Jeremiah 11

1This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2“Listen to the terms of this covenant and tell them to the people of Judah and to those who live in Jerusalem. 3Tell them that this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Cursed is the one who does not obey the terms of this covenant— 4the terms I commanded your ancestors when I brought them out of Egypt, out of the iron-smelting furnace.’ I said, ‘Obey me and do everything I command you, and you will be my people, and I will be your God. 5Then I will fulfill the oath I swore to your ancestors, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey’—the land you possess today.” I answered, “Amen, Lord.”  6The Lord said to me, “Proclaim all these words in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem: ‘Listen to the terms of this covenant and follow them. 7From the time I brought your ancestors up from Egypt until today, I warned them again and again, saying, “Obey me.” 8But they did not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubbornness of their evil hearts. So I brought on them all the curses of the covenant I had commanded them to follow but that they did not keep.’ ”Jeremiah 11:1-8

 This is really sad. In reading chapter after chapter of Jeremiah, God has turned away from his people Israel and Judah.  God made a conditional promise to them when they left Egypt, they were to follow God's rules, his precepts, his laws, and he Jehovah God was to be their only God. One of the reasons for them to annihilate the inhabitants of Cannan was to keep them from following the other gods of those nations. In reading about the kings, there were many evil kings that did not follow God's ways and did worship other gods. Warning after warning, Israel and Judah did not return to God and he allowed the consequences of their sins to catch up with them. God's spirit does not always strive with man. God is there if we repent and turn to him, immediately when we repent, God is there. Maybe we walked 20 miles in the wrong direction, God does not wait for us to walk the 20 miles back. At repentance, the first step when we turn around and walk toward God he is there right away. But what we seem to see in Jeremiah is God's people Israel do not repent. God says these prophets that are prophecying good are not speaking my words. God wants to see repentance and until he does, God does not step in. Much of the time it is not that God does us evil, he just stands back and allows the consequences of our sinful ways to catch up to us. The consequences of sin do not always hit us immediately.  Sometimes when we reap a harvest of sin,  of disobedience, it is down the road a ways. We reap what we sow. Charles Stanley use to always say we reap later than we sow and we reap more than we sow, but we do reap from the crop that we plant. If we look in the natural, it is sometimes three or four months after we plant a crop until the harvest. Here they sometimes plant pine trees, it can be twenty years or even more until they harvest a crop of pine trees.  So what do I seem to be reading in Jeremiah? God's people are not repenting and disaster is striking their land. They have been warned repeatedly but they do not turn to God. Their land is dry and there are cracks in the ground because of lack of rain. In the 13th and 19th chapters of Luke, we can find where Jesus wept over his people, over the city of Jerusalem, the one that killed its prophets. Jesus was sorrowful, they would not turn from their sins.  God is not wanting any to perish but that we all would come to repentance.  When we repent, all we have to do is take one step in the right direction and God is there at our side.  For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 The gospel really is simple, so simple even a caveman can do it. Believe in Jesus is all that it takes. Jesus will be right there. God bless, LVZ.