Year 6, Day 103: Jeremiah 51

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Ambition

• Ambition: We all need a goal to which we can strive.  When our ambition comes from God, we find fulfillment in our obedience into that for which we have been equipped because our Out is in proper focus.  But when our ambition comes from ourselves, we find ourselves chasing after our own dreams and trying to find fulfillment in accomplishments of our own making.

Ambition can absolutely be a good thing.  We all need that drive to move forward, advance ourselves, and become better today than we were yesterday.  Ambition can absolutely be a necessary part of the human condition.

However, our ambition needs to come from God.  We cannot spend our time wanting what we want.  We cannot pursue our desire if that is all that it is.  We need to pause and humble ourselves before God and seek His will for our life.

I find this an interesting idea to focus on as we bring the book of Jeremiah to a close.  In its immediate context, we have been looking at the fall of Babylon.  They fall because they were too ambitiously human in their conquest of the nations.  In particular, they were too ambitious in the conquest of Jerusalem.  This ultimately turned on them as it became an assault upon God.

In this chapter we also hear about the restoration of the Hebrew people as the Babylonians are brought into judgment.  But let’s not forget why the Babylonians need to be restored.  This entire book is about the Hebrew people following their own desires of their own hearts and ignoring the call of God.  What we see in the Babylonians is reflective of what we’ve seen in the Hebrew people all along. 

Human beings have an issue with ambition.  The issue isn’t that we lack ambition.  The issue is that our ambition often leads us away from God.

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