I was reading in Jeremiah 42 the other day and came upon an incident with God’s people Israel that I think has application to us. The country was on the verge of an attack by the Babylonians and the people came to Jeremiah and said, “Let our plea for mercy come before you, and pray to the Lord your God for us, for all this remnant—because we are left with but a few, as your eyes see us— 3 that the Lord your God may show us the way we should go, and the thing that we should do.” Jeremiah told them that he would check with God to see what they should do next. The people affirmed their commitment saying that whether it is good or bad they would certainly do what the Lord commanded.
Jeremiah came back from the Lord with the message that whatever else they did, they should not flee to Egypt to seek refuge there. They were to stay put and not be afraid of the king of Babylon. If they stayed and trusted God with the results, they would be eventually built back up; but if they fled to Egypt, God would pursue them there and they would face the destruction that they feared.
When Jeremiah told them these instructions from the Lord, their response was, “You are lying to us. We will not do what you say, but we will flee to Egypt.”
In these days we don’t go to a prophet to find out what the Lord has said. We go to the Bible. The Bible has everything God wants us to know to enable us to live faithful, obedient lives. And yet aren’t we sometimes like those people? We may go to the Word of God to find out what we should do, or we may counsel with a pastor to get sound biblical advice and then when we don’t like the answer, we do our own thing.
Let’s be faithful and honest in our efforts to work our way through this life. Let’s seek God’s guidance with a sincere heart actually desiring to follow the will of God once we know it. And then, when we come to grips with what God is actually commanding us to do, let’s follow through and do it in faithful obedience.
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