“But this command I gave them. Obey my voice and I will be your God and you shall be my people and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.”
– Jeremiah 7:23
Ah, I really want to hone in, focus on that last phrase right after God says to his people, “Obey my voice. I will be your God. You will be my people. Walk in all the way that I command you.” And then listen to this phrase, “that it may be well with you.” Isn’t this such a good word to you and to me today to know that the God of the universe wants you to be well, that God wants things to go good for you? He desires your good today. So when we come to God’s word, we can know that every command he gives us, that every way he calls us to walk with him is always, always, always 100% of the time for our good.
Jeremiah 7:23 Calls Us to Love God’s Word
Doesn’t that make you want to get up in the morning and read the word of God and meditate on it and memorize it and walk according to it all day long? Does this make you want to turn from sin, to turn from yourself, to turn from the ways of this world? Why? Because you want good because you want it to go well for you. Who of us doesn’t want it to go well for us today? Who of us gets up today or any day and says, “I really want it to go bad for me today”? Yeah, we choose sin. And that’s exactly where it leads.
Oh, God, reorient our minds, our hearts, our desires, our thoughts, our actions, our everything around your word, that it may go well for us. God, we know we trust that obedience to you will be glorifying to you. Help us to realize that it’ll also be good for us. Help us to realize today in a fresh way that that which is most glorifying to you is most good for us as well. That the way to experience our greatest good is in living for your highest glory. That the way to experience our greatest good is obeying your word, your commands. And as we obey to experience you as our God, us as your people, to walk with you in the ways you have commanded us, believing, trusting, knowing that it will go well for us. You have promised this.
Praying for the Betawi People of Indonesia
Even as we pray all the time on this podcast for unreached people groups and the spread of the gospel to unreached people groups, today for the Betawi people of Indonesia, almost 6 million of them, most of them having little to no knowledge of the gospel.
God, help us to believe that it will be good for the Betawi people, for us to pray and give and work and go, for the spread of the gospel to them and thousands of other people groups like them, that it’ll be good for them and that it will be good for us when we obey your command to make disciples of all the nations. That even commands which call us to live differently from this world, to sacrifice stuff and things in this world, that you command these things for our good.
Jeremiah 7:23 Helps Us to See God’s Commands
We think about you speaking Lord Jesus to the rich young ruler and how it says that you looked at him and loved him. And then you called him to sell all of his possessions and give them to the poor. That it would go well for him because you love him, that you were calling him to your good and he didn’t see it.
God help us to see it. Help us to see all your commands, even commands to sacrifice, to die to self, to go to hard places, to spread the gospel, to speak the gospel, God, that all these commands are for our good. All these commands to holiness, to abstain from this or that in the world are commands for our good. God, help us to believe. Jeremiah 7:23, and to live accordingly, to obey your commands for your glory and for our good. Oh God, we pray. 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.
