Then Jeremiah said to Zedekiah, ‘This is what the LORD God Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “If you surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, your life will be spared and this city will not be burned down; you and your family will live. But if you will not surrender to the officers of the king of Babylon, this city will be given into the hands of the Babylonians and they will burn it down; you yourself will not escape from them.”’
Jerusalem, 6th century before Christ. A crisis was looming: the city was surrounded by the armies of Babylon. King Zedekiah sent for the prophet Jeremiah.
The prophet’s message was not what the king wanted to hear. God was saying, “Surrender, and you will be okay”. The prophet was repeating a message he’d ben bringing for some time now.
Preaching this had already landed Jeremiah in a great deal of trouble. How desperately unpatriotic he was! Where – we might say – was the Churchillian spirit of courage and resistance? Just surrender to the Babylonians? No wonder the king told the prophet, as the audience ended, not to repeat this to anyone.
And yet, tragically but inevitably, God’s prophet was proved right. The king failed to surrender; instead, he held out, and when the city wall was broken through by the enemy, he tried to escape, but was captured. His sons were killed before him and then his own eyes were put out.
The bigger picture of this grim true story is that God – called here the LORD God Almighty, the God of Israel – was bringing about His promised judgment of His people for their rebellion against him. Jerusalem was indeed sacked, and its people taken into exile. Yet, in his mercy, He provided a way out: surrender, and you’ll be safe.
But the king and his nobles refused to surrender to God’s terms; thus, they did not find the safe passage He had offered them. Their denial of the truth had a terrible result.
If you read Jeremiah, you’ll see that this offer of safe passage in the face of the coming judgment God sends is a prominent and repeated theme. And of course it remains God’s way of dealing with us today.
For each of us, too, the enemy is at – or approaching – the gates. Each of us eventually faces death, and after that (unless the Lord returns first), the judgment. But in His gospel the Lord offers us terms of surrender, and safe passage; indeed, more than that, a glorious, redeemed future.
But so often our approach is like Zedekiah’s! We are in denial about what’s coming. We don’t give real thought to what may happen next. We might ask a man of God to bring us a cheering message, but fail to accept the gospel.
And all the while, in His grace, God is offering us terms, now, before it’s too late. He gave His Son for us!
Learn from Zedekiah – please don’t make his mistake!
