JEREMIAH CALLS THE PEOPLE TO OBEDIENCE
LESSON FOR THE JUNIOR CLASSES
STUDY SCRIPTURE:
JEREMIAH 7 : 1-11_ 21-23
Key Verse
“But this is what I commanded them, saying,” Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you will be My people; and you will walk entirely in the way I command you, so that it may go well for you.”
Jeremiah 7:23
INTRODUCTION
It is always best in life to listen carefully to what God has to say. He always keeps it simple. He stresses you have to follow His commandments and if you do not understand them and you tell Him so He will send someone to explain His ways to you, or He will speak with you directly. He does not have to many times speak to you directly for He has set up servants of His to teach people about Him.
In addition, you can look at how the servants of God in the Bible have behaved and what happened to them. Then you can look at the suffering of those who said they believed in God but did all kinds of things different from the ways of God and what He had instructed. They really suffered.
The voice of God is thus most important. His word cannot be broken without severe consequences. But we see in the Bible that God is extremely patient. The name we give to that characteristic of God is His “longsuffering”.
It means God is merciful and kind. He is gracious. He does not want to destroy even those that do not believe He is God and the Creator of all living things.
Therefore God had the young prophet Jeremiah warn the nation of Judah that if they continued being disobedient to the Covenant, the firm arrangement or agreement He had made with them they would end up in the bad situation of exile with their enemies taking over their land and country and destroying their possessions.
But despite Jeremiah’s 42 years of preaching and warning, the people of Judah kept on rejecting God. They did not want to be obedient. They wanted to do what they felt they would enjoy doing. They wanted to copy doing what the pagans around them were doing. They enjoyed the idol worshipping of the pagan nations who were so foolish they thought they could make gods of wood, stone, or precious metals and then worship that as their gods and bow down to the idols they had made.
So because Jeremiah loved his nation, he spent a lot of time and energy trying to talk to the people to get them to change their ways and attitudes, repent, and become obedient to God’s commandments. But they did not obey. They were captured by their enemies and taken into captivity.
Jeremiah cried over what had happened. He became known as the “weeping prophet”. We learn the lesson that it is always best to obey the voice of God. The way of obedience leads to life. The way of disobedience leads to death.