Jeremiah 11:8: “Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but everyone walked in the imagination of his evil heart; therefore I will bring upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do, but which they have not done.”

October 10th, 2024 by Pastor Ed in devotional

God faithfully brought light to Jeremiah’s generation, telling them of their sin and calling them to repentance, before He brought discipline through the Babylonians. The people of Jerusalem were relying on their own imagination, or understanding, to decide what was right and wrong. They rejected the idea of moral absolutes and instead tried to make moral decisions based on how they felt. A quick review of history reminds us that relying only on popular feelings, or what men think is right, leads to wars, persecutions, slavery, and racial intolerance. Today this attitude is referred to as relativism.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in his 1983 acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, said:

Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” . . . And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

“LORD, forgive us as a nation and a world that has over and over again forgotten You and relied on our own ideas of right and wrong. Please cleanse us and use us today to point someone to You.”