Follow the link to read Jeremiah 8 The Message.

The first three verses of this remind me of Matthew 23:27 - 28 (The Message): "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. God is very serious about our keeping His laws and commandments, and not following the ways of this earth. In Jeremiah 8, to the Israelites, having the bones of their ancestors spread out on the desert would have been a horrible culturual insult. Yet God was telling them that that was their risk if they did not change their ways.

When my group was in Jerusalem, we saw the whitewashed tombs that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 27. They are all laid out on a hillside in plain view of the Temple Mount area -- the southeast corner of Jerusalem as I recall. They are in man's view just as our souls always are to God -- laid out in plain view. How often do I carry ugly thoughts or feelings inside of me? It happens far too often but yet not nearly enough do I think about how God knows all that junk that I carry around. Fortunately, His grace saves me.

Verses 4 - 7 in Jeremiah 8 really speak to this. How often do we continue down the wrong road? How often do we stumble and not get up and make corrections? How often do we hold onto illusions?

I pray to God that He will call to my attention the evil in my life. The unconfessed sin. The bad thoughts that are, to God, laid out like bones in the desert. I pray also that, once these things are called to my attention, I can repent and permanently change my ways.