Jeremiah’s Generation - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2025

Though they say, "As the Lord lives," surely they swear falsely. O Lord, are not Your eyes on the truth?
Jeremiah 5:2-3

Jeremiah's Generation
Jeremiah's neighborhood and the surrounding culture were filled with religious people. His hometown, Anathoth, was one of the cities where the priests lived. The national reforms of King Josiah had reinvigorated a determination to remove Baal's wicked altars and follow the Lord's ways. In later chapters of Jeremiah, various priests and officials had the name of Jehovah on their lips.

But this chapter begins with God telling Jeremiah to "run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem" and through the open fields to see if anyone was actually seeking God's principles of justice and truth (v. 1). The results of such a survey would reveal that many people used the phrase "as the Lord lives" in their daily conversation. It is an expression found more than thirty other times in the Old Testament, used as a solemn promise that meant, "As surely as Jehovah is a living God, you can depend on me to do this or that."

To Jeremiah's religious generation, however, the words meant nothing. The phrase had become a throwaway expression—just a figure of speech, a cliché. And Jeremiah reacted to this fact with proper concern: "O Lord, are not Your eyes on the truth?"

God wants reality, not pretense, and He is surely able to tell the difference. Not everyone who says, "Lord, Lord," will enter His kingdom. Our culture, too, may be filled with people who are merely religious—not only in our neighborhoods and workplaces, but perhaps even at our Bible conferences and Christian gatherings. Are you among them? Do not rely on saying certain words as a way to escape God's judgment and secure His blessing! That is literally the definition of using His name in vain. Instead, we must seek the truth about who He is, who we are, and how to live.

Stephen Campbell