Year 6, Day 86: Jeremiah 33

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.

Jeremiah 33 is a curious chapter.  God begins the chapter talking about how destruction will come to Jerusalem and how much the people are ignoring the inevitable future.  This is not a new message; we should not be surprised at this message.

However, look at how God talks about the people.  They are dismantling their own city to fight against the Babylonians!  Their own precious Jerusalem is being torn apart by the very people who love it.  The very people who want to resist and hold on so dearly to Jerusalem are the ones tearing it apart piece by piece!

I think that this has a lot to say about our human ambition.  How often do we get an idea in our mind and we pursue it at the expense of other things in our life?  How often do I let relationships slide when I pursue personal ambition?  How often do I sacrifice things that I really need for personal goals that in the end really aren’t as important as I make them out to be?  How often in my sin do I end up tearing down the very life that I have fought so hard to build in the first place?

This really is the sin of ambition.  The people in Jerusalem are tearing apart their own town because they are too proud and too stubborn to go into captivity as God desires for them.  The people in Jerusalem have the ambition to be free, but their freedom only leads to sin and distance from God.  Their ambition is pulling them away from the one thing that can bring them closer to God: humble submission through captivity.

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