Rēad to Read …Again
Daily Reading: Jeremiah 49-50
Jeremiah 49:4
Wherefore gloriest thou in the valleys, thy flowing valley, O backsliding daughter? that trusted in her treasures, saying, Who shall come unto me?
All the way back in Jeremiah 15:10 the faithful prophet stated this, Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth!... Not only did Jeremiah prophesy against Judah (Israel) he also prophesied God’s judgment to the whole earth. In chapters 46-51 Jeremiah relates God’s coming judgments against some twenty-one Gentile nations. In today’s two chapters the spokesman for God declares destruction against six.
· Ammonites
· Edom
· Damascus
· Kedar
· Hazor
· Elam
No wonder he considered himself “a man of contention to the whole earth!” He was. In chapter 50, God turns the prophet’s attention to Babylon which was the first great world-wide kingdom as related by Daniel in Daniel chapter 2. All these nations did, and will again, suffer judgment from Almighty God. For example, Babylon was destroyed in 536 by Darius of the Medo-Persians. That was the Babylon of antiquity. But there will be another Babylon, the future ecclesiastical/political Babylon of the Book of Revelation. It too will suffer God’s judgment, in one hour her judgment will come (Revelation 18:10).
So, preacher, what does all this mean to me? Of the probable hundreds of things it means, it means that I Corinthians 10:12 is true: Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. This was written to the church in Corinth by the Apostle Paul. It was written to individuals in that church. By extension it was written to and for us meaning all the Christians in all the churches during the church age. All would do well to heed the warning of Paul. Those who think they stand should best realize they may fall, meaning they can fall. That fall will be one of their own making.
This is how it happens. Someone is doing fine, they have money, a good job, a family perhaps, their health is good, they are strong, have a good personality, everything a person could want. They are enjoying the good life. There is need of nothing for they have all they could need, want, or desire. In their prosperity they forget God. They are like those mentioned in Psalm 30:6, And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. These are those that Proverbs 1:32 speaks of, For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. God will not cause them to suffer a fall, they will suffer because they sowed seeds of wrongdoing through their free will actions of disobedience to God and His Word. It was the same with Israel, God did not cause their fall, they chose to disobey Him and their disobedience caused their fall into captivity and bondage.
Whether it be a nation or an individual, actions have consequences. Consider again Babylon, the greatest nation in the world at that time, fell. In a night it fell. It didn’t have to be that way either for that nation or the other twenty nations that Jeremiah mentions. Nor does it have to be that way in any person’s life. Basically, all they had to do was and is to keep the first commandment. which was articulated by Jesus in Mark 12:30. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. Keep this one commandment and everything else, all the blessings of God, will fall into place.
Dr. William T. Howe
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