The Bride and Her Ornaments—The Sin of Forgetting God

Jeremiah 2:32
“Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet My people have forgotten Me days without number.”

It is a clear proof of the great love of God for His people that He will not lose their love without earnest expostulation. When you do not care at all for a person, it does not matter whether they love you or hate you. But when you deeply love someone, you earnestly desire to possess their heart in return. This, then, is clear proof that God greatly loves His people. Whenever their hearts wander from Him, He is greatly grieved. He rebukes them and earnestly pleads with them, setting the coldness of their hearts in a true light and striving to bring them back to warm affection toward Himself.

Not only are God’s rebukes proof of His love, but when He goes farther and deals out blows as well as words, there is love in every stroke of His hand. Most truly does He say, “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten,” for rebukes and chastening show that He will not lose our hearts without a struggle for them. Do not, therefore, look upon a sermon that rebukes as something to be avoided. Far from it! Hear it and accept it as a token of love from God to your soul. That person is very foolish who will not hear the warning of a friend. Few prize a friend’s rebukes, yet a wise person knows there is no greater token of affection than when a friend undertakes the unpleasant task of pointing out our faults.

Many parents are like Eli—they cannot endure the task of chastening their children. When their sons grow up to be a plague, they should not wonder, for they have procured this evil to themselves by their unworthy love of ease. Our heavenly Father is never an Eli! He will not “spare the rod and spoil the child.” He loves us too well to allow us to continue in our iniquity. He will not stay His hand and leave us to perish. He will scourge rather than abandon. He will chide rather than lose. Today, He speaks in tones of severity that He may not be compelled to utter, tomorrow, words of doom.

Accept, then, at this time, dear Friend, whatever comes from this text. If it should be bitter in your mouth, receive it thankfully from God as good medicine to your spirit, and may His Spirit cause it to be. Coming to the text in which God proves His love to His people, notice first a grievous sin: “My people have forgotten Me.” Secondly, a chiding question about that sin: “Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?” And thirdly, let us observe the call to repentance, which lies within the text like perfume in a flower. If we have forgotten God, let us grieve over such forgetfulness and turn to Him at once with full purpose of heart—even unto God our exceeding joy!

I. A Very Grievous Sin

The first part of the text speaks of a grievous sin: “My people have forgotten Me, days without number.” Notice whom they have forgotten. It would not have mattered half as much if they had forgotten their dearest friends—if the husband had forgotten his wife, or the mother her child—but here are favored men and women who have forgotten their God, their Father, their life, their All! “My people have forgotten Me, their God.” Other nations, having set up their false gods, did not forget them but bowed before them with blind pertinacity. But God’s people have forgotten their God, the only God, the living and true God.

“My people have forgotten Me,” the good God, whom it is a pleasure to remember. “You are good and do good,” said the Psalmist, and it is true. Yet, too often, we forget the Source of all goodness. If we could forget evil, it would be well, but to forget the only and essential Good is truly sad. “My people have forgotten Me,” whom they were bound in duty to remember. God is our Creator—shall we not remember Him who made us? God is our Preserver—shall we not remember Him in whom “we live, and move, and have our being”? God is our Father—shall children forget the Father at whose table they feed and from whose lips they are comforted? God is our All in All, and shall we yet forget Him?

Surely, it would be better to lose memory than for memory to lose its hold upon God! My people have forgotten Me—God, the good, the best, who has a chief right to be remembered. Brethren, there is great evil in our hearts, or it would be so difficult to forget God that it would be impossible. A friend may go away, and we do not see him, but he has left so many tokens of his goodness that we are reminded of him every day. Is it not so with God? Has He not left us innumerable tokens of His affection for us? Ought we to forget when so many “forget-me-nots” are round about us?

But, supposing that friend has not gone away at all, but is living with us in the house and enters even into our chamber—what shall we say if we forget one who is constantly with us? No man is so present with his friend as God is with His people! He is in us and round about us! Never can we depart from Him, for we are not only in Him, but He is in us, and He sees all our ways. Oh, strange sin that we should forget One who is everywhere present and manifests that Presence in deeds of love! O forgetful creature, what do you think of your Lord? Do you owe the breath in your nostrils to God and yet can you forget? Is the bread upon your table put there by the hand of a God whom you do not remember? Are the very clothes upon your back the gift of His Divine charity, and do you forget Him?

You would be in the grave—no, you would be in Hell—but for His mercy—and yet, is He not in all your thoughts? Oh, this wicked forgetfulness of ours! Let us forget all else besides, but let it not be charged to us that we have forgotten our God! Yet it is so written, “My people have forgotten Me.”

II. Who Were They That Forgot God?

This casts a second light upon this sin. “My people have forgotten Me.” Not strangers, not heathen, not those who have only heard of Me but have never known Me, but “My people.” It signifies, “My chosen, My elect, a people whom I have taken out from the midst of the earth that they may be a people unto Me forever.” Chosen of God, and yet forget electing love? “My people.” It is a redeemed people who have become the Lord’s because they are not their own, but are bought with a price. He has redeemed them unto Himself forever—redeemed them from among men by the matchless price of His only-begotten Son’s life!

And shall it be that those on whom there is the eternal blood-mark—who are set apart by sacrifice to be God’s own—shall forget Him? Oh, sad ingratitude! “My people.” That is to say, a people not only chosen and redeemed, but brought to know Him, brought into fellowship with Him, brought into relationship with Him, brought absolutely into union with Him—they have forgotten Him.

You that sat at Jesus’ feet and drank in His loving words! You that sat at His table and to whom He was made known in the breaking of bread! You that have laid your head upon the bosom of the Lord—can it, shall it be said of you, “My people have forgotten Me”? Oh, but this is sad! “He that eats bread with Me has forgotten Me.”

Alas, my Brothers and Sisters, that you and I should have been upon the mount with Jesus. That we should have been in the garden with Him. That we should have danced for very joy of heart in His Presence, and should have felt ourselves next door to the gates of Heaven when He laid bare His heart to us—and yet it should ever be said of us that we have forgotten Him! This will be sad indeed if ever it comes to this! And yet, this is the crime laid at the door of His own people: “My people have forgotten Me.”

III. The Chiding Question

Now, dear Friends, I call your attention to the chiding question, which is the very marrow of the text: “Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?” This question is put because there are many trivial things that occupy minds so that they cannot forget them. How sad it is that the most grand things, the best things, should not equally engross our thoughts!

The Eastern woman was very fond of ornaments, and this was a question that every Oriental could understand. “Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire?” Of course, such forgetfulness was impossible. The young woman’s mind was full of her jewels! Forget her ornaments? The question is absurd! And yet I venture to say that these things are trifles—that the costliest jewels in the world are nothing but mere stones—that the richest dress that ever was made is excelled by birds and flies—and that the flowers of the field far surpass anything that can be manufactured by the needle.

But here is the point—do these Eastern women value their jewels and their dress so much that they cannot forget them? Are their heads filled with these things so that they never slip out of their memories? And do the people of God forget their God? Shall these trifles secure their places so surely and shall the most supreme good so readily escape our thoughts? Shame on us! Every time we see one who, in dressing, has evidently paid the daintiest attention to every pin, we ought to stand rebuked!

IV. The Call to Repentance

I now close with a few words of call to repentance if we have, in any measure or degree, forgotten our God. I am sure, first, that our God does not deserve to be treated so. “You use no other friend so ill.” Such love, such wondrous love, infinite, unending, everlasting love to you! And can you forget? So undeserving and yet so favored! Can you forget your Friend? Loved by God as He loves His own Son! Can you forget? Have you forgotten? Will not the time past suffice for that? A half-a-minute’s forgetfulness of God is half a minute too long! Let it not come to be “days without number.”

But if the number is ever so small, let us weep to think we should have forgotten Him at all! Let our sorrows flow at the recollection that He has never forgotten us—no, never for a moment—and yet we have forgotten Him. Our names have been on Jesus’ breastplate and on His shoulders days without number—shall His name be always out of our minds?

“I have engraved you on the palms of My hands,” He says. Let us engrave His name upon the tablets of our hearts! Think for a minute—if He had forgotten you—what would have been your portion? If God had suspended the outflow of His grace and left you to yourselves, what had been your fate? But He never has forgotten us! He is not forgetting us at this moment. He says to each one, however wandering, “I do earnestly remember you.” He will never forget us.

The dying thief said, “Lord, remember me,” and Jesus did remember him! He cries, “I remember you, the love of your betrothal.” Lord, do You remember me? Then would I smite my heart to think I ever should have forgotten You!

Oh, how can we forget when God is our diadem of Glory? It is our highest privilege that He is ours and we are His. God is our beauty, the honor and excellence of all His saints. It is this that makes us illustrious in the eyes of cherubim and seraphim—that God is ours and we are His! God is our joy, our only joy, our overflowing joy! He that knows God has Heaven within his spirit even now.

Let us not forget again, but let us bind the glorious name of our Lord about our hearts. May the sweet Spirit do it now, for Jesus Christ’s sweet love’s sake. Amen.

Charles Spurgeon