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Encouragement for the journey from God’s Word. Today's Scripture: Jeremiah 22:1-23:20 / Proverbs 25:11-14
Well, a good Wednesday morning to you. Hope your week's going well. Here we are in the middle of it already, and hurtling toward the end of July. Well, today we're reading in the book of Jeremiah, and Jeremiah is, you know, it can be a challenging book to read because there's so many pronouncements of judgment upon God's people, and particularly those of Judah and the city of Jerusalem.
And if you know the history of Israel, you know that there came a time when, even well before Christ, that the city of Jerusalem was really decimated. Babylonians had come to sit to Jerusalem, to Judah.
They leveled it. I mean, they leveled it. They destroyed the temple. They destroyed the palaces. They just destroyed the city. And that can be quite bothersome because, after all, you know, Jerusalem was the capital city of God's people.
The temple was the temple where God was to be worshipped. The one true God was to be worshipped. And these people, the Jewish people, were God's people. And you see this kind of devastation. You hear about it, and you say, man, you know, well, was God not able to save them?
Was he too weak to do anything against the Babylonians? I mean, this is just awful. What kind of a God is this? Well, the Lord anticipated that kind of thing because he said, you know, this judgment is coming, and Jeremiah is prophesying before the judgment comes.
This judgment is coming. The city is going to be devastated. And then he says this in Jeremiah chapter 22, verse 8. He says, many nations will pass by this city. So people from all over the world at that time are going to pass by this city, and they're going to ask each other this question.
Everyone will ask his neighbor. Why has the Lord done this to this great city? Why has the Lord done this to this great city? Well, the interesting thing is that the people asking the question will recognize that the God of the Jews is the one who brought this destruction upon them.
Why did he do that? Why? Here's the answer. Verse 9, then they will answer, because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God and worshiped other gods and served them. So here's the deal. God made a covenant with his people.
It's a covenant that they agreed to. It's a covenant that they swore to, that they would live by it. And that covenant involved, and you can see it summarized in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, that covenant involved, number one, having no other gods before him.
That he was the one true God, there was no other, and that they were not to have any other gods. Secondly, they were not to make any graven images and bow down before any images of that which they called God.
Then they were not to take the Lord's name in vain. They were to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. So those first four commandments in the Decalogue were part of God's covenant that he made with his people.
They heard what those requirements were, and they said, we will stand by them, we will live by these things. But they didn't. They didn't. And this text tells us that they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God, and they've worshiped other gods and served them.
So that tells you that they violated the first commandment, and that they had other gods. They violated the second commandment because they made images, images to Baal and Chemosh and other false gods, and they worshiped those gods, and they served those gods as just a way of expressing their worship, giving themselves, sacrificing of themselves for the sake of these false gods.
And thereby they impugned the name of the Lord. They spoke his name in vain, in emptiness, because they were putting him on par with the false gods that they were serving. And they violated the Sabbath, the day of worship of the Lord exclusively.
So there were multiple ways in which the people violated the covenant, and God warned them over and over and over again. You have forsaken me, turn back to me, do away with these false gods. And they didn't.
They wouldn't. So what does all this have to do with us? What does all this have to do with us? I think it serves as a reminder that we who claim to be followers of Christ are to worship him exclusively.
We're to have no other gods before him, and yet we can. We can make idols in our own heart and worship and serve other things other than the one true God. We can take his name in vain, profane his name, belittle his glory, and impugn his character.
We can violate those same commandments that they did, which indicates the need for some chastening. So let's take the warning from this passage of Scripture, not to spurn the grace of God and not to treat it lightly, but to be serious worshipers and followers of the one true God, the God whom we claim to serve, the God whom we claim to worship through Jesus Christ.
Let's be faithful to do that, and let's avoid the kinds of displeasant catastrophes that come from forsaking him. Oh, that we do not forsake him. Father, our Father, we pray today, may we be faithful to the covenant that we've made with you, and we pray that you would bless our walk-in and our faithfulness to that covenant, and we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.
All right, well have a good rest of your Wednesday. I trust God will bless you, and have a good day.