Approaching Doom
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Lord permits them to be led by other influences. Refusing the truth,
they accept falsehood, which becomes a snare to their own destruction.
God had pleaded with Judah not to provoke Him to anger, but
they had hearkened not. Finally sentence was pronounced against
them. They were to be led away captive to Babylon. The Chaldeans
were to be used as the instrument by which God would chastise His
disobedient people. The sufferings of the men of Judah were to be
in proportion to the light they had had and to the warnings they had
despised and rejected. Long had God delayed His judgments, but now
He would visit His displeasure upon them as a last effort to check them
in their evil course.
Upon the house of the Rechabites was pronounced a continued
blessing. The prophet declared, “Because ye have obeyed the com-
mandment of Jonadab your father, and kept all his precepts, and done
according unto all that he hath commanded you: therefore thus saith
the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Jonadab the son of Rechab shall
not want a man to stand before Me forever.”
Verses 18, 19
. Thus God
taught His people that faithfulness and obedience would be reflected
back upon Judah in blessing, even as the Rechabites were blessed for
obedience to their father’s command.
The lesson is for us. If the requirements of a good and wise father,
who took the best and most effectual means to secure his posterity
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against the evils of intemperance, were worthy of strict obedience,
surely God’s authority should be held in as much greater reverence as
He is holier than man. Our Creator and our Commander, infinite in
power, terrible in judgment, seeks by every means to bring men to see
and repent of their sins. By the mouth of His servants He predicts the
dangers of disobedience; He sounds the note of warning and faithfully
reproves sin. His people are kept in prosperity only by His mercy,
through the vigilant watchcare of chosen instrumentalities. He cannot
uphold and guard a people who reject His counsel and despise His
reproofs. For a time He may withhold His retributive judgments; yet
He cannot always stay His hand.
The children of Judah were numbered among those of whom God
had declared, “Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy
nation.”
Exodus 19:6
. Never did Jeremiah in his ministry lose sight
of the vital importance of heart holiness in the varied relationships of
life, and especially in the service of the most high God. Plainly he