Week 34

What struck me most in this recent reading is the absolute state of destruction that the Israelites faced.

Israel, the northern kingdom, had already fallen and were scattered abroad. Now Judah, the southern kingdom, was facing the same fate. God used Jeremiah to prophecy the outcome of His chosen people if they continued in their sinful ways. God didn't desire to punish them, but His justice demands punishment. His desire was that they return to Him.


If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. (Jeremiah 7:5-7)

The people's desire though was to continue living in disobedience to God and His law. As a result, the Babylonians were the tools that God used to punish them.

This is how Jerusalem was taken: In the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army and laid siege to it. And on the ninth day of the fourth month of Zedekiah's eleventh year, the city wall was broken through. (Jeremiah 39:1-2)

The seige lasted over a year. It must have been a horrific scene. Jeremiah mentions in Lamentations that children starved, the old and young lie dead in the streets, and starving women resorted to eating their children. A ghastly scene and then the walls fell...and the first temple of God was destroyed.

We know that there were godly men in Jerusalem at the time of its destruction. Jeremiah, Daniel, Haniniah, Mishael, and Azariah are to name a few of the more known. The latter three are more commonly known by their Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego.

Despite these amazing men of faith and godliness living in Jerusalem, God's punishment still fell on all of the people.

It makes me consider, as a person and as a society, where are we in relation to God today? Are we following Him and His ways, or are we following our own to be more like the world around us? Are false gods receiving our devotion instead of God? Is the blood of innocents and aborted children crying out against us? Is God calling out a warning to us and we turn deaf ears? Is there destruction in our future as horrible as what the people in Jerusalem faced?