Jer 1:1: The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests that were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin." "Hilkiah" means "the Lord is my portion." Jeremiah came from a family that did not desert the Lord.
Jer 1:5: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." If God is present in the process of conception, then the value of human life takes on the implications of eternity. The problem that the anti-abortion forces have in using this scripture as evidence for their cause is that it falls on deaf ears to those who do not believe in God anyway. Since they dont believe in Him, they certainly dont believe He was present during conception.
For my people have comitted two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters; And hewn themselves cisterns that can hold no water. We retain any kind of refined perception only by continual fellowship with the highest of its kind. That is so with literary perception. It is so with musical discernment. It is so with delicate artistic taste. And so it is with fine perception of sanctity. To retain our sprititual sensitiveness, it is imperative that we continue to hold fellowship with the Divine.
Jer 5:31: The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?" Jeremiah was shocked that the people of his day were being willingly led away by such deception.
Jer 10:2: Covenant people are not to learn the ways of the heathen.
Jer 10:20: My taberbacle is spoiled, and all my cords are broken. My children are gone forth of me and are not. There is none to stretch forth my tent any more, and to set up my curtains. The cords (the biding power of God) had been broken. The flock was gone and scattered. There was such uncleanness among the priesthood that no one dared go near the holy things of God.
Jer 10:21: For the pastors are become brutish, and have not sought the Lord; therefore they shall not prosper, and all their flocks shall be scattered Jeremiah prophesied that all shepherds who refuse to seek God in prayer will likewise fall.
Jer 13:23: Can the Ethiopian chamnge his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil Asa the spots of the leopard, though they havber ben acquired by limitation of its surroundings, have through long ages been so ingrained and fixed that they cannot be changed. The creature itself cannot alter or remove them by any effort; they are a part of its very nature. And the pattern of its skin lasts throughout the whole life of the animal, and is communicated from parent to offspring. And so every sinner knows how hard it is to change evil habits, to efface the stains of sin that have become dyed in the flesh. It is fatally easy to acquire what is fatally hard to get rid of. You get so accustomed to your sin that you never feel how sinful it is. You are like your surroundings and have no sense of contrast or shame. You are content with yourselves and make no effort to become better. And even when your conscience is aroused and you see the evil and the misery of your sin, the effort to root it out is painful in the extreme.
We cannot change the Ethiopians skin or the leopards spots; but God can. He who made the machinery of the mind can. It is possible to convert the soul which has long been accustomed to do evil; but such conversion is as much work of God as the creation of the soul at the beginning. When once we are linked to Christ, that union breaks the terrible chain that binds us to the past. The past is broken as much as if it were dead. Sin holds men by making them feel as if what has been must be--an awful entail of evil. His solution is not new resolves....but a new birth.
There is one way in which the leopard can change it spots, It is by removing it to another locality where there are no trees, and no surroundings like its native place and its prptective spots become like the new place. Fixed as the leopard spots may be there is no creature in reality who is more variable. Change the circumstances and surrounings and you change the way the leopard looks. There are multiple varieties of leopards worldwide and it is dependant upnn what their environment looks like.
Jer 17:9: "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it? Men and women do not know the depths of their depravity.
Jer 18:4: And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter Why was it marred? There was no lack of skill; no, but there was some gritty substance there, some stubborn resisting quality that would not yield to the deftness of the potters hand. Humam nature is often resistant, rather than pliable, to Gods touch. An evil dispositon in our nature mars the vessel in the hand of the Potter. The potter does not fling away the marred vessel, but he breaks it and puts to the wheel and reshapes it again. And he will shape and break again till the clay has taken the form he wishes.
The potter could not make what he might have wished; but he did his best with his materials. So God is ever trying to do His best for us. If we refuse the best, he gives us the next best. If we will not be gold, we may be silver; and if not silver, there is still the clay and the wood. The marred life will never again be what it might have been and what it ough to have been, It is said with deepest reverence that even God Himself cannot fully restore a marred life.
A prophet who foretells an event that doesn't come to pass is to be condemned as a false prophet. (Jer 23:32)
