Sin as Adultery
Adultery is the utter severing of a relationship. God made a covenant with Israel at Mt. Sinai, a
marital relationship. There is a pattern in the OT that shows us the heart of God: He makes a
covenant promise, Israel commits adultery against him, and God makes them his own again.
Adultery is heartbreaking because it breaks relationships and God’s desire for his people. We are
the center of God’s heart’s desire, and when we sin, we rip that out.
Jeremiah 3:1-10 | 1 If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her? Would not that land be greatly polluted? You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me? declares the Lord. 2 Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been ravished? By the waysides you have sat awaiting lovers like an Arab in the wilderness. You have polluted the land with your vile whoredom. 3 Therefore the showers have been withheld, and the spring rain has not come; yet you have the forehead of a whore; you refuse to be ashamed. 4 Have you not just now called to me, ‘My father, you are the friend of my youth. 5 will he be angry forever, will he be indignant to the end?’ Behold, you have spoken, but you have done
all the evil that you could.” 6 The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? 7 And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. 8 She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. 9 Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. 10 Yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the Lord.”
