Jeremiah 44:16-17

What a terrible thing it is when we reject God! When we make up our own minds instead of listening to His voice. Israel had been warned many times before, by the prophets, not the least of which was Jeremiah, and yet they had never gone back on the terrible things they were doing: they never repented. And thus, God wrought destruction upon them. Now, the remnant few had decided to disobey God again by going to Egypt (see the last two chapters – 42-43). Jeremiah brings them a new prophecy, a new warning, to stop their idolatrous ways (again they were offering sacrifices to the ‘queen of heaven’ – probably an Egyptian goddess or some-such), a final chance. But they openly reject it saying:

‘"As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you! But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble.”’ (Jeremiah 44:16-17)

They make up their own minds, using their own twisted logic. They saw that times had been good while they worshipped other gods, and when Jeremiah had originally told them to stop, it had brought about destruction. So, why stop? Isn’t it obvious that it was because they stopped that hard times had come about? Well of course, this is all very twisted logic, because the Bible makes it clear that they didn’t in fact stop when God asked them to, which is the reason for the hardship they now endure. However, their minds were searching for some validation of their desires, and so it came to this shoddy reasoning. Jeremiah, in the rest of the chapter, points out their mistakes and declares that indeed, they will keep their vows to their false gods and thereby meet with destruction.

I suppose the lesson from this is: how often do we justify our own actions with twisted logic that the fallen world has given us? How much have our minds been tainted by the sin in the world? Of course, as Christians, we are not lost as these people in the story are. We have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, teaching us wisdom and discernment. However, our minds are still in the world, and the world system will taint us wherever possible. We need to regularly be in the Word so as to ‘renew’ our minds to be thinking in harmony with God. We also need to suppress and reject our own desires in favour of Gods.

Living life our own way has disastrous consequences, because, let’s face it, we’re not the smartest people!