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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 3 of 5
Jeremiah 8:1-22
In Jeremiah 5:3, we saw that Israel no longer even felt the corrective blows with which the LORD had had to inflict them. Here we see His responsible people healing their own hurts "slightly" and pretending to enjoy the peace which God could not give them (v. 11; Jeremiah 6:14). Yet the balm in Gilead (grace) was available for them as was the faithful Physician who knew how to administer it (v. 22; cf Matthew 9:12). There is a lesson here for the believer whom God disciplines. If we accept from the Lord’s hand the trials which are necessary for us, let us also allow Him to bind up the wounds Himself which He has permitted (Job 5:18). Let us not seek to heal them superficially by our own resources.
The prophet adds in v. 12: "they were not at all ashamed" – that is the peculiar characteristic of a hardened conscience (Zephaniah 3:5). Complete indifference as to the evil they had committed characterises this poor people.
V. 20 can perhaps be stressed in this beginning of the month of September, when the harvests are nearing completion, when summer has ended. There is a favourable time for being saved: it is today. Soon the Lord is going to gather in the ripe fruits of the great harvest of souls. Then the summer will have ended. What a terrible awakening for those who will have to say, "We are not saved"!
