How often do people go to God about something, and pray for guidance and direction, when all the time their own mind is made up about what they intend to do. In some cases, looking to God for direction means asking God to bless our own plans, trying to get Him to sanction our way.
There is a striking example of this in Jeremiah 42. We find there a great company of people of all ages met together for apparently a very good object, and that is to present a supplication to Jehovah, to ask Him to show them the way wherein they may walk, and the thing that they may do (v. 3). What could be better or more becoming-looking to God for their whole future course? Nor do they stop here; they even go further and promise that when the mind of the Lord is revealed to them, they will do it. They say, "Whether it be good, or whether it be evil, we will obey the voice of the LORD our God." v. 6.
After ten days the answer came, a plain straightforward answer, telling them what to do, and promising them life and happiness in the doing of it. Now they know the Lord's mind unmistakably, and after their promises you would expect them to hear and obey; but do they? No, for in the next chapter we find it twice recorded, they "obeyed not the voice of the LORD." What became of all their former boasted obedience only ten days previous? When reminded of it by the prophet, God's messenger, they profess to doubt the answer they have received, because it does not fall in with their views and arrangements, and they say to him, "Thou speakest falsely," and they try to find a reason for not carrying out the Lord's will. Bent on their own way, and utterly disregarding the answer to their prayer, they begin at once to carry out their preconceived plans which end in judgment and death.
Is there no lesson for Christians here? Do we not sometimes speak of having the Lord's mind when to others it appears quite the contrary? Do we not too often go to God full of our own thoughts and ways instead of seeking to get His mind by dependence on Him?
If we trace the progress of these same people after they had carried out their own purposes and gone into Egypt, we find their further departure from God. Now they boldly say to the prophet, "We will not hearken unto thee, but we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth." Later on, judgment overtakes them as it assuredly must, for self-will brings its own punishment.
May we learn from their sad example not to give up dependence on God for self-will, for 1 Cor. 10:1111Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. (1 Corinthians 10:11) teaches us that "these things happened unto them for ensamples," and that they "are written for our admonition." If anyone should ask, What is false prayer? I think Scripture defines it in this same chapter referred to, Jer. 42:2020For ye dissembled in your hearts, when ye sent me unto the Lord your God, saying, Pray for us unto the Lord our God; and according unto all that the Lord our God shall say, so declare unto us, and we will do it. (Jeremiah 42:20). "For ye dissembled in your hearts," or, as another version has it, "For you, you are deceived in your souls."