Jeremiah 15:5,6
“Who will have pity on you, Jerusalem? Who will mourn for you? Who will stop to ask how you are? You have rejected me,” declares the LORD. “You keep on backsliding. So I will reach out and destroy you; I am tired of holding back.”
If we read this too fast, all we will see is God’s righteous judgment on the backsliding nation. Yet what does the last line say? “I am tired of holding back.” This tells us that even in the midst of their sin and rebellion, God held back His judgement in hopes that they would repent! He does not delight in the death of the wicked, nor does He desire that any should be lost. Sadly, some will be as they reject His offer of mercy and grace through Jesus Christ.
We must always remember that mercy and repentance are offered before wrath and judgment. Our God doesn’t start with wrath and work His way to mercy but does the exact opposite. It’s amazing if you read Scriptures like these and see how far they had fallen and yet how readily He was to forgive and heal them. This still applies to us today. We too have fallen short of God’s glorious standard, walking in our ways and not His, yet He offers us abundant life in Jesus Christ!
It can be easy for us to hyper-focus on one side of God’s character or the other. We can find ourselves fixating on grace and forgetting the justness of God, or we can find ourselves focused upon the Righteous Judge and forget about His grace. But our God is perfect in every way; full of grace and truth. Lord, help us to be a people just like You!
John 1:14- The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
God bless! I love you all, but His love offers mercy before the wrath! Glory, honor, and praise now and forever to Papa God, Jesus Christ our King, and the Holy Spirit!
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