Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
It's a tiny little book tucked away in the Old Testament with a title that is actually rather forbidding: "The Lamentations of Jeremiah." Few ever read it, but it's good bedtime reading, full of encouragement and comfort.
Israel had just suffered the most awful devastation, and the Lord Himself had permitted it! The sufferings of Israel and Jerusalem would have significance for the church down to the end of time. We today are not genetically better people than the Israelites of Jeremiah's time; and we need to realize our need of repentance. The Israelites were tempted to think of the Lord as their "enemy," and when everything seems to go against us today we are tempted likewise; but He pities us and loves us.
Chapter three is in poetry: "Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness" (vss. 22, 23).
"Our beloved brother Paul" (cf. 2 Peter 3:15) tells us that our "carnal mind is enmity against God" (Rom. 8:7). Don't run out the door in discouragement: the truth never hurts when it's "in Christ." Yes, all the evil apostasy that ancient Israel exemplified in Jeremiah's day could be ours today, but for the grace of Christ, our Savior. If He were to relax His hold on us, we could repeat the apostasy of Jeremiah's day.
The Lord knew that we would need this little book. Therefore, in great thanksgiving of heart let us say with Jeremiah, "Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed; Great is Your faithfulness," O Lord!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: March 20, 2009.
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