I have been reading in Jeremiah - chapters 26, 27, 28, 29. Some men were claiming to speak the Words of God to the people, but were instead speaking their own words. God told Jeremiah to tell them that they were dead men walking...and they were.
It struck me that if a man puts himself forward as giving the Words of God to His people, that man had best be quite sure that the words he speaks really are God's Words. Or else. Hence the title of this blog - Be afraid, be very afraid.
1 Timothy 5:17 says that pastors who do a good job teaching / preaching (giving God's Words to His people) should be honored. But Jeremiah shows how bad can be the fate of the pastor who gets so mixed up as to think his own words are from God.
I will continue to pray for my pastors / preachers - that they will get it right. Somehow I suspect that humility on the part of the pastor will play an important part in this. (The older I get, the more impressed I am by the virtue of humility - its importance and its rarity.) So I will pray for humility for them as a piece of the puzzle.
The flip side is that the book of Jeremiah is positively permeated with God (using Jeremiah's mouth) offering to change his plan(s) to destroy his sinning people for plans of blessing those same people if they will only turn back to Him. Sometimes the people do repent (Jeremiah 26:18,19) and God relents. I truly am doing better than I deserve. Praise God.
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1 comment:
Are you doing the Chronological Study as well. I read something today that I had never thought about before: "The LORD is my pasture" Jeremiah 50:7 Whoever found them devoured them; their enemies said, 'We are not guilty, for they sinned against the LORD, their true pasture, the LORD, the hope of their fathers.'
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