To whom shall I speak and give warning that they may hear, behold their ears are uncircumcised. They cannot listen. Behold, the word of the Lord is to them, an object of scorn. Take no pleasure in it.
– Jeremiah 6:10
So did you hear that last phrase? They take no pleasure in God’s Word. God’s Word has become to them an object of scorn. Something they despise, they don’t want it. They take no pleasure in it. And then Jeremiah 6:16, Thus says the Lord, stand by the roads and look and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is and walk in it and find rest for your souls. Oh, what imagery? Walk in this way according to the Word of God and you’ll find rest for your soul.
Jeremiah 6:10 reminds us God’s Word should be the source of our supreme pleasure.
Put these verses together. God’s Word is a source of pleasure that leads to rest for our souls. Lemme say that again. God’s Word is a source of pleasure that brings rest for our souls when we hear it and we walk in it. And so the question I want to ask you is, do you view God’s Word that way? Be honest. Think about your approach to God’s Word.
Do you view Bible reading, Bible study, meditation on the Bible, or memorization of the Bible as a source of pleasure that you can’t wait to do because you know that you’ll find rest for your soul in hearing and obeying God’s Word? Or does God’s Word feel more like something you should do that you’d feel bad if you don’t read? Almost like you need to check off that box in your life. But the reality is it’s not a source of pleasure that you run to for rest, for your soul.
And I’ll confess, there are times in my life when I wake up in the morning and I don’t go eagerly to time with God in his Word, with this sense of expectation and anticipation. And I should. I should every morning because I know this Word, God’s Word to me is a source of pleasure and delight and life, and I need rest for my soul in it.
Jeremiah 6:10 teaches us the right perspective toward the Word of God.
And so I just want to lead us to pray that God would give us a right perspective of his Word and that God would keep us from in any way viewing the Word as certainly an object of scorn or something we despise or even something we’re apathetic toward or complacent toward, that we would run to it for pleasure and that we would walk in it and find rest for our souls. God, may it be so, we pray. We praise you for your Word.
Lord, we praise you for your revelation of who you are, who we are, and how we can live. God, thank you for not leaving us in the dark. Thank you for speaking to us, revealing your glory and the satisfaction we can find in you alone.
And so God, we say yes. Sign us up for that pleasure. Sign us up for satisfaction in you, in your Word, and we pray that you change our hearts, that we might run each morning to your Word with anticipation and expectation and walk in it all day long and continually meditate on it all the way till we lay our head on our pillows at night. God, we pray for Psalm 1, meditation on your Word day and night to mark our lives because we take pleasure in it and because we know that it leads to rest for our souls.
Prayer for the Riau Malay People
God, thank you for this gift of your Word. Help us to spread this gift. God, as we pray today for the Riau Malay people of Indonesia on the island of Sumatra, 2 million of them, most of whom have never heard your Word, have never heard the good news of your love for them, have never found the pleasure, experienced the joy of relationship with you through faith in Jesus because they’ve never even heard the truth about Jesus. Please God, that they might find pleasure and rest eternally for their souls in your Word.
God, we pray for that and help us as your church to work to spread your Word to every people group in the world. Lord, please help us to steward your Word in our own lives and for the sake of others’ lives, especially those who don’t have access to your Word right now. God, we pray all this according to your word, which we find pleasure in, according to Jeremiah 6. In Jesus name, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
