Once Is Enough

“I will make them like split-open figs that cannot be eaten due to rottenness.” Jeremiah 29:17

Split-open – You forgot about that fruit in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator.  It was pushed way to the back so you didn’t see that it was getting soft.  You didn’t notice when the mold started growing.  But one day, when you pulled the drawer out a little more than usual, there is was.  Gray-green, mushy, disgusting.  One look was enough.  Right into the garbage.  What was once appealing was now revolting.

The Hebrew word šōʿār is used only one time in the Old Testament.  But one exposure to the picture in this word is more than enough.  It’s about figs that are so rotten than they can’t be used for anything at all.  Not even compost.  Just spit them out and throw them in the garbage.  Yuck!  Worthless.  Figs like this are not just disagreeable.  They are horrid.  Get rid of them, right now.  They stink!

God says that He will make Israel just like these šōʿār figs.  Spoiled.  Rotten.  Useless.  Why will He take what was once the apple of His eye and turn it into garbage?  Why would He let something that was once so appealing and enjoyable become nothing but putrid waste?  Ah, that’s the story of disobedience.  Israel, the nation established by God to be a royal priesthood and a holy example to all other nations, taxed God’s patience to the limit.  Time and time again these people heard the word of the Lord and went their own way.  Finally, they were of no use to Him.  Putrid.  Rotten.  All because they refused to obey.

Fruit rots because it can’t breathe.  Once it is picked, it continues to try to breathe but when it no longer is processing oxygen, it begins to ferment, chemically changing its living tissue into sugar.  That’s when it’s subject to the attack of microbiological agents.  They speed up the process of destruction.

Just like a “holy” nation.  Once we are removed from the vine (didn’t Jesus say something about this?), we continue to try to live normally, but the rotting process has already begun.  When we are deprived of the Word, we soon find that the microbes within us are busy at work fermenting what was once delightful, turning it into waste.  The moral is simple:  get disconnected, begin to rot.  Stay disconnected, become waste.  All that cold storage does is slow down the inevitable.  Life is designed to work only when the fruit is connected.

Are you šōʿār figs today, or are you abiding, connected to the vine?