“Ten days passed before the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah”

An example of perseverance in prayer.

“If you remain quietly in this land I will build you up…do not fear the king of Babylon…for I am with you to save you, I will grant you mercy…But if you disobey, saying we will go to Egypt where we will hear no more of war, nor hunger for bread, there you will die.”

This is a typology for the life of faith.  ‘I you remain quietly in this land’ of faith and trust in the Lord ‘I will build you up’  “For by waiting and by calm you shall be saved; in quiet and trust your strength lies” (Isaiah 30.15).  But if our hunger for self-assertion, power, wealth, certainly and pleasure overtake us, we return to the land of Egypt, symbolic of that place of slavery from which we were taken by the Lord when we were baptized into his death.  In Egypt is our death, for that is what awaits us if we wholly reject the difficult road of faith and knowingly walk back down the road of the world for the sake of false comfort and temporary security.

“Do not fear, little flock, it has pleased the Father to give you the kingdom.”