Sunday, December 29, 2013

A Devotional Thought from The Lamentations of Jeremiah
Look at this terrible description of literal judgment.
Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows. We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us. Our necks are under persecution; we labor, and have no rest. We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread. Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities. Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand. We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness. Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine. They ravish the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah. Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honored. They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood. The elders have ceased from the gate, young men from their music. The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into morning. The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us that we have sinned! 
Lamentations 5:2-16
This sounds like images from a sci-fi movie showing the devastation of a future time, or scenes from a violent video game, or the ancient destruction committed by an invading horde (which is what it is). Isn't it striking that Jeremiah, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, equates these terrible circumstances with the results of one generation suffering for the sins of another? And his confession in verse 16 that even the suffering generation had sinned? No need for preachers' moralizing here, modern people should read this for themselves and turn from sin.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Devotional Thoughts from Jeremiah
Here's a great Word God spoke to His people Israel, which is applicable to all believers in the God of the Bible:
Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. (33:3)
And listen to what one of those great things was, and is:
And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby theu have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me. (33:9)
Good, huh?

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

'nuff said! A Devotional Thought from the prophet Jeremiah
At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.
Jeremiah 18:7-10

Saturday, December 7, 2013

A Devotional Thought from the prophet, Jeremiah
Here is advice to an ancient nation that is good advice to our country today. Don't trust in your religion, or "spirituality," or what you think is your moral superiority. Instead change, amend, your evil ways, and God will give you peace and blessing in the land. There are a lot of behaviors and other doings the people of our country should amend. Here is the advice as Jeremiah spoke it in 7:4-7:
Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these. For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour; If ye opress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt: Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever.
That's good advice for the populace and the government.