REDEMPTION TESTIMONIES

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“However, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when it will no longer be said, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’ but it will be said, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where He had banished them.’ For I will restore them to the land I gave their ancestors.”

Jeremiah 16:14-15

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

We may not all be pastors in life but that doesn’t mean we don’t have our own stories to tell others, personal stories of how the Lord has worked in our lives, fulfilling the promises of His word while blessing us in various ways.

These personal stories that serve to minister to others are referred to as testimonies because they testify to God’s goodness, mercy, grace, and love.

As we look at today’s scripture passage from Jeremiah, we find testimonies front and center, testimonies about the amazing, awesome redemption that only comes from God Himself. Look again at these two verses:

“However, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when it will no longer be said, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’ but it will be said, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where He had banished them.’ For I will restore them to the land I gave their ancestors.”  Jeremiah 16:14-15

The Israelites of Jeremiah’s time were well aware of their heritage and the testimonies passed from generation to generation. They were well aware that their ancestors had suffered mightily at the hands of the Egyptians for more than 400 years and the only thing that broke their captivity was the intervention of a loving God who brought them redemption, delivering them from the oppressive clutches of the Pharaoh and setting them on course to inhabit the land which had been first granted to Abraham.

And He did so in grand style.

You remember, right?

Plague after plague after plague was sent on Egypt, each with the hope of jarring Pharaoh into allowing the Israelites to leave. After the tenth one that took the life of Pharaoh’s son, the Egyptian leader relented and Moses led God’s people away. But Pharaoh wasn’t about to give up easily for he pursued the Israelites who came upon a great sea separating them from the freedom they had waited so long for. We know God took care of that problem, dividing the seas so that the Israelites could pass through on dry land before releasing the waters to come crashing down on the Egyptians.

This wonderful act of deliverance had been shared for a long time, detailing how the Lord had brought His people up and out of Egypt. But as we see in our scripture passage, there was a new redemption story that would soon be told, a redemption testimony grounded in another Israelite deliverance from captivity.

The coming liberation would come after seventy years of exile to Babylon, a judgment sent upon the Israelites by God as a result of their sinful worshipping of false gods and idols. It was a time when God turned from His people just as they had turned from Him. If they wanted to place their faith in false gods, then they could call on those gods to save them, although as they would discover, no answer to their prayers would ever come from those gods. Only God Himself would bring them back to their homeland after they had paid the price for their wicked ways, allowing them to rebuild their lives and their relationship with Him.

That brings us to today and the truth that there are still redemption testimonies to be told. In fact, anyone who has accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior has been delivered from death to life, not just life in the here and now but forever more. Without Jesus, we would be a people without hope and any tangible future but with Him, we know we are going to live forever. In fact, the life that awaits us when this worldly one is over will be more glorious and filled with splendor than we can imagine.

Truly, in Christ, the best is yet to come because of God’s gift of salvation rooted in His Son.

Have you testified lately about the redemption you have in Him?

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.

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