Study of Jeremiah
Chapter 16

God was telling Jeremiah not to bother taking a wife and bearing children in this place because of the coming judgment. I can imagine the reaction of us in the United States if someone preached to us the same message. Our reaction would be to say that God doesn't cut people off. God is not like that. God loves everybody.

Its true God loves everybody which is why He sent Jesus to show us how to get back to Him (God). We have to realize though that after sending preachers and prophets to warn and warn and warn, time and time again, and people refuse and refuse, kill the preachers and prophets, which they did back then, there comes a time when God has to stop the evil or else new generations will rise up and be worse than the older ones were.

In the coming years, believe it or not according to Revelations, it will be worse than in Jeremiah's day. Why is this? Because this time it wasn't just the Jewish people who reject the law of God but the whole world who rejects the gospel of Jesus Christ. After all the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, His crucifixion, his burial and his resurrection to give eternal life to all who believe in Him, if we reject that there is no more that God can do to save us. That was the only way and if we reject that, we will be lost in hell forever. You can count on it.

Remember the story about a man who saw a storm coming and saw helpless birds exposed to the storm and wondered how he could get the birds to come safely into his barn. The only way would have been to become a bird and go tell them. God sent His Son to become one of us to give us the message of repentance and eternal life. His own people would not hear and are still not hearing and had him crucified. Of course that crucifixion was necessary in order for him to pay the price for our sins. Our sins crucified Jesus, not the Jews. Anyway if mankind keeps rejecting this good way of salvation eventually judgment will come just as in the days of Jeremiah and the days of salvation will end. Now is the time, now is the day of salvation. Now is the time to repent of sins and turn to God by believing in what Jesus did for us on the cross.

This is what happens when a nation of people continually reject God. God cannot allow sin to continue or suffering will continue. One day it will all be destroyed by fire. If we come to Jesus to escape the judgment of sin, we will be saved but sin will be destroyed. It cannot continue.

This happened then and will happen again at the battle of Armageddon.

There will not even be those who will mourn for these people.

He tells Jeremiah not to try to comfort the people for their loss.

Jeremiah was to warn and preach. He was not to eat and drink with the people who were facing judgment.

The people will ask God, "What have we done that is so bad?"

This is so plain. They worshipped other gods that they were forbidden by the law of God to worship. God gave them and would have given them so much and they preferred to worship gods that did not even exist. This led to the other sins of adultery, fornication, and even sacrificing their own children to these other gods. Someone suffers when a nation chooses to sin and turn away from God. The children suffer for one.  When we forsake God, we start to sin.  When sin starts, it gets worse and worse with every generation.  This is because there is a wicked one called Satan.  When we cut God out of our lives, Satan walks in uninvited.  He becomes our master.  We become a slave to sin. 

In our nation the unborn children are the ones suffering in this present time because of sin. Don't think for one minute that it is not painful for an unborn baby to be burnt by saline solution and aborted. Of course it hurts. Surgical abortion hurts also. I've seen pictures of these abortions. The babies look awful. This has got to be the worse sin imaginable for a civilized county like the United States which should know better. WE are supposed to be civilized, yet because a woman demands a right to choose. (I'm a woman myself so I can say what I want here. ) A woman demands a right to choose and chooses to allow a doctor (if you choose to call them that) to kill her little baby. God has been merciful so far to us but how long will that last?

As in the days of Jeremiah so is today. They didn't listen and today even the church isn't listening. They prefer to believe God loves them the way they are and will not bring any judgment. Okay but that is not what the bible says. That is not what the book of Revelation says. Even Jesus said:

This is why we need to hear the word of God preached continually and the bible read every day. If we don't hear from God we will begin to walk after our own imaginations. We will begin to do what is right in our own eyes. The trouble with that is that we all come from so many backgrounds and standards of living that we all are different. The nations with the best lifestyle is the nation that had godly influence. Why do you think the United States has been so great so far?  It is because of those that believe in God.  If God's hand of protection leaves us, we would not be so great. If we reject God and God's right to change our lives according to His word, we will eventually be without God's protection. Man's ways are not God's ways and eventually man's ways become evil. We need to learn of God's ways.

Man's ways are selfish and self-centered. That makes only the rich and powerful in control while everyone else suffers. Remember the days of slavery. Someone suffered.

The answer is God and from God comes love and compassion. Love does not abort babies, love does not enslave fellow human beings, love does not kill those who disagree with you, love does not steal from a neighbor, whether it is material goods or your neighbor's spouse. Love does not despise Democrats if you are a Republican or Republicans if you are a Democrat. Love does not hate the homosexual but it will cause us to warn them of their dangerous sin. That sin is an abomination in the sight of God. Read the first chapter of Romans. Love warns but does not hate. Love is to tell the truth, not tolerate sin.

This is why Israel lost their nation and were scattered all over the world.

Part of this started being fulfilled in 1948.

God is so good. Even though Israel sinned and was cast out in the time of Jeremiah and later after their rejection of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, God still remembers His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Israel will be saved and reunited with God after the coming tribulation period that is to come upon the earth in the future. Read Daniel and Revelation for more on this. Israel will discover that the Messiah that their forefathers had crucified is the very Messiah prophesied by Moses the prophet many years before. Israel will finally recognize the one they peirced.

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