Jeremiah 27 is set after the first deportation of captives to Babylon. Jeremiah pleads with Zedekiah and other leaders to submit to Nebuchadnezzar who is simply fulfilling a disciplinary role for his people. If they humbly submit to discipline, then they will be able to live in the land in relative peace as servants of the Babylonian empire. If they will not submit, they will make matters far worse than they needed to be. Still wearing the large wooden yoke (designed to be strapped to oxen to tow carts and ploughs) Jeremiah is then challenged by a false prophet, Hananiah. Following his prediction Hananiah symbolically removes Jeremiah’s yoke and breaks it. Jeremiah’s response is simple. He says, in effect, “Amen, let it be so, but if it doesn’t happen then we know who the true and false prophets are”. Jeremiah then predicts that Hananiah will die within a year as a sign to the people that his prophecy was false. This would still give them time to abandon any effort to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar and stop their situation becoming immeasurably worse. Surely enough Hananiah died. But did they cease to believe his lie and believe what Jeremiah was saying instead? No. The fact is, people often believe what they want to believe. Belief is not primarily a matter of intellectual conviction but a matter of the will. The leaders of Judah had their dreams and ambitions, and they would not be convinced that they were wrong whatever the evidence. Are you prepared to give your life dreams over to God? Are you prepared to have your ambitions challenged?
Give your dreams and ambitions over to God.
Read Jeremiah 27 and 28
