OK - I didn't pick the title for this day's lesson, and I wouldn't have picked it...but I'm going with it just the same! At first I thought, "Underwear? I don't think so!" So I did a little word study and discovered that the word used in Jeremiah 13:1-11, 'ezowr, can be translated as belt or girdle, but it was the innermost piece of clothing worn around the waist or hips. So, technically, yes, underwear. Never saw this one coming! But, you know, underwear has taken many different shapes and forms over the years...I've often thought it was a good thing I wasn't born when corsets were the prescribed underclothing for proper ladies...I can't imagine cinching up to attain the waist sizes with which they prided themselves. Ugh! I can feel a case of the vapors coming on!
The "girdle" that God told Jeremiah to wrap around himself, but to keep pure and untouched by water, represented the relationship that God longed for with His people. Much like the belt of truth that we are told to encircle ourselves with, was this girdle that reinforced to the Israelites that God had them wrapped in His promises and in His eternal truths. Their faithfulness to Him, their purity in the relationship would keep that wrap intact. But they had taken the relationship lightly and had relinquished it in favor of foreign gods and had kept it deeply hidden, hidden in the crevices of distant cultures and religions. When Jeremiah is sent to retrieve it, the girdle has become "marred" - ruined - because of the exposure to the water and filth of the hiding place. Interestingly, the word for marred used in Jeremiah 13:7 is the same word used in yesterday's study for the pot that had become marred, "shachath". So just as the pot had resisted the potter's hand resulting in marring, so had the cloth, the belt of relationship, become rotted due to its mishandling and the disregard shown. It had not been cared for, it had not been valued...it had been left to rot in a forgotten place, but not forgotten by God. He remembered and He cared.
He cared so deeply that He couldn't let the hurt go unnoticed or without His discipline. "The pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem" would be brought low and made as useless as the rotted belt. Where had this pride come from? How had it taken such complete hold of the people of God whom God had longed to hold close to Himself? It reminds me of the Christian song, "Slow Fade" by Casting Crowns...
"It's a slow fade when you give yourself away, It's a slow fade when black and white have turned to gray...
Thoughts invade, choices are made, a price will be paid, When you give yourself away...
People never crumble in a day, It's a slow fade, it's a slow fade.
The journey from your mind to your hands, Is shorter than you're thinking...
Be careful if you think you stand, You just might be sinking."
Boy, isn't that the truth?! It's a slow fade...for Israel, for us. We give ourselves away to thoughts that we know are not godly and before we know it, our hands are following our thoughts, our legs are walking in sync with our wayward hands and we're marching to a drummer that is not in God's band. Our pride that says we're doing just fine blinds us to see that we're going the wrong way. And we wake up one day saying, "How did I get here?"
That's what Jeremiah wants Israel to wake up and say! If they would only bend their stiff necks to repentance. Whenever we ask how we got to where we are, it must be the moment of our repentance...to follow that question with the plea of our heart, and with the bend of our knees, to say, "I'm sorry, Lord! I want You to wrap your belt of truth around me again...to know that You are everything You say You are to me, and to live for You! Not for my glory, not for my praise, not for my honor....ALL for YOU!" How God longed to hear those words from His people of old, but how He longs to hear them from us today as well. We are just as dear to Him and He has just as big of plans for us as He did for them. Everything Jeremiah is saying to the people of Judah, he is saying to us...let's open our ears and respond in repentance and such immense gratitude. Let's honor our God by showing Him just how much we cherish our relationship with Him.
Underwear? Maybe not. Maybe a garment of such high regard that we want to wear it where everyone can see --- fine linen that bears witness to our God who loves us so.
Has anyone ever had such a wonderful Father?
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