27 In the beginning of the reign of [a]Zedekiah the son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying— 2 thus says the Lord to me—“Make for yourself bonds and yokes and put them on your neck, 3 and send [b]word to the king of Edom, to the king of Moab, to the king of the sons of Ammon, to the king of Tyre and to the king of Sidon [c]by the messengers who come to Jerusalem to Zedekiah king of Judah. 4 Command them to go to their masters, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, thus you shall say to your masters, 5 “I have made the earth, the men and the beasts which are on the face of the earth by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and I will give it to the one who is [d]pleasing in My sight. 6 Now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant, and I have given him also the wild animals of the field to serve him. 7 All the nations shall serve him and his son and his grandson until the time of his own land comes; then many nations and great kings will [e]make him their servant.
8 “It will be, that the nation or the kingdom which will not serve him, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and which will not put its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine and with pestilence,” declares the Lord, “until I have destroyed [f]it by his hand. 9 But as for you, do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your [g]dreamers, your soothsayers or your sorcerers who speak to you, saying, ‘You will not serve the king of Babylon.’ 10 For they prophesy a lie to you in order to remove you far from your land; and I will drive you out and you will perish. 11 But the nation which will bring its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will let remain on its land,” declares the Lord, “and they will till it and dwell in it.”’”
In this chapter, we see a message that is similar to one Jeremiah delivered to the people of Judah in chapter 21. Keep in mind, these are not necessarily chronological, so that may have come around the same time, or could be from a completely different time in Zedekiah’s reign. In both cases, God tells them to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, or be destroyed.
Now that is naturally a hard thing for these folks to hear, and I think we can all sympathize with the difficulty of such a decision. No one likes to be be subservient to someone else, and yet there’s a strange irony in that. We value our independence, but life doesn’t really work that way. If we have a job, we serve someone, at the very least our customers.
And I would dare to say, if you aren’t serving anyone, you’re doing something wrong… Look at this passage again, in v. 6, God calls Nebuchadnezzar His servant. So even Nebuchadnezzar was not his own master, though I’m sure he would have argued that point. However, it would have been to no avail, as God sets out His own authority very plainly in v. 5.
These nations, though they all at one time or another knew who God was, being descendants of Noah, or more recently of Abraham, or his brother Nahor, had forgotten God. The Moabites and Edomites were especially close kin to Israel, though I don’t know for sure of the others mentioned in v. 3. So God calls them all once more to submit to His plan, and serve the one that He was raising up to rule the land.
Whether or not they would do it, that remains to be seen, but that’s the question for us also. God has put us all in different places, different occupations, different gifts, yet He has called us all to serve. We should not balk at His yoke, and I’m reminded once more of what Jesus told the people in Matthew 11: “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart…”
We could do a lot worse than to learn from Jesus, and sadly, we often do as we refuse to acknowledge that He is Lord of all. Lord of all, and yet He came to serve and give His life as a ransom, wow! We would do better, even the best, if we let God use our gifts and used them to serve others. Not just in the obvious ways, but in our daily tasks, serving each other with Christ as our example.