A brief overview for Sunday school teachers and Bible study leaders, of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Jeremiah 42:71-22 for Sunday, August 13, 2023, with the title, “Trustworthy.” A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRO: Can you share a time in your life when you were seeking some direction from God? 

(Cheryl & I after seminary, waiting for God’s direction for our first church; also when I had been sick for a year in our church in Louisiana; what should I do: stay on/step down? It was a difficult time. Also after I had recuperated from my illness in 2014, as we were looking for God’s direction for a church to get back into ministry.

You/likely many others in your group can share a time when you were seeking God’s direction. (Maybe it’s NOW!)

??? Then you might also discuss: what did you DO to seek God during those times???
(Read the Bible to see if God had a word for you; PRAY; ask others to pray to God for you; cleanse your life of any sin; ask someone’s advice on what to do … etc.) 

Then say: Today in Jeremiah 42 we are going to look at a group of people in Jerusalem who were looking for some direction from God too. We’ll see what they did — and how they responded when they got God’s direction!

CONTEXT:

Babylon has captured Jerusalem, and taken many of the best people into captivity, and left some of the poorest there. They told Jeremiah he could either stay there or go to Babylon (40:5). Jeremiah went back to Jerusalem, to Gedaliah the new governor. But Gedaliah is murdered, and although the one who killed him is run off, Johanan and some other leaders gather everyone together to flee to Egypt, because they are afraid that the King of Babylon will come and punish them all. This brings us to Chapter 42, where I am going to start this week’s lesson. I would expand the scope of this lesson, to include the first part of Chapter 42, and the first verses of Chapter 43 as well, because it’s really all an integral part of the same story.

OUTLINE

I. The people’s Request for God’s direction (42:1-6)

II. God’s Answer to the people’s request (42:7-22)

III. The people’s foolish Response (43:1-7)

I. The People’s Request for God’s Direction

42:1 says “Johanan, another man named Jezaniah, “and all the people approached”

(:2) “and said to Jeremiah the prophet, ‘Please let our petition come before you, and pray for us to the LORD your God, that is for all this remnant …

(:3) that the LORD your God may tell us the way in which we should walk and the thing that we should do.”

So basically they’re saying: Jeremiah, ask God to give us some direction: should we indeed go to Egypt like we are planning, or not? Just like we talked about, we’ve all been in this kind of situation, where we were seeking direction from God. We’ve all had people pray for us, like they were asking Jeremiah to do for them here. 

(Now this is a little bit of a “side point,” but I think it’s important to point out: it was a little different for them in those days, because they felt like they had to go to “the man of God,” the prophet Jeremiah, to get God’s direction for them — they didn’t feel like they could do it for themselves. WE as Christians today, on the other hand, don’t have to go to a “priest” or pastor or anyone else to seek God for us. We can go directly ourselves. This is called the doctrine of “the priesthood of the believer”: that every believer in Christ is a “priest.” Revelation 1:6 & 5:10 both say that He has made us “a kingdom of priests” to God.  We don’t NEED a priest; we ARE a priest! We can go to God directly ourselves, to seek His leadership and direction. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to get someone else to pray for you; but you don’t need to feel like you need to go through anyone else to get to God. You don’t need a priest; you ARE a priest!)

ALSO: there’s a “little thing” in :2 and :3 that may be significant. When they came to Jeremiah who did they ask him to pray to?
“The LORD YOUR GOD.” “YOUR” God! As if He wasn’t “their” God! It may be a little thing; a semantic difference. But sometimes these “little things” are revealing; that they didn’t really have that relationship with God for themselves. Make sure that YOU do — if someone in your group needs to hear the gospel today, you might share it here. 

So Jeremiah says in :4 “I have heard you. Behold I am going to pray to the LORD your God” (notice he turns it back on them here: he calls God, “the LORD YOUR God’! I.e., He should be YOUR God too, not just mine!).

And he says “and I will tell you the whole message which the LORD will answer you. I will not keep back a word from you.”

They said in :5, “May the LORD be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act in accordance with the whole message with which the LORD your God will send you to us.”

:6 = “Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we will listen ….”

??? SO what are they saying??? 

(Whatever God says to you, we are going to do it!)

THIS is the attitude that we SHOULD have. In John 2, at the wedding at Cana, Jesus’ mother Mary told the servants who were there: “Whatever He says to you, do it.” THAT should be the commitment of each of us: whatever God says, that is what we are going to do.  But IS it what we do? And is it what THEY did? That is what we will see unfold here in these next verses …

II.  God’s Answer

:7 “Now at the end of ten days, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah.”

??? What do you see that is significant in this verse???

(1. Jeremiah took seriously that he really needed to seek what GOD had to say. He waited for “the word of the LORD,” not just his own opinion.

2. This took TIME. He didn’t just run home and pray real quick and come back. He took TIME: ten days, to really get God’s word.  This is a challenge to some of us. We want God’s direction really quick. We live in an age on “instant communication” and we are used to a quick phone call, a fast internet search, etc., but hearing from God can take time. He may want us to take some time to seek Him.  We need to be willing to do that. We should adopt the commitment of the Psalmist in Psalm 130:5, “I wait for the LORD, my soul does wait.”  There’s a related verse in Psalm 123:2, “Our eyes look to the LORD our God UNTIL He is gracious to us.” How long was he committed to look to God? UNTIL He is gracious; however long that takes. We need to be willing to wait for God. I think this may be one of the biggest shortcomings of Christians in this “microwave” generation: we don’t really “wait for the Lord.” Jeremiah did here.)

:8 then says he called Johanan and all the other people back, and in :9 he says “Thus says YHWH the God of Israel …

And he gives God’s answer in :10: “If you will indeed stay in the land, then I will build you up and not tear you down … (he says at the end of the verse) “for I will relent concerning the calamity that I have inflicted on you. (:11) Do not be afraid of the King of Babylon, whom you are now fearing; do not be afraid of him,’ declares the LORD, ‘for I am with you to save you and deliver you from his hand.’”

??? SO what was God’s answer???

(Stay in the land, and He will bless them. Don’t be afraid of the King of Babylon. They were afraid of the King of Babylon because he had left Gedaliah as the governor, and he had been murdered, so they thought they he might punish THEM for it — even though they weren’t the ones who did it. That was the basis for their fears. But God says, don’t worry about that; it won’t happen. Stay here and be blessed; that was His word. 

But that wasn’t ALL of His word. He then said in :13, “But if you are going to say, ‘We will not stay in this land,’ so as not to listen to the voice of the LORD your God, (:14) saying, ‘No, but we will go to the land of Egypt, where we will not see war or hear the sound of a trumpet or hunger for bread, and we will stay there;”

… (:16) “then the sword, which you are afraid of, will overtake you there in the land of Egypt; and the famine about which you are anxious, will follow closely after you in Egypt and you will die there.’”

So God says: you are afraid of some things. You’re afraid if you stay here in the land, that the King of Babylon will come against you and there will be more war. You are afraid that with the land all devastated, that you won’t be able to get enough food, and that you will starve. 

But God says, NO! What you are afraid of, is what will happen if you DON’T obey Me! If you don’t obey Me, and go on to Egypt, you will die by the sword THERE. You will have famine THERE. 

It was very ironic. The thing they are afraid would happen if they OBEY God, would actually happen if they DISOBEY God and did what they are thinking instead!

And that actually DID happen! It turned out that after they all fled to Egypt, King Nebuchadnezzar ended up invading Egypt, and putting the land to the sword, so the very war and famine they were afraid of, if they obeyed God, is what they got when they disobeyed God! 

And that’s a good lesson for us today. All the things we are afraid that will happen if we obey God, will actually often happen if we do NOT obey Him! For example:

— We think: if I tithe, I won’t have enough money. I can’t possibly give 10% of my income to God. But actually the reverse is true: if you tithe, God will provide and you will be ok. But if you do NOT tithe, then the thing you are worried about, will happen: you will not have enough. But it won’t happen if you OBEY God, but because you DISOBEY Him.

— 

III. The Foolish Response

??? Have you/someone you know ever asked for advice — but already had their mind made up as to what they wanted to do???

(EX:  I did that once with a former pastor I had when we were in college. I called him up one day and told him a situation I was in, and asked what he would do. He said, “I think I would do … X”. I said, “Yeah, but I don’t want to do that ….”. I already had my mind made up. 

??? Anyone else ever do that??? 

(Share examples …)

This is what Johanan and the others did here. 

43:1 says: “As soon as Jeremiah who the LORD their God had sent had finished telling all the people all the words of the LORD their God — that is, all these words — (:2) Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, and Johanan the son of Kareah, and all the arrogant men said to Jeremiah, ‘You are telling a lie! The LORD our God has NOT sent you to say, “You are not to enter Egypt to reside there (:3) but Baruch the son of Neriah is inciting you against us to give us over into the hand of the Chaldeans, so they will put us to death or exile us to Babylon.” 

So what was their response? They didn’t like what Jeremiah said. They didn’t like God’s answer. They said, “You are telling a lie!” They thought that Baruch (who was Jeremiah’s scribe) was influencing him against them, to turn them over to the Babylonians. They didn’t believe this was God’s word. And they would NOT end up doing what they had promised they would do: obey God whatever He said!

That’s what THEY did — but let’s apply this to US. We still do the same kind of thing today, don’t we? We know what God wants us to do, but we don’t do it. 

??? Why do you think we so often do not do what God shows us to do??? 

(— One answer is PRIDE/arrogance. NOTICE: ??? What does :2 say about the men who responded this way to Jeremiah??? How does it describe them? 

(“Arrogant” men!  The Hebrew word (“zed”) means “insolent, arrogant, presumptuous, proud.”  This is a key to their response. They were proud, arrogant. 

Which makes sense: what is it but PRIDE, when they thought they knew better than God?! 

— Because it seems HARD! It seems like God’s way is often not the easy way. BUT we need to learn that in the end, it is really harder NOT to do what God says, even if it seems hard at first.

     A scriptural example of a person who thought it was too hard to do what the Lord asked, is the Rich Young Ruler. He came to Jesus and asked what he needed to do to have eternal life, but when Jesus told him, he went away sorrowful. He came to ask Jesus what to do — but when He told him, he didn’t like it, and went on his way. To him, it sounded too hard to do what Jesus said: to sell his possessions and give to the poor, and come follow Him. It sounded too hard: but if he never changed his mind, it ended up being a lot harder for him in the end! 

And it’s the same way for us, too: sometimes what God asks us to do sounds hard, but it’s actually harder NOT to do what He asks:

— it sounds hard to get up in the morning and read your Bible and pray before you leave the house. But it’s actually harder NOT to do it, and go through a day without God’s help! 

— it sounds hard to humble yourself and ask forgiveness — but it’s actually harder to live with a broken relationship that is always weighing down your conscience.

And so on … it’s like we talked about a bit ago: the things we are afraid of, if we obey God, are often the very things we get if we disobey Him! Don’t fail to obey God because it sounds too hard. It is actually much harder NOT to obey Him! 

— Because we have already made up our mind what we think we should do. +x Proverbs 14:12 “there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end of that way is death.” Just like me with my former pastor; I had already made up my mind what I wanted to do. That’s what Johanan and the others did here: they had already made up their mind what they wanted to do: they were going to go to Egypt. They really weren’t “asking” God; they really just wanted Jeremiah to tell them what they wanted to hear. That’s what most people want. But you can almost always count on it: if it’s the “easy way out,” or “what you want to hear,” that’s almost NEVER what God is going to tell you to do. The question is, is your mind open to what He’s going to tell you — or like these guys, have you really already made up your mind beforehand?

In April 1521, Ferdinand Magellan was riding high; he had made it all the way from Spain to the Philippines in his first-ever trip around the world. But he had gotten tangled up in a conflict between two Philippine tribes, and he decided to help one against the other. He was greatly outnumbered, but he had seen his European guns and armor dominate the natives in many other places, so he wanted to go in and teach them a lesson. He gathered his leaders together, and got their counsel. One said: we are greatly outnumbered; don’t do it! Another said, this has nothing to do with our real mission, to go around the world, don’t do it. No one was for it. But Magellan had made up his mind. With 49 men he attacked 1500 Philippine warriors, who just overwhelmed his little force, and they killed Magellan in the waters just offshore of the island.  He didn’t listen. He had already made up his mind. And it cost him, and many others, their lives.  

That’s how it was with Johanan and the others here. They rejected God’s advice, and did what they had already decided they wanted to do instead — and God said they would all die in Egypt as a result.

It may or may not cost us our lives if we disobey God — it might!—but at minimum we will create some great hardships for ourselves, our families, and others, if we don’t listen to what God has to say to us.  

I might close with Psalm 19:13, where David is asking God to keep him from a number of sins, and among them he prays: “Also keep back Your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not rule over me.” The word “presumptuous” there is the same Hebrew word used here of the “arrogant” men who rejected God’s word through Jeremiah. 

So David prays, “Lord, keep me from presumptuous sins.” Keep me from being arrogant, and rejecting Your word. That is a good prayer for ALL of us today, too! Lord, keep us back from presumptuous sins; help us to humbly receive what You have to tell us, and not think that we know better than You do! Help us to humbly listen to You, and DO what You show us to do!  

__________________________________________________________

— If you’ll type your email into the “Follow blog via email” blank on my blog home page, WordPress will automatically send you next week’s lesson and you won’t have to search for it.

— And if you write something in the Comments below, I’ll be sure to pray for your and your group by name this week.

Per my licensing agreement with Lifeway:

– These weekly lessons are based on content from Explore the Bible Adult Resources. The presentation is my own and has not been reviewed by Lifeway.

– Lifeway resources are available at: goExploretheBible.com  and: goexplorethebible.com/adults-training

– If you have questions about Explore the Bible resources you may send emails to explorethebible@lifeway.com