Thursday 27 December 2012

Jeremiah 31:7-17



 "Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
{Matthew 2:17,18} (NIV1984)

As I watched several interviews with parents of the little school children who were killed last week, this verse kept coming to my mind. There is nothing anyone can say to those parents that will comfort them, and there was nothing anyone could say to the parents of these small children who were murdered in an attempt to kill our Lord. 

The Holy Spirit revealed to Jeremiah that mass murder of Jewish children would take place in the future, that the mothers would be left alive to grieve. We are not to understand this prophetic fulfillment as if God said it would happen and therefore it must happen. Rather we understand this to be one of many cases where the Living God who holds time in His hand, sees clearly what wicked men will do, and tells His prophets to write it down so that people everywhere will glorify God, and put their trust in Him, because He alone has told us what will take place before it happens. We wonder where God was. He was there, working His wonderful plan of salvation, while wicked men used vile methods to oppose His righteous rule over their lives. 

This wickedness seems too much to bear, but if we read Jeremiah 31, we will read that the LORD will turn mourning into dancing. Only the LORD, the Living God, the Ancient of Days is able to do this great work and so, in spite of the wickedness around us, the darkness we see everywhere, we will draw close to Him.

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