Have you ever made a bargain with God? You’ve been in trouble or in some other hard place, and you said, “Lord, help me here and I will never sin again! I’ll devote my life to you!” And then the trouble passes, and you go right back to your old way. Yeah. Most of us probably have done that, and let me say that it’s not a good thing to do. We may forget, but God doesn’t. Thankfully, God understands our foolishness and we have forgiveness in Jesus, but making a promise to God is still a serious thing. My suggestion is that you take your promises very, very seriously.

In chapter 42 the people came to Jeremiah and said, “Please pray to the Lord your God for us. Pray that the Lord your God will show us what to do and where to go. Whether we like it or not, we will obey the Lord our God to whom we are sending you with our plea. For if we obey him, everything will turn out well for us.”

First off, did you notice that in the first sentence, they said, “pray to the Lord YOUR God”? Isn’t that interesting? These were supposed to be God’s chosen people, and yet they didn’t say “pray to the Lord OUR God.” When Jeremiah replied to them, he reminded them of this when he said, ”All right, I will pray to the Lord your God, as you have asked…”

Friends, either He is our God or He isn’t. Either we follow Him or we don’t. Sure, we are weak and we fail, but if we are His, when we fall we get back up and, with His help, we try again.

But that’s not what these people did in chapter 42. You heard what happened. God told them to stay there in Babylon and not go to Egypt. He told them that he would bless them if they stayed and bring disaster on them if they went.

They said, “Yeah. No. We’re going to Egypt. We don’t care what you tell us to do.”

So they told it like it was when they referred to God as “the Lord YOUR God”, didn’t they? They had no intention of listening if what He said was not what they wanted to hear.

And God was true to His Word. Disaster came to them.

Let’s not play games with God. Let’s understand that He truly does want to bless us, and let’s do our best to please Him so that He can.