June 1

The Jews had misinterpreted God's promise of eternal favour to Israel: "Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is His name: If those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever. Thus saith the Lord; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord." Jer. 31:35-37. The Jews regarded their natural descent from Abraham as giving them a claim to this promise. But they overlooked the conditions which God had specified. Before giving the promise, He had said, "I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people. . . . For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." Jer. 31:33, 34.

          Desire of Ages, page 107 from the chapter, 'The voice in the wilderness'

      The passage says that the Jews had misinterpreted God’s promise of eternal favour. We saw earlier that not every Jew had misinterpreted the promises. God chose two families who understood the promise to some extent. We also know of many who had a desire for a deeper understanding of God’s promise of eternal favour.

     As time passed we come to understand that God had to take major steps in order to let the Jews in general know that their role as God’s chosen messengers was at an end.

     What had the Jews, in general, done wrong? They overlooked the conditions God had specified. We have to be careful in our own lives, to understand and follow God’s conditions.

   We go back to the Isaacs for our song today. The song is ‘prophet’s admiration’. There is an added extra after the music. Click on the picture to listen.