Jeremiah 16
Embody the Message!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Thursday, April 4.
Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection clearly proclaim God’s love to the world (John 3:16). If it weren’t for Jesus’ crucifixion, humanity could never understand the fulness of the gospel, as explained in Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus, as the Suffering Servant of Israel, was not the first messenger to Israel whose life embodied the message. Just like God used the intimate details of Jesus’ life to portray the message, God revealed Himself in the personal details of His prophets’ lives. Like Hosea’s broken marriage and Ezekiel’s loss of his wife, Jeremiah’s call to celibacy had symbolic meaning. In Jeremiah 16:2, God commanded Jeremiah, “You shall not take a wife for yourself nor have sons or daughters in this place.” He obeyed God and trusted Him for the future.
I can only imagine how costly such a command was to Jeremiah, but he was a man called to embody the judgments of God, demonstrating the prophetic message of God’s wrath for sin. No wonder he was called the weeping prophet. Even though he had been called to celibacy, later, in Jeremiah 29:5-7, God commanded him to encourage the people to marry and have families while in exile, which was a prophetic sign through the people’s lives. Jeremiah’s symbolic action of not having a family represented the coming destruction of Jerusalem, just like the people’s actions of having families while in exile was symbolic of God’s promise to restore them. We must do the same by discerning how we are to live our lives, “so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:7-11).
Seize the moment and obey God’s Word in the intimate places of your life. Tell a better story with your life by embodying God’s message in the personal choices you make.
God bless you!
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YOUTUBE:
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