May 3

2 – The nation has fallen so far. God wants to know, and Jeremiah is assigned to tell them: “you once loved me so much. I defended you and fed you. Anyone who threatened you paid severely.  Now you will worship anything as long as it isn’t Me. There is a national attitude of “whatever buddy!” toward God.  Even the priests and leaders are given to Baal and Molech.”  God is going to continue pursuing Judah and will be trying to love them, but things do not look good.  They were so free and prosperous and strong but have turned themselves into slaves. They rebel at every turn.  They have become more proficient at sinning than those who have had no training in goodness (and vice versa!) It’s as if those who were lost all along come to the Israelites to learn about ‘how to be better sinners.’  It is so utterly pathetic what these people have turned themselves into.  They are dirty dirty dirty, lusting 24/7, anyone who comes to minister to them gets murdered, …and they think that a foreign government is going to be of aid to them!

3 – Israel, called out to be God’s bride, has turned itself into a trolling whore that will expend herself on anyone but her husband, and she doesn’t come home.  God is willing to forgive and reunite with them but their sinfulness is a bit more appealing to them at the time.  Judah held onto God a bit longer (the southern Kingdom) but they have slouched in their pursuit of God too.  Manasseh is king at present.  He’s the one who had Isaiah killed and he is turning out to be the darkest leader the Semitic world has ever seen.  His Satanic wretchedness far outdid Ahab. Manasseh was throwing live babies and young children into fires at evening rituals as a sacrifice to Molech.  Here was Jerusalem – no city had been so blessed, yet no place or people on earth had descended so far down from so far up. They had even become more wicked than their relatives in Israel; the northern kingdom. Judah was disaffectionately dubbed, “the adulterous wife”. And that was just the tip of the matter as for how bad they had become.

4 –  The opening of ch. 4 sounds like, “this is your final chance to exit from the highway to destruction…”  God wants to see total transformation of His people, yet they are bent on wickedness.  and the enemy army is on the march to come flatten them!  The sword is raised, a lion is at the gate, their chariots and horses are coming, war and death and crushing will engulf Judah. It is going to be awful – and Jeremiah can see it prophetically. It will happen.  The first influx of Babylonian soldiers enter Judah in 605 B.C. – 21 years after Jeremiah is called into ministry. The siege is progressively moving across Judah until 586 B.C. when Jerusalem is sacked and the Temple is destroyed.  Jeremiah is warning them for two decades to turn but God’s people are stubborn, dull to truth, skilled at deviance, and moronic about righteousness. It’s amusing that, as the enemy is closing in on them, some of the Judeans are pausing to put on mascara and “doll up” themselves.  That’s as dopey as the town being on fire, and stopping the work of dousing the fire so you can have time to wash and paint your house … before it burns to an ash heap!  Something is really wrong with these people. The sad thing is that it is an illustration of all of us.