For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
Those who have had enough to eat will reject even the sweetest dessert. However, those who are hungry will be grateful for even bitter food. It is a way to measure the need of those who request your charity. Those truly in need will take whatever they are offered, those who are picky about what they will accept are perhaps less in need than they would like you to believe. Of course, it is also a measure to use when we are in need. If we are too good to take what is offered, perhaps we are not yet in need (or perhaps our pride is still too great).
God has done wonderful things for us, but all too often we quickly forget. When things do not continue to go as we would like we quickly turn away and stop obeying God. Much of the time we lack the patience to wait for God to reveal the next phase of His plan. When things go “wrong”, we forget how He used such misfortunes in the past to bring honor to His name and good things to us. Time and again God disciplines us and welcomes us back. Yet we again and again forget what He has done for us.
The writer pointed to Jeremiah where the prophet declared that God was going to offer a new covenant. He points out that if there were no defects in the first covenant there would have been no need for a new covenant. Jeremiah told us that God would write His laws on our hearts and in our minds. The writer of Hebrews tells us that the new covenant makes the old covenant obsolete. The old covenant is now outdated and will soon disappear. Those to whom that old covenant applies who are faithful to that covenant will be carried over into the new covenant.
Ezekiel tells us that Sodom’s sins were pride, gluttony, laziness, and an unwillingness to help the poor and needy. It was for these sins that Sodom was destroyed. Ezekiel prophesied that the Kingdom of Judah far surpassed Sodom when it came to sin. By this account of Sodom’s sins, so has this country.