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Judah’s Amazing Stubbornness
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will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.’”
Jeremiah
23:5, 6
.
Those who would choose to live holy lives amid apostasy would
be enabled to witness for Him. The days were coming, the Lord
declared, when people would no longer say, “‘As the Lord lives who
brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ but, ‘As
the Lord lives who brought up and led the descendants of the house
of Israel ... from all the countries where I had driven them.’ And they
shall dwell in their own land.”
Verses 7, 8
. Such were the prophecies
that Jeremiah spoke when the Babylonians were surrounding the
walls of Zion.
These promises fell like sweetest music on the ears of the stead-
fast worshipers of God. In homes that still held in reverence the
counsels of a covenant-keeping God, even the children were might-
ily stirred. Their receptive minds received lasting impressions. Their
observance of Holy Scripture gave Daniel and his companions op-
portunities to exalt the true God before the nations of earth. The
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instruction these Hebrew children received in the homes of their
parents made them strong in faith. When Nebuchadnezzar besieged
Jerusalem for the first time and carried away Daniel and his friends,
the faith of the Hebrew captives was tested to the utmost. But those
who had learned to place their trust in the promises of God found
these promises to be all-sufficient, a guide and a support.
As an interpreter of the judgments beginning to fall on Judah,
Jeremiah stood nobly in defense of God’s justice. He extended his
influence beyond Jerusalem by frequent visits to various parts of the
kingdom. In his testimonies he constantly emphasized the impor-
tance of maintaining a covenant relationship with the compassionate
Being who on Sinai had spoken the Ten Commandments. His words
reached every part of the kingdom.
The Perversity of King Jehoiakim
At the very time Jeremiah was urging messages of impending
doom on princes and people, Jehoiakim, who should have been
leading a reformation, was spending his time in selfish pleasure. He
proposed, “I will build myself a wide house with spacious chambers,
... paneling it with cedar and painting it with vermilion.”
Jeremiah