Mike Focht 8/14/2026
How shall I pardon you for this? Your children have forsaken Me and sworn by those that are not gods. When I had fed them to the full, then they committed adultery and assembled themselves by troops in the harlot’s houses. They were like well-fed lusty stallions; every one neighed after his neighbor’s wife.
Jeremiah 5:7-8
In this passage, God is speaking to the Israelites through the prophet Jeremiah. The reproof here was sharp and stinging like the lash of a whip. Who would imagine God describing His people as an army of adulterers or like a horse in heat?! The prophet’s language is serious because the sin was serious.
The people of Jerusalem had turned from Jehovah to worship other gods. Part of their turning from God to false pagan gods was evident in their sexual sin. The God of Jacob had provided everything they needed. God reminds them that He had fed them to the full, and yet their response was to take His blessings and pour them out in sexual worship to false gods and self-gratifying sexual lusts.
God watched as His people, who claimed His name, marched into the harlot’s houses in masses. They crowded around sexual sin like a standing army. God watched their very hearts and saw as everyone looked at other men’s wives with animalistic lusts. Sexual covetousness dominated their imaginations.
Despite all their wickedness, they couldn’t imagine that God would bring judgment on them for these things. Yet what is God’s question? How shall I pardon you for this?
Jeremiah’s reproof still stands. American culture worships sex. We are no better than these ancient Israelites. What does God see when He looks at our hearts and our culture? He sees all the lust, pornography, sexual deviance, child abuse, rape, adultery, prostitution, sex slavery, fornication, homosexuality, and every other sexual sin born out of lustful covetousness.
Would God be wrong in describing American culture as a well-fed, lusty stallion? Certainly not. Like Israel before us, we are in need His pardon. We have sinned.
It is a sin to turn from God to something else.
It is a sin to pour out our worship on any false god, because only God Almighty, the Maker of the heavens and the earth, is worthy of our praise.
It is a sin to join the masses that are pouring into the modern harlot houses of our day, be they brick and mortar, paper or physical, digital or virtual.
It is a sin for us to take all of God’s blessings and use them to gratify our own endless and degrading sexual lusts.
It is a sin for humans to live like animals in heat, controlled by nothing more than basic instinct, when we are created in the image of God. We should be able to look at another human being differently than a well-fed, lusty stallion looks at another horse!
We are not animals! Refuse to live like one. We are not our sexual desires, nor should our sexual desires determine all our conduct. We are called to walk as sons of the Most High God. When God uses a stinging lash of rebuke to humble us, it is because our senses have become calloused by sinful lusts, and the sting is necessary to break through the thick covering.
May God’s stern rebuke cut through all hard hearts and open them to the healing of repentant acknowledgement of the truth.