Lamentations 1-2
"The visions of your prophets were false and worthless; they did
not expose your sin to ward off your captivity. The oracles they gave you were
false and misleading." (Lamentations 2:14, NIV)
Jeremiah mourns after
the fall of Jerusalem. He cries out to God and he cries out to the people of
Jerusalem. Jeremiah is heartbroken because the people would not listen to the
message God had given him to proclaim to a nation that was disregarding God who
had blessed them and given them all they had. Their prophets told them what
they wanted to hear instead of the truth proclaimed by God. Men claimed to have
a word of prosperity from God, while instead God was promising destruction.
Paul warned Timothy that men of his day were not much
different. "For the time will come
when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own
desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what
their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth
and turn aside to myths." (2 Timothy 4:3-4, NIV)
It does not matter what people say; what God says is what
really matters. We may not want to hear the truth, but that does not make the
truth any less truthful. People in our day are no different than the people of
Jeremiah’s day or the people of Paul and Timothy’s day. The truth of the
Gospel, the truth of the Word of God cuts us sometimes and we do not like what
it reveals about our lives and our standing before God. But it is better to
know the truth and the heed it than to continue on the road to destruction
ignoring the difficult truth.
God convicts us, not to make us feel bad, but to bring
correction and to restore our relationship with Him. He wants what is best for
us and sends the Holy Spirit to guide us. God does not want to kill all our
fun, He wants to give us fullness of life, but that fullness is only found when
we turn to Him and away from the false messages the world proclaims.
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