God’s Promises for Difficult Days

I have spent most of the past two days studying the Prophet Jeremiah’s thirtieth chapter. What a passage to consider! This coming Sunday at Southern Calvert Baptist Church, we are going to dive deep down into Jeremiah 30. I cannot wait. I want to share what I learned with you here in this article. I cannot believe we are about to enter the month of December. The year 2022 has one more month and then it is gone. In some ways, we are still trying to process 2020. The world has changed greatly over the past 3 years. We truly are living during difficult days. What are you doing to cope with these difficult days? Many have turned to idols, seeking satisfaction in things like drugs and alcohol. Others have turned to hedonism. None of that is working and it never will. What did the children of Israel do when facing difficult days in their history? They have the secret to success and we are going to learn that here in this chapter of the Bible.

‘Tis the Season for hope and salvation

I am so excited to prepare for Christmas. What a tradition! We get to remember the promise of the First Advent of the Messiah and celebrate the fact that it happened in human history. All of human history was split in half by the birth of Jesus Christ. He is the most famous human being of all time. His book, the Bible, continues to be the best selling book of all time. The birth of Christ has set our Western calendar for the past 2,000 years. To me, Christmas is a magical season. Sometimes, it is easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season that we forget the reason WHY we do all of this every year. It is a time of remembrance. It is also a time to reflect on the fact that the First Advent implies that there will be a Second Advent. I have written several articles on the Sundays of Advent and you can read them by clicking on the following titles:

Advent Sunday 1

Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent so I decided to look up what  Scriptures are used on the first Sunday of advent according to the Catholic Church. I did not grow up celebrating Advent so I decided to take a look at the Advent calendar and see what the Scripture references were for the Sundays leading up to Advent. The first Sunday of Advent contains four Scripture passages:

The Judgment of the Lord

As we continue to walk through the Word, we have discovered many insights about the Lord and about ourselves. This week, we are going to cover II Chronicles 36. Throughout the Bible, we see the Lord offering hope over and over to the people. In Jeremiah 31, in one of our previous lessons, we covered the transformational power of the New Covenant. In the midst of a very difficult time in the history of Israel, the Lord reminded the people of the hope found in the coming Messiah. This Messiah is going to bring a New Covenant between God and the children of Israel. The people of Israel were familiar with the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant was to point the people to the coming Messiah. The people were unable to obey the Old Covenant because of their sin nature. The New Covenant was going to deal with mankind’s sin nature so that those in the New Covenant would be able to obey the Lord and no longer be enslaved to their sin nature.

The transformational power of the New Covenant

Here are Southern Calvert Baptist church, we have completed the first year of a three year project of walking through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. We have been tracing the promise and fulfillment of Messiah, the Savior of the world. In Exodus, we witnessed the giving of the Law and how Israel entered into the Old Covenant with God. This was another step in the process of bringing the Messiah to the earth. In the book of Jeremiah, we are going to discover that the Messiah is going to bring a New Covenant with Him to the children of Israel. This covenant will also be available for the Gentiles (everyone who is not Jewish by birth). It is a different covenant from the first one because it is going to do something that the first covenant was never intended to do. That is what we are going to discover in this lesson. Our passage for consideration this week is Jeremiah 31:31-40. Take a moment and read it below.

I will never leave you, nor forsake you

The title of this message comes from the Word of God.

“The LORD is the one who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” (Deuteronomy 31:8)

The author of the book of Hebrews uses this quote in his message about the sufficiency of Christ as the Redeemer of all mankind.

Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, “I WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU,” (Hebrews 13:5)

Honor the power of the Word of God

I am super excited about teaching God’s Word this weekend during children’s church at Hoffmantown. This lesson focuses on the power of the Word of God and what our attitude should be toward the Word of God. Our main passage of study is Jeremiah 36. Before we get into this text, I would like for us to examine some truths from II Timothy 3:16. From this passage, we discover that the Word of God is profitable to us when we open It up and begin to explore It. The first thing that the Word of God does is, It teaches us. Everything that we do in this life is something that we must learn. Walking with God is no different. We have to learn to walk with God. His wants to teach us how to walk with Him via His Word. As we learn from God, He begins to show us our mistakes. This is not a very pleasant experience but it is a very much needed experience.

Help, life has wounded me, what do I do?

What do you do when you are hurting? Where do you turn? Do you ever seek to find the root of the problem? Have you ever considered that you may be the problem or do you constantly find someone else to blame? During the days of Jeremiah, Israel had the same problem. The people of Israel were suffering and they were looking for someone to blame, at times even pointing a finger at God. Have you ever seen people do that? Have you ever blamed God for your current circumstances?