Jeremiah 28:1-29:32
1 Timothy 1:1-20
Psalm 86:1-17
Proverbs 25:17
Interesting: the prosperity gospel wasn't a 20th century invention after all, was it? In today's OT reading we see two people - Hananiah and Shemaiah - who preach what the people want to hear: that, without any action on their part, the time of the Babylonian captivity is coming to an end. It confirmed what people wanted to hear, and distracted them from the sins they'd committed against God, which had led to their captivity in the first place, and for which they were being called to repent.
Contrast them with Jeremiah who, having received a prophecy from God diametrically opposite to what the Israelites wanted to hear, nonetheless went out and preached it fervently. He told them to get comfortable with their captivity, because they were going to have to wait seventy years before God returned them home. Seventy years. Not the two Hananiah was prophesying. Seventy.
What to take away? A few things, perhaps:
- First, we should be focused on what God wants for us, not what we want from God. Because, like it or not, it is His will - not ours - that will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
- Second, what he wants might not be pleasant. Seventy years in captivity, for example.
- Third, His plans have purpose, a purpose built upon His love for us. The call to Israel was to repent, was to return to Him.
- And lastly, in the midst of any hardship - even seventy years' worth - we will find God if we seek Him. And when we find Him and get to know Him, when intimacy conforms our hearts to His, then He is free to give us our hearts' desires. Because that is what He wants for us as well.
Father, for so many reasons past, and so many more to come, there is occasion for tremendous despair, and tremendous temptation to seek the comfort of messages we want to hear. Protect us from false prophets, give us a ravaging hunger to get to know You, and the desire to seek and obey Your will and word.
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