Impossible to Obey

Jeremiah 32:16-44

Obedience without questions is very common in the military for one is trained to follow orders.  But is it not a very different thing in your home with children, often we have been asked why, and what about in your business life?  How does that play out in your walk of obedience to Christ?

Remember Jeremiah is a believer of God, a prophet, so like you and I followers of God, he has come to this understanding found in Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”  So before Jeremiah ask the question, he does a review of God’s greatness to Israel and Judah, but it’s not to inform God, but to remind him of whose he is and to whom he is addressing the question.

The Question: “Yet you, O Lord GOD, have said to me, “Buy the field for money and get witnesses”—though the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans.”  Jeremiah in verses 26-35 is going back over the information God has given him, and the reason for what is going to take place, but to this point there is nothing more than God telling him to buy the field, and we find in Scripture that, “the just will walk by faith.”  Faith is confidence in the object of what one has put faith in, or as my dear friend Carroll Ray Jr. often said; “it is acting like Jesus tells the truth.”  So one’s actions are in agreement with the words of Jesus, or His commands, that is what Jeremiah is doing.

Often we make a poor decision especially in the area of investments, and it bugs us, and it seems it is also troubling Jeremiah over the purchase of the field God has instructed him to buy.  So in verses 36-44, the LORD is saying; Jeremiah it was a good use of your money, trust Me.  And then God shares six promises with him; #1, He is going to gather His people from the lands where they were driven.  # 2. They will live in safety under God’s protection, # 3. The LORD declares they will be my people and I will be their God.  # 4. He is going to give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me forever.  # 5. God promised an everlasting covenant with them, and # 6. And that they will be His delight and they will be planted in this land in faithfulness, so Jeremiah’s investment in doing what God has instructed is a sure thing. 

As a follower of Christ it is essential we grasp what Jesus is telling us in John 15:5, without abiding in Christ it is impossible to obey when His ways just do not add up to our understanding.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice