Jeremiah 27:8-9 – Anticipating Distraction

8 And it shall be, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and which will not put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation I will punish,’ says the Lord, ‘with the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand. 9 Therefore do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your dreamers, your soothsayers, or your sorcerers, who speak to you, saying, “You shall not serve the king of Babylon.” Jeremiah 27:8-9, New King James Version

Refusing to let what he sees as his spiritual regression slide with the excuse that he hadn't gotten enough solitude, CS Lewis admits, "What we call HINDRANCES are really the raw material spiritual life."

Jeremiah 27:8-9 can be seen in that light. These verses can be foreboding. They can be an here-we-go-again as they lay out the same traps into which people in possession of God's Word from Jeremiah's day to the present have fallen. Or, they can be seen as an opportunity to develop discipline, deepen an affinity for His voice as we anticipate other distractions. Do not listen, God says through Jeremiah, and what He commands, He makes possible even for a people with the poorest of track records.

Spurgeon helps us with this by encouraging honesty about ultimate sources. He leads in his sermon "the Condescension of Christ," "Trace every stream to the fountain; and bless him who is the source, and the fountain of everything thou hast. Brethren, 'Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.'"

Knowing Whom we follow, Christian, Who is our true Living Water, and what He gave up, we won't as readily be drawn to the easy option. Christ didn't take it. We won't have our eye lured away by the world's shiny things.

Christ gave up splendor we can barely imagine to become poor for our sakes. Following after Him, we will have a healthy suspicion of the kingdoms of the world. Following after Him, we will have the converse, a certain hardy expectation that the hard way, the disciplining way, the reliance-on-the-Father way is the legacy of our new family in Christ, a precious inheritance in the opposite direction from the ease and opulence the world treasures.





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