Method to the Madness

So I've been going through Jeremiah lately and heres what kicked my butt the other day.

Jeremiah 3:11 “The Lord said to me, “Faithless Israel is more righteous then unfaithful Judah.”

First thing I did when I read this was take a double take. “Did I read that right?” Unfortunately I did and that was a problem because I didnt know what to make of it. How on earth could a group of faithless people (people without any faith whatsoever) be MORE Righteous than a group of Unfaithful that are at least being faithful to some extent.

I chewed that all day long and It was really kicking me hard. Then at last nights session in my track People of the Word I sat next to a preacher that was visiting with us named Collin. And at some point during Session we were asked to talk to the person next to us about how what we had learned would improve our bible studying skills. I said well I will be better about learning the context of what I am reading before I dive in and confuse myself like my reading that morning had. Then I explained to him what had stumped me and he proceeded to enlighten me about a few truths of the Old Testament.

First off in Jeremiah where I was reading he asked if I even knew why Judah and Israel split. I honestly had no idea that they were once one. He told me that after Solomon was king the kingdoms split. 19 kings in Judah and 20 kings in Israel (I may have that backwards so sorry if I do) ZERO kings in Israel were currently following God, 8 were in Judah. This explained the faithless and the unfaithful descriptions.

He went into a lot more detail with me in the short time we had but honestly it triggered something in my head. I need to have a method to how I go about reading God's Word. I cant just dive into something when I have no idea whats going on.

So in this little nugget I'm really just trying to say that you should have some knowledge of what is going on before you read or else you're lost and you wont benefit from what you are reading.