Jeremiah 38:17-23 – Be discerning.

Having had Zedekiah’s assurance he would be spared, Jeremiah then proceeded to give the king the message God had for him. Jeremiah 38:17-23 capture the message that was told the king. The message to him remained the same as he had already declared. Verses 17-18 were what Jeremiah said to the king. “Thus says the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘If you will indeed go out to the officers of the king of Babylon, then you will live, this city will not be burned with fire, and you and your household will survive. But if you will not go out to the officers of the king of Babylon, then this city will be given over to the hand of the Chaldeans; and they will burn it with fire, and you yourself will not escape from their hand.’” The word Jeremiah told the king were just as discouraging. Here’s where Jeremiah showed his consistency. He did not mince his words.

Verse 19 shows that Zedekiah had one concern, he dreaded just thinking about how the people of Judah who had surrendered to Babylon would react to him. We can tell that besides being afraid of being shamefully treated by the Babylonians, he also dreaded the thought of how those Judeans would abuse him. So he voiced his concern to Jeremiah. In verse 20, Jeremiah then told him that even then he should just surrender to the Babylonians. For even if he would not act accordingly, he would still be scorned by those Judeans, as well as the Babylonians. Jeremiah further told him that if he would not obey and surrender to Babylon, the women that were in the place of Judah would become victims of the soldier and officials and be ill-treated and even raped by them. And in their quandary, those victims would blame Zedekiah for putting them in their plights. They would bitterly blame him for believing the deceptive words of his counselors who were supposed to be his friends.

Zedekiah probably knew deep in his heart that Jeremiah would not lie to him. Yet his counselors had shared messages that were different and even contradictory to that of Jeremiah. Who should he believe? This is where having discernment would make the difference. Like Zedekiah, we also need discernment in our seeking to nurture godly living. Often time we are thrown into circumstances where we will need to discern the will of God. We live in an over-communicative world. Social media is full of messages from people claiming to be speaking for God. If we are undiscerning, we may be persuaded and hoodwinked. We need to know that spiritual truths are spiritually discerned. We not only need to know the Scriptures well, but we need also to have a quickened heart that will be able to identify God’s voice and respond to the leading of the Spirit of God. We all need to strengthen ourselves with God’s Word. Hebrews 5:14 tells us that “solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”