Old Testament: Jer 2.20–22

To read the Bible in a year, read Jeremiah 1–2 on October 19, In the year of our Lord Christ 2024

By Don Ruhl 

Sometimes people promise God that they will not sin, or that they will stop doing a certain sin, perhaps because they are in trouble and want his help, and thinking that if they promise to quit some sin, he will be pleased and then help. 

Then after they are helped, they forget their promise and go right back into sinning. Israel had that problem: “‘For of old I have broken your yoke and burst your bonds; and you said, “I will not transgress,” when on every high hill and under every green tree you lay down, playing the harlot. Yet I had planted you a noble vine, a seed of highest quality. How then have you turned before Me into the degenerate plant of an alien vine? For though you wash yourself with lye, and use much soap, yet your iniquity is marked before Me,’ says the Lord GOD” (Jeremiah 2.20–22). 

The Lord takes us at our word. If we say that we will not sin, that is what he expects from us. 

It is better not to make that promise, then to make it and break it. 

That does not mean we can go on sinning, telling ourselves that is okay, just because we never promised that we would stop. 

The Lord still expects us to do righteousness. 

Questions: 

• Have you made promises to God and failed to keep them? 
• How do you feel when someone breaks a promise to you? 

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Don preaches with the Savage Street Church of Christ in Grants Pass, Oregon. 

Listen to his sermons here: GrantsPassChurchOfChrist.com