“Now I will give all your countries into the hand of my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; I will make even the wild animals subject to him. All nations will serve him and his son and his grandson until the time for his lands comes; then many nations and great kings will subjugate him.”
When you watch the news, you have to be careful. Ever since CNN became a 24-hour news station in the 80s, news has become the late-night sitcom for most Americans. Just like sitcoms have to come up with content every week to keep the viewers watching, the news has done the same thing. Who and what channel do you watch? Fox, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, podcasts, and the list goes on. With every story put out there in today’s world of news, we have an “opinion piece” that has masqueraded itself as news, and we, the viewers, have to decide which ones we choose to listen to as real news and which ones are, well, just opinions.
Israel did not have a 24-hour news station to tune into, nor did any of the Israelites have to choose what news to believe. The common news of the day came from the prophets. For Israel, the government was their belief system. In America, our founding fathers made it clear that the government should not trample upon religion or any belief system. It has been coined “separation of church and state.” They were smart enough to use the system from the Bible without the tyranny we read about under the religious establishment of Israel. They obviously read the Bible and saw how that worked out.
God made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob moved his family to Egypt, where they grew as a nation, and because of God’s hand, they became a large group of people. This same group of people was so numerous and of one origin that the Pharaoh of Egypt saw fit to enslave them because he feared them due to their numbers. You can read about this in Exodus.
Years went by, and they were set free from slavery, and God gave them the first-ever laws to govern by. They conquered the promised land, and Israel became a nation with borders. Fast forward to Jeremiah. Many kings had not followed the Lord. In fact, most of them did evil in the sight of the Lord. During this time, they would surround themselves with their own advisors, prophets of God. Some were actual prophets from God; others were puppets for the state, telling the kings what they needed to hear, basically lies meant only to pacify fear and not speak the actual words from God.
So here we sit with a group of people who don’t know who to listen to: the prophets of God or the prophets of the king. On one side, you have the crowd saying it is all good, God is on our side, and Babylon will not conquer you. On the other side, you have the smaller group of prophets saying something very different. They are telling the nation to serve Babylon, and you will live. Fox or CNN? ABC or MSNBC? Podcast or Facebook? Instagram or Truth Social? So, who and what is the right thing to listen to? I can just see the pragmatic Israeli family back then asking the same questions. Is Jeremiah right, or are the king’s prophets right? No one likes Jeremiah; he speaks bad things all the time; he is not fun to listen to. While the prophets of the king speak good things for Israel, half of Israel has already been exiled to Babylon. Jeremiah says all the other prophets speak lies. Do they, or is Jeremiah in it for himself and just hates the establishment?
How do we sort all this out? Thankfully, today, we have the Bible, and in it, we have the benefit of reading and studying all the flaws and failures of God’s people, as well as the times they made the right decisions. Jesus came and fulfilled the law and made a new covenant with us through His work on the cross to bring us the very Spirit of God to call our hearts home instead of the temple in Jerusalem. In the Bible, you will find the guidelines for so many of life’s issues.
Since God made man and gave His Son to die on the cross so we could be in heaven with Him, it is reasonable to think He knows how to govern His own creation. Just like the one who created the computer chip, He had to explain how it was supposed to work before people believed him. The Bible is God’s playbook for life on earth, and we get the Holy Spirit as a guide! Super cool! We don’t have to waver between opinion pieces to figure out who is right or what is misconstrued. We have the living Word of God as our guide.
If you are struggling to find order in all the mess of opinions and news, then you might want to actually study the Bible. In it, you will find the rulebook for life and the redemption plan for all of mankind. Govern the news and opinions of today under the guidance of the Bible and the Holy Spirit, and you won’t make the same mistake the Israelites did and choose unwisely.
Prayer: Father, I pray that we study Your word so much so that it becomes a part of our every minute thinking and doing. I pray that we understand the news of today through the Bible with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Let It Go 
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