Worshipping Ladies Community Group
This group is for Christian women only. We seek to love and encourage one another with the compassion Christ gives us.
Chapter 17:
The people's sin is inscribed on their hearts with an iron pen or a diamond point (ouch), as they run around worshipping hills and trees. This made God very angry, of course.
People who trust in mere mortals instead of in God will be dry and thirsty like desert shrubs. But those who trust in God's will be like flourishing trees planted by a stream. Even drought won't affect them.
People who get rich unjustly are like partridges trying to hatch the eggs of another bird—the baby birds will abandon them once they hatch.
The people who turn from God are in for a terrible punishment and a future life in the underworld.
Jeremiah prays to God: he says he's been a faithful servant, and wants to be saved from his enemies and healed from his sufferings.
He asks God to make sure that his persecutors are destroyed.
God tells Jeremiah to head out to the city gates of Jerusalem and urge the people to keep the Sabbath holy, telling them not to do any work on the Sabbath. Their ancestors received the same instructions but apparently ignored them.
If they can keep the Sabbath day holy, good kings from the line of David will enter their city, and people will come from all around to make offerings and worship God in Jerusalem.
But if they don't do this, God's wrath will burn up the city and devour it.
"But blessed are those that trust in the Lord and have made the LORD their hope and confidence. (8) They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. The leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit."
This is very similar to what is said in Psalms 1:2-3:
"But they delight in the law of the LORD, meditating on it day and night. (3) They are like trees planted along a riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do."
Both are promises to bless us if we trust in the LORD, make Him our confidence, and meditate on His Word day and night.
Also very similar to Matthew 6:33:
"Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need."