Jeremiah 16:14-18 – Living for God every moment

In Jeremiah 16 and verse 14 onwards, the message God gave through the Prophet Jeremiah was one of hope. He prophesied to them what would come beyond the Babylonian captivity. He was now looking at the other end of the tunnel. Yes, Judah had gone through a long dark tunnel but now there is light at the other end. God promised to deliver them and bring them back to their own land.  Just as He had rescued the people of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt under Moses, He would also deliver His people from their exile in Babylon and restore them to the promised land.  This latter deliverance would outweigh the significance of the deliverance from Egypt. How so? Israel's deliverance was only from one country i.e. Egypt. But in the upcoming deliverance, the people of Judah would be delivered from the land of the north  and from all the countries they were banished to.   

However, verses 16-18 prophesied that they would first be brought into captivity. Their captors were likened to fishermen and hunters. Judah’s captors like fishermen would come fishing for them. Then God would send their captors after them like hunters going after the beasts of the field. The hunters would search for them thoroughly. There would be nowhere that they could hide and not be found. No mountain, hill, crevice, or cleft of any rocky place could prevent them from being hunted. This was to say that there was nowhere that they could hide from their pursuers.

The reason: all they had done could not escape the eye of their all-seeing God. Sin always extracts a price and God saw everyone’s sin. No matter where they were hidden, they would be hunted. They had all polluted the land with their false worship of those idols. They would all be hauled and wholly deported  into a foreign land.

One verse comes to mind as we consider what God has said in this passage. Hebrews 4:13 says, “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.”  Nothing ever escapes the sight of God.  Our every thought and deed are ever before His sheering eyes. It behooves us therefore to be careful how we live. We must live as wise and not as fools redeeming every opportunity in these evil days.  There is no necessity for us to wait for calamity and then consider how we should live to please God. Jesus said that we must do work while it is yet day for the night will come when no one can work. We are now in the daylight of God’s revelation, so we must seize every opportunity and live every moment for the glory of His name!