Read Jeremiah 16:14-21
Let’s recall yesterday’s marathon illustration that we started with. Your coach was no doubt trying to encourage you and spur you on by telling you that you have 5km to go instead of 15km. But I don’t think lying is not the way to do it.
Even though I am not a running coach, I think a better encouragement would be to talk about the goal or the prize for
In today’s passage God brings forth encouragement but not before the race is finished. God refuses to lie and to let people be misguided. It is expected that Jeremiah would follow suit and not lie or give false encouragement to the people.
Hope given to the people in 14-15.
14 “However, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when men will no longer say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’ 15 but they will say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where He had banished them.’ For I will restore them to the land I gave their forefathers.
Just as God brought restoration and healing for the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, so too He will bring restoration and healing for the people sent into exile for their sinfulness and unfaithfulness. But rather than preach an easy gospel, the road to healing and restoration is marked out. Verse16-18.
Jeremiah 16:16–18 (NIV84)
16 “But now I will send for many fishermen,” declares the Lord, “and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks.
17 My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes.
18 I will repay them double for their wickedness and their sin, because they have defiled my land with the lifeless forms of their vile images and have filled my inheritance with their detestable idols.”
God opens the curtain a little in vs 21 and lets us see His reasoning.
“Therefore I will teach them— this time I will teach them my power and might. Then they will know that my name is the Lord.
God allows suffering and hardship to teach His people that He alone has power and might. The gods they bowed down to, the statues they prayed to could and did do nothing to save them. These false gods could do nothing to end the suffering of the drought. The people will know, through their suffering and ultimate exile, that the name of their God is Yahweh. They will know that the name of Yahweh has all authority and power in the heavens and the earth and that no god can compare to Him.
Prayer Points:
Using today’s Bible passage and reading notes spend time in adoration, confession, thanks and supplication.
Confession:
Thanks:
Supplication:
· Pray that Sonday’s church service will bring great glory and honour and praise to our Lord and Saviour. Ask the Lord to bring such great blessing that each person would know that Jesus is Lord and that He alone can save. Pray that many would come to the faith tomorrow.
· Pray that the Word of God would be faithfully proclaimed throughout the land and that all who preach would be filled with God’s Spirit and willing to proclaim the truth at any cost.
1. How would you summarise the main point of Jeremiah 16:14-21?
2. Why do you think vs 16-18 are put after the encouragement of restoration?
3. What does this teach us 2,000 years this side of the cross?
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