Jeremiah 16:10

 Jeremiah 16:10 says, And it shall come to pass, when thou shalt shew this people all these words, and they shall say unto thee, Wherefore hath the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?  God told Jeremiah that the people would question when they had done anything against God.  They would be unable to recognize their own sins.  If people become too far removed from God, then they will fail to see their own sins.  Verse eleven declares, Then shalt thou say unto them, Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith the LORD, and have walked after other gods, and have served them, and have worshipped them, and have forsaken me, and have not kept my law;  God then cited several ways that the people had sinned against Him, going back to their fathers.  This was not something new, but something tha had been going on for years.  They had forsaken God and started worshipping idols.  Verse twelve adds, And ye have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil heart, that they may not hearken unto me:  God then said the current generation were even worse, doing whatever their heart desired and totally ignoring God.  Verse thirteen declares, Therefore will I cast you out of this land into a land that ye know not, neither ye nor your fathers; and there shall ye serve other gods day and night; where I will not shew you favour.  God had brought them into the promised land, and now He was going to allow them to be cast out.  I don't believe that if we have put our faith in Christ that we will ever be cast out of His promised land, but we may certainly lose the joy of our salvation.  Verse fourteen adds, Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that it shall no more be said, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt;  God said that the time was coming when His name would no longer be honored as the God Who had brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt.  When God's people turn away from Him, the rest of the world is certainly not going to remember Him.  Verse fifteen proclaims, But, The LORD liveth, that brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands whither he had driven them: and I will bring them again into their land that I gave unto their fathers.  God said that even though the world might try to forget that He lived that it was not so.  God was still very much alive, and He would once again bring the remnant to the land that He gave their fathers.  Even if the whole world were to deny the existence of God, He will still be God. and He will still bring those who put their faith in Christ home to the promised land.  Verse sixteen adds, Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the LORD, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.  God said that there would be no place for the people of Judah to hide to escape the coming punishment.  There is likewise no place today where we can hide to escape God's punishment if we give in to sin and turn away from Him.  Verse seventeen states, For mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes.  God said that their sin was not hidden from Him, and neither is sin in the world today.  Verse eighteen adds, And first I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double; because they have defiled my land, they have filled mine inheritance with the carcases of their detestable and abominable things.  God said that He would punish their sins double, because they had polluted His land with sin.  It is especially bad when those who call themselves Christians defile God's law, since they should know what God requires of them and simply chose not to do it.  Verse nineteen says, O LORD, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit.  Jeremiah calls out to God, Who he calls his strength and refuge.  We must call out to God for our strength and refuge in the world today.  Jeremiah said that let even the Gentiles acknowledge God, and we know that this happened with the coming of Christ and the good news of the gospel.  Verse twenty asks, Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?  Jeremiah was asked if people would make for themselves gods who were no gods, and anytime we allow something to become more important to us than God, this is exactly what we are doing.  Verse twenty-one declares, Therefore, behold, I will this once cause them to know, I will cause them to know mine hand and my might; and they shall know that my name is The LORD.  God does deliver those who put their faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, and this deliverance is much greater than any that ever occurred with the people of Israel, because it is an everlasting deliverance.