Year 6, Day 69: Jeremiah 16

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Protection

• Protection: In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray that God might deliver us from evil – even the Evil One.  Sometimes we need God’s protection from the sin around us.  Sometimes we need protection from the sinful people around us.  Other times we need protection from the sin that lies within ourselves. In any case, Jesus’ point is clear.  We need protection from the Father to make it through each and every day.

It is finally in this 16^th chapter of Jeremiah that we get a glimpse of God’s full plan.  Yes, there have been all kinds of promises about judgment in the prior chapters.  There is even a healthy dose of that here in Jeremiah, too.  But it isn’t the judgment that makes this chapter special and unique.  It is the promise at the end.

As we finish this chapter, we hear the Lord make an unusual claim.  There will come a day when people stop talking about the Hebrew people as the people who were brought up out of Egypt by God.  That should make us raise our eyebrows a little.  After all, the Exodus is one of the greatest stories in the Bible!  God’s power was on full display!  Why would they stop talking about that event?  God then tell us that there will come a say when people remember the Hebrew people as the people that God brought out of the northern country.

Think about this claim for a second.  What this means is that God will have beaten the Egyptians – the big power in the world for many centuries.  Then God will have beaten the Assyrians and Babylonians, the next two big powers on the scene.  God is telling the Hebrew people – and the world – that He can protect His people from even the biggest nations in the world.  Human and worldly power means nothing to God’s plan.

But God goes further than just promising protection.  God tells us how He is going to do it.  God tells us that He is already preparing to send fisherman to catch the people who go into captivity and who turn to Him.  {As an aside, I love that the occupation represented the most among Jesus’ disciples is the fisherman!}  God tells His people through Jeremiah that hunters will go out and seek the lost.

This is what I love about God’s protection.  God isn’t passive about His protection.  He doesn’t just say, “I’m a shelter if you come to me.”  God says, “I will actively protect you.”  God says, “I will actively send people out into the world to protect you.”  That’s God’s protection.

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