Jeremiah 9 to 19
In the time of Jeremiah, people wore loose garments, with a cloth, called a girdle, fastened about the waist or hips. The Lord told Jeremiah to get a girdle of linen.
Jeremiah did as the Lord said; next he was told to go to Euphrates and hide the girdle in a hole by a rock. It is not now known if that were a place near by, or if he were to go far away to the river called by that name. Anyway, Jeremiah did just as God told him; he put the girdle in a hole and covered it with sand, and rurned home.
That seems strange, to bury a good new linen girdle in the ground; but we shall find why it was done.
“After many days” the Lord told Jeremiah to go and get the girdle he had hidden in the hole, and he went to the place and uncovered the hole and took out the girdle. But the nice linen girdle was all spoiled by the damp earth, and not fit to use.
Then the Lord said that as the linen girdle was spoiled by the wet earth, and not fit to use, so the sins of the people would spoil them to honor Him. And if they kept on refusing His Words, and praying to idols, and doing their own ways, they would be sent away where they would loose all honor, as the girdle had lost its beauty.
God had Jeremiah take all that trouble with the girdle, to be sure the people uerstood how they were spoiling their lives with sin.
Another time He told Jeremiah to go with the leaders of the city to the east gate; and to take a bottle of day and break it there, and tell the men, who were sacrificing to idols and even offering iheir children, that their city would be broken up as the bottle, unless they gave up the sins (Isa. 19).
He told them their sins were bad as though written, in their hearts with pens of iron. He asked them these questions:
“Can the Ethiopian (a black man) change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” Jeremiah 13:2323Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. (Jeremiah 13:23). No, they could not change, so the people who kept on in sin would do no good.
Jeremiah spoke even to the king and queen, for them not to be proud, but humble, and they and their people shotild. be saved from sorrow. He asked all,
Yet many kept on the wicked ways, as they planned in their hearts. God told Jeremiah to write these words:
Our hearts are the same as those people’s; we want to do as we wish; only the Lord really knows our hearts. Yet it is with our hearts, if we will, that we can believe God’s words; then we will desire to please Him.
ML 02/08/1942