is not predicting a future event. He is explaining a present reality. Look around you, he says. Look at the ruins of Jerusalem. Look at your exile here in Egypt. The sentence has already been carried out. You are living in the middle of the curse you earned, and you are still blaming the wrong god.
The Simple Logic of Judgment (v. 23)
Finally, in verse 23, Jeremiah lays out the cause-and-effect relationship with the stark simplicity of a prosecuting attorney's closing argument.
"Because you have burned incense and have sinned against Yahweh and not listened to the voice of Yahweh or walked in His law, His statutes, or His testimonies, therefore this evil has befallen you, as it has this day." (Jeremiah 44:23 LSB)
This is the great "because" and "therefore" of covenant history. It is the logic that our modern, therapeutic world cannot stand. We want to believe that our problems are complex, rooted in our environment, our psychology, our unfortunate circumstances. The Bible cuts through all that fog with a sharp, two-edged sword. "Because you sinned... therefore you are judged."
Their sin is summarized in three ways. First, the positive act of rebellion: "you have burned incense." This stands for their entire idolatrous system. Second, the negative act of rebellion: "you have not listened to the voice of Yahweh." This is the root of all sin. God speaks, and man refuses to hear. This is the sin of the Garden reenacted on a national scale. Third, the comprehensive nature of their disobedience: they did not walk in "His law, His statutes, or His testimonies." This covers the whole of God's revealed will. They rejected it all, from the moral law to the civil statutes to the covenant stipulations.
Because of this threefold rebellion, "therefore this evil has befallen you, as it has this day." The connection is direct, absolute, and undeniable. The desolation of their land and their lives is not a tragic accident. It is the just and predictable outcome of their covenant unfaithfulness. It is what God promised would happen from the beginning. God is simply keeping His Word, both the promises of blessing for obedience and the promises of cursing for disobedience.
Conclusion: The God Who Is Able to Bear It
This is a grim passage. It shows us a people who have sinned so thoroughly that God was "no longer able to bear it." It is a picture of judgment, of a land laid waste, of a people under a curse. And if the story ended here, we would have no hope. If our standing before God depended on our ability to perfectly keep His law, His statutes, and His testimonies, we would all be in the same position as this remnant in Egypt. Our lives are filled with the smoke of our own idolatries, our own refusals to listen to the voice of God.
But the glory of the gospel is that the story does not end here. The story does not end with a God who is unable to bear our sin. The story climaxes with a God who was able to bear our sin, and did.
On the cross, God the Son took upon Himself the full, unbearable weight of all the idolatrous incense, all the evil deeds, all the abominations of His people. He took the waste place, the horror, and the imprecation into His own body. He became a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). All the judgment that Jeremiah pronounced on Judah, all the judgment that we deserve, came upon His heart. And God the Father, in an act of infinite justice and love, poured out the full cup of His wrath on His own beloved Son.
Why? So that He could justly forgive us. So that when we come to Him, confessing our sins, He does not remember them against us. He remembers them against His Son. He does not say He is "no longer able to bear it." He says, "Your sins and your lawless deeds I will remember no more" (Hebrews 10:17). That is the great promise of the New Covenant, a covenant prophesied by Jeremiah himself (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
The warning of this passage remains for us. Do not mistake God's patience for His approval. Do not trifle with sin. Do not think you can burn incense on strange altars and escape the consequences. But do not despair. The same God who judged Judah is the God who saves sinners. The "because" and "therefore" of the gospel is this: Because Christ has paid it all, therefore all who believe in Him are forgiven, accepted, and saved. Run to Him. Cling to Him. And abandon all your other gods.