BEING ONE WITH GOD TO RECEIVE THE WORD OF GOD
To take, receive, and keep the word of God, we must be absolutely one with God. We must trust in Him, rely on Him, and not have any opinion that comes out of ourselves. We should simply enjoy what God has done and what He will do for us. This is the way to fulfill God’s economy, and this is the new covenant. In the new covenant we are one with God and let Him write Himself into us as our life and as our life law with its capacity for us to function. We all need to see this.
The principle of the Bible, especially of the New Testament, is that God opens Himself to us that we may enter into Him, receive Him, and become one with Him. Then He will be in us, and we will be in Him, taking Him as everything. The first thing we will take is His word to express His thought, His will, His heart’s desire, and His good pleasure; we will not care for our opinions or preferences. In this way we become His mouthpiece to speak Him forth to others for their supply.
THE STUBBORNNESS OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL
DUE TO THEIR NOT BEING ONE WITH GOD
If we see this, we will realize that the stubbornness of the children of Israel was due to their not being one with God. For example, Johanan, the leader of the remnant, strongly determined to go to Egypt to take refuge. He feared that the Babylonians would come to avenge the murder of Gedaliah. But God wanted them to remain in the holy land to be a remnant of His people. God would visit them and grace them and even use them to be His people as a testimony of the living God on earth. However, they altogether misunderstood God by their consideration and by their opinion. Nevertheless, all the leaders of the forces and all the people begged Jeremiah the prophet to pray for them concerning the way in which they should go and the thing which they should do, promising him that whether it was good or evil, they would listen to the voice of Jehovah (42:1-6). They said they would obey because they expected Jeremiah to go along with them. They expected that he would give them a "sugar-coated" word. Jeremiah, who was not one to speak such a word, told them that he would pray to Jehovah according to their words.
Instead of being in a hurry to speak, Jeremiah waited for ten days. After ten days the word of Jehovah came to them through Jeremiah, telling them not to go to Egypt but to remain in Judah. Jehovah said, "If you will still remain in this land, I will build you up and not tear you down, and I will plant you and not pluck you up" (v. 10a). This indicates that He would bless them, and they would enjoy Him. However, if they did not listen to this word but went to the land of Egypt, they would die there. Concerning this, Jehovah said, "If indeed you set your faces to go to Egypt and go to sojourn there, then the sword, which you fear, will overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine, about which you are worried, will follow hard after you there in Egypt; and you will die there. And all the men who set their faces to go to Egypt, to sojourn there, will die by sword, by famine, and by pestilence; and they will have no survivors or any who have escaped from the evil which I will bring on them" (vv. 15b-17).
(Life-Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, Chapter 32, by Witness Lee)
