Jeremiah 38:15 Then Jeremiah said unto Zedekiah, If I declare it unto thee, wilt thou not surely put me to death? And if I give thee counsel, wilt thou not hearken unto me?
We Understand What We Want To
Jeremiah was a man who feared God. Jeremiah feared God more than he feared people. He obeyed God instead of cowering to the king. Because of Jeremiah’s obedience, Jeremiah understood a lot more than just about anyone else did. It wasn’t that he was smarter, but he was more willing to act on what he knew. Sometimes we don’t know something because we don’t want to. Sometimes, we don’t understand something because admitting that we do understand would cost us too much.
King Zedekiah, on the other hand, never seemed to get it. The reason he didn’t understand was not because he hadn’t heard, but because it cost him too much to admit that he understood.
For instance, in Jeremiah 38, a group of princes came to him and said, “Look, this guy Jeremiah is not patriotic. He’s telling us that judgment is coming from the Babylonians. He ought to be killed.” To which the king replied, “Hey, I’m just the king, I can’t tell you no. If you want to kill Jeremiah, then have at it.” He was afraid of what people thought.
Just after this, an Ethiopian eunuch came to him and said, “Hey, this is evil what these men have done. This isn’t right.” Zedekiah replied, “Boy, you’re right. Let’s let Jeremiah out of prison.” So he did wrong when it was easy, and he did right only when there was more pressure on him than if he did nothing.
Finally, he tells Jeremiah, “Jeremiah, I’ve got to hear from God. Now, don’t tell anyone what you’re doing. I’ll meet you at the third door of God’s house.” The third door was a kind of back entrance. You get the sense that this was a secret meeting. Then the king said to Jeremiah, “I will ask thee a thing; hide nothing from me.”(Those were ironic words coming from a king who was trying to hide everything!) The meeting itself was a secret because this king was more concerned about what people thought than what God knew. As a consequence, he never understood what God would have him to understand.
Zedekiah had it harder than he would have because he was more fearful of what people thought than what God knew. The lesson to be learned today is this: It is impossible for a person worried over the favor of men to understand the words of God. When we want to understand, acknowledge our understanding, and are determined to act upon it, we’ll know more than we could have on our own, and we’ll do more than we could by our own strength.