The Price for Following Our Stubborn Inclinations

Jeremiah 7-9

 

The message of the Lord through Jeremiah was simple, change your ways or else.  The Lord was fed up with their speech – their claims that they were okay.  ‘If you really change your ways, I will let you live in this place, but look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless’.

 

‘Will you follow other gods and then come and stand before Me in this house that bears My name and say, we are safe –safe to do all these detestable things.’  They felt they were safe because they were keeping up with the sacrifices and offerings the Lord had required, but He reminds them, ‘I also gave this command – obey me’.

 

Instead, ‘they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts.  They went backward and not forward.’  All through time, God sent servants and prophets to warn ‘but they did not listen or pay attention’.  ‘No one repents of his wickedness, saying, ‘what have I done?’  Each pursues his own course.’

 

As a result, this is what the Lord says, ‘See, I will refine and test them, for what else can I do because of the sin of my people’.  ‘Why has the land been ruined and laid waste, it is because they have forsaken my law and followed the stubbornness of their hearts’.

 

‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, or the strong man his strength, or the rich man his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.’

 

We have brought it on ourselves.  The parallels are too great to ignore.  ‘The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.’