Category: Jeremiah35-

Categories
Jeremiah35-

Sliding back

Jeremiah

For those of you who have been following this blog through Jeremiah, you know that we’ve done quite a bit of jumping around the book just to stay roughly chronological.

That said, it may come as a bit of a surprise (it did to me) that chapters 43–44 are essentially the end of Jeremiah.

The last 8 chapters all happened prior to the events recorded here. The only thing remaining after this passage is a little footnote concerning King Jehoiachin which we’ll get to in a future blog.

What also surprised me was that Jeremiah probably died right there in Egypt.

We see in chapter 43 that he was dragged there against his will by the leaders of the Jewish remnant that was trying to flee from Nebuchadnezzar. And nowhere in scripture do we see that he ever returns to Judah.

Doing a little digging (the internet is such a useful thing), Jewish tradition holds that he did indeed die in Egypt, probably stoned to death by his own people.

Chapter 44 may provide some explanation for this. (Although admittedly, it may have no connection with it at all. There are times we just have to say, “I don’t know.”)

Having been dragged to Egypt, Jeremiah probably was shocked by what he saw when he got there.

Despite all the horrors that had happened to the Israelites in Jerusalem with the siege and its ultimate fall, the Jews living in Egypt, far from repenting from their sin, were continuing in it.

Namely, they continued worshiping their false gods, specifically the “Queen of Heaven.” (This is probably referring to Ashtoreth, a fertility goddess.)

At this, God gave Jeremiah a message to pass on to the people.

Basically he said this:

“You saw all that happened to Jerusalem because the people had turned their backs on me and started worshiping all these false gods. They did all kinds of detestable things and despite my warnings, they continued in their sin. That’s why all my wrath was poured out on them.

“Why then are you continuing in the sins that destroyed your family and friends in Jerusalem? Because of what you are doing, judgment will come upon you right here in Egypt.” (Jeremiah 44:1–14)

How did the Israelites respond?

“What are you talking about? When we made offerings to the Queen of Heaven, everything went well with us. It was when we stopped that this disaster happened. That’s why we’re making these offerings once again.” (Jeremiah 44:15–19)

It seems that the Jews here had some selective memory.

This is just a guess, but it’s possible that their stopping of offerings happened during the revival under Josiah. During that time, God’s blessing fell upon the nation.

But after his death, the last three kings fell back under idol worship, and so did the nation. It was at that point, after years of warning from the prophets, that Jerusalem fell.

Jeremiah also points out here that their prosperity during their time of idol worship was due not to their idol worship, but due to God’s mercy.

God had given them an extended time to repent, but when they refused to, his patience finally ran out and judgment fell. (Jeremiah 44:20–23)

And now, because they were continuing their sin, judgment would follow them there in Egypt as well.

What can we learn from this? Sometimes we look back at our old life before we became Christians and we start to remember “the good times.”

We think of our life of sin, and think, “Those were the good days. My life was so happy then. Maybe I should go back to my old way of life.”

But we forget two things.

Number one, for most of us, those good times were not so good.

We were often hurting our relationships with our family and the people around us by our attitudes and actions. On top of that, we were hurting ourselves by the bad decisions that we made.

But number two, and even more important, we were a people standing under judgment. And if we had continued on that path, we would have been condemned for all eternity.

Even if we were enjoying our lives, the day would have come when we would have paid for all of our sins.

The Israelites forgot this and slid back into their old sins, and it eventually cost them their lives.

If we slide back into our sins, they will destroy us too.

So let us not slide back to our old life and our old ways. Let us embrace the new life God has given us.

Only in doing so will we truly find a life worth living.

Categories
Jeremiah35-

Whether favorable or unfavorable

Jeremiah

Let’s face it. Sometimes God’s will is not convenient for us.

There are times we’d much rather do something other than what God has asked us to do. And it’s so easy to focus on what we want or what we think is right that we push God’s will to the side.

That’s what happened to the remnant of Jews in these chapters.

After Gedaliah’s assassination, two leaders of the remnant, Johanan and Jezaniah, went up to attack his assassin Ishmael and his band.

Ishmael and his people were going, along with their captives, to the land of the Ammonites who had hired them for the assassination.

Johanan and Jezaniah were successful in recovering the captives, but Ishmael and eight of his men escaped.

At that point, Johanan and Jezaniah had to decide what to do.

They were frightened that Nebuchadnezzar would hold them responsible for Gedaliah’s death, and were contemplating running to Egypt.

Before doing so, however, they consulted Jeremiah, saying,

Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do….

Whether it is favorable or unfavorable, we will obey the Lord our God, to whom we are sending you, so that it will go well with us, for we will obey the Lord our God. (Jeremiah 42:3, 6)

One gets the impression, however, that more than asking God’s will, they were hoping for God’s blessing on their plans.

They probably started making their plans for Egypt, fully expecting Jeremiah to say, “Yes, God wants you to go to Egypt. Go in peace.”

But Jeremiah told them just the opposite.

First he told them that God was grieved at having to bring judgment upon Judah, and that if they stayed in Judah, God would plant them there and they would be fruitful.

He also told them that they would have nothing to fear from Nebuchadnezzar.

After saying this, however, he warned them against going to Egypt, saying that if they did, what they feared would come to them: they would die in Egypt and never see Judah again.

Then Jeremiah said,

You made a fatal mistake when you sent me to the Lord your God and said, ‘Pray to the Lord our God for us; tell us everything he says and we will do it.’

I have told you today, but you still have not obeyed the Lord your God in all he sent me to tell you. (Jeremiah 42:21–22)

I like the King James and New King James translations here. The King James says,

For ye dissembled in your hearts, when ye sent me unto the LORD your God. (21)

The New King James puts it,

You were hypocrites in your hearts when you sent me to the Lord your God. (21)

Despite their promise to do whatever God said, favorable or not, the people disobeyed God, going to Egypt anyway.

What about you? When you come to God, do you do so hypocritically?

Do you dissemble in your heart saying, “Lord, I’ll do whatever you ask,” when you really mean, “I’ll do whatever you ask if it fits with what I want to do”?

Sometimes it seems favorable to us to do things God’s way. It’s easy to obey God then.

But how about when it seems unfavorable? What will you do?

If, for example, it means leaving a comfortable life, or if it means leaving behind your job or your girlfriend or boyfriend, will you do it?

God does desire what’s best for us. If only we could recognize that and trust him enough to obey him.

Do you?

Categories
2 Kings Jeremiah35-

Failing to heed the warning signs

Kings & Jeremiah

After the fall of Jerusalem, a man named Gedaliah was named governor of the area by Nebuchadnezzar.

Gedaliah appears to be a good man, and he attempted to calm the fears of the remaining Jews and was successful. In fact, many of the Jews that had scattered among the nations returned under Gedaliah.

But Gedaliah was naive. He was warned that a man named Ishmael, of the house of David, was plotting to kill him. Despite this, Gedaliah refused to believe ill of Ishmael, and did nothing to protect himself.

The result was that Gedaliah paid for it with his life. Not only that, the good he had done came apart as the people who had returned to Israel under him fled to Egypt.

What can we learn from this? We can have the best of intentions, and indeed do much good in our lives. But if we fail to heed the warning signs around us, all the good we do can come undone.

My pastor has in past Sunday messages shared about his own life and how his own family almost came undone at one point.

He was an assistant pastor at another church at the time, but he had spent so much time at the church doing ministry, it was causing harm to his family.

His wife had come down with ulcers because of the stress, his son had started to develop a nervous tic in his face as well. But all the while, he ignored all of this because he was doing “good” in his ministry.

Had he continued on that path, he could’ve lost both his family and his ministry.

Finally he realized he wasn’t living within God’s will. He took some time off to seek God, and during that time, he realized that he was out of God’s will and that he needed to change.

God has since blessed both his family and ministry in great ways and we are so blessed to have him as our pastor.

You may be doing good things, but are there warning signs in your life that you’re missing? With your personal life? With your family? With your finances? With your ministry? If you fail to heed the warning signs, you can lose everything.

Let us not be like Gedaliah, but rather heed the warning signs.

And by following God’s leading and direction, let us walk the path he has laid out for us.

Categories
Jeremiah35-

Because you trust in me

Jeremiah

One of the nice things of trying to do things chronologically in this blog is that it gives me a better perspective of Biblical events and where everyone fits in history. It also causes me to speculate a bit more than I have in the past.

For example, it’s very interesting to me that Nebuchadnezzar ordered that Jeremiah be treated well.

From chapter 40, it’s made clear that he did so because he knew of Jeremiah’s prophecies that God was handing Judah over to Nebuchadnezzar because of Judah’s sins. The question that pops up then is, “How did Nebuchadnezzar know?”

The easy answer is that with all the exiles that had been taken to Babylon earlier when Jehoiachin was dethroned, Nebuchadnezzar had gained access to these prophecies.

But the question still remains, “Who told Nebuchadnezzar, and why did he believe the prophecies?”

This is pure speculation, but I have to wonder if it wasn’t Daniel.

He certainly had the respect of Nebuchadnezzar. He was considered the chief of the magicians and served in Nebuchadnezzar’s court. (Daniel 4:9)

And from Daniel chapter 9, we know that Daniel knew about the prophecies of Jeremiah.

I wonder if Daniel, when hearing that Jerusalem was about to fall, didn’t tell Nebuchadnezzar, “Hey there’s a guy named Jeremiah living there. He’s a prophet of the God I serve. He has even predicted Jerusalem’s fall to you because of their sin. Please make sure no harm comes to him.”

Like I said, this is pure speculation, but thinking about it now, it’s also purely possible.

At any rate, however Nebuchadnezzar heard about Jeremiah, he ordered his men to look after Jeremiah. And so they did.

Jeremiah had suffered through a lot through the reigns of the kings following Josiah. But because he had trusted in God, when Judah fell and all of its leaders were killed or exiled, his life was spared.

The same can be said of a man named Ebed-Melech.

When Jeremiah had been thrust into a cistern to die, Ebed-Melech was the man who had had the courage to approach Zedekiah to plead on Jeremiah’s behalf. As a result, Jeremiah was set free.

And so God told Ebed-Melech,

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: I am about to fulfill my words against this city through disaster, not prosperity. At that time they will be fulfilled before your eyes.

But I will rescue you on that day, declares the Lord; you will not be handed over to those you fear. I will save you; you will not fall by the sword but will escape with your life, because you trust in me, declares the Lord.’ (Jeremiah 39:16–18)

God was as good as his word and spared Ebed-Melech when the walls were broken through and Jerusalem was captured.

“Because you trust in me.”

Those words resonate with me. God promises that if we will trust in him, while others will suffer his judgment, we will escape with our lives. We will receive his mercy and grace.

This is not to say that we won’t ever suffer for trusting and following God. Jeremiah certainly didn’t escape it for much of his life. Many others throughout history have not only suffered, but died for their faith.

But in death, they found rest and reward.

That’s what faith is about. We don’t always see deliverance in our lifetime. We may go through many struggles because we follow Jesus.

But ultimately, faith says, “Even though I can’t see it now, I believe that in the end, all will be made right.”

That’s the faith Jeremiah had. That’s the faith that Ebed-Melech had.

That’s the kind of faith we need too.

As the writer of Hebrews said,

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

Categories
2 Chronicles 2 Kings Jeremiah35-

Reasons for the fall

Kings,Chronicles, and Jeremiah

This is one of the few times in scripture that the same event is talked about in four different places.

Jeremiah 52 appears to be a historical appendix, however, and seems to have been added by someone other than Jeremiah. It’s an almost word-for-word repetition of the Kings’ account.

Basically Zedekiah had rebelled against Babylon, despite taking an oath in God’s name to be a vassal under him, so Nebuchadnezzar put Jerusalem under siege for 2 years.

As a result, there was famine in the city, and at last, the walls were broken through.

Though Zedekiah fled, he was eventually captured. His sons were put to death, after which he was blinded and taken into captivity until he died.

Nebuchadnezzar killed the officials of Judah, and also the chief priest and the next in rank.

Everything of value in the temple was taken away, and then the temple itself, the palace, and the houses of the land were all burned down.

Why? 2 Chronicles makes the reasons crystal clear.

[Zedekiah] did evil in the eyes of the Lord his God and did not humble himself before Jeremiah the prophet, who spoke the word of the Lord… He became stiff-necked and hardened his heart and would not turn to the Lord, the God of Israel.

Furthermore, all the leaders of the priests and the people became more and more unfaithful, following all the detestable practices of the nations and defiling the temple of the Lord, which he had consecrated in Jerusalem.

The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place.

But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. (2 Chronicles 36:12–16)

What can we learn from this? Why did Jerusalem fall?

First, they did what was evil in God’s sight. It goes without saying that when we do evil, we bring evil upon ourselves.

Second, when they heard God’s words of rebuke, they didn’t humble themselves and repent. Rather, they hardened their hearts, not only continuing their evil deeds, but becoming even more unfaithful to God.

Third, they followed the religious practices of the nations around them, and in doing so defiled the temple of God.

Finally, they continually mocked the words of God and scoffed at his messengers until finally there was no remedy for the evil in their hearts. It is possible to so harden ourselves that we make it impossible for ourselves to return.

How about you? What path are you going down?

Are you unrepentedly doing what God has called evil? When you hear God’s words of rebuke in his Word or through messages at church, do you just close your eyes and ears?

Are you following the religious practices and beliefs of the people around you, and in so doing defiling the temple of the Holy Spirit within you?

I’m not just talking about following other religions. I’m talking about following the gods of money, sex, and materialism as well. These things will defile your lives.

Worst of all, have you become so hardened to God’s word, that you actually scoff at it and anyone who would preach it?

These are what caused Israel to fall into destruction. And it will cause you to fall to destruction too.

I’m not saying that you’ll lose your salvation. But you will eventually destroy all the good things in your life. And you’ll wreck all the good plans God intended for your life.

Instead of having a life worth living, you’ll be left with a wasted life full of regret.

Let us not be like the Israelites who lost everything. Let us keep hearts that are soft and humble before God. For only in doing that can we find the way of life.

Categories
Jeremiah35-

A futile hope

Jeremiah

Zedekiah is kind of a difficult guy to figure out. Here is the son of the last good king of Judah, Josiah. So he had an example of what a good king was.

He also saw how two of his brothers (Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim) and his nephew (Jehoiachin) had failed miserably by going their own way.

Yet, he insisted on following in their footsteps, rather than his father’s.

To some degree he seemed to have some respect for Jeremiah. He certainly consulted him often enough.

Yet when his officials got tired of Jeremiah’s prophesies against Jerusalem, Zedekiah allowed them to falsely accuse him of deserting to the Babylonians, to beat him, and throw him into prison.

Later they convinced Zedekiah to put Jeremiah into a cistern to die.

Only by the actions of one brave man confronting Zedekiah about this was Jeremiah rescued from the cistern, and returned to the courtyard of the guard where he was held prisoner.

But the question was, why consult Jeremiah at all? He never listened to anything Jeremiah said.

As Jeremiah 37:2 says,

Neither [Zedekiah] nor his attendants nor the people of the land paid any attention to the words the Lord had spoken through Jeremiah the prophet.

The only thing I can think of is that he was vainly hoping that somehow God would change his mind. That even if he continued living his own way, God would save him anyway, and just let him live his own life in peace.

But it was a futile hope.

God does indeed sometimes change his mind concerning judgment. But as Jeremiah 18 says, it’s predicated on one thing: repentance. And that’s something that Zedekiah never did.

Instead, he made excuses for why he wouldn’t obey. When Jeremiah urged him to surrender to the Babylonians, he replied,

I am afraid of the Jews who have gone over to the Babylonians, for the Babylonians may hand me over to them and they will mistreat me. (Jeremiah 38:19)

And when Jeremiah tried to convince him that was not so, Zedekiah refused to listen.

How about you? Are you clinging to your sins, hoping that things will somehow turn out for the good?

Are you insistent on living your own way, just hoping that God will show mercy and not bring judgment for it?

That’s a futile hope. If we hold on to our sins, if we insist living our own way, judgment will eventually come. God will not change his mind if we don’t repent.

If however we repent, God will forgive and he will restore us.

I’m not saying that there will not be any consequences here on this earth for our actions. We do reap what we sow.

But when we repent, God will forgive us. And by repenting, we allow God to start turning our lives around for the good.

What will you do? Will you hold on to a futile hope? Or will you seek the hope that comes from repentance?

Categories
Jeremiah35-

The blessing that comes from obedience

Jeremiah

So many times we know what God says, but don’t obey him.

One reason is that we feel like we’ll “miss out on all the fun.” Or that we’ll find more happiness if we do things our way instead of God’s.

That’s how the people of Judah were. But here God shows them and us the blessing that comes from obedience.

God told Jeremiah to invite a family to the temple. They were all descendants of a man named Recab.

They must have been looked upon by their neighbors as a bit strange. They still lived in tents when everyone else had built their own homes, and they refused to drink wine like everyone else.

When this family came, they went to one of the rooms in the temple where the sons of a man named Hanan lived.

Jeremiah then offered them wine to drink, but they replied,

We do not drink wine, because our forefather Jonadab son of Recab gave us this command: ‘Neither you nor your descendants must ever drink wine.

Also you must never build houses, sow seed or plant vineyards; you must never have any of these things, but must always live in tents. Then you will live a long time in the land where you are nomads.’

We have obeyed everything our forefather Jonadab son of Recab commanded us. Neither we nor our wives nor our sons and daughters have ever drunk wine or built houses to live in or had vineyards, fields or crops.

We have lived in tents and have fully obeyed everything our forefather Jonadab commanded us. (Jeremiah 35:6–10)

Even when Nebuchadnezzar came against Judah, and they were forced to flee from their land to Jerusalem, they continued to keep the command of Jonadab.

God then spoke to Jeremiah, saying,

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Go and tell the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem, ‘Will you not learn a lesson and obey my words?’ declares the Lord.

‘Jonadab son of Recab ordered his sons not to drink wine and this command has been kept. To this day they do not drink wine, because they obey their forefather’s command.

But I have spoken to you again and again, yet you have not obeyed me.’ (13–14)

In other words, “These men obeyed their forefather Jonadab, even though he was a mere man. But here I am your God, and you don’t obey me. Why not?”

But then he said of the Recabites,

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘You have obeyed the command of your forefather Jonadab and have followed all his instructions and have done everything he ordered.’

Therefore, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: ‘Jonadab son of Recab will never fail to have a man to serve me.’ (18–19)

Because the Recabites were faithful to their forefather, and to God, they found blessing in their lives at a time when judgment was falling on the land they were living in.

What about you? Do you truly believe that if you follow God and do things his way that you’ll find blessing?

This is not to say that your life will be easy. But you will find joy and contentment in your life as you follow him, no matter your circumstances.