Passage Read: Jeremiah 33-36
Meditation Verses: 33:4-9
Thought
There are two parts to God's message to Israel. One, that they will be destroyed and uprooted from their land because of all their sin against the Lord. And two, that the Lord will again have compassion on them and bring them back to their land and remove their sin from among them, then they will bring the Lord glory and honor as He intended at the first. There is both a message is doom and a message of hope. The false prophets only spoke one message, a message of hope without need for repentance. Jeremiah spoke both, the warning of destruction for their rebellion, and the promise that the Lord would forgive and restore and transform the people. False prophets don't rebuke sin, they only promise good. True prophets speak both a warning against sin, and a promise of forgiveness and restoration.
Application
The preachers who don't speak against sin and our need to repent, but only speak assurance of future blessing are false teachers, giving a distorted view of God that will doom their hearers. They don't care for the people entrusted to them, but only take advantage of them. The preachers who know and love God and care about those entrusted to them both call their people to repentance and offer hope for the future to those who receive warning and turn from their evil ways. So also the Gospel that only speaks of God's goodness and not His hatred of sin is a distorted Gospel. To be faithful to God, I need to both warn of judgment and offer hope of forgiveness to those who repent and believe in Jesus.