Children are very special in God's eyes.
This is the Lifespring One Year Bible Rewind,
and coming to you from Riverside, California,
podcasting since 2004, I'm Steve Webb, your OG Godcaster.
This is the podcast that comes to you every single day,
right there in your podcast app.
Take a look, there it is every day,
and we're reading through the Bible.
I'm really glad you're here today, welcome.
The website is LifespringMedia.com.
You'll find over 4,000 episodes of different podcasts.
there. Amazing. You know, I just love the way you tapped on that play button a moment ago.
You did it with such panache. And that outfit, is it new? Looks great on you. Oh, and today is
pay a compliment day. And it's Prophecy Friday. We'll read Jeremiah 17 through 21, and I'll have
some comments and an on this date in church history and some other little things. Let's begin.
Our Heavenly Father, we love you so very much, and we thank you so much for your word.
We pray, God, that as we read today, that you would really take, really put your message into our heart.
We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Jeremiah chapter 17.
The sin of Judah is written down with pen of iron and with a sharp diamond.
It is written on their hearts and on the horns of their altars.
Even their children remember their altars and their wooden female goddesses of Asherah by green trees and on the high hills.
O my mountain in the country, I will give your money and all your riches to those who fight
against you. I will give your high places as the price of your sin through all your land,
and you yourself will let your land go that I gave you. I will make you serve those who hate you in
a land which you do not know, for you have made my anger start a fire which will burn forever.
The Lord says, Cursed is the man who trusts in man, who trusts in the flesh for his strength,
and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
For he will be like a bush in the desert,
and will not see when good comes.
He will live in dry wastes in the desert,
in a land of salt where no other people live.
Good will come to the man who trusts in the Lord,
and whose hope is in the Lord.
He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the river.
It will not be afraid when the heat comes,
but its leaves will be green.
It will not be troubled in a dry year,
nor stop giving fruit. The heart is fooled more than anything else. It is very sinful.
Who can know how bad it is? I, the Lord, look into the heart, and test the mind. I give to each man
what he should have because of his ways and because of the fruit that comes from his works.
As a bird that sits on eggs which it has not laid, so is he who gets rich by doing wrong.
When his life is half over, they will leave him, and in the end he will be a fool.
A beautiful throne on high from the beginning is our holy place.
O Lord, the hope of Israel, all who leave you will be put to shame.
Those who turn away from you will be written in the earth,
because they have left the Lord, the well of living water.
Heal me, O Lord, and I will be healed.
Save me, and I will be saved, for you are my praise.
They say to me, Where is the word of the Lord? Let it come now.
But as for me, I have not run away from being a shepherd who follows you, and I have not been
hoping for the day of trouble. You know what I said was spoken in front of you. Do not make me
afraid of you. You are my safe place in the day of trouble. Let those who make it hard for me be
put to shame, but do not let me be put to shame. Let them be afraid, but do not let me be afraid.
Bring on them a day of trouble and destroy them with twice as much.
The Lord said to me, Go and stand in the people's gate, through which the kings of Judah come in and go out, and also in all the gates of Jerusalem.
And say to them, Listen to the word of the Lord, kings of Judah, and all Judah, and all people of Jerusalem who come in through these gates.
The Lord says, Be careful for your lives. Do not carry any load on the day of rest, or bring anything in through the gates of Jerusalem.
Do not bring a load out of your houses on the day of rest or do any work.
But keep the day of rest holy, as I told your fathers before you.
Yet they did not listen or hear, but made their necks hard and would not change their ways.
Listen to me, says the Lord, and bring no load through the city gates on the day of rest.
Keep the day of rest holy by doing no work on it.
Then kings and their sons will come through the city gates who will sit on the throne of David.
They will come in war wagons and on horses with the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem.
And people will live in this city forever.
People will come in from the cities of Judah and from the places around Jerusalem.
They will come from the land of Benjamin, from the valleys, from the hill country, and from the Negev.
They will bring burnt gifts, animals to kill on the altar in worship, grain gifts, special perfume, and gifts of thanks to the house of the Lord.
But if you do not listen to me, to keep the day of rest holy by not carrying a load when coming
through the gates of Jerusalem on the day of rest, then I will start a fire in its gates,
and it will burn up the beautiful houses of the kings of Jerusalem, and will not be stopped.
Jeremiah chapter 18. The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying,
Go down to the potmaker's house, and there I will let you hear my words. So I went down to the
potmaker's house and saw him making one on the wheel. But the pot he was making of clay did not
come out like he wanted it. So the potmaker used the clay to make another pot that pleased him.
Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, O people of Israel, can I not do with you as this
potmaker is done, says the Lord? Like the clay in the potmaker's hand, so are you in my hand,
O people of Israel. If at any time I speak about a nation to pull up and to break down and to
And if that nation I spoke against turns from its sin, then I will change my mind about the
trouble I planned to bring upon it. If at another time I speak about a nation,
that I will build and plant it. And if it does what is sinful in my eyes by not obeying my voice,
then I will change my mind about the good I had promised to bring to it.
So now speak to the men of Judah and to the people of Jerusalem. Tell them,
the Lord says, See, I am making trouble for you and making a plan against you.
So each of you turn from your sinful way, change your ways and your works.
But they will say, There is no hope, for we are going to follow our own plans.
Each of us will act in the strong will of his sinful heart.
So the Lord says, Ask now among the nations who has heard such things.
Pure Israel has done a very sinful thing.
Does the snow of Lebanon ever leave its rocky mountains?
Does the cold flowing water of other lands ever dry up?
But my people have forgotten me.
They burn special perfume to false gods of no worth.
They have fallen in their ways from the old paths,
and have gone on side roads, not on the straight road.
They make their land a waste, a thing that is spoken against forever.
Everyone who passes by it will be surprised and shake his head.
I will send them out everywhere like an east wind in front of those who hate them.
I will show them my back and not my face in the day of their trouble.
They said, Come and let us make plans against Jeremiah, for the law is not going to be lost
to the religious leader, or wise words to the wise man, or the word of God to the man of God.
Come and let us hurt him with our tongue, and let us not listen to any of his words.
Think of me, O Lord, and listen to what those who hate me are saying.
Should bad be given in return for good?
Yet they have dug a deep hole for me.
Remember how I stood before you to speak good for them,
to turn your anger away from them.
So give their children over to hunger.
Give them up to the power of the sword.
Let their wives lose their children and husbands.
Let their men be put to death.
And let their young men be killed by the sword in battle.
May a cry be heard from their houses
when you bring an army upon them by surprise.
For they have dug a deep hole to take me, and have hidden traps for my feet.
Yet you, O Lord, know all their plans to kill me.
Do not forgive their wrongdoing or cover their sin from your eyes.
Let them be taken down before you.
Punish them in the time of your anger.
Jeremiah chapter 19
The Lord says, Go and buy a potmaker's clay jar,
and take some of the leaders of the people and some of the older religious leaders.
Then go out to the valley of Ben-Hinnom by the potsherd gate, and there say the words that I will tell you.
Say, Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem.
The Lord of all, the God of Israel says, See, I am about to bring much trouble to this place.
The ears of everyone that hears of it will hurt.
The people have left me and have made this a strange place.
They have burned special perfume in it to other gods that they and their fathers and the kings of Judah had never known.
They have filled this place with the blood of those who were not guilty.
They have built the high places of the false god Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt gifts to Baal.
This is a thing which I never told them to do or spoke of.
It did not even come to my mind.
So see, the days are coming, says the Lord, when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-Hinnom.
Instead, it will be called the Valley of Killing.
I will make the plans of Judah and Jerusalem come to nothing in this place.
I will cause them to fall by the sword in front of those who hate them, and by the hand of those who want to kill them.
And I will feed their dead bodies to the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the earth.
I will make this city a waste place, and people will make sounds of hate.
Everyone who passes by it will be surprised and make strange noises because of all its troubles.
I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters.
And they will eat each other's flesh when the armies shut them in, and when those who want to kill them bring much trouble to them.
Then you are to break the jar in front of the men who go with you, and say to them,
The Lord of all says, In this way I will break these people and this city, even as one breaks a potmaker's jar, which cannot be put back together.
Men will bury the dead in Topheth until there is no place left to bury.
This is what I will do in this place and its people, says the Lord.
I will make this city like Topheth. The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah
will be made unclean like Topheth. This will be because of all the houses on whose roofs they
burned special perfume to all the false gods of the heavens and poured out drink gifts to other
gods. Then Jeremiah came from Topheth where the Lord had sent him to tell what would happen.
And he stood in the open place of the Lord's house and said to all the people,
the Lord of all, the God of Israel, says, See, I am about to bring to this city and to all its
towns all the trouble that I have spoken about, because they have made their necks hard and would
not listen to my words. Jeremiah chapter 20. Now Pasher, the religious leader, the son of Emer,
was the head leader in the house of the Lord. When he heard Jeremiah saying these things,
Pasher had Jeremiah, the man of God, beaten. Then he put him in chains at the upper Benjamin gate
by the house of the Lord. On the next day, when Pasher set Jeremiah free from the chains,
Jeremiah said to him, The Lord does not call you Pasher, but fear everywhere. For the Lord says,
See, I am going to make you a fear to yourself and to all your friends. They will fall by the
sword of those who hate them while you look on. I will give all Judah into the hand of the king
of Babylon, and he will carry them away in chains to Babylon, and will kill them with the sword.
I will give over all the riches of this city, all that its people have worked for, and all its things of much worth.
Even all the riches of the kings of Judah I will give to those who hate them.
They will take their things and take hold of them and carry them to Babylon.
And you, Pasher, and all who live in your house will be taken away in chains.
You will go to Babylon, and there you will die, and there you will be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have told lies.
O Lord, You have lied to me, and I was fooled. You are stronger than I, and have had power over me. I have been laughed at all day. Everyone makes fun of me, for whenever I speak, I cry out. I tell of fighters and destroyers, for the word of the Lord has become a shame and a cause of laughing at me all day long.
But if I say I will not remember him or speak any more in his name, then in my heart it is like a burning fire shut up in my bones.
I am tired of holding it in, and I cannot do that.
For I have heard many speaking in secret, saying, Fear and trouble is on every side.
Speak against him. Yes, let us speak against him.
All my trusted friends, watching for my fall, say, It may be that he will be fooled.
Then we can get power over him and punish him.
But the Lord is with me like a powerful one who causes fear.
So those who make it hard for me will fall and not have power over me.
They will be put to much shame because their plans have not gone well.
Their shame will last forever and will not be forgotten.
O Lord of all, you test those who are right and good.
You see the mind and the heart.
Let me see you punish them, for I have given my cause to you.
Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord, for He has taken the soul of the one in need from the hand of the sinful.
Cursed is the day when I was born. Let the day not be honored when my mother gave birth to me.
Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father, saying,
A baby boy has been born to you, and made him very happy.
Let that man be like the cities which the Lord destroyed without pity.
Let him hear a cry in the morning and a call of danger at noon.
For he did not kill me before I was born, so that my mother's body would have been my grave.
Why was I ever born to see trouble and sorrow, and spend my days in shame?
Jeremiah chapter 21
This is the word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, when King Zedekiah sent him to Pasher,
the son of Melchijah, and Zephaniah, the religious leader, the son of Maaseah, saying,
Will you speak to the Lord about us? For King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon is making war against
us. It may be that the Lord will do something for us like he did in times past, and make him leave
us. Then Jeremiah said to them, Say this to Zedekiah, The Lord God of Israel says, See, I will turn
against you the objects of war you were using to fight with against the king of Babylon and the
Babylonians who were gathered outside the wall to shut you in, and I will bring them into the center
of this city. I myself will fight against you with my hand out and with a strong arm, in much anger.
I will kill both man and animal in this city. They will die of a bad disease.
After this, says the Lord, I will give over Zedekiah king of Judah, his servants,
and the people who were not killed in this city by the disease, the sword, and hunger.
I will give them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of those who
hate them, and into the hand of those who want to kill them, and he will kill them with the sword.
He will not let them live or have pity on them.
Also tell the people, The Lord says, See, I set before you the way of life and the way of death.
He who lives in this city will die by the sword and by hunger and by disease.
But he who goes out and gives himself up to the Babylonians, whose armies shut you in, will live.
He will at least have his life.
For I have set my face against this city for trouble and not for good, says the Lord.
It will be given to the king of Babylon, and he will burn it with fire.
Then say to those of the house of the king of Judah, Hear the word of the Lord, O house of David.
The Lord says, Do what is right every morning. Take the person who has been robbed away from
the one who has made it hard for him, so my anger will not go out like fire and burn with no one
to put it out, because of the sinful things you have done. See, I am against you, O you who live
in the valley, O rock of the plain, says the Lord. You who say, Who will come down against us,
or who will come into our houses. I will punish you for what has come of what you have done,
says the Lord. I will start a fire among your trees, and it will destroy all that is around it.
In chapter 18, the Lord showed Jeremiah a potter who was not happy with the pot he had made,
so the potter made a new pot with the clay. God said to Jeremiah, Can't I do this with Israel?
But if a nation turns from its sins, I will change my mind, and I will not tear it down.
Beloved, God made a great nation here in America. And for those of you not in America,
keep listening. I'll get around to the rest of the world in a minute. But as I was saying,
God made a great nation here in America, but then much of America turned from him.
Can't he tear America down? Of course he can. But I believe we can stay his hand if we again
turn to him and turn away from our evil ways. One thing we could do is stop the abortions.
There have been 62,502,904 abortions in the United States since Roe v. Wade.
God hates the idea of child sacrifice, which is what abortion is.
We could stop victimizing children.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
roughly 800,000 children go missing each year in the U.S.
The FBI pegs that number at 460,000.
Oh, that's much better, right?
I don't think so. The things that are done to children in this country and around the world
are unspeakable. They're terrible. They're from the very pit of hell. We have to learn to honor
God as a nation, and we have to do what is right. Now let me turn my attention to the world here for
just a second, since the Lifespring family members are around the world. How about this world statistic?
Over 42 million abortions occurred worldwide in 2020.
In just 2020, over 42 million abortions.
That far surpasses the totals of people who perished as a result of the world's leading causes of death.
That means the world's leading cause of death is abortion.
Ah, that's horrible.
And that number, by the way, comes from the World Health Organization,
lest you think that this is an overinflated number by a group with a pro-life agenda.
It's not.
That's from the WHO.
Yes, I am an American, so I care deeply what happens here,
but that doesn't mean that I don't care what happens around the world.
People are hurting everywhere.
People are being victimized everywhere.
And there will come a time when God will say,
Enough!
And the Great Tribulation will begin.
Jesus said that only the Father knows when that's going to happen.
But would you be surprised if it was soon?
I sure wouldn't.
Well, let's turn back to Jeremiah.
Jeremiah brought a message from the Lord that called Israel out for their sins,
and he told them that destruction was on the way.
And what was their reaction?
They hated that message, and they would not turn away from their sins.
And in verse 18 of chapter 18, the people said,
Come and let us hurt him with our tongue.
Hurt him meaning Jeremiah.
And let us not listen to any of his words.
So what they were literally trying to do was cancel him.
They didn't want to let him speak.
They wanted to silence him.
Well, what did Jeremiah do?
Did that make him lash out at them?
Did he take things into his own hands?
No.
He prayed to the Lord,
Do not forgive their wrongdoing or cover their sin from your eyes.
Let them be taken down before you.
Punish them in the time of your anger.
He took it to the Lord, which is the right thing to do.
Now, one thing that has to be pointed out,
this is a complete 180 from the prayer that Jesus prayed on the cross, isn't it?
Jesus said, Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.
But is there a time where it is right to pray the kind of prayer that Jeremiah prayed?
As we heard in the rest of today's reading,
the Lord's anger had been kindled toward Israel,
and he did not rebuke Jeremiah for that prayer. So, what are we to do with that? I think it is
right to pray against sinful behavior. I think it is right to pray against people who are victimizing
innocence, people who are aborting babies, people who are engaging in sex trafficking of children,
or other kinds of slavery. Slavery, I haven't talked about it recently, but slavery is not
something that just happened here in the United States a hundred years ago. There's more slavery
today in the world than there was when slavery was taking place here in America. I don't think
it's wrong to pray against that. Children are very special in God's eyes. I don't think it's wrong to
pray against people that are victimizing children. What do you think?
Today's verse of the day is Jeremiah 17, 7.
But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.
Jeremiah 17, 7.
Many of us try to live the Christian life backward.
We try to behave our way into belonging and perform our way into acceptance.
But in 1 John 3, 1, the Apostle John flips that upside down.
Before obedience, there's identity.
Before effort, there's love.
In the latest episode of Verses We Missed,
we pause to see the love that names us children of God
and reminds us who we already are.
Listen to See What Kind of Love,
available now at verseswemissed.com
or your favorite podcast app.
Minions sent a 100-set boost-agram a couple of days ago on the S3E107 1 Samuel 26-31 episode.
In the On This Date in Church History segment, where I talked about Gutenberg,
Minions Boost said,
It's wild to think how spoiled we've been made by technology.
Most of us would balk at having to use an electric typewriter, never mind a printing press.
I often get frustrated just trying to highlight and copy a string of text with my phone.
Yeah, I know the feeling, Minion.
Yeah, you're right.
We are spoiled.
I'm old enough to remember when you had to go to the library to do research.
And not only that, you had to know the Dewey Decimal System to find the book you were looking for.
Now it's all on our phones.
Give me ten seconds and I can find pretty much any answer I need.
Crazy.
And speaking of typing, I took a typing class on a manual, not electric, on a manual typewriter.
I don't remember whether it was junior high or high school, but my how things have changed.
Thanks for the reminder, Minion.
Now I feel especially old.
Excuse me while I go lay down.
And thanks again, Minion, for your continued boost.
Very much appreciated.
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On this date in church history, February 6th.
In 1631 on this date, a ship named The Lion dropped anchor in Boston Harbor.
On board was a young radical minister named Roger Williams.
He arrived in the New World seeking a pure church, but his journey would soon lead to something even more revolutionary.
Williams quickly found himself at odds with the Massachusetts authorities.
He argued that the civil government had no right to punish religious sins and that the land belonged to the Native Americans, not the king.
Hmm. His arrival on this date set in motion the events that would lead to his exile
and the founding of Rhode Island, a colony built on soul liberty, ensuring that no person would
ever be forced to worship against their conscience. And then exactly 62 years later,
on this same day in 1693, the British crown took a different approach to faith in the colonies.
King William III and Queen Mary II issued the royal order for the College of William and Mary
in Virginia. While Williams was a voice for the outsider, William and Mary was built to be the
heart of the Anglican establishment, dedicated to training, quote, good ministers of the gospel,
unquote, to lead the growing American colonies.
Beloved, God is the potter and we are the clay. He can remake or shatter nations like America
if we refuse to repent from abortion, child exploitation, and the culture's silencing of
truth. We need to turn back to him now. Pray boldly as Jeremiah did when his anger is kindled
and stay his hand of judgment while grace remains. Amen? Until tomorrow, may God bless you richly.
I look forward to seeing you then. I'm Steve Webb. Bye.
All the programs in the Lifespring Media family are made possible by your value-for-value support.
Thank you.
The Lifespring One Year Bible Rewind is a Lifespring Media production
hosted by Steve Webb, the OG Godcaster since 2004.