GOD’S WORD FOR DECEMBER 26 ~ ~Jeremiah 29:11-13~ ~ “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart”
We’re hearing from Dr. Michael Youssef in his book, “How to Read the Bible” in chapter 11, “The Major Prophets: Thunder in the Kingdom”
Today, we’ll learn about Jeremiah in the first part of “Jeremiah: The Prophet Who Confronted Kings.”
Jeremiah is a book of warnings and laments. Jeremiah was called by God as a prophet in the thirteenth year of Josiah, king of Judah, in 626 BC. He served as a prophet for nearly forty years, during the reign of five kings of Judah. Again and again, he warned of God’s judgment against Judah – until his warnings finally came to pass with the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in 587 BC.
Israel had reached a state of extreme corruption and idolatry. The people worshiped idols and burned their own children as sacrifices on the altars of Baal. Jeremiah warned the people that God would not allow their idolatry to go unpunished. But the wicked kings, greedy priests, and false prophets would not listen.
So God had no choice but to withdraw His blessings from Judah. As a result, the Babylonian army starved and conquered Jerusalem, and the people were led away into captivity.
Here again, we see that Judah was not the Kingdom of God. Why? Because Judah had broken the Covenant. God shifted His focus entirely from the Jewish state to a small, faithful remnant with whom He will one day make a New Covenant. The people of the New Covenant will be the people of God’s Kingdom. They will be people with clean hands and clean hearts. God will only rule over an obedient people.
The kings of Judah in the time of Jeremiah – such as Joachim and Zedekiah – were godless, selfish, corrupt and idolatrous. Jeremiah rejected the political state as the vehicle of God’s Kingdom because it reflected the immorality and apostasy of its leaders.
Jeremiah’s message arises again and again in God’s Word. If we chose sin, rebellion, and false gods, then God will let us go our own way. He will allow us to suffer the consequences of our willful choices, which lead to desolation.
But while there is time remaining, there is always an opportunity to return to God and find salvation. He does not reject us, even when we abandon Him. If we turn to God with repentant hearts, He will receive us and welcome us home.
People who encounter the book of Jeremiah for the first time are surprised by the struggles Jeremiah endured against political and religious leaders, the people, and even God. In his sorrow, Jeremiah wrote:
“Oh, that I had in the desert a lodging place for travelers, so that I might leave my people and go away from them: for they are all adulterers, a crowd of unfaithful people, (Jeremiah 9:2)
Through Jeremiah, God shows us that He welcomes our most troubled emotions, even when they are directed at Him. The prophet candidly, even angrily, complains to God, pouring out his complaints and his feeling that God has misled him:
“I never sat in the company of revelers, never made merry with them; I sat alone because Your hand was on me and You had filled me with indignation. Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable”? You are to me like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails. (Jeremiah 15:17-18)
God did not condemn Jeremiah, yet He did not want the prophet to remain mired in anger and self-pity. He urged him to pull out of his emotional nosedive and focus on the future to which God had called him:
“If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve Me; if you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be My spokesman” (Jeremiah 15:19)
Later, when Jeremiah reaches the absolute pit of his despair, he pours out his anguish to God. Again, God understands and does not rebuke him for them:
“Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought my father the news, who made him very glad, saying, “A child is born to you – a son!” May that man be like the towns the Lord overthrew without pity. May he hear wailing in the morning, a battle cry at noon. For he did not kill me in the womb, with my mother as my grace, her womb enlarged forever. Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame? (Jeremiah 20:14-18)
We wince at these bitter words –yet we shouldn’t be quick to judge Jeremiah. Who among us could have withstood the pressures, threats, and disappointments that he endured?
(tomorrow we’ll see how Jeremiah handled the wicked kings and the people)
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POEM BY HELEN STEINER RICE
“THIS TOO WILL PASS”
If I can endure for this minute whatever is happening to me, no matter how heavy my heart is or how “dark” the moment may be,
If I can remain calm and quiet with all my world crashing about me, secure in the knowledge God loves me, when everyone else seems to doubt me,
If I can but keep on believing what I know in my heart to be true, the “darkness will fade with the morning” and that this will pass away, too,
Then nothing in life can defeat me for as long as this knowledge remains, I can suffer whatever is happening, for I know God will break “all the chains”….
That are binding me tight in “the darkness” and trying to fill me with fear, for there is NO LIGHT WITHOUT DAWNING, and I know that MY MORNING IS NEAR.
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“God has not promised to bless my thoughts, but He has promised to bless His Word”—Adrian Rogers
Ps 94:19
When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Your comforts delight me
Matthew 6:33
But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and ALL THESE THINGS will be added to you (necessary things to live in this world)
1Peter 1:21
who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. (Meaning: the power that raised Jesus from the dead is the same power that puts faith into us—-that raises our dead spirits unto salvation)