Over 2,700 years ago, the people of God had forgotten God and strayed into worshipping the gods of the surrounding nations. God sent prophet after prophet to call Israel to repentance, but they did not pay attention to his words and rejected his law (Jeremiah 6:19).

As God called them away from their counterfeit repentance into true repentance from the heart, he declares this to his people:

“Stand by the roads, and look,
And ask for the ancient paths,
Where the good way is; and walk in it,
And find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16).

Their iniquities and sins had kept God’s blessing and his rest from them (Jeremiah 5:25). But what they needed in the midst of their sin and their unrest was not a new word from God or a different word. What they needed was to remember his good way and to walk in it.

How could they do that?

They needed to look and ask for the well-worn paths of the faithful who had followed God before them. They needed to remember and hear what the One God had said, and they needed to walk the same road as the faithful people of God before them.

Church, as we seek to follow God with our whole hearts, we would be wise to stop and to look and to ask for the ancient paths. We find those as we go to God’s Word, but we also must be sure that we’re not interpreting God’s Word according to our wisdom and our desires. How has the church walked faithfully with God and exalted Christ for thousands of years?

Let us cling to the Word of God and learn from those who have gone before us in church history so that we might walk in his good way and enjoy his peace in the journey.

With prayer and joy,

Ben