the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
Jeremiah 21:2—Peradventure the Lord will deal with us according to all his wondrous works. (R.V.)
It was during the last extremity of the siege that Zedekiah sent this message to Jeremiah. His people and he had postponed their compliance with the warnings and invitations of God’s love till the last possible hour, and now they were more eager for immunity from the consequences of their sins than to repent and return to God. The answer was immediate—that matters must now be allowed to take their course. It was, however, added that even now all who dared to act in faith and go out to the besiegers would save their lives.
What a test of faith was here! It seemed as though it were worth while to risk everything and stay in the city rather than venture out to those terrible hosts that were gathered around. But there was no alternative. To stay in the city was certain death; to go forth into what seemed certain death would secure life. Men may reach a certain point in wrong-doing when the disasters their sins have courted are inevitable. As they have sown, they must reap. They have set the rocks rolling, and they must see the devastation wrought on their homes. Yet, even then, there is a way of escape.
Still God pleads with men, as in Jeremiah 21:8 : "Thus saith the Lord, Behold I set before you the way of life and the way of death. He that abideth in this city shall die by the sword; he that goeth out and falleth away to the Chaldeans shall live." This surely is the exact counterpart of the words which our Lord is recorded as having spoken on four different occasions: "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake, the same shall save it." There is a strange reversal of human imaginations at the cross of Christ!
