Toward the end of Jeremiah (chapters 41-44) after the
Babylonians had conquered Jerusalem, the Babylonians had set in place a
governor over the region—Gedaliah.
Well, there were some forces that didn’t like this foreign appointed governor
so they killed Gedaliah. The folks
that did this were soon brought to judgment by the people left in Jerusalem but
they then faced a difficult future.
Once the Babylonians heard that Gedaliah had been murdered they could
come back and even do more destruction on them. So they thought of leaving and traveling to Egypt for
protection. The people approach
Jeremiah and ask him to seek the Lord’s will. Jeremiah tells them he will ask the Lord but they must
listen to it. The people respond:
Then they said to Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful
witness against us if we do not act in accordance with the whole message with
which the Lord your God will send to you to us. Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we will listen to the
voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you, so that it may go well
with us when we listen to the voice of the Lord our God.” --Jeremiah 42.5-6
Doesn’t that sound great—“whatever God says, even if we
don’t like it, we will obey!”
Jeremiah goes and asks God what to do and he says not to go to Egypt but
to stay in Jerusalem. He promises
that it will be okay for them from the Babylonians. And how do the people respond? Do they humbly listen and submit? Not hardly.
Here is there reply:
“You are telling a lie!
The Lord our God has not sent you to say, ‘You are not to enter Egypt to
reside there’; but Baruch the son of Neriah is inciting you against us to give
us over into the hand of the Chaldeans, so they will put us to death or exile us
to Babylon.” --Jeremiah 43.2-3
So the people go down to Egypt in defiance of the Lord’s
word through Jeremiah. They even
force Jeremiah to go with them. In
Egypt the Lord continues to warn his people through his prophet Jeremiah. He rebukes their idolatry for the
people were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven. Will the people now listen to the
Lord? Here is how they respond to
Jeremiah’s message:
“As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord,
we are not going to listen to you!
But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded
from our mouths, by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven…” --Jeremiah 44.16-17
This is an amazing display of rebellion. This was God’s people who supposed to
“live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8.3)
but now they are arrogantly stating that they will “carry out every word that
has proceeded from our mouths.”
Before we are too hard on these people we should examine our
own hearts and lives. Do we do the
same thing as they did? Do we say,
“I just want to hear what God wants.”
And then when we are shown the word of God and it challenges our desires
do we run away in defiance? The
choice before us is this: Will we live by the word of God or will we live by
our words? These things were
written for our instruction (1 Corinthians 10.11). May we heed the message and listen to the word of God. He knows best.
