Week 4 God Offers a Last Chance for Repentance

Let's take a look at what it is that God is doing through Jeremiah. We have seen that the Lord is saying that the time has come for the Israelites to suffer the punishment for their sins, especially their idolatry. As we read through Jeremiah we begin to understand that the Lord's heart has been broken by the complete lack of His people to understand what they possess as His chosen people. Instead they have traded the glorious for something that fades and is worthless. But here in Jeremiah chapter 36, we see once again God giving them the chance to repent. This is close to the end, Zedekiah is king, the last king of Judah, and God urges Jeremiah to read to the people all of the prophecies he has been given by God since he began his ministry during Josiah's reign.

Jeremiah 36:2-3
“Take a scroll of a book and write on it all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel, against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah even to this day. 3 It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the adversities which I purpose to bring upon them, that everyone may turn from his evil way, that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.”

Here again God reaches out in His unfailing love. The Jews have a chance to repent and return to the Lord. They are able to enter into that relationship that they were meant to have. But an interesting aspect of this repentance offered is God does not promise to stop the punishment that is going to come on Judah, He only promises that the individual will be forgiven. I think as New Testament believers, we feel that if we repent, no matter how long it has taken us to get to that point, that God will also deliver us from any repercussions that are coming because of our sin or the sins of those around us. Often we are mad at God when we do suffer after we have repented.

How many times have I had my children say they were sorry and ask for

forgiveness of their siblings and it ended up being only words, they were not actually sorry, in fact they believed they were not wrong in what they had done and were only sorry they were caught. Yet, because they said the words they felt they no longer deserved any punishment for their actions. Of course what they wanted and what actually ended up happening were not necessarily the same thing.

So why are surprised when we tell God we are sorry and we still have to work through whatever the consequences of our sin happen to be. The whole 'reaping' and 'sowing' aspect of the way the world is set up by God. Sometimes God intervenes, but usually we must suffer the fallout from our actions.

Taking this a step farther and looking at the world we live in....and knowing that we do indeed live under grace....what can we expect the Lord to do with the nations of the world??? If someone like Jeremiah were to come on the scene today and list the many sins of the world around us, pointing out idolatry and warning us of the judgment to come what is our reaction to be.

I have been seriously thinking about this as I have been studying the Old Testament prophets. Looking around at the news and hearing the stories of things going on around the world, I cannot help but think that we are no better than ancient Israel. We are full of idolatry and injustice, but we think that since we are Christians we should not have to suffer. We can say we are sorry and everything will be OK.

The question becomes, how do we show the love of Christ and balance that with the reality of the coming wrath of God? Many feel that we are living in the end times, that the time is short, if this is true we need to have a complete picture of who God is to present to a lost and dying world. We cannot just show the happy and easy parts of Christianity, we need to know that there may come a time when we have to take a stand as Jeremiah and the other prophets did. So....How do we do this without sounding like doom and gloom or pie in the sky????