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Jeremiah 48:47  “Yet I will restore the fortunes of Moab in days to come,” declares the LORD.  Here ends the judgement on Moab.

Not unlike all of his prophecy, this chapter of Jeremiah makes fairly depressing reading.  Perhaps what I find most depressing is that, when I look around our world today, and especially at our own nation, with its initial input of declared Gospel truth during the early days of European settlement, and I see where we have come in two hundred and thirty-seven years, and where we are in the ‘Christian’ West today, it is hard not to conclude that we are under the same judgement as Moab!

Moab’s arrogant pride in human achievement (verse 29), her brazen defiance of the Lord’s rightful authority (verse 26), and her outspoken ridiculing of the LORD’s Covenant People (verse 27), are the grounds for his pronouncing such harsh judgement against her.

But I take heart from the concluding promise of future restoration: “Yet I will restore the fortunes of Moab in days to come”.  Only an all-powerful, sovereign God is qualified to promise such an undertaking.  And this is a God who longs for his people, the ones who are ‘called by his Name’, to “humble themselves and pray and seek [his] face and turn from their wicked ways,” and he “will hear from heaven, and … will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

This God came among us and shed his blood on a Cross to redeem us!  So, what are we waiting for?  Let us ‘humble’ ourselves, and ‘pray’, and ‘seek his face’, and ‘turn from our wicked ways’, that he might, once again, come among us in the power of his Holy Spirit, and restore us.

– Bruce Christian