February 9, 2024 - How to Not Repeat Past Mistakes in the Future - Pastor Paul Vallee

So, how do we overcome our sinful past to have a new future? How can we learn the lessons from our past mistakes to avoid making devastating and destructive decisions in the days ahead? This will become evident as we see an example of a group of people who learned nothing from their past experience. God’s word is unchanging, and his ways remain the same. He is constantly calling us away from sin in all of its varied expressions, and we come to Him to find our needs more than  amply met. It amazes me how patient God is and how he continually communicates with us despite the constant disobedience that we pursue as human beings. In the continuing drama of the remnant of Jews who had survived the destruction of Jerusalem and the pillaging that had happened in the countryside, we find that they had now fled for ‘safety to Egypt,’ or so they thought. They had asked Jeremiah to seek God for direction and had been warned that safety was found in obeying God, which meant staying in the land, but their fears drove them to Egypt. Egypt was now a land that was about to experience a Babylonian incursion. In Jeremiah 43 and 44, we hear Jeremiah's final messages to the people who sought refuge in Egypt. How many of us have sought refuge in something outside of God’s best for our lives? So, what are the lessons we need to learn from past mistakes so as not to repeat them?