In Jeremiah 35 we have another object lesson. Jeremiah gets a word from the Lord. He tells him to go to the house of the Rechabites and invite them into the chamber of the temple of the Lord and offer them to drink wine. Jeremiah does exactly what the Lord says and he set jars filled with wine and some cups before the sons of the house or the Rechabites and said to them, “drink wine.”

Jeremiah 35:6-10  But they replied, “We do not drink wine, for Jonadab, son of our ancestor Rechab, commanded, ‘You and your descendants must never drink wine. ⁷ You must not build a house or sow seed or plant a vineyard. Those things are not for you. Rather, you must live in tents your whole life, so you may live a long time on the soil where you stay as a resident alien.’ ⁸ We have obeyed Jonadab, son of our ancestor Rechab, in all he commanded us. So we haven’t drunk wine our whole life—we, our wives, our sons, and our daughters. ⁹ We also have not built houses to live in and do not have vineyard, field, or seed. ¹⁰ But we have lived in tents and have obeyed and done everything our ancestor Jonadab commanded us.

 It seems that the Lord is trying to get across to these Israelites and Judean’s that they do not listen.  The Lord used an entire group of people who have lived among them, to show as an example that they will follow and obey their ancestors for generations but those who God calls his own people do not obey him and do not follow him. 

What does it mean to be called Christian? Do we follow after Jesus and keep His words or do we just call ourselves Christians and do whatever we want like these people in the book of Jeremiah.

In Jeremiah 36, the Lord tells Jeremiah to take a scroll and write on it all the words that I’ve spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah, and all the nations from the time I first spoke to you. The Lord says, “perhaps when they hear this and about the disaster that is coming that they will turn from their evil ways and I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. So Jeremiah calls Baruch and he tells him all the words to put in a scroll. Jeremiah is restricted from going into the temple because nobody wants to hear him, so he sends Baruch to go and speak all the words of the scroll.  When he reads it there are 3 men there who hear it and they decided that the King needs to hear these words but they know how risky this is so they say to Baruch and Jeremiah to go hide. They take the scroll and go in to the King and as they read all that the sroll says the King cuts and burns the scroll piece by piece as it’s read as if it does not matter.  The Lord again comes to Jeremiah and says to write again all the original words that were on the original scroll that king Jehoiakim had burned.

Jeremiah 36:29-31 You are to proclaim concerning King Jehoiakim of Judah, ‘This is what the Lord says: You have burned the scroll, asking, “Why have you written on it that the king of Babylon will certainly come and destroy this land and cause it to be without people or animals?” ³⁰ Therefore, this is what the Lord says concerning King Jehoiakim of Judah: He will have no one to sit on David’s throne, and his corpse will be thrown out to be exposed to the heat of day and the frost of night. ³¹ I will punish him, his descendants, and his officers for their iniquity. I will bring on them, on the residents of Jerusalem, and on the people of Judah all the disaster, which I warned them about but they did not listen.’”

How dangerous is it to do your own thing and to not listen to the Lord? God gives His word for our good and to prosper us. Ignoring it is a detriment to us. How can we be better at listening to what the Lord has to say to us? What is one step we can take to make God’s words important to us?

Thanks for Listening,

Starla