Today, I am reading and commenting on Jeremiah 19-22.

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Jeremiah delivers two messages.  First, he tells the people of Jerusalem that Jerusalem and all of the cities which it rules will be conquered by Babylon and their people taken into captivity.  This will happen because the people forsook God and made offerings to other gods, filled the land with the blood of innocents, and sacrificed their children to Baal.  I have always read the Old Testament passages about “filling the land with the blood of innocents” as a comment on a tyrannical government which killed people who protested its actions, as the Chinese government did in 1989.  As I read it today I realized that while it sometimes means that it also refers to when criminals are allowed to run rampant and murder becomes common.

Which brings me to the lessons we need to take from this first message in today’s passage.  We need to examine our lives and stop worshiping any idols to which we have given our loyalty.  And we must call people to stop worshiping the various idols they have chosen to serve.  We need to seek solutions to crime.  Those solutions may call for us to make sacrifices, of time and of money.  But we must also demand that criminals be held accountable for their crimes.  Murder cannot be seen as an acceptable price to pay.  And we must stop sacrificing our children to the god of convenience, whether that is before birth, or later in their lives.

Jeremiah’s second message was to the rulers of Jerusalem.  They must rule justly and prevent the economically powerful from robbing those without power.  The rulers must stop using their power to do wrong or violence to the weak in society.

When we read Jeremiah a casual reading tells us that Jeremiah was prophesying that disaster and destruction cannot be averted.  But if we read more carefully we realize Jeremiah told the rulers and the people of Jerusalem how it could be averted, but he also told them that God knew that they would not take those actions.  We must never cease examining ourselves to see how we are failing to faithfully do God’s will and we must never cease to call people to turn to God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.