I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Jeremiah 7-9.

    As I was reading the first thing that I saw which I wanted to comment on was chapter 7 verse 19:

“Am I the one they are hurting?” asks the Lord. “Most of all, they hurt themselves, to their own shame.”

We need to really pay attention to this. If we truly love someone we cannot look the other way when they sin, because they are hurting themselves by their sinning. As I was composing my thoughts, Facebook put up as a “memory” from 2013 my blog for that day, which I had titled “Sin Is Self Destructive Behavior”. I was using a different read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year schedule then, so that blog was on a completely different passage. We need to recognize that those who are sinning are unlikely to listen to our warnings, but we must warn them anyway.

    There are many people who think because they go to church, or do good things, they will avoid the harm that their sin produces. Such is not the case. No matter what else we do, our sin will have negative consequences for us. If we do not listen when God calls us to give up our sin, He will apply ever greater discipline to us. However, our sin does not just bring harm to ourselves. Our sins cause harm to others, either because we directly harm others, or because others are influenced by our bad behavior to sin themselves. Therefore, if we do not turn from our sin, from our self-destructive behavior, eventually God will destroy us.