Year 3, Day 96: Jeremiah 43

Wisdom Goes

The leaders make their fall complete.  They come to Jeremiah and accuse him of lying.  Oh, how the mighty have fallen!  Only a few days ago they had promised to listen to Jeremiah for good or for bad.  When they didn’t hear what they wanted, they accuse him of lying.

Remember the human perception of truth?  We tend to believe that which we desire to believe because it supports our own perception.  It is easy to think the earth is at the center of the universe because we see the sun, moon, and stars revolving around our horizon.  So we struggle believing that it is the earth that is moving around the sun.  Our perception – rather, our interpretation of our perception – always clouds our ability to receive truth.

Johanan and the other leaders are no different.  They believe the Babylonians are going to be harsh masters.  It doesn’t matter to them that God says the best course of action is to humble themselves.  They are predisposed to believing the Babylonians are not the best choice.

Here’s the really tragic part.  Looking back through history, we know the Babylonians were the right choice.  Nebuchadnezzar had a certain level of respect for the Hebrew people and especially God.  We know that when the Persians come onto the scene things dramatically improve.  God did know what he was talking about.

Looking back through time, we know that to be true.  Looking forward through time would have necessitated faith.  That is the one thing that we really do not see here in the Hebrew leaders.  {Surprise, surprise, surprise.}  There is no faith present.  They cannot see through the eyes through which Jeremiah sees.  Their minds are made up, just like Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah before them.  Leadership defined their culture; they are demonstrating that they are a product of that culture.

The Stones

The Lord tells Jeremiah to take stones and place them at the gate of a governmental building on the border of northern Egypt.  These stones would mark the place that Nebuchadnezzar would establish his throne.  God’s message to the Hebrew people is clear.  If they thought they were escaping Nebuchadnezzar’s influence, they would once more live under the terror that his army would bring.

I can only imagine how demoralizing this message must have been.  Imagine already living through the despicable nature of siege warfare.  Now you hear someone saying to get ready and do it all over again.  I think that message would have been enough to convince me to turn around and march right back into Nebuchadnezzar’s hands.  Better to surrender with God’s protection than be forced to live under a second siege under God’s wrath!

So much for the wisdom that, “It is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,” right?  You would think that these people would have heard that message and realized that if God spoke rightly through Jeremiah once that God would do it again.  They should have responded.  They should have recognized truth.  But they didn’t.  Their hearts remained hard.  The threat was distant and they felt safe in their own schemes.

Just as a historical note, we don’t have any historical confirmation of Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest into Egypt.  We do have an artifact that hints to Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Egypt as occurring in 568-567 BC.  This artifact would generally agree with the prophecy of Ezekiel 29:19 which was given in 571 BC.

Judgment Against Egypt

I have to wonder something here.  Does God bring judgment upon Egypt because of the disobedience of the Hebrew people?  In other words, had Johanan and the other leaders obeyed the Lord’s word as spoken through Jeremiah, would the Lord have brought the Babylonians against Egypt?

We’ll never know the answer to that question.  But it should make us stop today and ponder the messiness of our sin.  When we sin, we don’t just impact ourselves.  We impact other people around us.  We impact innocent people – well, people who are innocent of our sin.

The other angle to this is if God was going to bring Babylon against Egypt anyway.  I personally believe this to be true.  In this case, how much does our sin put us in harm’s way of God dealing with other people’s sin?  Johanan’s decision to take the Hebrew people to Egypt only places them in the direct line of fire that God has trained upon Egypt! 

When we abide in the Lord, we are kept safe from His judgment.  But when we sin, we open ourselves up to all kinds of judgment. 

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