JEREMIAH 7:24

Before judgment comes, God, in His mercy, always seeks to warn His people and to get them to repent so that judgment can be averted or cancelled. His Word specifically informs us that He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). He is by no means a cruel or vengeful God. He doesn’t try to get us or to trap us so that He can mercilessly punish us. Any such view of God is erroneous and contrary to the truth. It is worth repeating: He never sends judgment and destruction without first sending repeated warnings and giving His people time and opportunity to repent and make amends. We must never forget or overlook these very sobering words of Scripture, “He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy” (Proverbs 29:1). Unfortunately, the children of Israel often went backward instead of forward without seeing the necessity of repentance and change. May none of us in this last-days church fall in this category.

In this enlightening book of Jeremiah, sadly enough, this is the frightening scenario that is graphically painted for us. Instead of turning away from their awful sins and repenting, the children of Israel persistently chose to remain as they were and to traffic in their increasingly ungodly and nefarious ways. They had become so vile and wretched that no amount of warning and pleading with them seemed to move or convince them to repent. They had become set and seasoned in sin, committing every kind of abomination and every evil work. They were described by the prophet as defiling the land and making the Lord’s heritage an abomination (Jeremiah 2:7). Instead of Israel standing up and being a beacon of God’s light and presence, the prophet Jeremiah chronicles for us their flagrant degeneracy and their unmitigated contamination by the surrounding nations and cultures they had conquered and whose lands and territories, the Lord had so graciously given to them,

It is with great alarm and consternation that the Lord queries through the prophet, “Hath a nation changed their gods, which are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 2: 11,12). Earlier on in the passage we read, “The priest said not, where is the Lord? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit” (Jeremiah 2:8). How very sad when the pastors and prophets were no better than the people they were supposed to lead!

Today, for me, the message remains very simple. We were not sent here to be influenced and contaminated by this world and present age. We were sent here to make a difference – to let them know that our God is awesome and real, that it was He who led us and brought us out, and who has done the most amazing things for us. We were sent to be influencers and not to be seduced and influenced by the world. We have one simple task, and that is to make sure that we are obeying the voice of the Lord and to walk in all the ways He has commanded. How dreadfully sad that the people of God went backward instead of forward. The Word declares, “But they harkened not, nor inclined their ear: but walked in the counsels and in the imaginations of their evil heart and went backward and not forward” (Jeremiah 7:24). We refuse to go backward. For us ever forward! No turning back!