Yesterday we looked at some verses in Jeremiah, particularly those that talk about settling down and getting to work even during the captivity.

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters…multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile… (Jeremiah 29.4 – 7, ESV)

Live life. This will be a 70-year captivity. Someone asked, what if COVID lasts for 70 years? Best we be about what we’re supposed to be doing within COVID constraints.

Now on to a conversation in Jeremiah I find fascinating, recorded in Jeremiah 42. The people who are left behind in Jerusalem after many have been taken captive to Babylon ask Jeremiah whether or not they should go to Egypt for safety. And they pledge to do as the Lord says:

Then all the people from the least to the greatest came near and said to Jeremiah the prophet, “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— that the LORD your God may show us the way we should go, and the thing that we should do.” Jeremiah the prophet said to them, “I have heard you. Behold, I will pray to the LORD your God according to your request, and whatever the LORD answers you I will tell you….Then they said to Jeremiah, “May the LORD be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act according to all the word with which the LORD your God sends you to us…We will obey the voice of the LORD our God…” (Jeremiah 42.1 – 6, ESV)

So Jeremiah prays, and the word of the Lord is clear, “Whatever you do, don’t go to Egypt.” (See Jeremiah 42.7 – 22.) And what’s the response of these people who said, “We will obey the voice of the LORD our God.”?

When Jeremiah finished speaking to all the people all these words of the LORD their God, with which the LORD their God had sent him to them, [they] said to Jeremiah, “You are telling a lie. The LORD our God did not send you to say, ‘Do not go to Egypt to live there…’ So …the commanders of the forces and all the people did not obey the voice of the LORD, to remain in the land of Judah. But [they] took all the remnant of Judah…also Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch the son of Neriah. And they came into the land of Egypt, for they did not obey the voice of the LORD. (Jeremiah 43.1 – 7, ESV, emphasis mine)

You can’t make this stuff up. June is studying discernment right now: how do we know what God’s will is? This passage teaches that, at a minimum, it doesn’t matter if we can discern God’s will if have no intention of obeying it.

If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. (John 17.7, ESV)