The Stubbornness of the Saints Text: Jeremiah 35:1-11
Introduction: A Divine Object Lesson
We come now to a curious and instructive episode in the ministry of Jeremiah. God, who is infinitely creative in His methods of instruction, decides to set up what we might call a divine object lesson. He is going to use a small, peculiar, and steadfast clan of nomads to throw the flagrant disobedience of Judah into sharp relief. This is not a parable; it is a real-life test, a piece of street theater orchestrated by God Himself to indict His covenant people.
The scene is Jerusalem, in the waning days of the kingdom of Judah under the feckless King Jehoiakim. The Babylonian storm clouds are gathering on the horizon, and the city is filled with a low-grade panic. Refugees are trickling in from the surrounding countryside, seeking safety behind the city walls. Among them is this group, the house of the Rechabites. God tells Jeremiah to find them, bring them into the very temple of God, and offer them wine.
Now, this is a test on multiple levels. It is a test for the Rechabites, certainly. But more profoundly, it is a test for Judah, and they do not even know they are being tested. God is about to contrast two kinds of faithfulness, two kinds of legacies. On the one hand, you have the legacy of Jonadab, a mere man, whose words have been treasured and obeyed by his descendants for some two hundred years. On the other hand, you have the legacy of Yahweh, the living God, whose covenant words, spoken from Sinai and repeated by a long line of prophets, have been trampled underfoot by His own children. The faithfulness of the sons of Jonadab will be a screaming testimony against the faithlessness of the sons of Jacob.
This passage forces us to ask some hard questions about our own lives. What are we passing down to our children? What commands are we honoring? Are we building a legacy of multi-generational faithfulness, or are we simply adrift in the cultural currents, indistinguishable from the world around us? The Rechabites were peculiar. They were counter-cultural. And God commended them for it. This is a call for us to be a peculiar people, a holy nation, whose stubborn obedience to our Father puts the world to shame.
The Text
The word which came to Jeremiah from Yahweh in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying, "Go to the house of the Rechabites and speak to them and bring them into the house of Yahweh, into one of the chambers, and give them wine to drink." Then I took Jaazaniah the son of Jeremiah, son of Habazziniah, and his brothers and all his sons and the whole house of the Rechabites, and I brought them into the house of Yahweh, into the chamber of the sons of Hanan the son of Igdaliah, the man of God, which was beside the chamber of the officials, which was above the chamber of Maaseiah the son of Shallum, the doorkeeper. Then I put before the men of the house of the Rechabites pitchers full of wine and cups; and I said to them, "Drink wine!" But they said, "We will not drink wine, for Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, saying, 'You shall not drink wine, you or your sons, forever. And you shall not build a house, and you shall not sow seed, and you shall not plant a vineyard or own one; but tents you shall inhabit all your days, that you may live many days in the land where you sojourn.' So we have listened to the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, in all that he commanded us, not to drink wine all our days, we, our wives, our sons, or our daughters, nor to build ourselves houses to inhabit; and we do not have vineyard or field or seed. We have only inhabited tents and have listened and have done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us. But it happened that when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against the land, we said, 'Come, let us come to Jerusalem before the military force of the Chaldeans and before the military force of the Arameans.' So we have inhabited Jerusalem."
(Jeremiah 35:1-11 LSB)
The Peculiar Command and the Prophetic Test (vv. 1-5)
The narrative begins with a direct command from God to His prophet.
"Go to the house of the Rechabites and speak to them and bring them into the house of Yahweh, into one of the chambers, and give them wine to drink." (Jeremiah 35:2)
God sets the stage with great specificity. This is not to be a private affair. Jeremiah is to bring this entire clan into the temple complex, into one of the official chambers. This is a public act. The location is significant. They are in the house of God, surrounded by the symbols of Israel's covenant with Yahweh, a covenant they were flagrantly violating. The officials have rooms there, the doorkeepers are there. This is happening in the center of Israel's religious and national life.
And the test is simple: "give them wine to drink." Now, there is nothing inherently sinful about drinking wine. The Scriptures are clear on this. Wine is a gift from God that makes glad the heart of man (Psalm 104:15). But for this particular family, it was a matter of covenant faithfulness to their earthly father. Jeremiah obeys, gathering the whole clan, and sets pitchers and cups before them. The offer is made plainly: "Drink wine!"
This is a real test. A prophet of God, in the house of God, is offering them something that is not, in itself, forbidden by God's law. It would have been easy to rationalize. "Well, Jonadab was a great man, but times have changed. We are refugees now. A little wine for our troubles is surely permissible. Besides, a prophet is telling us to do it!" But they do not rationalize. Their response is immediate and unequivocal.
The Power of a Father's Words (vv. 6-10)
Their refusal is rooted in a long-standing family covenant, a legacy of obedience.
"But they said, 'We will not drink wine, for Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, saying, 'You shall not drink wine, you or your sons, forever...'" (Jeremiah 35:6)
Notice the authority they appeal to: "Jonadab... our father, commanded us." This Jonadab, a contemporary of King Jehu, lived about 250 years before this event. He was a zealous man who helped Jehu purge Israel of Baal worship (2 Kings 10). He established a set of rules for his descendants, a family constitution, designed to keep them separate from the corrupting influences of the settled, agrarian, and often pagan culture of Canaan.
The commands were threefold: no wine, no permanent houses, and no agriculture. They were to be perpetual nomads, pilgrims, sojourners. This was their identity. These were not arbitrary rules. They were boundary markers, designed to preserve their identity as a distinct people. Abstaining from wine kept them from the excesses and idolatrous feasts of their neighbors. Living in tents and refusing to own land was a constant, physical reminder that this world was not their home. It was a protest against the Canaanite temptation to find ultimate security in land and possessions rather than in God.
And look at the thoroughness of their obedience. "So we have listened to the voice of Jonadab... in all that he commanded us" (v. 8). This was not a partial or occasional obedience. It was comprehensive. It involved their wives and children. It shaped their entire way of life. For over two centuries, this father's words had echoed down the generations, and they were still potent, still authoritative. This is the power of a godly legacy. This is the Fifth Commandment lived out over centuries: "Honor your father and your mother." They honored the memory and the command of their founding patriarch, and it had preserved them.
Principled Compromise (v. 11)
The final verse of our section shows that their obedience was not a blind, unthinking legalism. It was principled.
"But it happened that when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against the land, we said, 'Come, let us come to Jerusalem before the military force of the Chaldeans and before the military force of the Arameans.' So we have inhabited Jerusalem." (Jeremiah 35:11)
Here they explain why they are currently in Jerusalem, which seems to be a violation of the "dwell in tents" and "build no house" rule. But it is not. Their father's command was given so "that you may live many days in the land where you sojourn" (v. 7). The purpose of the rule was the preservation of life and their distinct identity. When the Babylonian army swept through the countryside, staying in tents was no longer a means of preservation but a death sentence. The principle of preserving life trumped the specific application of living in the open country.
So they made a calculated, principled decision to seek temporary refuge in Jerusalem. They did not abandon the rule; they adapted its application in light of the greater principle. This shows they were not mindless robots. They understood the spirit and the purpose of their father's law. This is wisdom. They broke the letter (temporarily inhabiting a city) to keep the spirit (preserving their lives to continue their legacy).
This is a crucial lesson for us. We are called to be faithful to God's commands, but faithfulness requires wisdom in application. We must distinguish between the timeless moral law of God and the specific, temporary applications of it. The Rechabites knew that the command to preserve life was more fundamental than the command to live in a tent. They were faithful, not fragile.
Conclusion: The Rebuke to Judah
And so the object lesson is complete. The Rechabites have passed the test with flying colors. Their stubborn, principled, multi-generational faithfulness to a fallible human father stands as a towering monument. And next to it, God will place the faithlessness of Judah.
God will go on to say through Jeremiah, "The words of Jonadab the son of Rechab, which he commanded his sons not to drink wine, are observed. So they do not drink wine to this day, for they listen to their father's command. But I have spoken to you again and again, yet you have not listened to Me" (Jer. 35:14). The contrast is devastating. The Rechabites obeyed a man they had never seen. Judah disobeyed the God who brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand, who spoke to them from the fire, who gave them His law, and who sent them prophet after prophet.
This story is a call to us as Christian fathers. We must be like Jonadab. We must establish a family culture, a household covenant, that is intentionally and deliberately counter-cultural. We must give our children clear, biblical principles to live by. We must teach them to be pilgrims and sojourners, not to be comfortable here, not to put their roots down deep into this passing world. Our commands must be aimed at their preservation in a hostile world, that they might "live many days" in faithfulness to God.
And it is a call to us as children, whatever our age. The legacy of faithfulness is our responsibility to carry on. The Rechabites did not say, "That was for my great-great-great-grandfather's generation." They owned the covenant for themselves. We are to receive the heritage passed down to us, the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and we are to live it out with the same stubborn, unyielding faithfulness. The world will offer us its wine, its comforts, its permanent houses. It will seem sophisticated and reasonable. But we must have our answer ready: "We will not, for our Father has commanded us otherwise."