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  BIBLE READING: Ezekiel 14-16         Israel, as we know, had a preoccupation with their own importance. They were Jews, everyone else was a Gentile. They had the law, everyone else were dogs. We have examples of God showing them that their thinking is a little wrong in the person of Jesus, who talks to the Samaritan woman, and Peter who goes to the Gentiles. But here in Ezekiel we have another example: ‘"Son of man, how is the wood of the vine better than any other wood, the vine branch which is among the trees of the forest?’ (Ezekiel 15:2)      The vine branch is an obvious reference to Israel (they are referenced in this manner other times throughout the Bible), and the verse says that the vine branch is not better than any other branch or piece of wood in the forest. In fact, all of the wood burns the same when the fire comes. You see, Israel had the wrong idea of themselves. They believed they were inherently better than any other nation, by being the vine. But God m

  BIBLE READING: Ezekiel 5-9                 In 2006, Jacinta Marcial, an Otomi Indian and mother of six, was accused of kidnapping six Mexican police officers. Police had confronted street merchants about pirated CDs, and her picture had appeared on the margins of a newspaper photograph of the event. Despite the absurdity of the charges, she was found guilty and sentenced to 21 years in prison. Last fall, after much pressure from international human rights organizations, the Mexican courts changed the verdict and set her free after three years of wrongful imprisonment. “As far as I am concerned, I forgive them,” she said. Injustice angers the Lord. Perfect justice is what He’s all about. Ezekiel 6 uses the literary device of addressing the land, which is told that the idolatrous places of worship that have been built on it and defile it will be destroyed. Ezekiel 7 takes “the end has come” as its refrain and is a vigorous indictment of the nation’s sin of idolatry. Worshiping

  BIBLE READING: Ezekiel 1-4                 Just for a moment, lets imagine that you were living in Jerusalem when the first wave of the Babylonians came and destroyed the city.   You were one of the lucky ones that survived, but you were carried off into exile.   After five long years, you find yourself on the banks of the Chebar canal in Babylon and today is your birthday. Although all birthdays are special, this one was supposed to be very special, because today you turn thirty.   You see, you are a member of the tribe of Levi and today was supposed to be the day that you were to take on your duties as priest of the Most High God within his holy Temple.   You begin to imagine what things would have been like if the Babylonians had never invaded.   No doubt your family and friends would have thrown you a huge party to commemorate you and your special day.   Yet today there would be no party, you are not even sure if many of your family members are still alive.   So…you go out t

  BIBLE READING: Lamentations 3-5 “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. "The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.”                         -Lamentations 3:22-26                 Lamentations is not lighthearted reading; it’s a collection of desperate cries from the bottom of a pit. The author laments the suffering of God’s people during their time of captivity, which left them trapped in misery for years.   But in the middle of the book, a glimmering light shines through the darkness, as the weeping writer lifts his head and proclaims hope in the God of love and compassion. We witness the progression from a downcast, bitter soul (verse 20) to an upright, resolute warrior refusing to be consumed

  BIBLE READING: Lamentations 1-2 “How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave.”                                                                                                                                                                 -Lamentations 1:1                        Sin wreaks havoc in your life. It takes those who were once the jewels in God’ crown and makes them unsavory salt, good for nothing other than to be trodden under foot. How the mighty have fallen to sin! How easily do men turn from righteousness just to take a “harmless” sample of sin, only to find that they have fallen far from all righteousness.                 Do not be decieved by the pleasures of sin. Their joy may endure for a while, but eternal fire awaits the sinner. God is not mocked. If you willingly choose to taste of the pleasures of sin, He will ensure

  BIBLE READING: Jeremiah 51-52                 King Zedekiah was the last king of Judah; he was the son of king Josiah (the same Josiah that God used to return Judah to Back to Him) Well unlike his father he did not follow God, Zedekiah followed the path of the three kings before him. (Jehoiachin -nephew, Jehoiakim – brother, and Jehoahaz – brother) God’s patience had run thin and it was time to let the people know he had had enough!                 You would think a son of Josiah would follow in the footsteps of his father and lead Judah back to God especially after his brothers and nephew’s horrible reign. God warned Zedekiah, through Jeremiah and other prophets, multiple times that the Babylonian invasion was happening because of the sins of the people. They instructed him to not rebel against the Babylonians. But He threw Jeremiah in jail and proceeded with his plans to rebel against King Nebuchadnezzar. He only made things worse for Judah. God was still trying to be mercif

  BIBLE READING: Jeremiah 50   “Declare among the nations and proclaim, set up a banner and proclaim, conceal it not, and say: “Babylon is taken, Bel is put to shame, Merodach is dismayed. Her images are put to shame, her idols are dismayed.”                                                                                                        - Jeremiah 50.2                 Jeremiah prophesied amidst the height of the Babylonian empire. As the supreme world power, Babylon ruled with an iron fist. None who opposed her could stand.   I imagine that to be alive at the time, it would seem that Babylon would last forever. Yet, at that very point in history, God spoke through the prophet declaring the destruction of Babylon with all its gods as if it were taking place at that very moment.   On God’s timeline, Babylon was a blip, and all its power a barely noticeable mark. This is true of all earthly kingdoms. “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?… He who sits in the

  BIBLE READING: Jeremiah 46-48                 The next few chapters of Jeremiah (46–51) focus on different Gentile nations that God told Jeremiah to pronounce prophesies of destruction against. This chapter deals with Egypt. From the point of view of secular, military history, the battle of Carchemish was perhaps the most important in ancient Egyptian history. This critical Assyrian city was conquered by Egypt in 605 BC, bringing about the fall of the Assyrian empire. However, when Pharaoh Necho returned to Egypt, he made a tactical error, leaving too small of a garrison to guard the newly acquired city. This left the door open for the rising world power Babylon to take the city from Egypt later that same year.                 Of course, God, who lives outside of time, had already warned the Egyptians to prepare themselves for war and had predicted their defeat. His desire then, and today, is to draw the whole world into His plan of redemption, as it says in John 3:16, “For Go

  BIBLE READING: Jeremiah 42-45                 There are always those who think they know better than others. However, it is a completely different matter to arrogantly believe oneself to be more knowledgeable than God, which is exactly what happened. Think about it. They had enough faith that God used Jeremiah to run to him when they needed answers. They believed that God would give them a message through Jeremiah. In fact, they were so certain that they vowed to obey everything God told them through Jeremiah. Then they actually heard what God had to say. The people again rejected God in favor of Egypt.                 How many times have the Israelites tried to, or actually have, fled to Egypt when they had questions or uncertainty in their lives? Why? What is it about Egypt that allowed it to hold such a place in their twisted hearts? What was it about the Egyptians that caused the Israelites to trust the security of the chains that bound them in slavery instead of the God t

  BIBLE READING: Jeremiah 38-41 “So they took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king's son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. And there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.”                                    -Jeremiah 38:6                 During WWII, a submarine was rammed by another ship and quickly sank. Despite many efforts to rescue the crew, it was feared that their oxygen would run out long before anyone could get to them. Hours into the rescue attempt, the sonar officer, who was listening for any indication of life on the crippled sub, heard a tapping sound, recognizing it as the dots and dashes of Morse Code, he deciphered the message, a simple question that came slowly: “Is . . . there . . . any . . . hope?” That is the ultimate question for most people! In almost every generation, during turbulent times full of difficulties, depression, and discouragement, many believers

  BIBLE READING: Jeremiah 35-37                 Jeremiah 36 contains the story of God telling Jeremiah to write all the judgments He has against Judah on a scroll and read it in the temple. Jeremiah gets Baruch to write down the words he says and take the scroll to the temple to read them out. Some of the princes heard the words and were afraid, and decided they must tell the King, but first they told Baruch and Jeremiah to hide unless the king didn’t like what he heard. He didn’t. In fact, it says he wasn’t even frightened, but he threw the scroll into the fire and ordered the men to seize Baruch and Jeremiah. However, the LORD hid the two, and ordered them to write down another scroll.                 If there is anything that we can learn about God’s will, it is that God’s will cannot be thwarted.   God’s work will always get done, no matter how much adversity there is against it.   Jonah tried to run away from God, but God found him.   Elijah thought he was all alone in his

  BIBLE READING: Jeremiah 32-34                 One of the greatest invitations to prayer ever given to anyone was spoken to Jeremiah when he was in prison for preaching the truth. God said: “Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” (Jeremiah 33:3). God mercifully spoke to him in his distress with both a command and an invitation. Truthfully, It Is a Command! God takes the initiative: “Call unto Me.” Jesus said, “Men ought always to pray.” Paul said, “Pray without ceasing.” God says to Jeremiah, “Call Me!”                 Have you ever had an important person give you a card with their unlisted number on it and say, “Call me”? If someone important gives you his private number, that’s a great privilege. Almighty God came to Jeremiah and did just that: Jeremiah 33:3. These verses express the importance of the Person Who spoke to Jeremiah:             “Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by

  BIBLE READING: Jeremiah 30-31                 The Bible is the most unique collection of writings to ever exist. It was written over 1,500 years by God through 44 different people. Each book tells a story about real people, and together they form the grand narrative of a God who loves us, pursues a relationship with us, and rescues us. The entire Bible, including Jeremiah’s prophecies, point to our need for a hero and that hero is Jesus. In Jeremiah 31, hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, God promises to save Israel and to create a new covenant. In this new covenant, people will experience forgiveness and a closeness to God they’ve never known.                 Jesus established the new covenant with his life, death, and resurrection. The first covenant relied on the people’s ability to follow the Ten Commandments, but time and time again they failed. Under the old covenant, the people had to offer a sacrifice to pay the debt their sin created. When Jesus came, He did wh

BIBLE READING: Jeremiah 24-26 “You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, although the LORD persistently sent to you all his servants the prophets, saying, 'Turn now, every one of you, from his evil way and evil deeds, and dwell upon the land that the LORD has given to you and your fathers from of old forever.”          -Jeremiah 25:4-5 The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah concerning the upcoming seventy years of captivity that they were facing at the hands of the Babylonians, came with a hope of salvation.  If they were to repent or “turn now” from their evil ways, God would allow them to return home to the land God had promised them.  The phrase “turn now”, in the original Hebrew implies that you “return to your starting point.  God certainly does forgive us when we earnestly seek His forgiveness and He willingly places us back to a new starting point as if we never strayed away in the first place.  Yet our repentance must be one that is genuine an

BIBLE READING: Jeremiah 22-23                 The Bible is God’s word, and it is very much like a  fire  and a  hammer . Fire is used to purify metallic ore by exceeding the melting point of the metal that’s being refined, so that the imperfections, which don’t melt, can be removed. Believers down through the ages have all discovered that throughout their lives, their melting points have been exceeded over and over again. Fire was also used to burn up the chaff, the useless stuff, during the harvest season so the crop could be gathered. God desires for our lives to yield fruit, so He burns up the chaff that keeps our spiritual harvest from being all it should be. God’s word is also like a hammer that pounds and makes hard hearts malleable and stubborn minds pliable. American hymn writer H.L. Hastings described God’s word as an anvil in 1890. What he said is still true to this day: “Infidels for eighteen hundred years have been refuting and overthrowing this book, and yet it st