We're making our way through Jeremiah. So glad you're here tonight. We left off last week,

Chapter 13. We're going to pick it up in Chapter 14. Both chapters sort of go together and woven

into the fabric of these two chapters is a most powerful and profound principle concerning

one, there are many, but one of the many purposes of adversity and affliction. Namely, why it is that oftentimes God allows the adversity and

the affliction in our lives. This is by no means an exhaustive study.

But there is one purpose, I believe, that the Lord wants us to see here.

And it's that of him turning us back to him because we're all prone to stray from him. And such is the case here with God through the prophet

Jeremiah concerning Judah. I think of what David wrote in Psalm 119. He says it twice, the same

thing in two different ways. In verse 67, Psalm 119, he says that basically it was a good thing that God afflicted

me.

It's almost like he's thanking God for the affliction because he knows absent the affliction,

he would have been and gone astray. Then he get to verse 73 of that same Psalm, the longest Psalm, the longest chapter in all

of the Bible by the way.

And again, he says the same thing in a different way.

He says, it was good that I was afflicted.

Thank you, God, for afflicting me because had

you not afflicted me, I would not have taken heed to your word and kept your word.

So again, what we have before us tonight is one of the many reasons why it is that God will allow adversity and affliction.

So you ready?

Well, we're going to do this.

So first one, the Word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah concerning the droughts.

Judah, verse 2, mourns, and her gates languish. They mourn for the land and the cry of

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