Another week has flown by and I’m ready to start week 9 of 13 weeks (90 days) of reading the Bible in 90 Days. Wow! The time is flying by. This past week, I’ve been finishing II Kings and II Chronicles as well as reading most of Jeremiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Daniel, and starting Ezekiel. That’s a lot of ground to cover.
I haven’t studied Jeremiah much before. Yes, I’ve read it, but it always got so gloomy, I couldn’t seem to stick with it. This time was different. I now have a better feel for where he fits in to the rest of the Bible. Although they lived in different places, he was alive when Daniel was! Well, they overlapped anyway.
His ministry was not a pleasant one…at all. He had, for the most part, the job of giving bad news to Judah. It was this:
“Every one of you follows his stubborn evil will, refusing to listen to me. (GOD) Therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your fathers have known…” (Jeremiah 16:12-13)
Yet even with this bad news, He continued to offer grace.
“And if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turn from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.” (Jeremiah 18:8)
Sadly, they did not repent. They did not listen to the many dire warnings. At times, they even tried to kill or silence Jeremiah, but GOD protected him from death at their hands.
They continued living the lives they wanted to live…but not for long. Soon, Babylon came and ran over them…taking many of their people away. What a sad end to people who had the truth, but chose to go their own way. They chose to be stiff-necked.
The challenge to me…and all of us is this:
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What will be our response to the truth of GOD’s WORD?
- Will we obey it?
- Will we listen to the warnings GOD gives us and change the way we are going?
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Or will we stiffen our necks and decide to go our own way, “do our own thing” to our peril?
