LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES ~ A Study in Jeremiah

Love doesn’t just happen; love is hard work. That seems like a strange statement in our day. We are used to phrases like, “falling in (and out of) love”. The world has romanticized love which is fixated on feelings, attraction, and what one can get from a relationship rather than what one can give. Because love has been redefined by a culture that loves sin, anything that qualifies as love from the heart based on emotions and feelings is viewed as beautiful and good. The definition of “to sweep someone off their feet” is to dazzle and amaze someone, to cause someone to fall quickly in love with you. But, ladies, what do we association with sweeping? Dirt! You rarely hear someone list as the passion of their lives to clean, brush, or clear the floor of dirt, dust, and debris. “Head over heels in love” is literally describing somersaults, and I am no gymnast! Most women who have been married for any length of time remember the first days of love when it did ‘feel’ as though life was riding a merry-go-round in slow motion with the wind blowing through our hair. Life was exciting! Before long, however, somehow that merry-go-round morphed into the wildest roller coaster you had ever imagined, and you wanted off!

 I had been married for fifteen years or so, and I was on the phone with a younger friend who had been married a fraction of that time. Realizing it was fast approaching the hour when my husband would be home, I quickly explained that I needed to get off the phone to put on my lipstick and freshen up my make-up. My friend was taken back by that comment. She said, “I can’t believe you’ve been married this long, and you still put on your lipstick before your husband comes home.” I, on the other hand, couldn’t believe she couldn’t believe it!

On another occasion, years later, my husband and I had hit a rough spot in our marriage. With my husband’s business consuming the best part of his day, and my time focused on homeschooling, teaching Bible study, and domestic duties, we were slowly drifting apart. While on vacation, we went for a walk on the beach early one morning. We were at a standstill to know what we should do moving forward. I will never forget turning toward him in desperation and asking, “What do you want from me?” He said, “I want you to get up and make me coffee!” At that moment, you could have knocked me flat on my back with a feather. Dumbfounded, I choked out, “What?” My husband usually got up early and left for work long before I ever got up and started my day. I remember thinking, “I can do this.” What we came to realize we really needed was to carve out more time to spend with each other.

 I know these seem like silly illustrations, but my point is this: True love is the hardest work anyone will ever be called to do because it is sacrificial and giving. Sinful beings, prone to live our lives in the pursuit of getting the desires of our flesh met, we do not want to give, we want to get. True love seeks to please the object of its love.

Whenever I was getting ready to go to trial, my appointed-by-the-court, criminal defense attorney asked me to get as many character letters for the judge as I could obtain. I told him I would reach out to friends and I would get as many as I could alerting him to the fact that some may not be able to do so if their husbands didn’t want them to get involved. He said, “Why would their husbands have anything to say about it?” Yikes!

 Most women in the world want to be married to a man with the mindset of my attorney. Israel had perfect love, the very One whose character defines true love, yet she wanted lovers who would not attempt to ‘control’ her. This is how she viewed God’s love for her because she loved her sin more.

 How well you prepare your way to seek love! Therefore, even the wicked women you have taught your ways. (Jeremiah 2:33)

 Prepare—skillfully, seeking to please, to amend the way you do things in order to please

To seek—to seek to find, to seek to secure, to seek the face, to desire, or demand

 God’s people would go to any length and had practiced all manner of evil in order to prove their love for other gods. They even went to the heathens around them and taught them a thing or two about how to sin.

This word for prepare we find in another place of Scripture used of wicked Queen Jezebel seen in the word adorned. The word is used of Jezebel bedecking herself as a harlot. 2 Kings 9:30—When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it, and she painted her eyes and adorned her head and looked out the window. Jezebel was the daughter of the priest-king Ethbaal, ruler of the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon. She was married to King Ahab of Israel and persuaded him to introduce the worship of the Tyrian god Baal-Melkart, a nature god. It was Jezebel who had most of the prophets of Yahweh killed. We’ve heard the term ‘jezebel’ to characterize immoral behavior. This is a shameless or wicked woman. Urban Dictionary paints a great picture of a jezebel that helps us understand Israel in Jeremiah’s day. She seeks attention from and possibly plots to use someone who is wealthy or otherwise desirable in order to gain status in society. She is often beautiful and knows it. She uses her looks to her advantage to “lure in” her next victim. She has to be the center of attention but doesn’t have true friends because she is so shallow. She will do anything to get what she wants. Once she uses people to that end, she will toss them away and move on when they no longer satisfy her.

 God noticed how well Israel prepared her way (course of life) to seek this illicit love. In doing so, she was able to give ideas to the Gentile nations around her teaching them to be even more wicked. This is outrageous considering they did not even know who God was. From Israel’s perspective, her pursuit of ‘love’ fulfilled her, so it was self-justifying. You know the motto, “If it feels right, do it.” Just like today’s way of thinking where marriage is viewed as something that can be walked away from as easily as it is entered into, loving idols was just as good as worshiping God. She saw no difference because it was all about what satisfied her!

As believing women, our focus is described for us in 1 Peter 3:3-4—Your adornment must not be merely external—braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. We seek to pursue a heart of humility, purity, faithfulness, gentleness, kindness, goodness, etc. so that the Lord is pleased with our worship because that is our greatest desire. We focus on the heart because our worship is spiritual. Harlots worshiping at the altar of false idols seek to beautify the outside of their bodies because their worship is of the flesh.

 This reminds me of the sexual revolutions throughout history, but specifically of the ideology in the 70s when I was growing up. It just shows us that there is nothing new under the sun. The hippies (our name for them then) were those who walked around saying things like ‘groovy’, ‘peace, man’, and promoted this idea of free love as the solution to all the world’s problems. Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of ‘love’. According to Wikipedia, the movement’s initial goal was to separate the state from sexual matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It stated that such issues were the concern of the people involved, and no one else.

Instead of the world bringing its concepts and definitions of love into the church, the Israelites were going out into the world and trying to teach pagans the things they were advocating in their attempts to normalize what was sinful or perverted. Today, not many even feel the need to justify any pursuit (I mean any pursuit) of love as beautiful—adultery, premarital sex, homosexuality, and all sorts of perversions are readily accepted as norm. Instead of, “If it feels right, do it,” our motto must always be, “If it’s right, do it.” The ‘pursuit of holiness’ has been replaced by the ‘pursuit of happiness’ at all costs. What Israel and those who try to walk one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom today fail to realize is that right and wrong is what God says it is; and that never evolves or changes.

Also, on your skirts is found the lifeblood of the innocent poor; you did not find them breaking in. (Jeremiah 2:34)

Psalm 106:38—And shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with the blood.

What was the results of this immoral love they called beautiful? Their skirts were stained with the lifeblood of the innocent poor. They can say it’s nobody’s business but their own, but many lives are affected by their actions, especially those of unborn children, those suffering the fallout of wrecked homes, and prophets who reproved them and called sin what it is. Negative ramifications abound for all those who fall victim to those with a ‘free love’ mentality where self-seeking love is justified in getting all they want from the object of their love.

Breaking in means a burglary, an unexpected examination, or a secret search. Israel’s sin was in plain view. God did not need to search to find her guilt. The fact that this lifeblood was seen on her skirts proved that her sin was public and that there was a lot of bloodshed. Her skirts were literally filled with it. They didn’t murder people who were breaking into their homes. They had blood on their skirts because of their pursuit of free love—murder in the name of their selfish false love.

God told the Israelites that bloodshed would defile their land. Numbers 35:33-34—"So you shall not pollute the land in which you are; for blood pollutes the land and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the Lord am dwelling in the midst of the sons of Israel.”

King Manasseh was a wicked king who had his own infant son pass through the fire. Child sacrifices surely defiled the land. Not untouched by this threat, we claim to be a Christian nation, yet since Roe vs. Wade over 60 million innocents have been slaughtered in the very wombs of their own mothers. Yet, just like Israel, our nation as a whole stands before the Judge and pleads ‘Not guilty, Your Honor.’