Jeremiah 11:4 KJV
Which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, Obey my voice, and do them, according to all which I command you: so shall ye be my people, and I will be your God:
The reference to Egypt as an iron furnace goes back to the book of Deuteronomy, which has been read publicly after it had been discovered in the Temple.
My only experience with iron smelting is through documentaries and a few conversations with employees, not of iron but aluminum smelters. It appears to me to be a miserable, though necessary work regardless of the conditions of the individual factory. That God would liken the Jews slavery in Egypt to an iron furnace speaks to
- The trial
- The difficult conditions and
- The hardships
they faced while there. It was a deliverance, though long in coming, of enormous proportion.
The point is that with such a deliverance, it should have been of little consequence those commands God gave to them. They were free men. To have a government to maintain their freedom should have been a matter of thanksgiving.
Yet they obeyed not.
It is the mark of our sin nature that we wrestle against those very things that bring blessings upon us. It is a sure sign of Satan's influence that we would struggle to be free from the very things that give life so that we might pursue those things that destroy.
God set them free from the iron furnace but they created an iron furnace of their own making.
No comments:
Post a Comment