God’s unexpected cure

“And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, ‘Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?’ then you shall say to them: ‘Because your fathers have forsaken me, declares the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law, and because you have done worse than your fathers, for behold, every one of you follows his stubborn, evil will, refusing to listen to me. Therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.’ 
“Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’ but ‘As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where he had driven them.’ For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their fathers. (Jeremiah 16:10–15)

This study using “therefore” is about cause and effect, not according to my feeble and usually missed by a mile guesses but according to the way God works out His will. The above passage tells His OT people that because they have turned to other gods He is going to send them to a northern land where those other gods are served exclusively. It was an odd punishment, but history says that ended idol worship for the people of Israel. The prophet goes on to say:

For my eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed from my eyes. But first I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations.” O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: “Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit. Can man make for himself gods? Such are not gods!” “Therefore, behold, I will make them know, this once I will make them know my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord.” (Jeremiah 16:17–21)

Think of this odd cure this way. If my child was addicted to video games, would I even suppose the making him play them all day long for weeks on end would sicken him to the point that he never wanted to do it again? Likely not. God’s ways are not our ways!

If I have a bad habit, does repeating it make me sick of it? Most are not as God-dishonoring as idolatry. Suppose I was a smoker (not true but for example) His cure might be making me smoke a carton of cigarettes in one day making me totally sick of it. 

Jesus, this “therefore” is making me think. I expect an interesting day! Besides that, we are in Glacier Bay in Alaska and told to expect all sorts of wonderful sights — and I’m thinking it unlikely that this over-exposure to them will make me want to return to my plain life!