AWAKE BIBLE IN A YEAR AUGUST 9
Read Jeremiah 5-8
God is asking frank questions, and talking plainly, Jeremiah echos Isaiah, God is looking for a people who return. God says they don’t know how to blush.
And Jeremiah is frank as well in Jeremiah 8:20 “The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.” And in v. 22 is there no balm in Gilead? Basically he is saying, ‘God can we be healed?’
Ahhh who can heal their stubbornness!? Even Jesus says over Jerusalem some of the same phrases check out the similarities. “From the time your ancestors left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again I sent you my servants the prophets. But they did not listen to me or pay attention. They were stiff-necked and did more evil than their ancestors.’” Jeremiah 7:25-26 NIV
Now compare this to Matt 23:37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.
Lord deliver us from our own willfulness! Oh to be willing. Today we chose faithfulness, we chose restraint with our will, through the power of the Spirit. Self-control is available.
Even in whatever circumstances we are in!
“This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”
Jeremiah 6:16 NIV
PRAYER: LORD WE WANT TO WALK IN IT.
“But they did not obey Me or bend their ear [to hear Me], but followed the counsels and the stubbornness of their [own] evil heart (mind), and [they turned and] went backward instead of forward.”
Jeremiah 7:24
PRAYER: LORD REMOVE ALL BACKSLIDING FROM US. We long to listen to you and follow your counsel.
Sydney Lund In chapter 7, God is rebuking Judah and in verse 11 He says, “has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?” And in Matthew 21:13, Jesus says an identical statement, “my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers.”
