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Jeremiah 8 (ESV)

⁸ “How can you say, ‘We are wise,
and the law of the Lord is with us’?
But behold, the lying pen of the scribes
has made it into a lie.
⁹ The wise men shall be put to shame;
they shall be dismayed and taken;
behold, they have rejected the word of the Lord,
so what wisdom is in them?
¹⁰ Therefore I will give their wives to others
and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest
everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest,
everyone deals falsely.
¹¹ They have healed the wound of my people lightly,
saying, ‘Peace, peace,’
when there is no peace.
¹² Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?
No, they were not at all ashamed;
they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among the fallen;
when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,
says the Lord.

REFLECTION:

This passage describes the false wisdom, false godliness, and false peace of the people of Judah. ​​Everything is false. They think they are wise, but in fact there are lies and greed hidden in their wisdom, their wisdom is just petty tricks in the world which are extremely stupid in reality. They use worldly methods to heal and comfort people, thinking that they can find peace in this way. There is no peace at all, while they are just deceiving themselves. And in all these abominations, they “were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush” （v12） and greatly offended God. Wouldn’t the righteous and holy God condemn them? The conditions of the Judahites back then remind us today, because there is nothing new under the sun, and what happened before will still happen now. Our world today is also full of deceitful tricks, fill with desires and lies. People seek false things to rely on, thinking that they can get peace from them, but in fact their hearts are full of anxieties. We should be constantly reflecting as we are in such an environment, to see whether our lives are also polluted by this worldly turbid current? May the inner peace in each of us be true peace, rooted and built on God’s faithful promise.

PRAYER:

Come to God quietly, examine your heart, and see if your peace is built on the foundation of lies, and see if you have replaced the desire for God’s great wisdom with the petty tricks in the world. Ask God to give you true peace, make you stand firm in the torrent of the world.

HYMN:

There Is None Like You – youtu.be/EP0Wwn53ZgI