In Jeremiah 42, the people ask Jeremiah for counsel. They say, “May our petition come before you; pray to the Lord your God on our behalf, on behalf of this entire remnant (for few of us remain out of the many, as you can see with your own eyes), ³ that the Lord your God may tell us the way we should go and the thing we should do.”

and they add in verse 6: “We will certainly obey the Lord our God!”

So Jeremiah takes 10 days to seek what the Lord has to say and afterward he says, This is what the Lord says…..”‘If you will indeed stay in this land, then I will rebuild and not demolish you, and I will plant and not uproot you, because I relent concerning the disaster that I have brought on you. ¹¹ Don’t be afraid of the king of Babylon whom you now fear; don’t be afraid of him’—this is the Lord’s declaration—‘because I am with you to save you and rescue you from him. ¹² I will grant you compassion, and he will have compassion on you and allow you to return to your own soil.’

And the Lord adds this:

But if you say, ‘We will not stay in this land,’ in order to disobey the Lord your God,..

and if you say, ‘No, instead we’ll go to the land of Egypt …

(IF THE DECIDED TO GO TO A MORE COMFORTABLE PLACE INSTEAD FOLLOWING THE LORD)

… then the sword you fear will overtake you 

…the famine you are worried about will follow on your heels^[

… you will die there. 

I have warned you this day and you have gone astray at the cost of your lives.

Can you imagine the Lord speaking this to you and then disobeying anyways??

That is exactly what happens. In Jeremiah 43 it says, these arrogant men responded to Jeremiah, “You are speaking a lie! The Lord our God has not sent you to say, ‘You must not go to Egypt to stay there for a while!’ 

They failed to obey and they went on their way to Egypt, taking Jeremiah with them.

And here we get another object lessons from God.

Jeremiah 43: 8-13 ⁸ Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah at Tahpanhes: ⁹ “Pick up some large stones and set them in the mortar of the brick pavement that is at the opening of Pharaoh’s palace at Tahpanhes. Do this in the sight of the Judean men ¹⁰ and tell them, ‘This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: I will send for my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and I will place his throne on these stones that I have embedded, and he will pitch his pavilion over them. ¹¹ He will come and strike down the land of Egypt—those destined for death, to death; those destined for captivity, to captivity; and those destined for the sword, to the sword. ¹² I will kindle a fire in the temples of Egypt’s gods, and he will burn them and take them captive. He will clean the land of Egypt as a shepherd picks lice off his clothes, and he will leave there unscathed. ¹³ He will smash the sacred pillars of the sun temple in the land of Egypt and burn the temples of the Egyptian gods.’”

Not only did these arrogant men disobey to their detriment but they now had brought their curse of sin upon Egypt where they had run off too. Listen to the warning, if we choose to disobey, beaware that our actions never affects just us. They also effects those around us.

Thanks for Listening,

Starla