October 6
God Warns His People to Listen
Jeremiah 25, 26; 2 Chronicles 36
Key Verse: Amend
your ways and your doings, and obey the voice of the Lord your God, and the
Lord will change his mind about the disaster that he has pronounced against
you.
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Jeremiah 26:13
Jeremiah deserves more respect
that we may have paid him. We tend to remember him as the Weeping Prophet or
one of the Prophets of Doom. The more I study him, however, the more I realize
that Jeremiah took on a tough assignment from God and did it with great courage
and creativity.
Imagine the jeers he must have
heard when he walked the streets of his day with an ox yoke around his neck!
But when the crowd stopping laughing, Jeremiah may have slammed home his point
by saying: “Unless you amend your ways and start listening to God, you will
soon be wearing the burdensome yoke of the king of
The prophet wore the yoke not to
attract attention to himself but to the warning God instructed him to give to
the people. The people, he said, were not listening to God. They acted as
though God did not exist and they persisted in doing evil.
The people ignored God and they
ignored Jeremiah, except for the few who wanted to shut him up for revealing
their wickedness. Still, in obedience to God, Jeremiah continued for years to
warn the people that God would punish them if they did not repent and amend
their ways.
The message for us here is clear:
if we refuse to listen to God and live like he wants us to live, then we also
will suffer the consequences of our sins. We have a greater advantage than the
people of Jeremiah’s day. We know from the teachings of Jesus how God’s people
should live.
We too are tempted to ignore God
and his warnings in Holy Scripture. Our hedonistic culture constantly lures us
to worship other gods rather than “amend our ways” to please God. Too many of
us chase after pleasure when we could be chasing God. We are prone to take the
safe and easy way rather than take a courageous stand against pornography,
legalized gambling, and other evils of our time.
The people of