Sincerely Seeking God
When we seek to know God,
we should search for Him with all our hearts,
knowing that He will ultimately respond.
Here's Gene:
When you read the book of Jeremiah,
it's primarily judgment.
It's a word of warning, of condemnation.
It's not a positive message to Judah.
But yet he speaks of hope.
And we see it here in chapter 29--
a message of hope in the midst of
all of this doom.
For this is what the Lord says:
"When 70 years for Babylon are complete,
I will attend to you and will confirm
My promise concerning you
to restore you to this place. ...
And when he says "this place,"
he's talking about the land of Israel.
He's talking about Jerusalem and Judah.
...I will restore you to this place.
For I know the plans I have for you"-- ...
These are the words of the Lord
now to the people of Israel.
...this is the Lord's declaration--
"plans for your welfare,
not for disaster, to give you
a future and a hope.
You will call to Me and come and pray to Me,
and I will listen to you.
You will seek Me and find Me
when you search for Me with all your heart.
In other words, God is saying:
Yes, I'm going to judge you
because of your sin.
But I have a heart for you.
And when you come to Me
with a heart of repentance, sincerity, I'll listen.
And we see that happening.
Now here's the interesting thing.
It didn't necessarily happen
with a whole group of people.
It actually happened with spiritual leaders
within the setting--even in captivity,
such as Nehemiah.
And notice Nehemiah's prayer.
Now the little background here is
that he had received a report
that the walls of Jerusalem
had been broken down.
The gates had been burned with fire.
And those who were still in the
Jerusalem area--because there were some
who were not taken into captivity.
They were in desperate, desperate need.
And so Jeremiah, being cupbearer to the
King Artaxerxes there in Babylonian captivity,
was brokenhearted.
And notice what he did.
And I'm just going to read his prayer.
And notice how it relates to what
God said about hearing a
prayer of repentance.
When I heard these words,
I sat down and I wept.
I mourned for a number of days,
fasting and praying before the God of heaven.
I said Yahweh, the God of heaven,
the great [and] awe-inspiring God
who keeps His gracious covenant
with those who love Him
and keep[s] His commands,
let Your eyes be open and Your ears
be attentive to hear Your servant's prayer
that I now pray to you day and night
for Your servants, the Israelites.
I confess the sins we've committed against You.
Both I and my father's
house have sinned.
We have acted corruptly toward[s] You
and have not kept the commands,
statutes, and ordinances
You gave Your servant Moses.
Please remember what
You commanded Your servant Moses:
"If you are unfaithful,
I will scatter you among the peoples.
But if you return to Me
and carefully observe My commands,
even though your exiles
were banished to the ends of the earth,
I will gather them from there
and bring them to the place where
I chose to have My name dwell."
In other words, Nehemiah is illustrating
exactly what God said would happen.
If Israel humbled themselves,
bowed before the Lord, and sought the Lord
with all their hearts.
This is exactly what Nehemiah
was doing for the people of Israel.
Daniel did the same thing.
In chapter 9 of Daniel--and I'm not going
to read the whole of his prayer.
But here, basically is his prayer--
on his face before God.
And he's in captivity.
And notice Daniels prayer.
Daniel discovered this
by reading Jeremiah's prophecies.
It'd be seventy years
and it was coming to a conclusion:
Lord, hear!
Lord, forgive!
Lord, listen and act!
My God, for Your own sake,
do not delay, because Your city
and Your people are called by Your name.
The city is what? Jerusalem.
And so here we have illustrations
of men who were in captivity
but who had not bowed the knee to Baal.
And they were in this condition
because of the sins of their people.
But they didn't buy into that.
And while they were there,
they actually prayed for the people of Israel.
And that attitude of course, spread
throughout Judah as these people
began to pray for deliverance.
Here's an interesting statement
really from the New Testament.
And I couldn't help but think of
Jesus' statement on the Mount of Beatitudes
when He was teaching His disciples. He said:
"Keep asking...
And I've called this persistent prayer.
..."Keep asking, and it will be given to you.
Keep searching, and you will find.
Keep knocking, and the door
will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks receives,
and the one who searches finds,
and to the one who knocks,
the door will be opened."
Here we have a statement
in the context of grace and God's mercy
for deliverance.
Not just from persecution
but deliverance from judgment
because of sin.
If you call, if you ask, you will receive.
And an interesting question
for thought and discussion is:
Why do some people refuse to
seek God's help even though they are
experiencing difficult circumstances?
And I had to think about that.
Number one, I think is ignorance.
They don't know they have that freedom.
They need to be taught.
Another reason I think is embarrassment.
We're ashamed.
We look at our lives and we say:
You know, I'm not going to be
a Zedekiah in the midst of my sin--
come and ask God to deliver me.
And what we need to learn is
that there's no sin that God won't forgive.
We don't need to be embarrassed.
The embarrassment has brought us to repentance.
Therefore, we need to go to God,
regardless of our sin and our failure,
with a repentant heart.
And another reason I think that people
don't go to God and seek Him
is because of pride.
I don't need God.
I can dig my way out of this by myself.
And that of course is the ultimate in arrogance.
Let's remember this wonderful
Principle in the midst of all this
judgment as a result of sin:
When we seek to know God,
we should search for Him with all our hearts,
knowing that He will ultimately respond.