Related Articles
Table of Contents
Topic: The Unclean Girdle
[DCLM Daily Manna 29 October 2019 Daily Devotional by Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi]
Text: Jeremiah 13:1-14 (KJV)
Key Verse: “This evil people, which refuse to hear my words, which walk in the imagination of their heart, and walk after other gods, to serve them, and to worship them, shall even be as this girdle, which is good for nothing” – (Jeremiah 13:10).
MESSAGE:
John the Baptist went about in raiment of camel’s hair and a leather girdle about his loins eating locusts and wild honey to rebuke the unbridled affluence of the professors of religion in his day. Isaiah walked naked and barefooted for three years (Isaiah 20:3,4), as a message to Israel of the shame in depending on Egypt and Ethiopia. When man closes his ears to hearing God’s warning, He often demonstrates same with signs man cannot notice.
The Lord was speaking to Israel and Judah that had been dull of hearing through the parable of the linen girdle. Prophet Jeremiah was to put the linen girdle on his loins without washing it. After many days of going around with this dirty girdle, he was to go and hide same in the Euphrates (about 250 miles away). After a while God asked him to go and bring it back. What he brought back was a girdle marred and good for nothing.
Israel and Judah were like a girdle to the Lord. As a girdle cleaves to a man, they were to stick to the Lord to be a people. But they would not hear; they walked in the imagination of their hearts and served other gods. They became like a girdle that is good for nothing.
This parable has many applications to the Church and individuals to whom God has bestowed grace in time, talent, treasure, with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. To presume that one can be marred with sin and still retain the closeness, favour and power of the Almighty is completely delusionary. Proverbs 30:12 states that “There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness”. Our prayer today must be: “Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me…” (Psalm 19:13).
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Sin joins one with the devil in a union.
THE BIBLE IN ONE YEAR: Jeremiah 22-24
