Jeremiah 35:1

Jeremiah 35:1  says,  The word which came unto Jeremiah from the LORD in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, saying, Jeremiah prophesied during the reign of different kings we will note.  Verse two adds, Go unto the house of the Rechabites, and speak unto them, and bring them into the house of the LORD, into one of the chambers, and give them wine to drink.  God instructed Jeremiah to go to the Rechabites and invite them into the house of the LORD and to give them wine to drink.  Matthew Henry said that the Rechabites separated themselves from the rest of Israel, lived in tents and did not drink wine.  They were already living in houses instead of tents because of necessity, so this would be a test to see if they would break their other vow when it was not of necessity.  It is one thing to do something out of necessity and another to do it simply because we may have found it necessary to give in to a certain religious practice just because we have failed in another.  Verse three states, Then I took Jaazaniah the son of Jeremiah, the son of Habaziniah, and his brethren, and all his sons, and the whole house of the Rechabites;  Verse four adds, And I brought them into the house of the LORD, into the chamber of the sons of Hanan, the son of Igdaliah, a man of God, which was by the chamber of the princes, which was above the chamber of Maaseiah the son of Shallum, the keeper of the door:  Jeremiah brought the Rechabites into the temple as God had commanded him to do.  Verse five declares, And I set before the sons of the house of the Rechabites pots full of wine, and cups, and I said unto them, Drink ye wine.  Jeremiah said he set pots full of wine and cups before them.  This was in the house of God and would have been at no cost to them.  Yet, it would have broken their vow to God to drink it.  Not everything that happens in the church building today may agree with our own personal vow to God, and if it doesn't, even if other believers do it, we must refrain from dong so.  Verse six adds, But they said, We will drink no wine: for Jonadab the son of Rechab our father commanded us, saying, Ye shall drink no wine, neither ye, nor your sons for ever:  The Rechabites declined to drink the wine because of the vow to their father.  Verse seven continues, Neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any: but all your days ye shall dwell in tents; that ye may live many days in the land where ye be strangers.  They also brought up the fact that they were not to build houses or plant vineyards according to the command of Rechab.  Verse eight states, Thus have we obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab our father in all that he hath charged us, to drink no wine all our days, we, our wives, our sons, nor our daughters;  They said that they had obeyed the commands of Rechab.  Verse nine adds, Nor to build houses for us to dwell in: neither have we vineyard, nor field, nor seed:  They repeated the vow to not build houses or plant vineyards.  They may have been living in houses at this time, but they had not built them and did not consider them a permanent home.  Verse ten continues, But we have dwelt in tents, and have obeyed, and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us. Then verse eleven concludes, But it came to pass, when Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came up into the land, that we said, Come, and let us go to Jerusalem for fear of the army of the Chaldeans, and for fear of the army of the Syrians: so we dwell at Jerusalem.  The Rechabites said that they came to Jerusalem out of fear of the army of the Chaldeans.  Again, they weren't there to establish permanent homes.  We should never allow anything to come between God and us, but if we have made a vow to God we should do our best to keep it, even if everything seems to be going wrong around us.