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 33-35.

Jeremiah predicted the fall of Jerusalem, but he also prophesied that God would never abandon the Jewish people.  What I find interesting is that Jeremiah’s prophecy here was in response to people saying that Israel was not worthy to be counted as a nation.  This struck me because there are many people saying the same thing today.  I thoroughly believe that those people will discover that God’s promise given through Jeremiah is every bit as true today as it was then.  The reason that people said it then was much different from the reasons people say it today.  When Jeremiah prophesied, God promised to restore the people of Israel to their land.  Today, they have been restored to that land, but some people refuse to recognize that this came about because of God’s action.  It may be that God will once again exile His people from the land He gave them because of their sin, but those who choose to be their enemies will pay a price for their hostility.  God has restored the people of Israel to their land several times throughout history, and each time, He exiled them once more when they failed to faithfully follow His commands.

After the above prophecy, Jeremiah condemns the elites of Jerusalem for their failure to stay the course when they repented and turned back to God, or, at least, claimed to do so.  They had freed their Hebrew slaves, their fellow Israelites whom they had enslaved for one reason or another.  By doing so as part of a religious revival they acknowledged that continuing to keep them as slaves was a sin.  However, they soon repented of freeing their slaves and re-enslaved them on one pretext or another.  Jeremiah unfavorably contrasts this with the Recabites, who followed the commands of their ancestor to not drink wine or live in houses.  They had followed these commands since the time of King Jehu of Israel, when their ancestor helped Jehu eliminate Baal worship in the Northern Kingdom.  The Recabites followed their ancestors commands for generations, but the elites of Jerusalem would not remain faithful to God’s commands for even a matter of months.  To which of these groups do you and I belong?