Rev. Sean Kilgo, pastor at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Lawrence, KS, joins host Rev. Timothy Appel to study Jeremiah 16:1-21.
The LORD gives Jeremiah another enacted prophecy by commanding him to forgo marriage and children, funerals and feasts. Such good gifts of God will not be enjoyed in the Promised Land anymore because the people of Judah have forsaken the LORD from one generation to the next. Therefore, the LORD will hurl them from the Promised Land. Yet He promises deliverance for His people. With an act of greater significance than the Exodus from Egypt, the LORD will bring His scattered people back to their land. He will ignore neither their sin nor their idolatry, but He will bring about the change of heart that He desires as He gathers them back to Himself from all nations. All who place their trust in Him will realize that their idols were no gods at all as they see His power and might in His name, the name that has now been revealed to us in Jesus.
“A Time to Destroy and a Time to Build” is a mini-series on Sharper Iron that goes through the book of Jeremiah. The prophet calls the people of Judah and Jerusalem to repent of their faithless idolatry and warns them of the destruction that is coming in the Babylonian exile. Yet Jeremiah does not leave us without hope in the midst of such dark days. Jeremiah and all who believe the Word of God he preached survive because of hope that is found in the righteous Branch from the line of David, Jesus Christ.
