While reading through the Bible in a mad dash (read it in less than 30 days), I noted down passages to come back to that stood out to me for one reason or another. This entry revisits two of those passages, specifically Jeremiah 2:19 and Jeremiah 15:19-21. These passages both involve God’s response to those who have strayed in their devotion.

Your own wickedness will correct you, and your backsliding will rebuke you. Know therefore and see that it is an evil and bitter thing, that you have forsaken the LORD your God, and that my fear is not in you,” says the Lord, the LORD of Armies. (Jeremiah 2:19, WEBBE).

As I look back over my life and see times when I was close to God and times when I drifted away, I indeed see that I am more miserable when I chose to follow my own desires at the expense of either being aligned with God wholeheartedly or helping others. I am worse off when I distance myself from God, and my experience proves that it is evil and bitter to run from God. The fear of the Lord also could likely be translated reverence, respect, honor, etc and that makes a lot of sense here. If we honor, respect and otherwise have an appropriate perspective of God, we realize that the God who instructs us is also the God that wants good things for us. It is in our own best interest to do what God would have us do.

19 Therefore the LORD says, “If you return, then I will bring you again, that you may stand before me; and if you take out the precious from the vile, you will be as my mouth. They will return to you, but you will not return to them. 20 I will make you to this people a fortified bronze wall. They will fight against you, but they will not prevail against you; for I am with you to save you and to deliver you,” says the LORD. 21 “I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem you out of the hand of the terrible.” (Jeremiah 15:19-21, WEBBE).

There is a lot to unpack here, and I won’t get to all of it. Specifically, I’m going to ignore the historical context for the moment because it struck me as to how accurately this has applied to my life over time (and continues) - in certain respects.

The previous back-sliding passage theme continues here with God saying “turn back to me.” There is a sense of looking forward to the future here with this passage. It isn’t so much “you’re bad, stop being bad” and more along the lines of “stop the bad so I can use you for good.” I think this is the thought behind separating the precious from the vile - the holy from the wicked. Similarly, the author of Hebrews urges us to:

…lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1-2, WEBBE)

… but, now back to Jeremiah.

“They will return to you” not vice versa. This seems to have something of a “repent” philosophy going on here. They will repent of their ways to join your perspective, but you won’t turn to their ways. You’ll be a fortified wall that they fight against, but they will not prevail. It was this part that caught my attention while reading this through. There were some in my life who shunned me in order to cause me to repent of being gay - something I didn’t choose. Or perhaps they were shunning me to repent of being OK with the fact that God made me gay, but … either way … that wasn’t going to work. Like a fortified wall, they were not going to be able to break down this wall they hated so much. And eventually, after casting me out, they did return to me and now we are restored. I didn’t see this passage, or have it stand out to me at the time, but looking back, it speaks to me in a sortof reverse-prophetical way. It was written before the event and now I look back and in a way apply it to my own situation. This isn’t a technique for attempting to understand how to interpret the Word of God, but rather an engagement in permitting my soul to dialog with God regarding a topic that was very personal and emotional for me and drawing God’s presence into that event after the fact in a healing way. “They will not prevail against you” is comforting as it reminds me that God is still in control.

“For I am with you to save you and deliver you.” This was in stark contrast to how I viewed God’s role in my life as a teen. I constantly prayed to God to make me either not gay, or not alive. God was the antagonist in that as the One who could alter reality for the better, God just … didn’t. My perspective is different now. God was delivering me from others and myself. I didn’t endure more than I could handle, and when I thought it was too much and wanted to end it all, God intervened and delivered me from myself. Surely it is God who saves me. And God wasn’t standing by as the antagonist; God was delivering me the whole time.

There is quite a bit more to say about this passage and God delivering me from the hand of the wicked, but for now, I’ll leave it at this.

From these passages, we have God reaching out to bring back those who have gone astray. And God does this not to just get the deviants back in-line, but to give them a purpose and future, helping them flourish as they do good and walk closely with God.

I’m trying to figure out my strategy in what versions of the Bible to quote and how to do that. Public domain works, such as the KJV and WEB remove a lot of the questions and barriers around this topic. The World English Bible (WEB) is a modern translation without copyright constraint, as is the World English Bible British Edition (WEBBE) which I prefer at the moment over the WEB. We’ll see how my journey to find appropriate translations unfolds.