What Happens if the Church Gets it?

 Jeremiah 36:1-8

Have you ever had this thought come into your thinker; what happens if the church gets it?  Yes, the “it” is, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”  God is not what so many in the pew think, for Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  And in John 3:18, it is well defined the invite is for all, everyone who believes in Him is not condemned, that is all-inclusive.

But one must understand the gift has been offered and each person has to make a choice, and your choice has to do with your judgment, as stated in John 3:19.  “This, then, is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.” 

God is as merciful today as He was in the days of Jeremiah, in fact, the Scriptures tell us He is longsuffering wishing no one would perish, but light exposes darkness and mankind loves darkness and runs from the Light, Jesus is Light.  So God in His mercy tells Jeremiah to: “Take a scroll and write on it all the words that I have spoken to you against Israel and Judah and all the nations, from the day I spoke to you, from the days of Josiah until today. It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the disaster that I intend to do to them, so that every one may turn from his evil way, and that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.” (Jeremiah 36:2-3)  That’s grace, by turning from sin and confessing before God the act of serving self, and that is called repentance, and the Father’s act of forgiveness.

Jeremiah is no longer allowed to enter the temple, so he summoned Baruch and dictated all that God had said and Baruch wrote it down on the scroll.  Picking up the account in verse 5-8, “Then Jeremiah commanded Baruch, “I am restricted; I cannot enter the temple of the Lord, so you must go and read from the scroll—which you wrote at my dictation—the words of the Lord in the hearing of the people at the temple of the Lord on a day of fasting. You must also read them in the hearing of all the Judeans who are coming from their cities. Perhaps their petition will come before the Lord, and each one will turn from his evil way, for the anger and fury that the Lord has pronounced against this people are great.” So Baruch son of Neriah did everything Jeremiah the prophet had commanded him. At the Lord’s temple, he read the Lord’s words from the scroll.”

They were given a clear message, and so were you and I, now it's time to make a choice, listen and go to the light, or ignore and run for the darkness.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice