Obey the Lord by doing what I tell you. Then . . . your life will be spared.
Jeremiah 38:20
In 1951, Joseph Stalin’s doctor advised him to reduce his workload in order to preserve his health. The ruler of the Soviet Union accused the physician of spying and had him arrested. The tyrant who had oppressed so many with lies couldn’t abide the truth, and—as he had done so many times—he removed the one who told him the facts. Truth won anyway. Stalin died in 1953.
The prophet Jeremiah, arrested for his dire prophecies and kept in chains (Jeremiah 38:1–6; 40:1), told the king of Judah exactly what would happen to Jerusalem. “Obey the Lord by doing what I tell you,” he said to King Zedekiah (38:20). Failure to surrender to the army surrounding the city would only make matters worse. “All your wives and children will be brought out to the Babylonians,” Jeremiah warned. “You yourself will not escape from their hands” (v. 23).
Zedekiah failed to act on that truth. Eventually the Babylonians caught the king, killed all his sons, and burned the city (ch. 39).
In a sense, every human being faces Zedekiah’s dilemma. We’re trapped inside the walls of our own lives of sin and poor choices. Often, we make things worse by avoiding those who tell us the truth about ourselves. All we need to do is surrender to the will of the One who said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
By Tim Gustafson
