By Pastor Erik Iverson
Faith Lutheran in Condon and Holy Cross Lutheran in Seeley Lake 

De profundis

 


Imagine that you have never owned a home, but one day someone offers to sell you theirs (with ample property) for pennies on the dollar. There is only one catch...your country has just been invaded and that property lies within what is now enemy territory. To make matters worse, you are in the one city still left standing, with the enemy literally crashing the city walls, and you know for a fact that very soon everything will be destroyed, and the majority of your people will shortly either be executed or taken captive to a foreign land. Would you take him up on his offer?

That is exactly the situation that the prophet Jeremiah found himself in around July 10, 586 B.C....2,434 years ago, possibly to the very day of you reading this. And to answer the earlier question, yes, he did. The obvious question is, why?

His country had been falling into decadence and decay for some time, consequential to their own choices. God had sent others before him to warn and plead with both people and king to repent and come back to Him, and He would bless them as before. They refused.

Jeremiah had been sent as well, having given up all to be faithful to his calling, yet almost no one listened. Jeremiah’s final message/plea/warning was that if they still refused, judgment was soon to come in the form of the Babylonians, who would do all of the aforementioned. For his troubles, the king had ordered Jeremiah to be lowered into an old cistern and left to die.

Yet God had other plans. He was rescued, and now as the prophecy was literally coming to pass, this offer to buy a home was put before him, and God was telling him to accept. Again, the question is...why? Put simply, this too was a message...one of hope and a future. God was saying in very unmistakable, visible terms that as bad as things were, He was still there, and that all was not lost. No matter how far a people may fall away and reject Him, His love and forgiveness are ever present. 

This was not the first time such a thing had happened in Israel’s history, and sadly it would not be the last, culminating in the persecution and crucifixion of Christ Jesus and subsequent destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman general Titus in 70 A.D. Yet then, as now, God still holds out the same promise, be it to us as individuals or as a nation: “If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14

We all, in our own ways, have fallen short. Christ Jesus offers forgiveness, true hope and eternal salvation, asking only for repentance. He stands at the door today, knocking. Will you answer?

 

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