Message Rejected

We are sometimes placed in the uncomfortable position of giving someone bad news. Where everything inside of you shuts down and you just want to continue on your way as if nothing has happened. I remember, many years back, I had the unfortunate task of telling a colleague that her car was stolen. Her automatic response was disbelief. She even had me convinced that I wasn’t seeing right. Until we reached the place where her car was parked that morning. It was only then she believed me.

Poor old Jeremiah in today’s piece was in the dog box again. First of all he says in Jeremiah 36:5 (NIV), that he could not enter the temple for he was restricted. But in verse 2, God told him to “take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah and all the other nations from the time I began speaking to you in the reign of Joshiah till now.

Jeremiah used the scribe Baruch to write the scroll and read it to the people, in the temple. It was a special time of fasting when the people were seeking a word from God. Baruch read the scroll in front of the people and then to the temple officials, and “they looked at each other in fear” (16). The officials told Baruch and Jeremiah to hide out of fear for the king’s response. The secretary told Jehoiakim (the king), about the scroll and was told to read it aloud. The king would cut the scroll as it was read and threw it in the fire. The king and his officials were not afraid and did not repent. This angered God more and the fate of the king and the people of Judah and Jerusalem worsened. This we can see in the second scroll that Jeremiah had to write (see verses 27 to 31).

There are those who God ask to step up and speak the truth, according to the Holy Bible. When the message is hard to deliver you need to push through and pray to God for His strength and guidance. The people that God called by name will hear the news and will turn their lives around. It will be the ones whose hearts are hardened that will reject the word. Stay firm in the word of God and He will make your paths straight.

My prayer for you today is that you will hear the message from God and repent. #GodCanDoThis