Jeremiah 37

Poor Zedekiah. He was so deceived. He thought that making a military alliance with Pharaoh would help him. It didn’t. He thought if he asked Jeremiah to talk to God for him, he might get some good news. He didn’t. Somehow, in his mind, he thought there still might be a way out of his predicament. There wasn’t.

Yet he still couldn’t seem to listen to the Lord, which seems incredible, given the startling clarity of God’s message: “Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet: ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: Tell the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of me, “Pharaoh’s army, which has marched out to support you, will go back to its own land, to Egypt. Then the Babylonians will return and attack this city; they will capture it and burn it down.” ‘This is what the Lord says: Do not deceive yourselves, thinking, “The Babylonians will surely leave us.” They will not! Even if you were to defeat the entire Babylonian army that is attacking you and only wounded men were left in their tents, they would come out and burn this city down.’” (vs 6-10)

Here was God’s basic message to Zedekiah: You’re goin’ down. Even if all Babylon has left is a few wounded guys, they’re still gonna take you down. In short, God was doing everything He could to try to open Zedekiah’s ears, but it wasn’t working very well. Zedekiah was determined to be deceived… and he would be.

But God spoke the truth about deception to Zedekiah when He said, “Do not deceive yourself.” This is truly the only way we can be deceived—if we want to be. Ultimately, even Satan (the master of deception) cannot pull the wool over our eyes unless we help him pull it down. If we end up deceived, it’s because we have deceived ourselves.

Why does it work that way? Because God is the master of light, and as John said, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” (Jn 1:5) In our lives, there is no way that Satan’s darkness can overpower God’s light unless we have seen the light and decided that we prefer the darkness. We have the power to reject the light, but we don’t have the power to turn it off! God’s light will always come to us, and it is up to us to ultimately decide what we will do with it.

If you end up deceived, it is because you have deceived yourself. But God doesn’t want you to be deceived! He will use every conceivable method to reveal the truth to you, giving you every opportunity to escape deception. Learn from Zedekiah’s unfortunate example and make sure to take advantage of all those opportunities!