Chapter 11 - If God Didn’t Listen

This chapter focusses on the covenant. God has made promises to the people and he has called the people to hear his voice and enter into the covenant. Here, we see that they have turned away. They have forgotten the covenant and they have failed to follow. In verse 11 there is one of the most devastating lines in all of the Bible. It is from God to the people. He had promised to bless. He had promised to hear, but now the people have turned away and God says the following,  “Though they cry to me, I will not listen to them.” 

This is not the end of the story. The pain that God feels all through this book, as demonstrated in Jeremiah himself, is that God never turns away, God never breaks covenant. Thought the people are unfaithful, God remains faithful. 

The rest of the chapter has echoes prefigurings of Jesus himself; one who is led to the slaughter, but by his own choice, one who intercedes for us, though here Jeremiah is told not to intercede.  

When I consider this I think of Jesus himself. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  

Dear Jesus: Help me to see how you exist in this in-between place. Help me to see, in your incarnation and in your sacrifice, the love of God who never turns away, who hears our cry.