RESPECT THE WORD. Jeremiah 33:3.

I always thought grownups were a little silly about Bibles: don’t drop it, don’t set it on the floor, don’t wrinkle the pages, don’t let it get wet, etc. But that comes from a good motive. Most people in history had no Bible or shared one, and had to treasure it.

And consider this: when Jeremiah wrote God’s message on a scroll and sent it to the king to be read, King Jehoiakim burned it. It was winter and the king was sitting by the fire. Each time the scribe read 3 or 4 columns, the king sliced them off with a knife and threw the parchment in the fire. Soon the entire scroll was burned.

I wonder how God felt?

God told Jeremiah to write it down again. This time God added punishment: “the king of Babylon will come and destroy the land … there will be no king to sit on David’s throne, and King Jehoiakim’s corpse will be thrown in the street to rot. Even his descendants and officers will be punished….” Jeremiah 36:29-31.

Can you imagine treating God’s word that way? Especially when it is the world’s only written copy? And yet, many of us own Bibles, maybe more than one, and they sit collecting dust. Is the one who never reads the word any better off than the one who destroys it in the fire?

We should cherish the word, love the word, and CRAVE the word. Look back three chapters. God says He wants to reveal to you amazing things:

“Call to Me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things that you do not know.” Jeremiah 33:3

That sounds awesome, doesn’t it? God calls Himself the “Revealer of Mysteries” (Daniel 2:29), and He reveals them through His word. But you gotta open it! Ask Him to give you the desire, then pray the prayer of Jeremiah 33:3. He will amaze you! For example, a THIRD cool thing I read today (3 of 4) [1] was that the angels are as innumerable as the sand of the sea! (Jeremiah 33:22). That’s an incredible army on our side!!

God, give us a passion, a hunger for your word! Amaze us! Help us feast on it daily, and be amazed by Your revealed mysteries!

ΑΩ

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[1] The fourth was that the descendants of Jonadab reported that their ancestor told them never to drink—and they had been obedient to him for generations! Further, though drinking is not forbidden in scripture, God blessed these people greatly for honoring their ancestor. Jeremiah 35:6,14,18-19.

P.S. It is worth noting that when the king burned God’s message, God responded by having Jeremiah dictate it to his scribe a second time, just as when Moses broke the tablets of the law, God helped Moses make new tablets. GOD PROTECTS HIS WORD, no matter what skeptics may say.