AP

Jeremiah 38:17-18  Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, “This is what the LORD God Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘If you surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, your life will be spared and this city will not be burned down; you and your family will live.  But if you will not surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, this city will be given into the hands of the Babylonians and they will burn it down; you yourself will not escape from them.’”

I have struggled for a couple of hours trying to fathom what is going on in this chapter, and the commentaries are not very helpful.  Even Matthew Henry, whom I usually find insightlu, left me identifying with the satirist, Edward Young: “Commentators each dark passage shun, and hold their farthing candle to the sun.”  But I did watch a devotional originating from Sharon Reformed Presbyterian Church, in Iowa, USA, that suggested a helpful approach!

There is so much intrigue going on between King Zedekiah in early sixth century BC Jerusalem and the faithful prophet, Jeremiah, that details of their interaction are best understood in their wider Salvation History context.  Zedekiah is a weak, irresolute King who is torn between popular opinion, saving his own credibility, and the totally counter-cultural advice the LORD is giving him through Jeremiah.  

For the Prophet, on the other hand, obedience to the LORD’s direction is paramount, even at the cost of his own acceptibility and safety.  But this truth-speaking mouthpiece of the LORD is still concerned not to make things harder for the king if at all possible (eg, he is prepared to tell a lie for the king to this end – verses 24-27)!  If Zedekiah had been more attentive to his knowledge of Hebrew, he would have remembered that his own name meant ‘The LORD is Righteous’, and Jeremiah’s name meant ‘The One Whom The LORD has Appointed’.

The point that the Sharon RPC devotional makes is that all this shows the desperate need for a truthful, resolute king who would be fully obedient to his Father’s will, even if this would be 180 degrees counter-cultural and cost him his own life through unimaginably excruciating pain on a cruel cross.  Thanks be to God that we live at a time when we see all this fulfilled and worked out, exactly in accordance with God’s Eternal Plan of Salvation, in King Jesus.

Are we prepared to put up with ridicule, and being considered fools in the eyes of the Atheistic Humanism that is considered the accepted norm in our contemporary society, in order that people might surrender whole-heartedly to God’s Plan – the way of the Cross – just as Zedekiah was told to appear weak and to surrender to Nebuchadnezzar and go to Babylon.

The Apostle Paul leaves us in no doubt: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’”, and “we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-19, 23-25)  “Then learn to scorn the praise of men, and learn to lose with God; for Jesus won the world through shame and calls you to his road.” (Frederick Faber)

– Bruce Christian