Tag Archives: The Creator

Day 131: Our Heavenly Father

Jeremiah 31:7-14

For Yahweh says,
“Sing with gladness for Jacob,
and shout for the chief of the nations.
Publish, praise, and say,
‘Yahweh, save your people,
the remnant of Israel!’
Behold, I will bring them from the north country,
and gather them from the uttermost parts of the earth,
along with the blind and the lame,
the woman with child and her who travails with child together.
They will return as a great company.
They will come with weeping.
I will lead them with petitions.
I will cause them to walk by rivers of waters,
in a straight way in which they won’t stumble;
for I am a father to Israel.
Ephraim is my firstborn.

“Hear Yahweh’s word, you nations,
and declare it in the distant islands. Say,
‘He who scattered Israel will gather him,
and keep him, as a shepherd does his flock.’
For Yahweh has ransomed Jacob,
and redeemed him from the hand of him who was stronger than he.
They will come and sing in the height of Zion,
and will flow to the goodness of Yahweh,
to the grain, to the new wine, to the oil,
and to the young of the flock and of the herd.
Their soul will be as a watered garden.
They will not sorrow any more at all.
Then the virgin will rejoice in the dance;
the young men and the old together;
for I will turn their mourning into joy,
and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow.
I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness,
and my people will be satisfied with my goodness,” says Yahweh.

Modern secular culture has to ignore many obvious human needs in order to maintain its composure and one of those things is mankind’s need for hope. From an evolutionary perspective, mankind doesn’t really have a basis for hope because they believe that mankind was produced by accident. There’s no reason to believe that mankind’s existence at the top of the food chain will remain. The same accidents that produced man could also produce something else in the future. There’s no reason to think that some other thing won’t become more fit for survival in the future. This kind of nonsense is not found in the Bible, of course. Instead, what we find are things like we read here.

The truth of the matter is that God is the Creator and His decisions are all that is required to make things happen. We have been reading about the fact that God intended to make terrible things happen to Israel because they had chosen to walk away from Him, but at the same time, He said things like this. He makes it clear to Israel that He intends to bring them back in the future. Not only will He bring them back, they are to enjoy prosperity, peace and joy. Even before He sends them into captivity, He makes this clear. This message inserts something precious into their minds. Whenever they consider the horrible situation that God forced them into, they will also have the memory that this same God will force them back into their own land and “they will not sorrow any more at all.” That’s what I call: hope technology. God wasn’t intending to simply torment His people. He intended to save them.

Not only is mankind not the product of a series of accidents, they were created by a Father. Israel is a glorious example to Gentiles like us. A father doesn’t torture His children. His intent in punishing them is to make them thrive as he removes error from their lives and sets them up for the future. What we see in this example is God saying: “I am a father to Israel.” He then goes on to explain their final end. Israel’s Father has dedicated Himself to their success and that’s exactly what they will have. As Christians we have this same Father. When Jesus taught us to pray by saying: “Our father who is in heaven…”, He said that we should start by remembering this fact. We go through a lot of problems in our lives too, but we can count on the fact that our Father is dedicated to our success just like He shows us with Israel.

Day 117: God Chooses King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon

Jeremiah 27:1-7

In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, saying, Yahweh says to me: “Make bonds and bars, and put them on your neck. Then send them to the king of Edom, to the king of Moab, to the king of the children of Ammon, to the king of Tyre, and to the king of Sidon, by the hand of the messengers who come to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah. Give them a command to their masters, saying, ‘Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel says, “You shall tell your masters: ‘I have made the earth, the men, and the animals that are on the surface of the earth by my great power and by my outstretched arm. I give it to whom it seems right to me. Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant. I have also given the animals of the field to him to serve him. All the nations will serve him, his son, and his son’s son, until the time of his own land comes. Then many nations and great kings will make him their bondservant.

No one should ever accuse God of failing to communicate. God is the very best communicator and this book of Jeremiah is a great example. God has been speaking much the same message over and over in various ways to various people on earth through Jeremiah. Here, God chooses to send an illustration out with messengers to the nations in the middle east. He has Jeremiah make bonds and bars and then makes him wear them. Then, he gets messengers and sends these bonds and bars to five nations. You can imagine how getting a bond or a bar in the mail would get your attention. If the messenger was then to tell you that Jeremiah, a prophet in Israel, wore these and took them off to have me bring them to you. Then he would tell them that Jeremiah said that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon is going to take over your land and all of the land in the area because Israel’s God, the One who made it all, has decided. That would communicate don’t you think?

God is also communicating to us right now through this message. He’s reminding us that He “made the earth, the men, and the animals that are on the surface of the earth” by His power. It reminds us that He is the One who is in complete control of all of the leadership on the face of the earth. Notice that eventually, even Nebuchadnezzar’s time of judgment was to come and at that time, the land was to be taken from him. I’m not sure that Nebuchadnezzar was willing to admit that He was God’s servant at first, yet, that’s what God called him. The Bible tells us that God calls all who have positions of authority, His servants. God even chose us to be parents or older siblings or aunts and uncles. We were given authority by our birth order not by our power. God has and always will control the governments of the world and we have nothing to worry about. Our job is to depend on God’s good purposes and obey His word.