26:1,2
Jeremiah is commanded to stand in the courtyard of the temple and to give the word of the Lord to everyone who comes to worship there. Jeremiah is to give them everything the Lord says, nothing is to be omitted. It is important that we give the whole word of God. We need to understand that while we serve the people, we are not servants of the people. We are God’s servants. The people will not always want what God wants!
26:3
“Perhaps they will listen ...” This verse is very conditional. “Perhaps they will listen”, “Then I will relent”. There are debates between Calvinists and Arminians, and quite often they are utterly futile. If we read the Bible we can find plenty of evidence that the Lord is sovereign, He knows all things and His will is always done. Yet at the same time we find verses like this, and there are plenty others, that show that what we do and think matters. Indeed, we can find this on every page of the Bible. And there are a number, like this one, that read as though God changes His mind. What we then often do is that those on one side of the debate seeks to show that the other side’s interpretation is wrong. This is not very helpful. Two of the great truths of the Bible are (i) The Lord is absolutely sovereign; and (ii) what we do with our lives matters. A compatibilism approach seems by far the most sensible. I.e. in our limited understanding the sovereignty of God and human responsibility seem incompatible, but in God’s view they clearly are not!
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