Anatomy of Apostasy - Definition of Sin

One of the things that stand out from reading the book of Jeremiah is how he addresses their sin. Surprisingly he doesn’t address sin in the same particularly narrow way most of us have been brought up to view it. He deals with the roots of sin whereas we get stuck on the fruit a lot of the time. For example, Jeremiah rebukes Israel for not seeking God (Jer. 2:6), for finding satisfaction in things other than Him (2:13), for not fearing Him (2:19), for being blinded by their lusts and not calling sin what it is, sin (2:22), for having unrestrained lust (2:24), for not being ashamed of their sins (2:26), for not learning from God’s chastisement (2:30;5:3), and for refusing to repent (5:3). These things all add up to Israel finally falling away from God (apostatizing) and being taken captive for their rejection of God.

What I would like to do over the next few weeks is look at a few of these “roots” in more detail and show some other examples in Scripture that illustrate the principle that Scripture is trying getting across to us. The other thing I would like to do is to show how we should avoid letting these things creep into our walk of faith so that we will not end up like Israel did at the end of Jeremiah. But most of all I want to glorify God’s great patience and longsuffering toward His covenant people because of His faithfulness to the covenant of promise.