August 23 2001
"With my great power and outstretched arm I made
the earth and its people and the animals that are on it,
and I give it to anyone I please. "
Jeremiah 25: 5
"But if any nation will bow its neck under the yoke of the
King of Babylon and serve him, I will let that nation remain
in its own land to till it and to live there, declares the Lord"
Jeremiah 27:11
Sometimes the things that God asks us to do or leads us to do make no 'logical' sense to us. I can only imagine the confusion that people felt... Why would God ask us his people, his treasured possession to bow under the yoke of Babylon? Why would God allow another nation to have power and control over us? I try to 'understand' all that God directs me to do before I do it but many of those things are beyond my comprehension. This chapter in Jeremiah helps me see that God often directs us to hard things that are simple... I only need to choose to obey. That is hard because I can't see how following that direction can be best for me... I can only imagine disaster. As God has directed me through resolving issues in my life he's directed me to do things at different times from writing and reading a journal, sharing that with key people in my life, confronting some of the people who have hurt me. In almost all of those situations I couldn't imagine how any of those were best for me and everything in me wanted to resist. The actions were hard but simple.. I really only needed to choose to follow the direction God was pointing me. In the end I saw how each of those actions helped me. God is faithful to his promises. What he may be doing in a given situation is beyond my comprehension most of the time but if I trust and follow eventually I start to see what he is working out. What was God working out for his people in Jer 27.. I don't know all of it... I know despite the fact that it was a harsh situation that was the only way to keep the nation alive so that when they were freed from captivity there was still a remnant that could go back to Jerusalem to rebuild and restore worship the way God intended. He also used Babylon to keep the articles of the temple safe so that when they rebuilt the temple structure they had many of the temple articles (promise: Jer 27:22, articles taken: 2 Kings 25:13, articles returned: Ezra 7:19). This teaches me to be humble before God and to trust his leading no matter what it may be.