Study from God’s Word… Jeremiah, Chapters 10 - 12 … Passage for Reflection: Jeremiah 11: 14 … NIV Don not pray for this people nor offer any plea or petition for them, because I will not listen when the call to me in the time of their distress.
My Journal for Today: Today’s highlight verse is a hard passage from God’s word to receive. Is there really a time when it’s too late for God to hear us; and apparently the answer is, “Yes.” As Dr. Smith points out by analogy in his devotional for today, when a parent is dealing with a recalcitrant child, there comes a time when the hand of the father is on its way to the butt of his disobedient child when no amount of last second pleading will stop that hand of loving correction.
For ancient Israel and Judah, in the times of Jeremiah, God’s people had once again turned away from God. God had to put up with years and years of repeated idolatry and whorish living from His chosen ones; and here they were again disregarding the Covenant God had made with their ancestors (and with them). And we read, in today’s Bible reading from the book of Jeremiah that God had “pulled the trigger” on their punishment; and no amount of last minute pleading was going to help. God had turned them over to a future captivity by the Babylonians; and any last minute pleas to Him were not going to stop them from learning that God was serious.
Just yesterday, I was with a group of serious Christians who gather once a month in a designated place to pray, in earnest, for our city and our land, both of which have gone the ways which can be documented in that fateful passage in Romans 1: 18 -32 [linked here for your review], which I’ve cited on a number of occasions this year. And when I review that passage, even when I’m with such like-minded and on-track Christians, praying diligently and desperately for God’s deliverance, I can’t help but think that we may be in that place when God is no longer in a listening mode; and we are about to experience our Lord lifting His hand of protection from the evils of this world to show all of mankind what it is to be without His Spirit protecting the world from the evils of the Devil and his minions.
My, oh my! That prospect is horrible to contemplate.
I’ve heard it preached and prophesied by men of God, like John MacArthur, that we may – in fact and in reality – may be in that place where the hand of the Father is already in motion and no amount of last minute pleading is going to stop our Lord from showing mankind that we cannot live without Him and we cannot be the correction which is needed to save us from ourselves.
Now that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be giving up on my pleas or my prayers, or stop gathering with others to cry out for God’s mercy. I will do that; but I’ll do it because I have hope in the scenario that God has already played out in the Person and finished work of His Son, Christ, The Messiah. And I have hope in what my God has promised will take place when The Bridegroom comes for His Bride, the Church. And finally, I believe that we, who are that remnant of believers in a perverse generation, will be protected – somehow – from the hand of God, … even if that hand will come upon our land with the lifting of protection, allowing Satan to bring his evil upon our world.
Oh, how I will continue to plead …
My Prayer for Today: Oh, Lord, have mercy on us! Protect us. Guide us with Your light out of the darkness. Help us to walk through the valley of the shadow of death into Your loving arms. Amen
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