My senior year in high school, my best friend surprised me

He said, “I don’t think I can justify bringing a child into this world”
- that was something I was still looking forward to enjoying,
• getting married and some day having children
◦ I knew about war and poverty and race riots and assassinations and environmental pollution
• but my outlook was not so bleak as to rule out children
- what God is describing in this passage is just that bleak!
• there was no future for the people of Judah
◦ if they had children now, it would be only for them to die
• God was watching out for Jeremiah,
◦ but he was using Jeremiah’s situation as an illustration