Jeremiah 46:27-28
“But fear not, O Jacob my servant,
nor be dismayed, O Israel,
for behold, I will save you from far away,
and your offspring from the land of their captivity.
Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease,
and none shall make him afraid.
Fear not, O Jacob my servant,
declares the Lord,
for I am with you.
I will make a full end of all the nations
to which I have driven you,
but of you I will not make a full end.
I will discipline you in just measure,
and I will by no means leave you unpunished.”
We really can't appreciate this couple of verses in Jeremiah's prophecy without recalling the chapters prior. These two verses really summarize what began in Jeremiah 42. In that chapter the leaders of Israel that still remained in the land (Babylon had already taken most of Israel captive) had come to Jeremiah and asked him to pray to God for them. They not only asked him to pray but promised to obey whatever God said. That was a lie!! They did not obey and instead, when Jeremiah told them to NOT go to Egypt and stay in the land under the captivity of the Babylonians, they left for Egypt and rejected the leadership of Babylon. That is the context of these two verses. God will discipline those who reject His Word. We can think that He won't, or that He chooses to ignore our sin and disobedience. The last two lines of the above verses sum up God's call to us and His work in us and to us: "I WILL discipline you in just measure, and I WIL by no means leave you unpunished." God's discipline for His children is real and sure. We are NOT, however to reject it and fear it as though some bad thing. If we disobey, the correction is to move us closer to conforming to His image. This is a long passage to include in such a short group of devotional thoughts, but you can read what Jeremiah wrote without fully, by faith, grasping what the writer of Hebrews wrote to us in the New Testament. Read it in faith and accept it in truth. God will and does discipline us. But we are to rejoice in it and not rebel further as a result over it.
Hebrews 12:3-11
Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”
It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
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