I’ve always been fascinated by X-rays. There have been a few occasions when I’ve had to go to hospital to have an X-ray. I’ve been fortunate – the X-rays I’ve had have never revealed anything problematic. But sometimes X-rays are really important because they expose a problem – a broken bone, a heart problem or a shadow on the lung. The X-ray brings those problems into the light so they can be treated.
The Bible can be like that. It exposes the human condition, bringing the problem into the light so that it can be treated with the good news of the gospel. The Old Testament Prophets often do this. These books contain the messages that God spoke to his people through messengers (prophets) in the period of the Old Testament.
The Bible exposes the human condition, bringing the problem into the light so that it can be treated with the good news of the gospel.
One of these prophets was Jeremiah. Early in the book that collects his prophetic messages, God speaks through Jeremiah, pronouncing judgement on his people for the way they have abandoned him and broken the covenant agreement that had been made between them and him.
I was struck recently by a few lines of Jeremiah’s message that offer a powerful X-ray of the human problem:
‘Be appalled, O heavens, at this;
be shocked, be utterly desolate,
declares the Lord,
for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,
broken cisterns that can hold no water’ (Jeremiah 2:12-13).
They’re strong and dramatic words. God is passing judgement against his people. He calls the heavens to be his witness. It’s like he’s setting up the biggest, most grand and intimidating courtroom there could ever be.
And then comes the accusation: his people have committed two evils. The words in their original context are speaking specifically about God’s Old Testament people, but I think they apply more broadly; they provide an X-ray of the human problem in all times and places, including our own.
The first accusation is that the people have forsaken God. This is the story of Old Testament Israel, and the story of humanity as a whole: we forsake the God who made us and who deserves our obedience and allegiance. We fail to trust him and his ways. Through Jeremiah, God describes himself as ‘the fountain of living waters’. He’s the source of life and health. It’s an image of God as the source of life to the full, our best life. This is who God is, and yet, so often, we forsake him.
The second accusation is that they have turned elsewhere to look for the life they long for. The water metaphor continues; they have hewn cisterns – holes dug in the ground to collect water – but they are cisterns that leak. It’s a vivid picture of what the human heart does: we reject God and look to fill the gap he leaves and the needs he fills with other things. We reject a fountain of fresh water for the stagnant water of a cistern and find that that water is fast seeping away. We turn from God to other things and find they don’t deliver – they don’t meet the needs we long to have met, and they don’t lead us into our best life.
This is the story of the human heart. We see it in all areas of life, including sexuality.
This is the story of the human heart. We see it in all areas of life, including sexuality. God created human sexuality; he created it with a good plan and purpose. When lived out in line with that purpose, it points us to him, the fountain of living water. And yet, so often, we turn away from God and his plan for sexuality. Instead, we try our own ways – digging cisterns – but find they don’t deliver – they’re cisterns that can hold no water.
This is the story of the human heart. But it’s not a story that ends there. Because this isn’t all that Jeremiah says about the human condition and the human heart. Later in the book, we find words of promise:
‘For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more’ (Jeremiah 31:33-34).
‘I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul’ (Jeremiah 32:40-41).
God promises a time coming when he will change hearts. He will write his law on our hearts and put reverent fear of him in them so we can live in obedience to him. And he will do us good, forgiving our sin, with all of his heart. The human problem exposed in Jeremiah 2 – the heart problem – is solved by God’s work in hearts, which the Bible story will later show us happens through the work of Christ.
Though Jeremiah tells us the story of the human heart, a story we see played out around us time and time again in the area of sexuality, as in many areas, he also tells us that there is true hope for the human heart. There is the hope of a heart that has God’s law inscribed on it and that fears God, a heart that doesn’t forsake him or turn elsewhere, but that trusts and obeys him, ‘the fountain of living water’. That’s good news for any of us who are aware of the ways we have forsaken God’s plan for sexuality or have gone our own way. There is hope. The X-ray reveals the problem, but once the problem has been revealed, the solution of the gospel can be applied.
