I’m reminded this morning that it’s not like the prophets were sent to a people who had never heard of God . . . theirs wasn’t a door-to-door, cold call ministry introducing people to the one true God. Nope . . . they were sent to warn a people that God had already claimed as His own . . . they were sent to a people who had grown up on stories of deliverance . . . they were crying out to a people who had been taught concerning God’s power and miraculous intervention . . . they were those called to be holy just as they had been taught that their God is holy. But they chose another way . . . a dead end way.

It’s summarized in one word . . . a word I came across this morning while reading the opening chapters of the prophet Jeremiah. That word? Apostasy. In some Bible translations it’s rendered “backsliding.” Apparently the Hebrew word has the idea of “turning away.” The prophets were sent to a people called of God who turned away from God . . . who chose a course of backsliding . . . who were overcome by apostasy.

If you think about it, only the people of God can turn away from God. Those outside the family can reject Him . . . can choose to refuse Him . . . can defy Him . . . but only those who have known Him can choose to turn away. Only those who have been brought to the dwelling pace of God can backslide . . . only those who have brought into covenant relationship can forsake the God of promise . . . or, as the Lord through Jeremiah puts it, only those who have faced their God can give Him their back.

For they have turned their back to Me, and not their face.   (Jeremiah 2:27b ESV)

It sends a chill down my spine . . . the thought of giving God my back and not my face . . . probably for a couple of reasons. First, how it must grieve God to have His people give Him their backs. How it must sadden Him to call us to “Come!” and we respond, “No thanks, I’ll go and find my satisfaction in something else.” Does the heart of God ache when He sees those who have tasted of eternal, thirst-quenching water, choose instead to forsake Him and the fountain of living waters He provides and put their efforts into hewing out their own cisterns, “broken cisterns that can hold no water” (2:13)? I’m thinkin’ . . .

Secondly, I’m just shaken by the thought of becoming so turned around that I might give my back to the One “who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Cor. 4:6). The face of Jesus Christ turned toward me by infinite grace . . . and that I might somehow think there’s something more worth pursuing and turn away, giving Him my back, as I seek the vanities of this world. O’ Father, by Your grace may it never be.

O’ that my face might ever be turned toward Him. That I would, by faith, look longingly into the eyes of Him who has been pleased to “lift up His countenance” upon me. That I might relentlessly be like those who desired to worship and, coming to Philip, said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (John 12:20-21). That, by the Spirit of God living in me, my GPS might consistently be set to ” looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2).

My face . . . not my back, Lord . . . by Your grace . . . for Your glory.