Chapter 8
8:4 starts with "You shall say to them..." but MSB does not identify this as a new message....
vss 4-7 speak of how even nature knows when it is time to turn back. Birds know when to migrate, they know the times. But Judah does not. They won't repent despite the time being upon them. They persist in doing things wrong, they refuse to turn back. The implication is that they KNOW they should, it is in their hearts to do so, but they CHOOSE to get it wrong.
vss 8-13 speak of the fate that awaits those who claim to be wise. Their wives will be given to others, their fields to conquerors. Because they have sinned and not felt guilty. They have forgotten how to blush. Sin is so prevalent that it isn't even noticed.
vss 14-17, The land, the whole land, is to be devastated by the invaders. When they come, there will be no pacifying them. No stopping them. No mercy to be had from them.
vss 18-21, Jeremiah expresses his personal grief at the implications of the message he is delivering. He mourns, and is dismayed. It is summed up in this last verse of the chapter, a well-known phrase, but I didn't realize the context until now:
22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored? [Jer 8:22 ESV]
2023 - This is about the curing of a nation, about the need to provoke a national repentance and set a whole nation back on the right path. God has tried all kinds of things with Jerusalem, and still they refuse to turn back to him. Despite God's corrections, punishments, declarations, and condemnations through the prophets he sent them, Judah and Jerusalem would not turn away from following their own methods, which included everything EXCEPT obedience to God's commands. Look at us today. We sneer at morality, make fun of the hillbillies that get married first, we take God out of schools, we take the Ten off the courthouse lawn, the overt, open worship of Satan is on the rise and being called free exercise. We hear now and then that if the US doesn't soon change its ways, God is going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. Read Jeremiah, and you will see that he will have to apologize to Jerusalem also, and God calls them WORSE than Sodom and Gomorrah.
Possible FB post.
12/29/20 - See the notes on Mark 11, about the cursed fig tree, in connection with the timing of this prophecy. This is about 70 AD, not the Tribulation or the Millennial.
2024 - So to this point, Jeremiah is very depressing, and the chapters seem quite long. The description is of a place gone so bad that it sounds like the "Days of Noah". Everyone, continually, behaving badly, and the primary motivation of life seems to be greed. If anything is financially profitable, it can be pursued free of guilt or conscience.
I wonder how much of what we are seeing today in the US is just like that. As time goes on the level of corruption in our government agencies and our executive branch seems to have reached a place so dark that we would not previously have even believed it could happen. The cooperation in corruption MUST BE at a majority level, else the corrupt would be prosecuted by the majority of honest men. But that is not how it is going. Trump is talking big...but it remains to be seen whether he can find "10 good men" in Washington DC. I have my doubts.
2025 - Jeremiah just heaps despair on top of depression for the first 8 chapters. This was also his message in Jerusalem at the time he lived. Yet those who heard him laughed and talked and shook their heads and clicked their tongues. They were immune to the words of Jeremiah.
I read him today and it's like he could be talking to us in the US. We were founded on God's principles. On inalienable rights bestowed by our creator. It is a fundamental rock in the foundation of this country. We are built on t his. And here we are, laughing at anyone who actually believes in a creator. We scorn anyone who declares Islam a threat to us. And do you think people who don't believe in any god anyway will hesitate to sacrifice to Allah when their life depends on it? They won't care, they won't resist, neither here nor apparently anywhere else in the world.
2025 - Here is an incredible turn of events...Russia and China are far more secure against Islam than the US today. In Russia they will even let you worship though not really in China. Who would have ever believed that Russia would become the safest country in the world for Christians, and yet that is where the trend is leading!