1-2 The Lord spoke through Jeremiah when King Zedekiah sent Pashhur son of Malkijah and Zephaniah son of Maaseiah, the priest, to speak with him. They begged Jeremiah, “Please speak to the Lord for us and ask him to help us. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon is attacking Judah. Perhaps the Lord will be gracious and do a mighty miracle as he has done in the past. Perhaps he will force Nebuchadnezzar to withdraw his armies.” 3-7  Jeremiah replied, “Go back to King Zedekiah and tell him, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I will make your weapons useless against the king of Babylon and the Babylonians who are outside your walls attacking you. In fact, I will bring your enemies right into the heart of this city. I myself will fight against you with a strong hand and a powerful arm, for I am very angry. You have made me furious! I will send a terrible plague upon this city, and both people and animals will die. And after all that, says the  Lord, I will hand over King Zedekiah, his staff, and everyone else in the city who survives the disease, war, and famine. I will hand them over to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and to their other enemies. He will slaughter them and show them no mercy, pity, or compassion.’

8-10 “Tell all the people, ‘This is what the Lord says: Take your choice of life or death!  Everyone who stays in Jerusalem will die from war, famine, or disease, but those who go out and surrender to the Babylonians will live. Their reward will be life! For I have decided to bring disaster and not good upon this city, says the Lord. It will be handed over to the king of Babylon, and he will reduce it to ashes.’ 11-14 “Say to the royal family of Judah, ‘Listen to this message from the Lord! This is what the Lord says to the dynasty of David: “‘Give justice each morning to the people you judge! Help those who have been robbed;  rescue them from their oppressors. Otherwise, my anger will burn like an unquenchable fire because of all your sins. I will personally fight against the people in Jerusalem, that mighty fortress - the people who boast, “No one can touch us here. No one can break in here.” And I myself will punish you for your sinfulness, says the Lord. I will light a fire in your forests that will burn up everything around you.’” Jeremiah 21:1-14 New Living Translation paraphrase. (English Standard Version link)

How situations can change! The previous chapter of this book told how Pashhur had ordered Jeremiah to be beaten and put in stocks because he was preaching God's judgement on the nation. In today's reading we see that the King was now begging Jeremiah to ask God to help him against the oncoming Babylonian army. What do you think the court officials would have thought of the answer Jeremiah gave to the King's request?

I suspect that many of them would have regarded Jeremiah as a traitor! Look what he said in vs 8-10. He was urging people to surrender and save their lives. And he tells the King that God was going to give Jerusalem up to destruction. What was the reason for that? (vs 11-14)

Jeremiah highlights the very things that the Royal family and the leaders of the city had not been doing! Instead, they had perverted justice and crushed the weak and helpless. People in power were oppressing the rest and were arrogant. They were certain that Jerusalem, built as it was upon a hill, could never be captured by an enemy army. Therefore they just ignored God's righteous laws. So Jeremiah was not being a traitor against the nation and the King; he was simply being true to God and faithfully giving the message God had commanded him to preach.

That is a challenge that Christians are likely to face more and more in the days we are living in. As Presidents, Prime Ministers and Governments promote laws that go against what God has taught, those who continue to uphold what the Bible teaches will be looked upon as enemies of the state. Let us take heart from the prophets of old like Jeremiah, and from the many Christians who stayed true to God's word through the ages when persecuted, and remain faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ in our morally crumbling generation. Like Jerusalem of old, the world today also faces a coming judgement of God. We need to warn people of this, as well as tell them how they can be saved through the message of the gospel.