Zedekiah came to the throne in tough times. He was installed by Nebuchadnezzar in place of his nephew Jehoiachin and was never fully accepted as king by the people. He had to make a decision between submitting to Babylonian rule or making an alliance with his neighbours, something forbidden by the law of Moses. He was ambitious enough to go with the latter option. All the time, however, God was speaking to him, telling him, through Jeremiah, to submit to Babylon. Had he done so he would have avoided a terrible siege and the deaths of thousands of his people. But instead he imprisoned Jeremiah for opposing his policy. Jeremiah didn’t just have bad news about the inevitability of their defeat, he also had good news. God was going to restore his people so that one day they would again buy and sell land in their own country. To underline this God tells Jeremiah to make the symbolic gesture of buying a field (an otherwise foolish move when a foreign army was already taking over the country!). God has good news for you. He plans to restore you and lead you on to better things. His good news for you is the same as that proclaimed here by Jeremiah (vss.38-41). But your ability to hear and receive this from him depends on your willingness to hear and accept the bad news. The bad news is that our personal ambitions often take us away from the blessings of God. Sometimes we have to let go of something before we can receive something better.
Reflect on your ambitions. Is there something you need to let go of?
Read Jeremiah 32
