A futile hope

Zedekiah is kind of a difficult guy to figure out.  Here is the son of the last good king of Judah, Josiah.  So he had an example of what a good king was. 

He also saw how two of his brothers (Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim) and his nephew (Jehoiachin) had failed miserably by going their own way. 

Yet, he insisted on following in their footsteps, rather than his father’s.

To some degree he seemed to have some respect for Jeremiah.  He certainly consulted him often enough. 

Yet when his officials got tired of Jeremiah’s prophesies against Jerusalem, Zedekiah allowed them to falsely accuse him of deserting to the Babylonians, to beat him, and throw him into prison. 

Later they convinced Zedekiah to put Jeremiah into  a cistern to die. 

Only by the actions of one brave man confronting Zedekiah about this was Jeremiah rescued from the cistern, and returned to the courtyard of the guard where he was held prisoner.

But the question was, why consult Jeremiah at all?  He never listened to anything Jeremiah said. 

As Jeremiah 37:2 says,

Neither [Zedekiah] nor his attendants nor the people of the land paid any attention to the words the Lord had spoken through Jeremiah the prophet.

The only thing I can think of is that he was vainly hoping that somehow God would change his mind.  That even if he continued living his own way, God would save him anyway, and just let him live his own life in peace.

But it was a futile hope. 

God does indeed sometimes change his mind concerning judgment.  But as Jeremiah 18 says, it’s predicated on one thing:  repentance.  And that’s something that Zedekiah never did.

Instead, he made excuses for why he wouldn’t obey.  When Jeremiah urged him to surrender to the Babylonians, he replied,

I am afraid of the Jews who have gone over to the Babylonians, for the Babylonians may hand me over to them and they will mistreat me.  (Jeremiah 38:19)

And when Jeremiah tried to convince him that was not so, Zedekiah refused to listen.

How about you?  Are you clinging to your sins, hoping that things will somehow turn out for the good? 

Are you insistent on living your own way, just hoping that God will show mercy and not bring judgment for it?

That’s a futile hope.  If we hold on to our sins, if we insist living our own way, judgment will eventually come.  God will not change his mind if we don’t repent.

If however we repent, God will forgive and he will restore us. 

I’m not saying that there will not be any consequences here on this earth for our actions.  We do reap what we sow. 

But when we repent, God will forgive us.  And by repenting, we allow God to start turning our lives around for the good.

What will you do?  Will you hold on to a futile hope?  Or will you seek the hope that comes from repentance?